“Holy shit,” I said. “I’m gonna be a grownup.”
“Language, Rafael.”
“Grownups curse all the time,” I protested.
“I don’t,” Uncle Gabriel pointed out.
Sometimes I thought Uncle Gabriel was the only grownup who mattered. Sometimes I thought he wasn’t a grownup at all. We tell people when they reach a certain age that they can take the training wheels off and make decisions on their own. That doesn’t mean they ever gain the confidence that they’ll always make the right ones.
“Are you sure about this?” Uncle Gabriel asked suddenly.
I struggled to remember what we were talking about. “Huh?”
It wouldn’t have done me any good. “You and Skylar,” Uncle Gabriel said. “I’m not trying to make light of your feelings. But are you sure it’s appropriate? Considering?”
“Considering?” I repeated, dumbfounded.
“Your past,” Uncle Gabriel said. “You’re young now. I know you think you have the whole world figured out—”
The opposite.
“—but nothing will change that your father killed his mother. There will be times when it will come out of nowhere to haunt you. You notice, for example, that he looks like his mother when he smiles a certain way. You remember a story your father told you when you were little, but you can’t share it with him.”
Those moments had already come. Sky always looked like his mother. I always remembered my father.
“We’re supposed to love each other,” I said.
Uncle Gabriel pulled his gigantic feet up on the tree branch. I don’t know how it didn’t snap. “What do you mean?”
“Me and Sky,” I said. “We were supposed to love each other. It makes sense to me. Doesn’t it make sense to you?”
Uncle Gabriel waited to hear what I had to say.
“Because that’s how we heal the past,” I said. “We can’t bring his mom back. We can’t get my dad to apologize. We can only love each other. We love each other, and that turns the tie between our families into a good one. It turns the pain into love. It’s like magic.”
I’d always believed in magic. Not rabbits in top hats, witches on brooms, but a lingering embrace. A cool spring day. Recognizing yourself in someone else’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Uncle Gabriel said.
“What for?” I asked.
“Because you’re a smarter kid than I necessarily acknowledge. You’re a good deal smarter than me.”
“Naw,” I said. “Nobody’s smarter than you.”
“That’s what you think right now. You’ll see someday.”
We went back into the house and Uncle Gabriel listened to the radio with Rosa. I decided to read a book. Two hours later I’d only finished three more pages in Charlotte Doyle, but that’s always the way with me. I turned my ears instead to Mary and Caleb’s muffled chatting a few rooms away. I’d given Caleb my room to sleep in, least until he built his own room, or his own house.
“How’s your story, Rafael?” Rosa asked, her smile subdued.
I told her about Charlotte smacking the Captain across the face. That chick was boss.
It was only later, when everyone else had gone to sleep, that I stole back outside and across the reservation. I didn’t care how late it was; if Sky was awake, I wanted to see him. I climbed up the side of his house and knocked on his window, but I needn’t have, because the light was on in his bedroom. He slid the window open within three seconds, grinning wanly. He must’a been so worried about his dad.
“Do you wanna go somewhere?” I asked him.
He was too chicken to climb out the window after me. He turned his lamp off and crept down the stairs. I waited for him by his front porch. He smiled at me when he came outside, his jacket zipped up to his chin. His curls looked funny with the noisy wind blowing them.
“C’mon,” I said.
I took him by the hand. It said a lot about his confidence in me that he never protested, or got fed up with me, or tried to go home. Wariness tingled in Sky’s palm lines when we walked east into the woods. I asked him if he was okay and he beamed at me; and for a moment all I could do was stare at him in scant moonlight, overwhelmed that he existed. He asked me what the matter was by touching my hands. His fingers were warm. I bent my head to kiss him, and he anticipated it, rising on his toes, his hands catching in my jacket. His mouth felt so soft. There wasn’t a single part of him that didn’t feel soft and kind. I wondered if I was shaking. I wondered because he held me tightly, his hands sliding down to my waist, burning me, but in a good way, and if he hadn’t I might have left the planet. I held him, too. I held him because he was too precious not to hold. My arms went around his back, my hands spread against the dip in his spine. I laid my head on top of his head, folding him into me. He laid his arms on my chest and his hair tickled my chin and my throat. He was my favorite resting place. He was the reason I felt like a good person, and wanted to keep being that person.
