Overlooked (Gives Light Series Book 6)

by Christo, Rose

  The best part about December was the end-of-term exams, ‘cause they meant no more school until February. But the exams were the worst part, too. Early one morning I sat wedged between Sky and Annie at our desk, staring at the thick pamphlet in front of me. The questions morphed in front of my face like a foreign language.

  What year was the Dawes Act signed? Explain how the Act undermined Indian sovereignty.

  Has the Treaty of Fort Laramie been violated? Why or why not?

  Which tribe was responsible for creating the first draft of the US Constitution?

  What was Terra Nullius?

  I’d read all of this before. I’d studied it every night for the past week. And I didn’t remember a damn thing.

  At the end of the school day, about noon, I met up with Sky and Annie and Aubrey in the backyard. The first graders played on the tree swings, John Seth Grace pushing Jack Nabako. Aubrey and Annie very pointedly avoided one another’s gaze. I found out why when Annie turned her eyes on me, blazing like black coals.

  “So I’m not good enough for your nighttime dalliances, am I?” she asked.

  I started. “Annie, it was totally spur of the moment.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her!” Aubrey said hurriedly.

  “Oh, but you couldn’t come and fetch me, is that it?” Annie asked. “You’d rather have Allen Calling Owl in the car with you?”

  Allen happened to walk by us just then. He jumped, as though struck by a gong. He threw Annie a puzzled look.

  “I swear to God, I didn’t even wanna go!” I said through my teeth, annoyed.

  “Of course you didn’t!” Annie said.

  Sky put his hand on Annie’s arm, a line on his forehead, his face serious. Annie calmed minimally. “Of course,” she said, “I know you didn’t have a say in the matter, Skylar—”

  I gagged loudly. Annie spun toward me on her heel, her hair flying. I shrank back.

  “Annie,” I said, “you wouldn’t have gone for something like that, anyhow. You’re too responsible—”

  “Too responsible? Is that what you think of me?”

  “Alright, alright,” Aubrey said quickly, jumping in. “I think you should leave Rafael alone. He’s made a mistake and he’s suffering enough for it, really.”

  Annie blew a clump of hair free from her eyes. Righteous fury looked weird on a girl so tiny and waifish, her pointy little chin, her ski bump nose. I didn’t get the chance to apologize to her. Mr. Red Clay came out through the school’s back door, arms folded loosely. He raised an imperial eyebrow at the four of us.

  “What?” I asked miserably.

  “I’m fairly certain three of you are supposed to be grounded right now,” Mr. Red Clay said. “Would you like me to walk you home?”

  I scowled. Of course he freaking knew we were grounded. Sometimes it sucked living in a community so small.

  “Teacher!” Jack yelled from the swings. “My hiney itches!”

  I trudged home dejectedly, my hands in my pockets. I didn’t realize Sky was following me until he took my hand out of my pocket and wrapped it around his. He was warm, and he was everything nice about the world, his brown jacket zipped halfway, the scarf around his neck swallowing him up. It wasn’t that cold out. I watched him for a while: the way the weak sun found his hair through the pronged tree branches; the way his curls shifted when the wind envied them. I didn’t know why it envied him. He was already Wind and Sky.

  “Sky,” I said. “Are you gay?”

  Sky dropped my hand, staring incredulously.

  “It’s just,” I hastened. I knew how dumb I sounded. “I kept assuming you were gay, but some people like guys and still like girls. I mean. For all I know, you could be bi—”

  Sky tugged me down by my jacket. Sky kissed the breath out of me, stealing it for his own. I thought at first that he was trying to shut me up; but when I felt the insistence behind his lips, I understood. It wasn’t a matter of whether he liked boys or girls. He liked me. I just happened to be a boy.

  I could’ve gone on kissing Sky forever. I buried my hands in the small of his back, hunched over him, his hands curled at my chest. His legs fitted between mine, his floppy hair tickling my cheeks. It was like that scenario I described with the regalia. I was more of me when I was with Sky. I was among the clouds, and the sun, and the seam in the fabric of reality.

  “Wait,” I muttered. I let go of him with great reluctance. “Uncle Gabe’s gonna kill me if I stay out too long.”

