The Different Girl

see the water moving, and not just the surface. I could sense the current beneath, just from looking. The real last time we had been at the dock it was to do with numbers—how hot it was and the wind and when the tide would turn. I rose from my hands and knees, with Eleanor coming over to help me.
    “Do you see more?” she asked.
    “The whole water.”
    “And the birds.” She pointed to a pair of gulls gliding above the rocks. “I looked without getting caught. I looked as hard as I could.”
    Robbert watched us with his hands in his pockets and a big smile on his face. Then May’s head came into view, bobbing above the crest of the path. Eleanor and I both waved to her, and Robbert spun around.
    “What is it?” he shouted. “Where’s Irene?”
    “She said I could come.”
    Robbert saw us watching and waved us back to work. May caught up to where he stood and watched us, too. Her eyes were red. Even with the wind I could hear.
    “Did you two have a talk?” Robbert asked.
    May nodded. Her lip was shaking.
    “We need your help, May. We need to know what happened. Why .”
    “I don’t know why. I just woke up.”
    Robbert sighed. “You don’t want anything bad to happen, do you?”
    “Something bad already happened.”
    “But this is to everyone, May. Even you.”
    “I told her I don’t know.”
    Robbert rubbed his mouth and stuck a finger in one ear, wiggling it. Then he clapped his hands and shouted to Isobel that she was too close to the edge.
    That night I woke in the dark. At first I wasn’t sure where I was, but then I saw May, kneeling by my side. She put a finger in front of her mouth. I knew this meant not to talk, but I didn’t understand why. I spoke as softly as I could.
    “May—”
    Her hand covered my mouth and she looked over her shoulder, listening for a noise—for Irene. It was three a.m., so Irene was asleep, like she was always asleep, like everyone else. I had never been awake at three a.m. I remembered the footprint on the kitchen floor. Was being awake at night something May did all the time?
    When did May learn how to wake me up?
    Slowly she lifted her hand. I swung my legs over the edge of the cot, and May helped pull me to my feet. She looked into the dark of the stairs to Irene’s room as we slipped through the kitchen. She opened the screen door to just before the hinge began to squeak, then motioned me through. I didn’t have my smock on. What if it rained? I didn’t know what was wrong—though something had to be wrong—so I decided that the best thing was to find out. May eased the door shut and I felt her standing near me, warm.
    There was no moon, but the stars were bright. May took my hand and we crept down the steps, keeping on the canvas runner to muffle sound. She pulled me to the beach.
    I paid attention to as many things as I could, even as May hurried me along, because this time on the island was so new. We stopped on the path and May tugged me down out of the wind, with our heads just at the level of the whistling grass. If anyone did look from the kitchen porch we wouldn’t be seen.
    “She told you something, didn’t she?”
    I didn’t know who May meant, or when. May shook her head with impatience. “The other one, the one they work on more—who has dreams—”
    “That’s Caroline. You should know her name, May. Her hair is brown.”
    “Caroline. Caroline knows something, doesn’t she?”
    Caroline had nodded to the path, so I could tell Isobel and Eleanor, but did that include May? Would it make her mad again? I remembered Irene’s story of the girl who knew things. Each time you learned something it was like a forking path that made you think something else. Would you speak or be silent? Would you finish the equation or look away? Would you follow the rules or make new ones?
    “How did you know how to wake me up?” I asked.
    “Sssh!” May hissed.
    “Why don’t you want anyone to hear?”
    “Because it’s a secret.”
    “What’s a secret?”
    “What they know. I heard them. They can’t decide what to do with me.”
    “That’s because you haven’t been going to school. You have a lot of catching up to do, and you don’t always pay attention—”
    May put her hand over my mouth.
    “No one can hear, May,” I said through her hand.
    “You don’t know that. You have to whisper.”
    I didn’t want her to be upset, so I did my best. “How did you know how—”
    “I watched them—when they—when you take naps. I