LITMIR.BIZ

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and what brought us here. We’ve kept it secret for a reason. It’s something we bring up scarcely in our own conversations because it upsets your mother that I would leave my life to be with her.” Daddy regarded her with a softer look and took her hand. “If we are to stay hidden, we have to stay here. Just tell that girl that your presence is needed at home. We’ve let you go to grade school. You’ve almost paid Mr. Rollins for the clothes and supplies, so I think that’s plenty enough debt on your shoulders.”

      I nodded as a cold feeling iced over in my stomach.

      Mama was quite a beauty. Her soft brown eyes and high cheeks bones would have made for a looker in her day. Her wavy brown hair was streaked with a few sprigs of white. Though she had trouble keeping it pinned up, it always looked pretty. She wasn’t from high society and never acted proud, but she held her posture as if she were groomed from the finest of ladies. I could see why Pop would fight a whole family to love her.

      It looked like we were destined to spend our lives running, never really belonging anywhere.

      * * * *

      I woke at 4:30 AM, ate a fast breakfast with Mama and Pop, and then Pop and I were off to whatever part of the land we had to work that day. Hay fields, apple orchards, endless grass fields. There was always something to be done. Though Mr. Rollins never really assigned any of it to our family, my father took it on as his job to find things to do to feel worthy of his keep.

      After I helped Pop in the catacombs, I rounded up some string and a hook. With a small tin can, I carried some worms. There was nothing like tying your fishing line to your toe, and lying back with a piece of straw in your mouth and a hat over your face.

      Napping off and on, I waited until a tug came at my toe. When I got a bite, I always jumped to catch the line and pull the fish in. On the evenings I had a good catch, Mama fried up an amazing fish dinner.

      A jerk came from my toe, and I shot up.

      “Now that was funny.” A girl laughed as my hat fell to the ground and the sunlight bombarded my eyes. Annabeth, who had somehow silently sat beside me, plopped a rock into the water. “You should have seen the look on your face.”

      There went all my fish.

      “Aren’t you supposed to be playing with a dolly somewhere?” I untangled the line from my toe. I may have spoken six words to her since she’d been small enough to play with a doll.

      She definitely wasn’t a little girl anymore.

      “Aren’t you supposed to be plowing a field?” Her eyes widened and she immediately recoiled. “I didn’t mean it like that. Like I think you are only a farmhand. You just—oh, never mind.”

      “What is it with you and your sister, meandering all over the woods by yourselves?”

      “I’m not all by myself. Unless you’re a ghost?” An innocent sparkle lit up her eyes. “So, you catch anything?”

      “Three brim, a snapping turtle, and an irritating sixteen-year-old.” I smirked.

      “What did you do with them?” She looked behind me and wrinkled her nose.

      “Oh, the smell. That’s the dead ones from last Saturday. I throw out everything that’s not cat fish, and I let the turtles loose.”

      “Gross.” She jerked her hands into her lap as if the ground was somehow dirtier now. Grass and dirt from the rocks fell on her pink and black dress. “You kill them?”

      “There’s no use for them to be in there tugging at my toe all the time. That’s what I do to little irritating things that pull on my line.” Now that I’d gotten over the initial embarrassment, she really wasn’t such a bother. But her reactions were funny.

      “Wow, you really know how to treat a lady.” She sighed, looking out at the water. “So, do you eat the fish you catch?”

      “Yep. After Mama chops their heads off and cleans out their guts.” I took out my pocket knife and began whittling a stick. “You ever put a worm on a hook?”

      Annabeth looked at the worms pulsating through the dirt. “No, but I’d try anything once.”

      “Well, then.” I took out a hook and a worm. Grinning, I held them in front of her angelic, surprised face.

      Up close, she had smoother skin and a more innocent smile than Grace. Looking a little green, Annabeth took the worm with her forefinger and thumb.

      “You just stab it into its head and push it through, like this.” I used a hook and worm for demonstration.

      She turned greener but set her jaw. With precision, Annabeth stabbed the hook right through the worm. Who’da thought?

      “You have potential.” There was something about a girl who could wear a dress like that and didn’t mind a little dirt.

      Her eyes settled on my face as she batted her eyelashes. Not coyly. None of her movements seemed planned. She was genuine. When she looked back up to me, I had to look like an idiot, staring.

      For a moment the air was thick around us.

      Something strange heated my stomach, and my fingertips tingled to touch her cheek. So I did. I leaned closer, not minding if my lips touched a girl.

      “Potential for what?” Grace’s icy voice shattered the moment. “Mama is looking for you.”

      “Is she now?” Annabeth turned to look at her sister.

      Grace stood at the top of the bank with her hands on her hips and a fierce glare in her eyes.

      “She is. And I promise Daddy won’t be happy to know you’re down here doing God knows what with a young man.”

      Annabeth tossed a piece of grass into the pond. “There’s plenty about you I don’t tell.”

      Sure that a ball of snakes had begun writhing in my stomach, I stared at the water. I shouldn’t have felt nervous that Grace had found me talking to her sister, but I did.

      Grace scaled the embankment and slipped a time or two.

      “Maybe you can teach me how to cast next time?” Annabeth patted my arm and got up.

      Grace’s face turned bright red. “Oh, I’m telling all right.”

      “Well, you can finish what I started, then. Here.” Annabeth put the impaled worm in Grace’s hand.

      Grace shrieked and tossed it to the ground. “Ugh. You little…”

      “Ah, ah, ah. No foul language. Remember Mrs. Cobb’s lesson.” Annabeth sauntered to the easier path to the house and made it up the incline with ease.

      As she stared after her sister, Grace’s knuckles were white on her clenched fists. “You can’t get a good husband if you don’t carry yourself properly. And rolling around in dirt, playing with worms is nowhere on Mrs. Cobb’s etiquette list.”

      Annabeth sang her way through the woods.

      Oddly, the air was thicker when Grace was close, making it harder to breathe. A fleeting urge to gather my things passed. I wouldn’t let her run me off from what I enjoyed most. I dug my fingers into the dirt. With them soiled, maybe she wouldn’t try to hold my hand.

      “So what were you two doing?” Grace had a weird tone in her voice.

      “I showed her how to put a worm on a hook.”

      “How disgusting. She’ll never be a lady.”

      “I think it’s good that your sister isn’t scared to try new things.” I don’t know where the courage to say it came from.

      “New things? Then you and I can try something new.” Grace spun toward me, shoved me back on the grass, and put her mouth all over my face. After a series of odd caresses and sucking noises, she finished the kiss.

      I hadn’t moved my mouth.

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