  He locked his hands behind my neck and kissed my dimples. He went on kissing them, with the result that I lost my train of thought. Once I cottoned on I showed him a reproachful look. He didn’t care. He took my hand and kissed that, too.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  I grabbed Sky in one arm, slinging him over my shoulder. His belly spasmed with surprised laughter. He slapped my back and kicked his legs, which had about the same effect as swatting a boulder with a feather. I carried him down the crossroads to his house, appropriately cross with him. A couple of people stared at us along the way. What did I care? It was Sky’s fault, not mine.

  When I went back to my house my chief concern was for Sky’s father. Now that I was grounded I couldn’t follow Mary around the reservation anymore. But as it happened, Mary wasn’t up for killing Paul today. I was grabbing lunch in the kitchen when I heard retching down the hall. I put down the hotbread and walked outside. I found Mary in the bathroom in her fuzzy bunny pajamas, kneeling on the floor, hugging the toilet bowl.

  “What did that?” I asked, scared.

  She surfaced. Her face was free of piercings and makeup, but the dark circles around her eyes made her look like a raccoon. Her skin was waxy, her teeth chattering.

  “Detox,” Mary said.

  I got on the floor and rubbed her back, frightened at the bumps in her fragile spine. She bent over the toilet and vomited again. I held her hair away from her face. She raised her head and gasped for breath, dry and sucking. I stood and turned the faucet on in the sink, catching water in my cupped palm.

  “You think you could eat some pine nut soup?” I asked. “Y’want rose tea?”

  “Oh, God, no,” Mary moaned.

  I knelt again. Mary drank the water from my hand, her lips pale and cracked. I put my arm around her back and helped her off the floor, flushing the toilet the toilet. We shuffled out into the hall together and I got her into her bedroom. I peeled the blankets back on her bed. She dumped herself on the mattress.

  “I wish I had a redo,” Mary said, pulling her legs up. “Every human being should get just one redo. That’s enough to make your life a little better, but not too much that you’ll be reckless with your choices.”

  “Is this really okay?” I asked skittishly. “Should I get you to the hospital?”

  “Nah, it’s good,” Mary said. “They had me on this huge cocktail of antibiotics, now they’re weaning me off…”

  I sat on the bed with her. She hugged her pillow, exactly like a little kid.

  “Want I should read to you?” I asked.

  Mary mustered up a grin. “Whatcha gonna read?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  I went into the kitchen and ate lunch first, but it only took a few minutes tops. I put a bucket beside Mary’s bed and we sat together against her headboard, me reading to her from Carmilla. Carmilla made me think way too much of myself. She was a monster, and she couldn’t help it, but the way she loved Laura was all-consuming. It was the same way I loved Sky. Even when I wasn’t thinking about him I was thinking about him. Me and Carmilla, we had to be careful, because sometimes we forgot that humans were fragile and needed to be loved gently. I don’t mean to say that I was a monster. I knew I wasn’t. I knew, too, that I had a monster’s blood in me.

  “Skip ahead to the sexy parts,” Mary interrupted me.

  I lost my train of thought. I glowered at her. “This book was written in 1871.”

  “Okay,” Mary said. “Then
stop reading.”

  I tossed the book aside, exasperated. Mary tugged on the braid beside my temple.

  “Ow!” I said.

  “You and your dove’s feathers,” Mary said.

  A silvery-gray dove’s feather hung knotted in my braid. Mary touched it with painted fingernails. She recognized Mom when she saw her.

  “Mom loved you, you know,” I said.

  “Sure she did,” Mary said. “She loved you more, though.”

  “Does it have to be a competition?” I asked sourly.

  “Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t bother me any,” Mary said. “It’s just Mom subscribed to some weird Freudian bullshit. I was a lesbo, and she knew it, and she wouldn’t let me in the dressing room with her whenever we went to the mall. You ever notice she made Dad bathe me?”

  My stomach turned. Mary was older than me; it made sense that she remembered things I didn’t. The more she remembered about Mom, though, the more I wished she wouldn’t.

