Their arguing must have increased in velocity, as Moni took me and the girl to her room to sleep that night.
The next morning, Mom had a cut on her cheek, the skin around the slice like a puff pastry. She silently fixed a bowl of cereal for me, until Moni entered the kitchen with the girl. The girl stood with one hand in Moni’s, the other touching her cheek. Mom’s face flared with discomfort as she hurriedly went back upstairs.
I said nothing and went with Dad in the Jeep to school. He turned the volume up on the radio as if to drown out any questions I may have had in my mind.
By the end of the month, as the weather turned cooler, I would bring the girl with me to the neighborhood playground. Mom was hesitant at first.
“She could use some fresh air. Being around other kids,” I argued.
Mom bit her lip, something she seemed to be doing more frequently. “Keep her close. And don’t let her wander.”
“Fine.”
“Isla.”
“I will. Don’t worry so much.”
I could see her face in the front door window as I held the girl’s hand and led her down the sidewalk, leaves circling our feet from the warm afternoon gusts.
Most of the neighborhood kids thought nothing of this new creature who had landed in their world—one who had caused “grown-up” talk among their parents, low-voiced conversations at the dinner table.
So that girl they found, she’s really staying with them?
Not often you see something like that happen . . . I mean, we would do the same, I’m sure.
Would we though?
But to the children she was just another body on the field. Another kid to wait behind before their turn on the slide. Harmless at best, and nothing to be fussed over.
Except for one. There is always one.
She lived two blocks away from us. I wish I could remember her name. Shaina, Shawna, one of those names that sounded like it had to be said with a twang. Her father worked for John Deere and would get transferred to another state the following spring. We never saw her again.
You would think I would remember her name after what happened.
At first Shaina, or whatever her name was, would give hard stares. These elevator eyes that never stopped traveling over the girl, one finger twisting her long, wavy, flaxen hair. I would give them right back to her, a learned skill from my already seasoned time on the playground.
“Can I help you?” I asked her, clutching the girl’s hand. She looked up at me and then over to Shaina.
“She can’t be your sister.”
“Why is that?”
Her nose wrinkled as if she smelled something repulsive. “You look nothing like each other. Sisters are supposed to look alike.”
“Who said we were sisters?”
“My mom did. She said it was going to raise a lot of questions for the both of you if they took her in.”
Everything felt hot in my face.
“Like I said. You can’t be sisters.”
I felt the skin under my eyes tingle and cheeks go red. I wanted to tell her that her mom didn’t know what she was talking about. That she was shaming me. That she made me feel less than her. I wanted to tell her to go to hell.
But another word and the tingling would turn into something even more embarrassing than saying nothing at all.
I sat on a bench with the girl still holding my hand. She looked at Shaina and then back at me, a peculiar look in her broad eyes.
We went home. Mom, of course, seeing that we survived the ordeal of the playground, sent us back the next day despite me dragging my heels over it.
Shaina was there again. She was too busy on the spinning carousel, pretending to be surfing with her arms out, laughing, to notice I was back with the girl.
The girl tugged at my arm. I pulled her in closer. She tugged again. I looked down at her to find the blankness replaced by an eagerness, an urgency to be freed.
I let her hand go.
I watched her for a while but soon grew tired of keeping tabs on her. It wasn’t until I realized I couldn’t see her anymore that I actively searched. There was no panic; somehow I knew she wouldn’t run away from me.
I found her five minutes later in the crawl space under the green tube slide. Shaina was there, too, her mouth in a stunned O shape, one hand holding a fistful of her own hair, the other palm up in the air, as if she, too, wasn’t sure how she ended up like this.
The entire left side of her hair had been cut off.
A pair of scissors lay in the pebble gravel. A pair I recognized.
Later, when they asked me about it, I pretended not to know how it happened. Maybe Shaina did it herself?
The girl looked at me and stood up.
