The Different Girl

thumb rubbing back and forth along the zipper. She looked up at me. Her words got tangled.
    “W-which—I’m sorry—I forgot your name.”
    “I’m Veronika. My hair is red. I found you.”
    “Veronika saved your life,” said Robbert.
    May looked down and squeezed the rubber bag. “Thank you.”
    “Can we look at your pictures?” I asked.
    “May should eat something first,” said Irene. “At least her soup.”
    Now May was sniffing. She wiped her nose on her fingers and then her fingers on her shorts. She leaned forward to eat. I stayed where I was, next to her, since I’d been the one to make her talk.
    • • •
    In the end May ate her noodles, too, and the table was cleared and wiped so nothing spilled could touch the pictures. We expected May to describe each one in turn, because that was what we did, but instead she unzipped the bag and looked through them all without talking. Eleanor was about to speak, just ahead of me wanting to speak, but Robbert put his hand on her shoulder. We were to wait, because this was something new. Usually this meant an unfamiliar bird or cloud—different, but belonging to a group we already knew. May was another different altogether. Her group was the group of girls, which had been our group, but her being in it changed everything. From now on we were us compared to her.
    This was even more true when May began to talk.
    “The Mary is our boat. I lived there since I can remember, with Will, my uncle Will, and then later with Cat, too—Cat is my other uncle, though he’s not my real uncle, but the Mary needs two people who can sail. In another year I could make three. I can do almost everything. That’s Cat.”
    She pointed to the smiling man who held the fish in the fifth picture. Irene pointed to the first picture, of the two men on the dock.
    “Is one of these men your uncle Will?”
    May shook her head. “Those are friends of Cat.”
    “Where do they live? Where is that?”
    May sniffed. “Port Orange.”
    “That’s quite a distance,” said Robbert. “Do you live there, keep a berth? Is that where you have family?”
    May only shook her head.
    “Not everyone feels welcome in Port Orange any more, do they, Irene?”
    “They’d feel welcome if they had family,” Irene said. “If they had a school, or a church.”
    May shrugged and stared down at the pictures.
    “Where else did you sail in the Mary ?” Robbert asked. “What was the biggest place?”
    “Will doesn’t like us to talk. About any of that.”
    “Why not?”
    “We like to be left alone.”
    “So do we,” said Robbert. May nodded, as if his words meant something more. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, turning her face since the sleeve was short.
    “We’re traveling people. We take cargo and messages, and we catch fish.”
    “What about Tarawa?” Irene asked. “Were you ever there?”
    May shook her head.
    “Not ever?”
    “Not for a long time.”
    “Since things changed?”
    May shrugged, like she wasn’t sure.
    “Didn’t the people in Port Orange make you to go to their school?” asked Robbert.
    May shook her head. “Will and Cat said no.”
    “I didn’t think they let anyone say no.”
    “I don’t know. I guess I stayed out of sight below.”
    “When you took things for people, carried cargo, did you know what it was?” Irene pointed to the crates on the dock in the first picture. “Was it always things like this—this big? Or smaller?”
    May thought about all the different crates. “Usually smaller.”
    “Did you know what was in them?”
    “Will never let me.”
    “But you looked,” said Irene. “Didn’t you, May?”
    May turned. She didn’t answer at once. She was staring at Caroline’s hair. “Sometimes books. Sometimes chips and wires. Or parts to make machines. Mostly we set up meets with other boats offshore—then go into port afterward, all empty, so a search didn’t matter.”
    Irene and Robbert looked at each other. “Your uncle Will sounds very careful,” said Robbert. “Everyone has to be careful these days, don’t they, May?”
    Isobel tugged at Robbert’s sleeve. “Do you know May’s uncle or his friend Cat?”
    “Maybe the men on our supply boat know them,” said Eleanor. “Maybe we can ask.”
    “Can you read, May?” asked Irene, not paying attention to Eleanor.
    May shrugged.
    “We read very well,” said Eleanor.
    “Is that your parrot?” asked Isobel, pointing.
    “No.”
    “What happened to your