The Different Girl

found. Will you do that?”
    I nodded, but still had my question. “Irene?”
    “Yes, Veronika.”
    “What should we do if she comes to look at us?”
    Irene smiled at me. It was a nice smile, and all the answer I got.
    • • •
    I don’t know why I asked. Maybe at the chance we might get sick as well, that one of us could be tangled up on Robbert’s bed. But the next morning, while we helped with breakfast, I saw Eleanor staring at a floor tile near the door. On purpose I dropped the spoon I was holding and bent to pick it up, so I could look at the tile more closely. At Eleanor’s feet lay a fresh smear of dirt and grass, which might have come from Irene’s sandal or Robbert’s sneaker if it hadn’t been topped by the dusty dots of small round toes.

4.

    That morning our class was in the kitchen. Irene had us study temperature and the barometer and the satellite map on Robbert’s notebook, so we could carry numbers in our heads to compare with how things would feel outside later on. After helping her make lunch—miso soup, from a waxed paper pouch instead of a can—the five of us took the red gravel path to the dock. We listened to the wind and the water, and peered at the seaweed and mussels and barnacles. We measured the speed of the wind and the position of the absent moon and the exact point the tide would turn. That these were questions we could answer—that the answers were numbers—made a change from the walks about deciding what to say, walks where we had too many answers and had to find, like guessing a bird from its shadow, a question that fit them.
    Yet, especially since I’d found the girl, we had become more used to stories and guessing, like we’d turned a page in a book, so when this walk with Irene seemed like everything we’d almost stopped doing, we were confused. But doing numbers instead of stories was just another parrot in a cage: while part of me tracked the moon, another part saw it as one task I did instead of another and then, because this was our new habit, I asked myself why. So there were always two questions, or always one question more—since sometimes Irene’s problems got complicated—than we’d been directly asked.
    We didn’t mention this out loud. That was a test, and to ask Irene was either to pass or to fail. The true test was knowing before you asked what the answer would be—and since we couldn’t work it out, none of us said a word.
    Caroline and I walked back on either side of Irene, holding her hands, since Isobel and Eleanor held her hands on the way down. Holding Irene’s hand was different every time: her skin was soft, but also just a little loose, so exactly where it would wrinkle and where it would stretch was always special. Sometimes we squeezed too much and she would ask us to be more gentle, but usually she just held out her hands for us to take, and one of us would say “And no pinching!” Irene would always smile and reply, “That’s right” to whoever had spoken.
    The path back climbed a small hill before the rocks changed to scrub and grass—just before you could see the kitchen roof. Irene released our hands and told us to wait, then kept walking for another thirty yards, until the top of her head disappeared. Then we saw Irene’s hand in the air, like a moth flapping back and forth. She was waving to Robbert.
    I looked at Caroline. “Irene said you found something else on the beach that you’re not supposed to talk about.”
    Caroline only nodded, as if answering out loud would be against Irene’s instructions.
    Eleanor tugged on Caroline’s smock. “What was it?”
    “What was it?” echoed Isobel.
    “I can’t say,” whispered Caroline. “ I can’t.”
    “Why not ?” asked Isobel.
    “We have to guess,” said Eleanor. “Was it alive?”
    Caroline shook her head, but before we could ask more questions we saw Irene coming back.
    Caroline and I took her hands again. Robbert waited on the kitchen steps, and even held the door open as we went inside. Across the yard, the classroom door was closed.
    • • •
    For two days we worked on numbers, preparing in the morning and then walking one day to the beach for waves and the next to the woods to study palms. Both days, on our way back, Irene left us at the spot on the trail just before we could see the buildings and went ahead to wave. It was only returning from the woods, when I saw where I’d stood behind Robbert’s building, that I understood what she was