The Different Girl

Caroline. “Or his friend Cat?”
    “I’m sure they did,” Irene replied. “But they had their own work. And our school here is special. You all know more than May does. Just because she’s lived in places you haven’t, it doesn’t mean that what she thinks about things is right.”
    “What does she think that isn’t?” I asked, very much wanting to know.
    “That depends on the thing,” said Irene.
    “It probably depends on the time of day,” said Robbert, “and the weather, too.”
    Then he stood up, stuffing his notebook—because he’d been making lots of notes the entire time—into his satchel. He slung it over his shoulder and went off to his machines. We all waved good-bye, and Irene had us all do experiments where one of us left out every other word and the others tried to guess the sentence. It was easy until Irene began whispering in our ears to describe invisible things, like ideas and feelings, but even then we were able to guess because there was nothing on the island that the four of us didn’t know.
    As we called out our guesses I saw this was a sign about us, like the perfect sounding of our words. It was a happy thought, because right answers made Irene smile, but also because knowing this about ourselves meant that May’s words—because that was where she lived—were themselves sounds of the sea, every bit as much as the crash of a wave or the cry of a gull.
    • • •
    More often than not May was with us, partly because she no longer needed so much sleep and partly because she finally decided to become our friend. Now that we knew about her missing school, we wanted her to answer questions, too, and get smarter. But Irene didn’t ask May questions often, and when she did they weren’t about the assignment. For her part, May wanted to know about Irene and about Robbert. What we first tried to tell her—how they ate and talked and moved and worked—wasn’t what May wanted to hear. What she did want to hear, like where Irene and Robbert were born, and why they had left that place and come to the island, we couldn’t say. Sometimes when we were alone, on walks or on the porch, May whispered questions about us as well, about why we were our size, or why some of us did different things. We always did our best to answer: about testing and control, or about being just the balanced size for our arms and legs—just like her—but our answers never made May feel better, at least not the way answers did for us.
    Irene was good at not talking about what she didn’t want to, of course, so when she avoided May’s questions the rest of us would change the subject back to school. Even though May and Irene each kept trying to get the other to say something she wouldn’t, we were all still happy to have everyone together, especially with Robbert and Irene being snappy when they thought they were alone.
    “I just don’t think we can,” Irene had whispered, standing with Robbert in the courtyard. She had taken him a cup of tea and stood with him while we watched from the kitchen through the screen.
    “What are they saying?” May had asked, but we were all trying to hear.
    “It probably depends,” said Robbert, talking into his teacup.
    “We don’t know where they’d be going next.”
    “No, we don’t. That depends on how much they know.”
    “Then we can’t.”
    “But what else—Irene, we can’t pretend—”
    “She’s a child.”
    “Who knows . If one word—one word, Irene—”
    “If we’re not sure, we can’t,” Irene repeated, and walked away. When she got to the kitchen we were in a line by the table, except for May.
    “Everyone ready for a walk?” In the time it took to climb the steps, Irene had found her smile, the same we always saw.
    • • •
    That day we walked to the woods, and the next to the dock, and the one after that to the cliffs. Irene split us up like she had before, into groups of three, with her in one and May in the other. The two of us in each group changed every time, though for some reason I was never with Caroline and May together. When I was with Irene, we always talked about what we had observed. I also observed Irene: when her smile went away, or when she stared out from the cliff tops, or when her hand fell to our heads or our shoulders, patting or caressing us, which she never used to do except when we were going to sleep. In all these moments I felt, like a bone beneath skin, the sadness Irene had shown with the ruined