The Different Girl

didn’t count.
    We’ve done different things,” I said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like deciding to stay longer on a walk. Like deciding at all.”
    May made another face. “Everyone decides.”
    “Not always,” I said. “Isobel and Eleanor and Caroline didn’t decide like I did, just like Isobel and Eleanor and I don’t have dreams. Just like they didn’t find you. I found you, and that was another decision. Caroline doesn’t know what that was. And Caroline found something on the beach. I don’t know about that.”
    May turned to Caroline, blunt again. “What did you find? What was it?”
    Caroline was stuck between different rules. “I don’t know,” she finally whispered. “I didn’t know what it was.”
    May glanced at Irene. “Did they know?”
    Caroline nodded.
    “Was it the same thing in your dream?” I asked.
    Caroline didn’t answer.
    “ Was it?” May demanded, pulling at Caroline’s hand. Caroline nodded.
    “Why don’t they want you to say?”
    “Sometimes that’s the way we learn. Things have correct sequences, and if one comes too soon we have to wait.”
    “But this is happening now .”
    May’s voice had become loud enough for Irene to look back. I waved at her. May looked down at her feet until Irene looked away, then whispered to me.
    “And you can’t dream.”
    “I don’t, whether I can’t or not. But Caroline does.”
    May shook her head. “No, she doesn’t. She’s doing something else.”
    Since I really wanted to know what Caroline had seen, instead of answering May, I waited. Just like she had before, May shifted the question.
    “What did you dream?” she asked Caroline.
    Caroline blinked, because she felt May’s hands squeezing and heard the changes in May’s voice. Since I was on the side of May’s face with the scab, I could also watch the skin being pulled when she spoke, tight on the curve of her cheek.
    “I don’t know it’s a dream when it happens,” said Caroline. “I only wake up slow, slow from remembering. When I put that memory next to others I see it doesn’t fit inside my time, that the dream is out of order, like making oatmeal in the middle of a walk.”
    “But are the dreams memories? Real things that happened?”
    “Not always. But now they seem like mine.”
    “But how? Where can they come from?”
    “Irene says dreams are different thinking. Where do your dreams come from?”
    “My dreams aren’t like that ,” May said. “When I dream I don’t need anyone to—to—what he was doing. No one does.”
    “What was your dream this morning?” I asked Caroline.
    “I was listening to Robbert.”
    May frowned. “What was he saying?”
    “He was telling me to hide.”
    • • •
    Eleanor called back to be careful, because the first person to reach the cliffs always let everyone else know we were near the edge. Actually it wasn’t hard to tell, since the black rock extended at least ten yards back from the lip. When you reached the band of black, it was time to watch out.
    Being on the cliffs was like being on the dock or on the beach—it was a place you could only go if you knew how to keep away from danger. There was a spot where we stood to look out, a good safe distance back since Robbert had explained how rock can crumble, how gravel was slippery, and how surfaces can’t be trusted.
    We caught up to the others at the lookout spot. The cliff curved on either side, so you could see all the way to the water, which meant you could also see the seaweed, the crabs, the birds, the nests, the barnacles, and the waves. Irene took her hands from Isobel and Eleanor and tucked hair the wind had pulled free behind her ear.
    “How are your feet, May?”
    “They’re fine.”
    “Good. What did you see on your way? Did you girls show May how we take walks?”
    “We study things,” said Isobel. “As much as possible.”
    “They did.” May nodded and looked at the ground, making it seem like she was shy about talking instead of the truth, which was that she hadn’t looked at all. Irene turned to Eleanor, for a good example.
    “What did you see, Eleanor?”
    Eleanor described the wind, how it had strengthened as we’d come closer to the cliffs, and how the direction had changed in little ways as the path wound up the slope. She pointed to the water and explained how the wind was connected to the tide, and how the tide determined, for just one example, what all the seabirds were doing.
    May shaded her eyes with one hand and