  “People aren’t perfect, Raffy,” Mary said. “You have to love them the way they are.”

  “Some people are perfect,” I muttered.

  Mary snickered. “I know you’re gaga for him, but Chrissy’s kid’s not perfect, either.”

  “Sky,” I said. “His name’s not Chrissy’s Kid.”

  “Anyway,” Mary said. “Enough about that. I wanna try and get some sleep.”

  “Have you?” I asked. “Gotten any sleep,” I clarified.

  “Two hours last night,” Mary said. “Don’t do drugs, Raffy. Take it from me.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  I left Mary’s room. I came back with a bowl of sage leaves from the pantry. I didn’t have a matchstick on me, but Mary took the cigarette lighter from her bedside table and set the sage on fire. It seared red, cooled black, and crumbled.

  “Smudging and purging, huh?” Mary asked. “Haven’t done it in years.”

  I blew on the black ashes, smoke coiling around our faces. I hated the scent of sage, but then most of the stuff that heals your body smells really bad.

  “You don’t need the hospital,” I said. “If this was good enough for our ancestors, it’s good enough for you.”

  Mary stuck her finger in the bowl, testing. The ashes must’ve been cool enough, because she scooped up a handful and rubbed ‘em on her face. She breathed in the fumes. Grandmother Earth cuts off her own hair for us to use as medicine. It’s bad form to deny her, and arrogance to think we know better.

  “Any better?” I asked.

  “My head feels clear,” Mary said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Clearer than it’s been in a long while.”

  I put the bowl on Mary’s nighttable, in case she wanted more later. I got a towel from the bathroom, came back, and wiped the ashes from her face. I told her to get some sleep.

  “Do you wanna do the Weird Dreaming thing?” Mary asked.

  I pulled the quilts up over her bony legs. I wanted to sweat the fever out of her. “Right now?”

  “Why not?” Mary asked. “We haven’t done it in years.”

  She saw the sheepish look on my face. “You tried it without me, huh?”

  “It didn’t work,” I confessed.

  “No shit. Okay, get over here.”

  I folded up my glasses and hung them off the bedpost. I climbed onto the bed with her and felt like I was four again. Mary and I used to sneak into each other’s rooms at night and stay up talking instead of sleeping. It got so bad eventually that Mom and Dad moved Mary’s bedroom to the second floor. I was four again, and Mary was the biggest, safest thing on the planet, and it didn’t matter that I was grounded; I had my best friend back.

  “Where you wanna go?” Mary asked. She closed her eyes, her head on her pillow.

  “The aquarium,” I said. I put my head beside hers.

  “Meet outside the walrus enclosure?” Mary asked.

  “Hell yeah.” I added, angry, “They got rid of the walrus.”

  “Those bastards.”

  I shut my eyes and made my arms and legs go numb. My body fell asleep, my mind still awake. The colors behind my eyes warped into a black iron fence. I leaned over it, peering at the murky gray water on the other side. Smooth, flat rocks and artificial ice decorated the grounds, a mesh net separating the enclosure from the hot sky.

  Dream Mary came and stood next to me. She whistled. “They really did get rid of the walrus.”

  “Why were you so fixated with that thing, anyhow?” I asked.

  “Because his teeth were almost as big as yours!” Mary said. She ruffled my hair. I batted her hand away.

  “It’s nice,” Mary said. “Being here without the crowds.”

  “I went here with Sky last summer,” I said. “We watched the pilot whale show.”

  Mary’s teasing grin made a comeback. I inched sideways, fuming.

  “It’s weird how close you guys are,” Mary said.

  “Weird how?” I asked dully.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” Mary said. “It’s like now that I’ve seen the two of you, I can’t believe you weren’t together before. You’re so gentle with the kid, too. Crazy.”

  She was embarrassing me. I walked away from the walrus enclosure, looking for the eel exhibit. Mary followed me. Mary said, “Kind of makes me wish his dad wasn’t the one who staked the blood claim.”

  It wasn’t his dad, I almost said. I bit my mouth to keep silent. I felt my teeth pierce my lip and marveled over how real dreams seemed while you were in them. Maybe life was the same way. Maybe when our lives were over we looked back and wondered how we’d ever been deceived.

