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It’s like she doesn’t hear me, and she wraps her legs even tighter around me. She’s crushing my throat.
I had a growth spurt last year, and I’m bigger than most of the men in the commune.
I gently but firmly use one hand to pull her arms down and the other to unlock her ankles.
Her sobs are interrupted by her shocked yelp when she lands on her rump on the spongy grass that runs along the lake’s shore.
I stand back and get my first good look at the girl who just fell out of the freakin’ sky.
She’s tiny. She can’t be older than eight. Her knobby knees are pressed against her chest, and her skinny arms are wrapped around them. Her quivering chin rests on her forearms. She’s got one of those weird bowl haircuts that I’ve only seen on boys. It’s plastered to her forehead and trails of water stream down her face. The droplets cling to her long, spiky eyelashes before they plop onto her forearm.
She’s got a splash of dark brown freckles across the bridge of her nose that look like they were left by a fine mist of paint.
She’s shivering, staring ahead of her lips that vibrate around chattering teeth.
I grab my towel from the ground next to her and hand it to her.
“Here, dry off.” She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t even look up.
Maybe she can’t hear me.
The wheels in my head start to spin as fresh possibilities occur to me. Or maybe she doesn’t speak at all. Or maybe she was raised by wolves.
“Can you hear me?” When she still doesn’t answer, a kernel of worry starts to unfurl in my chest. She’s too little to be out here by herself.
I scan the lakeshore for signs of a family or anyone else at all.
My eyes land on my little blue canoe bobbing up and down in the lake. I groan when I realize I’m gonna have to swim back out there to get it. If my book weren’t out there, I’d leave it until tomorrow. But, I can’t take the chance that one of those out of nowhere summer showers will choose tonight to surprise us.
“Did Daddy send you?”
I look down at the girl, and she’s peering up at me. Her hand is pressed to her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun. I can see directly into her eyes. Now that they’re not widened in fear underwater or squeezed shut in terror, I can see they’re the color of an impossibly black, moonless sky. They’re wide set and big but tip up sharply at the corners.
“You saved me, like an angel from heaven. My daddy’s there. Maybe he sent you,” she breathes out. Her dark eyes grow wide with awe.
I frown at her. “I’m not a damn angel.”
“I think you are,” she insists. A sudden tremor racks her skinny frame, and I thrust the towel at her again.
“Dry off before you get sick.”
She stares at the towel like she’s never seen one before for a full two seconds before she finally reaches for it.
She drapes it over her head and starts to rub her hair.
Her fingernails are painted gold.
My stepfather preaches about the sin of vanity every week—twice a week. On Wednesday at night bible study and on Sunday from his pulpit.
He says that women who adorn themselves are sinners. In our small community of Cain’s Weeping, he’s the judge, jury, and dispenser of justice.
Nobody who lives here would be caught dead with their nails covered in color. And certainly not one so glorious as that gold. He would say they were trying to tempt the flesh of men by casting the very sun into the shade. And there is something about the way the gold gleams against her sun-browned skin that makes the sun seem ordinary.
If I still believed in any of the garbage he said, I might think this girl had been dropped down in front of me by the devil himself. To make me wonder where she came from and if she’ll take me with her when she goes back.
I want to live somewhere where girls can paint their nails if they want.
When she moves the towel off her head and starts to wipe down her arms, I squat down in front of her and get as close to eye level as I can.
