Mother is waiting with a bucket of water out front, but Janey pulls Mary past her. Giggling, they run up to their bedroom and dive into the freshly made bed, rolling around and smearing dirt on the white sheets like overexcited infants. Janey kicks her legs frantically until the sheets are in a tangle, drapes herself over Mary, and then falls into a dark and sudden sleep. She wakes up with a gasp in the morning, initially confused by the still air and the sun streaming in through the window. Mary’s dark head is pressed against her chest. Breathing in and then exhaling, Janey makes Mary’s head rise and fall. Squirming and grumbling, Mary puts a hand on Janey’s breastbone to feel the pulse beneath. Janey’s pulse is slow, beating strong and low like dragging footsteps.
The red clay from the shore has dried on the sheets, and it looks like they’ve been murdered in their bed. They’re valuable wasteland sheets, which Mother must have laid out in an ill-calculated gesture of welcome. Janey thinks of all the sheets on all the beds in the wastelands, skeletons with shreds of dried flesh curled up underneath them like dolls. Or blood, perhaps, long dried, the sheets stiff and maroon like they’ve been caked with mud.
School always starts the day after summer ends, unless it’s a Sunday. Janey knows the intent is to shock the children back into regular life as quickly as possible, like splashing cold water on fighting dogs. Janey and Mary clean themselves early, before Mother can get at them, and purposely do a bad job of it; they leave smears of mud behind their knees and between their fingers, and Mary’s hair is one big snarl. Then they sneak into the cellar, Mary devouring an entire cold chicken and swallowing a raw egg while Janey nibbles on a potato.
When they emerge, Mother is cooking an unnecessary breakfast, although Mary might be hungry again in a few minutes. A summer supervised by Janey always leaves her ravenous. Mother hugs Mary tightly, kissing her forehead, and awkwardly pats Janey’s arm. Janey doesn’t like being touched by adults, and Mother is constantly dancing between wanting to show affection and fearing Janey’s rejection.
“You two look like you’re in one piece,” Mother says. “Mary, did you eat the chicken I was saving for dinner?”
“Not all of it,” Mary lies.
Father wanders in and looks pleasantly surprised. “Welcome back, girls,” he says. Mother rushes to serve him some cornmeal porridge with berries, and Mary and Janey slip upstairs to get dressed.
Janey often feels a faint guilt about Mother and Father. She knows that, with a normal child, they would have been normal parents. Quiet and passive, they have always been bowled over by Janey’s stubbornness, unsure how to respond to her. Since she was a child, Janey has ruled them. She loves Mother but pities her hesitant nature, treating her faint commands and tentative decrees as mere suggestions to be ignored at her own whim. As for Father, Janey has always held him at arm’s length, with Mary safe behind her. She sometimes catches glimpses of thoughtfulness, of strength, in his personality, but the rule of father and daughter on the island keeps her steadfastly on guard against him. Father appears, somehow, to understand, and he skirts her and Mary with distant affection. The only time Janey lets him touch her is when she is sick, and unable to mount her usual defenses. When Mother has to sleep, or care for Mary, he holds her hand, bathes her forehead with cold water, sings to her, or tells her fantastic stories of flying girls and talking animals. Upon recovery, Janey treats these episodes like a dream, for fear of warming to Father and letting her defenses fall away.
Up in the girls’ bedroom, Janey’s skirt is too tight on her, and she swears and throws it to the ground. “I shouldn’t be growing,” she mutters.
“You don’t look any different to me,” Mary says to reassure her.
Janey turns away and leans her elbows against the window frame. Her vertebrae stretch and swell against the tight skin of her back, rounding upward like they are waiting to break free. She runs her hands through her damp hair. “I can’t do this forever,” she says out the window.
“Nobody can do anything forever,” Mary says.
“You’re right,” says Janey. “Let me try on one of your dresses.”
Mary is shorter than Janey but about twice as wide, and they both laugh as Janey swims about in too much cloth, striking ridiculous poses.
Eventually Janey finds a dress of hers that still fits. They slip on their shoes, which feel so strange that they have to take slow, careful steps to avoid falling over. Father is gone already, to see how their vegetables survived the first frost. The world seems new and chill and sparkling, although they know it will thaw to muck as the sun moves higher in the sky.
Mary dawdles, and they walk too slowly to get to school on time. Mr. Abraham might be angry, but Mary resists Janey’s tugs on her arm, arguing that she would take a whipping right now if it means they get to be outside a little longer. Nobody’s whipped Janey in ages, perhaps because they’re afraid she might grab the stick and begin whipping them back.
At school, the children are uniformly miserable, pulling at their clothes, twisting in their seats, and picking at dirt under their fingernails. Their eyes roll red and wild, naked hands reaching to peel scabs and pick at sores. They avoid one another’s gazes, trying to recollect themselves from the summer mobs, embarrassed at the way their skin shows, hair combed tight, wrapped and trussed in clothing that won’t seem normal for a few days.
Janey always enjoys school, and even today she seems a little cheerful. At her age, she’s learned all she needs to learn, so she rotates around to different classrooms, performing duties as a surprisingly patient assistant. Her thin fingers will grasp the end of a pencil over smaller, plumper ones, and she’ll guide it around in careful swoops. Even the slow children, the ones who really can’t ever learn to read or write but are eager to try, she approaches with optimism and interest.