The Different Girl

different—like some birds eat crabs, and some other things, like palm trees or grass, eat something else entirely, like sunlight. Like energy.”
    She patted Eleanor’s hair and scooped the strips of vegetable protein off the cutting board into the steaming water.
    “What about May?” I asked.
    “May needs to eat like me.”
    “Did you see her this morning? Do you know where she is?”
    “I didn’t, Veronika. I don’t.”
    “Do you know for sure she didn’t fall into the water?”
    Irene waited until the soup was simmering before she gave an answer. She poured water from the filter jug into a cup.
    “What do you think?” she asked me.
    I didn’t want to think, because I didn’t know for sure. I wanted Irene to know for sure and tell me. I shook my head. Irene turned to the others.
    “Someone must be able to think.”
    “I can think,” I said.
    “But now you don’t want to, is that it?” Irene turned to the others. “Isobel, why do you think Veronika doesn’t want to?”
    “Because of May,” said Isobel.
    “Because May and Veronika are special friends,” said Eleanor.
    I didn’t like everyone looking at me like I was different—because their looking made me different—but also because of Eleanor. Her words were a statement about me but held a question inside, and the question was why had I become different from her, and how that made Eleanor—and me, hearing it—both feel alone.
    “I am friends with everyone,” I said.
    “But there are people we can’t be friends with,” Caroline said. “Angry people, like Robbert said.”
    “May is angry a lot,” said Isobel.
    “May isn’t one of those people,” I told her. “They sank her boat.”
    “No, she isn’t,” said Irene. “But May is different from all of us, isn’t she?”
    “May doesn’t go to school,” said Isobel.
    “May doesn’t care,” said Eleanor.
    “She cares about some things,” said Caroline, “but not the same ones. She knows how to sit on the edge of a cliff or walk in the water, but not how to read or use numbers.”
    Suddenly I understood it. Of course May hadn’t fallen. My being frightened for her was just like our not paying any attention to the peak.
    “There are places we wouldn’t know,” I said. “Small places where you have to climb or squat or jump. That’s why you don’t think she fell.”
    Irene stirred the soup. “What do we do when we want to know something?”
    Eleanor answered before anyone else, though all of us knew. “To know why a bird flies you have to know what it wants from flying—if it wants to catch bugs in the air or crabs on the rocks. So to know where May went, we have to know what she wants from going.”
    “To be alone,” said Caroline.
    “Because she’s still sad,” said Isobel. “But how long does being sad last?”
    I turned to Irene. “Are you still sad about our parents?”
    Irene took a moment to answer. “Sadness can last your whole life, Veronika. But it doesn’t mean you can’t also be happy, too. We’ll give May as much time as we can—and hopefully that’s all the time she needs.” Irene tapped the spoon on the rim of the cooking pot and then set it to the side. She put the lid on the pot and lowered the flame to a flickering blue ring. “There. We’ll wait for Robbert and eat when he gets here.”
    • • •
    Over dinner no one mentioned May at all. Instead we were finally able to ask more questions about our talk with Robbert, which was better because now Irene could answer, too. But the most interesting part wasn’t even an answer to what we asked, but Irene talking instead about life in a place full of rain: what extra clothes she had to wear, how the air was damp, about rust and mold, about hats made of plastic, umbrellas, whole villages on stilts, not seeing the sun for weeks at a time—almost the exact opposite as our island—and about how many places where people lived had turned into islands, and how many older islands had disappeared. By the end of her story all four of us were quiet from how dangerous it must have been. When Eleanor said this out loud, Robbert leaned close to her, so we could see her eyes reflected in his glasses.
    “That’s exactly right, Eleanor. And that’s why we had to leave.”
    As I folded my smock for sleep I wondered if May would come wake me like before. I wondered what she thought in her hiding place, and if she thought of us—if she knew how much we thought about her or if she only cared