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“Do you mean … Are those the kind of snakes that bite?” she whispers urgently as if she’s afraid someone will hear her.
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes. “This is Texas. You shouldn’t walk around barefoot. Most of them can’t bite through leather. You have to wear shoes,” I scold her.
I look back at my canoe and remember that I still need to get my book. “Let’s get your stuff so I can see you home.”
She worries her bottom lip and looks up at me through her lashes, her eyes sad. “Are you mad at me?” Her voice is so small, and I feel bad that I snapped at her. She’s just a kid—a sweet one at that.
“Nah. I’m not. I just have to get home, okay?”
“Okay,” she says quietly. I turn around and crouch so she can hop on my back.
When she doesn’t hop on right away, I turn around to look at her. “Get on. You can’t walk barefoot all the way back up there.”
Her grin is huge, and she says, “Oh, okay.” I turn back around right before she leaps onto my back and wraps her legs around my waist.
I grab hold of her thighs and start walking.
She rests her sun-warmed head against my shoulder. “I’ve never had a piggyback ride,” she says, and I can feel her cheek and jaw moving against my back. It makes me long for my sister suddenly. She loved piggyback rides.
“Me neither,” I mutter.
“This is like riding a horse,” she says dreamily.
“Well, I’m not a horse, okay?” I warn her as I start to climb through the wooded brush.
She weighs next to nothing. If it wasn’t for her vice grip around my neck and her heart thumping against my back and her nonstop chatter, I could forget she was even there. It’s a good thing, too, because the climb up to the cliff’s edge is really steep in places. If she were much heavier, it would be pretty hard to do.
I try to keep my eyes on the ground as much as I can because I wasn’t kidding about snakes. I never come up here without my boots and jeans on.
A rattler bite won’t kill you if you can get help. But getting bit up here, so far away from town, it would take a long time to find help—if you could walk. And if the poison doesn’t kill you, then exposure will.
“Let’s tell each other our favorite things,” she says in a singsong voice.
&nbs
p; “What for?” I say as I duck to avoid a low hanging branch.
“Well, we’re going to be best friends. And I love talking about my favorite things. I can’t stop talking about them,” she says.
“You can’t stop talking, period. How old are you? Eight? Why do you talk like a grown up?” I ask her.
“I am eleven years old. I’m in sixth grade,” she says proudly.
“You’re small for eleven.”
“I’m not small, I’m petite,” she says in that grown-up voice.
“Maybe in Las Vegas, but ‘round here, you’re small,” I say.
“How old are you?” she asks in that sunny voice that didn’t ever change even when I’m grumpy.
“I’m fourteen,” I tell her proudly.
“Really? I thought you were older. My cousin is seventeen, and you’re taller than he is.” She swings her bare feet, and they bounce off my thighs midstride.
“Will you quit that?” I snap over my shoulder. My foot hooks under an exposed tree root.
“Oh, shoot.” I windmill my arms to stop myself from falling forward. She shrieks, but using her arms like reins, pulls us backward.