We went to the hillock in the woods, moonlight spilling over the taut rope bridge. We crossed the bridge, the arroyo spilling down under our feet. The more nervous Sky looked, the tighter he gripped my hand, pressing himself into my back. I liked that I was the one who made him feel safe. We walked the bridge out of the woods and into the badlands, Sky gazing about in a stupor.
The eastern side of the badlands was a place nobody visited all that much. For starters, big game animals didn’t hang out there, and the clay wasn’t porous enough for dry farming. A few years back the tribal council had discussed turning it into a tourist attraction, but the tribe had voted against it. If you’d seen it, though, you would’a known why they’d considered it. Five Old West houses decorated the gritty sand, roofs splintered, windows missing. A water trough stood next to what might have been a sidewalk once. The drinking tray was bone dry. The poles for the livestock had crumbled with age.
“Freaking ghost town,” I grunted. “That’s not the cool part. Come on.”
We walked a little farther. The canyon opened up on a deep, smooth crater. The crater was covered in a natural glass deposit, something you’ll see in the desert sometimes, especially after lightning strikes. The glass reflected every detail in the sky above it: the smoky stars with fluttering candle wicks; the coal blackness of the shivering night. The moon settled low over the crater, and where the silvery-yellow glass caught its image the reflection flared a startling sun red, rising to kiss the spectral satellite. For that exact reason we called this place the Sun-And-Moon Crater. It was the only spot on earth where Moon and Sun, quarreling lovers, put aside their differences.
Sky looked around in awe. Sky sat down between the peyote flowers, spidery and white on fat cactuses, and the carpet echeveria, fanning, apple-green petals thick and hardy with bashful pink tips. A leaf bug traipsed across the sand, and Sky put his hand down and it crawled onto his knuckles. Sky’s face lit up. I didn’t know how he could stand it. I loved nature more than anything, but I could’a done without the insects.
The moon looked watery and blue tonight, veins delicate, craters frothing with sea foam. He was Titan, the Mermaid Moon, and we were standing on Jupiter. He didn’t hold a candle to the kaleidoscope around Sky’s shoulders, the blues inside of reds, the reds inside of whites and the whites inside of purples. I watched Sky letting the leaf bug down, back into the desert; and I realized I couldn’t tell him about his dad. It would hurt him. Hell, it even hurt me. Why couldn’t Paul get it through his head that Sky was the most important person on the planet? If Paul cared about Sky, how could he go through with this?
Sky looked at me weirdly. I realized I was still standing, dumbass that I was. His gaze lingered, and for a moment I was afraid he’d somehow read my mind. Wouldn’t’a been the first time. I sat next to him begrudgingly. I tried to read the warmth in relaxed eyes. The folds at the tops of his cheeks were pinched. He’d looked at me like that before, at least once to my recollection, on Fort Hall. It worried me.
Sk
y elbowed me. Annie likes Mary, he signed, bending his middle finger.
I took a moment to celebrate that I could understand him. I grunted. “Long as she doesn’t start hanging out with her,” I complained. “Annie was our friend first.”
Sky stared at me.
“What?” I asked, unsettled.
Annie likes Mary, Sky signed again.
“Yeah,” I said. “Can’t say I blame her, I like Mary, too, when she isn’t being a pain—”
All at once, I understood.
“What—no she doesn’t,” I choked.
Sky raised his eyebrows. Yes she does.
“She’s got a boyfriend,” I protested.
So?
“So—she doesn’t—she’s not—”
My mind wasn’t working. I started over.
“Did Annie tell you that?” I whispered, like I was afraid she could hear us.
She doesn’t have to, Sky said, by means of his quirky, cheeky smile. She’s my best friend.
“Yeah,” I said. “But—”
I don’t think she even knows it, Sky told me, shaking his head.