  “What d’you think comes after life?” I asked Mary.

  Mary made pretend puking sounds. I got ready to yell at her. But then she said, “We go back to the planet, like all Plains People do.”

  I had the feeling we really came from the Sky.

  “Seriously, Raffy,” Mary said. “They put us in the ground and we decompose. We break down into water and nitrogen and fertilize the dirt.”

  “That’s gross,” I said.

  “No, it’s not,” Mary said. “Because without water and nitrogen how do you expect the soil to grow? Face it, kid. We are the life that feeds the next generation. They eat us, and then they die, and then they feed the next generation, too. As long as this planet is here, we’ll be here, too.”

  We came up on the tent where the pilot whales performed their daily shows. We went inside; but the water tanks were empty. I sat on the white bleachers, Mary still standing. I thought about the Sacred Hoop, an ancient name for all of reality. Maybe it made sense that our ancestors saw circles everywhere they looked.

  “Watch,” Mary cackled. She nodded at the chlorine water. It rose and bubbled like a monster lay underneath.

  “Stop it,” I said, creeped out.

  “What I wish,” Mary said, “is that I understood why we bother being born at all if we only wind up in the dirt again. Seems like we should’ve just stayed inside the planet for good. Be happier that way.”

  “We used to live that way,” I reminded Mary. “It was Coyote who tricked us into leaving the heart of the planet. He made himself look like Wolf and he told us we’d be happier on the surface.”

  “What a jackass.”

  “Yeah, but it’s okay, ‘cause we go back in the end.” That was what death was for.

  “Wowie zowie,” Mary remarked.

  “Don’t say that ever again.”

  The Statue of Liberty rose out of the pilot whale tank. I gave my sister a weird look.

  “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of Mary,” she sang.

  “You’re so full of yourself,” I groused.

  “So you think we should just off ourselves?” Mary quipped. “If we were happier being one with the planet, and that’s basically what we go back to in the end, it makes you wonder why we bother with the crap in between.”

  What I really wondered was whether the questions Mary kept voic
ing were my own questions. This was a dream, after all. There was a reason Mary and I never talked about the conversations we’d had in our dreams once we woke up. Talking about ‘em would’ve shattered the illusion that they were real.

  “I mean, you know?” Mary went on. “Hell,” she said. “Our people are nuts. Probably there isn’t any truth to their teachings. Probably we only exist by accident. Everything’s an accident.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I asked.

  “That we’re an accident?” Mary said.

  “How can you believe that?” I asked. “You and I have totally different minds. They shouldn’t fit together, but they belong together. We belong together, and we wound up together. That’s not an accident, Mary. That’s magic.”

  Mary shrugged. “It’s humans’ job to give meaning to things that don’t have any meaning.”

  “You really think there isn’t a plan behind the world?” I asked.

  “I don’t know anything anymore,” Mary said. She finally sat beside me. “I’m nineteen. I’m too old.”

  “You’re a baby.”

  “An old baby.”

  “Listen,” I said. “Remember staying at Grandma Gives Light’s house in Idaho? Remember when it snowed?” I said, “Haven’t you ever bothered looking at a snowflake?”

  Mary shook her head slowly.

  “You’d understand if you had,” I said.

  “Boo,” Mary said. “Like that helps me now.”

  A glassy blue trinket glittered underneath the bleachers. I reached down and picked it up. Shaped like a pilot whale, it hung on the end of a willow string. I tied it around my wrist, entertained.

  “Let’s meet again someday,” Mary said.

  I didn’t get to ask her what she meant. I woke up.

  Mary’s bedroom was swathed in darkness when I opened my eyes. I raised a lazy arm, reaching for Sky’s lights on the ceiling. I tugged them like a drawstring. Gold and green and robin’s egg blue splashed the walls in clarity. The clarity sharpened when I scooped my glasses off the bedpost, tucking them over my ears. Mary slept with her arm across her forehead, her hair in her mouth. I realized, maybe for the first time, that we both had dimples. I’d always thought of them as Mom’s dimples. I’d never thought of them as Mary’s.