The Different Girl

on the cooker and lit the blue gas ring.
    Before she sat in her own chair, Irene turned out the kitchen light. This only left the glow from the gas ring, which gave a faint halo to each of their heads. I looked at my bare arms and saw them both reflect pale blue. Outside, the rain fell hard as before, and the wind pressed tight against the glass.
    “Primitive man around the fire,” said Robbert.
    “Stop it,” said Irene.
    “Irene likes to listen to sounds in the dark,” I said.
    Robbert nodded. “I know.”
    I wondered when they would put me to bed with the others. I didn’t want them to. The water began to hiss inside the kettle.
    “What did you say to May?” Irene asked me, but at the very same time I had a question of my own.
    “What is primitive?”
    Our words overlapped, but since Irene’s questions were always important I began to tell them everything I had said to May and what May had said back. I wasn’t sure how they would react to the part where May got so angry—about overhearing Robbert and Irene—but since I didn’t understand that either, I hoped they would explain it. I also wasn’t sure about my telling May about the explosion, but again it seemed like she needed to know how we shared losing parents—that being the same was the best way for her to trust me.
    “It’s good to know she isn’t hurt,” said Irene, after I finished.
    “But will she be hurt in the storm?” I asked.
    “I don’t know, Veronika. We don’t know where she is. She must have found some place. I hope it’s dry.”
    I looked up. Even though Irene’s bedroom was directly above us, I could still hear rain pounding on the roof. “What place could be dry?”
    “Maybe she found a cave,” said Robbert.
    “Are there caves?” I asked.
    “There might be,” Robbert’s pale fingers scratched in his hair. “On the cliffs. A person would have to climb.”
    “How could anyone even find them to begin with?”
    Robbert smiled. “How do you think, Veronika?”
    “By going right to the edge and looking down? Even though that’s too dangerous?”
    “How else?” asked Irene.
    She leaned forward to watch me thinking, and I knew they both already had the answer—that they’d known about the caves before May had ever arrived. Now it was a problem for me, to imagine a part of the island that had always been there but somehow lay beyond our consideration. I thought of the cliffs, and where May had stood, farther out, looking down.
    “By the birds.”
    “What about them?” asked Irene.
    “The patterns where they fly. From the cliff wall, when they go out of sight. The angles don’t make sense unless there are places down below to stop and then start off again.”
    “But why is that a cave?” asked Robbert. “Why not just an outcropping of rock?”
    “Because of their speed, and the angles. They have to be going farther in.”
    Robbert looked at Irene and smiled.
    “That’s very good, Veronika,” she said.
    I was glad to see them smile, and also to know that May did have a cave after all, even if she had to share it with birds.
    The kettle began to whistle.
    “O let me do it,” said Robbert, waving for Irene to stay.
    “I’ve set out the green. Only half a scoop.”
    Robbert tapped the loose tea from the scoop until he had the right amount, tipped it into the pot, then poured the water in after. I knew he was supposed to warm the pot with water first, and Irene knew I knew because she saw me looking. She shrugged and leaned back again. With the gas turned off, the only glow came from the machines on the counters and shelves, colored pinpricks. But these were faint, and Irene’s face lay in shadow.
    “Is it time for you to sleep?”
    “Do I need to?”
    “You’ve had a very big day. Escaping the storm. Were you frightened?”
    “It happened so quickly, and you both were there. Are storms always so fast?”
    “Not all of them. Listen to it. What do you hear?”
    What I heard first was Robbert getting the teacups, so I turned to face out the window.
    “It’s like a finger of the sky,” whispered Irene, “dragging across the world.”
    “The sky does not have fingers,” I said.
    Irene laughed. Robbert set a steaming teacup near her hand.
    “I hope the trap holds up,” he said.
    “I wish that girl were indoors.”
    Now it was Robbert who shrugged. He sat with his cup. Irene didn’t say anything more until finally Robbert said, “I don’t want anything to happen to her,