I sat back, dumbfounded. I put my hands on my lap. I never would’a thought—I mean, Annie? And a girl? Did my sister count as a girl? I thought she counted more as a growth, or a minor plague. I guessed some people were into that kind of thing. Only I never thought Annie was one of those people. I’d thought she had more sense than that.
“What about Aubrey?” I asked, worried.
Sky frowned.
“I guess it ain’t our business,” I said. “Damn. Are you serious? Annie’s crazy.”
You’re crazy, Sky said, his fingers digging into my ribs.
“Don’t do that,” I grunted, ticklish. “No I’m not.”
You are, Sky said, grinning brightly.
He tried to wrestle me to the ground. I let him believe he’d overpowered me. I felt so happy to do it, to hold him close and warm him when the night was cold. He scooped up handfuls of sand and pretended to bury me in them: my arms at least, my shoulders. I kissed the freckles on his wrists, mouthed the chilly blush on the side of his neck until he gave up, slumping against me. We lay between the glass and the desert flowers, beneath spiral galaxies and warm stellar dust. I loved Sky so much I don’t know how I stayed inside my own mind.
That’s the way it always was with Sky: I felt like nothing could touch us. Maybe I was right. But in the beginning of spring I had reason to feel otherwise. Uncle Gabriel told Sky and me about the upcoming Sun Dance and invited us to try it out this year. The Sun Dance was a pretty big deal; only grown men were allowed to participate. I guessed this meant we weren’t kids anymore. It was early evening, and I was walking Sky back to his house when he gave me another of his weird, lingering looks. I finally got fed up; not with him, but with my inability to read him. I touched the back of his hand, waiting for his emotions to flow through me.
They opened up in the pit of my chest. They spread into my stomach, into my throat, rising through my ears and my temples and filling my eyes. I felt love. I felt incomparable contentedness, even resignation, that this was a part of me for the rest of my life and nothing I did could ever change it, and maybe free will was as much a myth as satyrs and sirens.
I let go of Sky. I looked at him, bemused. I already knew he loved me. Was he only just figuring that out? His face took on a sickly puce shade. I felt so sad to see it I wanted to apologize. Sometimes I knew things, and I expected that everybody else knew them. If I’d paid a little more attention, I could have spared Sky the worry.
I didn’t get the chance. We both noticed a pair of taipo’o standing on his front porch. He ran to them first, and I followed him; I could tell by the slapping of his shoes on the soil that he was scared. When I drew closer I realized the taipo’o were police officers, or at least dressed like police officers, uniforms dark blue, hats on their heads. Mrs. Looks Over and Mrs. Red Clay from the tribal council came out of the house and onto the front porch, Mrs. Looks Over yelling something fierce.
“This is outrageous! I am the boy’s custodian!”
I didn’t know what was going on. I only knew how afraid I felt. I wrapped my hand around Sky’s wrist, because the part of me that was paranoid, the part of me that hadn’t had a lot go right in his life, thought that these taipo’o had come to take Sky from me. I told myself I was being stupid. I told myself nobody cared if we were together or not.
I was wrong. One of the cops started talking about how Sky was a foster kid, which meant he belonged to the state, which meant we’d done a bad thing taking him to Idaho. My stomach dropped. The sound shut off in my ears. I’d taken Sky to Idaho to show him our heritage. I’d hurt him in the process.
Sky went inside his house and grabbed a duffel bag. Sky came back outside and smiled at me—a “What can you do?” sort of smile. Was he insane? Was he literally out of his mind? I felt sick to my stomach. I reached after him and grabbed his hand; but when I saw the nightsticks and the holsters on the cops’ waists, the strength let out of my knees. My fingers uncurled from Sky’s hand. My hand dropped at my side.
Sky walked away from the reservation, flanked by the taipo’o police. Mrs. Look Over and Mrs. Red Clay lost their auras. The light seeped slowly out of the pine trees. The light left the road under my feet. The light tore down from the sky and curled up in a ragged ball and shrank in on itself, disappearing. The whole reservation went black. I couldn’t see the hands on the ends of my arms, the glasses on the bridge of my nose.
“It’s my fault,” Mrs. Looks Over’s voice said, shaky.
“No, it’s not,” I said into the darkness. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “It’s my fault.”
“I will find a way to contest this,” Mrs. Red Clay said. I looked left and right, but didn’t see her.
“I didn’t know,” Mrs. Looks Over’s voice said. “I didn’t know I had to keep him in the state. They never told me—”
My skin burned. My head was exploding with pain. I sank until I was sitting on the ground, or what I thought was the ground. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t see. Why would they do that? Those taipo’o. Why would they take the light away?
“Rafael?” came Mrs. Looks Over’s weak voice.
“Um,” I said. “I gotta get home.”
I heard Mrs. Looks Over’s tiny feet on the walkway. I felt her gnarled hand on my shoulder. I stood up, and she took my hand, linking her arm with mine. It’s like she knew I was blind. She walked, and I walked with her, stewing in my own skin and sweat.
After what felt like walking for eternity I heard hot wind rustling on clay, clotheslines creaking, a door squeaking open. A pair of big hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me onto a smooth floor. I recognized Uncle Gabriel’s feelings, familiar, guarded concern.
“Catherine,” Uncle Gabriel said. “What’s the matter? You look shaken.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Looks Over said distantly. “I don’t know.”
Uncle Gabriel invited Mrs. Looks Over inside for elderberry juice. He closed the door—I heard it—and I bumped into the wall. My useless glasses slid down my nose. I felt my way to the sofa and sank down on it, my arms and legs cold. I didn’t feel like a real person just then.
Uncle Gabriel’s footsteps fell away in the distance. The couch shifted next to me. Mrs. Looks Over touched the back of my hand, her ancient fingers leathery and afraid.
“I’ll get him back for you,” I promised. “Okay?”
“I don’t—”
The darkness swirled in front of my eyes. The darkness lifted off the couch and the mantelpiece and the windows overlooking the badlands. I squinted. The living room was gray, but at least I could see it. In seconds, I knew why. Mary had come out of the kitchen to stand in front of the fireplace. All the shadows in the room went straight to her hair, her shoulders, and disappeared, sucked into her vacuum aura.
What’s wrong?
I heard Mary’s voice in my
head. I used to be able to talk to Mary without words.
“Foster care took Sky away,” I said.
He’s sixteen.
Seventeen, almost. If he’d been born a year earlier this might not be happening right now.
Rafael, Mary said.
I looked at her. She was black and white, like one of those old photographs of Bear Hunter, of Wovoka, our beloved ancestors. Maybe she was a shaman like Wovoka. Maybe she was the only constant in the world, the only thing that made sense, even when she didn’t make sense herself.
We’re gonna talk to Paul, Mary said.
Uncle Gabriel came back and gave Mrs. Looks Over her juice. I stood up and followed Mary out the front door. Gray sunlight blasted me across the eyes, gray soil spilling open under my feet. My hair was gray and my skin was gray. There might as well have been no difference between me and the terrain. I felt at the moment that there were only two things: Sky, and whatever wasn’t Sky.
Mary and I stopped outside the Looks Over house. Mary knocked on the front door. Paul came outside within a few minutes, expressionless. I’d never really thought about how gray his eyes were until the environment matched them. I don’t think he saw us so much as he looked through us. But then that was always the way with Paul.
“Hey,” Mary said. “We’ll bring him back. Alright?”
Paul rubbed his mouth with his hand, reminding me briefly of my uncle. Paul looked away, thinking.
“Did they say where they were taking him?” Mary asked. “Hey. Look at me.”
“No,” Paul said quietly, looking at her. “They didn’t tell Mother.”
Paul couldn’t go looking for Sky himself. The minute he left the reservation the Major Crimes Act stopped protecting him.
“We’ll figure it out,” Mary said. “Social Services has to know.”
“You know why they’re doing this,” Paul said faintly. “Don’t you?”
I didn’t understand.
” ‘Course I know,” Mary said. “They can’t get you, so they get your kid.”
“I can’t talk right now,” Paul said.
He went inside his house, a bear retreating into its den. When he was gone I felt more afraid than I had minutes earlier.
Overlooked (Gives Light Series Book 6) Page 21
