“Oh, totally. I’m lucky.”

  “Heck yes you are. I wouldn’t wish foster care on anybody.”

  “It’s really bad?”

  “So far, yeah. I hate it pretty much every minute of the day. It’s like a cross between prison and dodgeball. And there’s not enough food.”

  “Dodgeball, like whenever you play with older kids that want to laugh at you?”

  “Yeah. Hurt you, and then laugh at you.”

  She seemed to be thinking about this. I mean really turning it over. She whispered, “Do the kids get abused? I’ve heard that.”

  “My mom definitely had molester type shit done to her whenever she was little. In a supposedly Christian home. I just basically watch my back, night and day.”

  She blinked a couple of times. I was surprised how well I could see her in the dark. I knew I shouldn’t shock Emmy, given she was already upset. But she’d asked. Nobody ever did. I told her I was sure there were good fosters out there that are God’s angels, like everybody says. But I had yet to meet them because they didn’t take kids like me.

  “What do you mean, kids like you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She took in a big breath and let it out. “I was so mean to you and Matty last summer. I’m sorry. This has been a year.” Again, it was like she’d turned into somebody’s mother or one of the nicer ladies at church. I couldn’t figure out what I was dealing with. I wished I was older.

  “You were okay,” I said. “At times.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. After you saved me from the sharks.” She pulled up her knees and showed me the silver bracelet I gave her that day. She was wearing it around her ankle. Leave it to somebody like her, to think of something like that. I couldn’t believe she still had it.

  “It’s not like they were going to take you down. I never got why you were so scared.”

  “Because they’re evil creatures with dagger-like teeth? Why were you not?”

  “No reason. I’m just not. I like thinking about the ocean, and what all is living in there. It’s like my brain-Lysol. It calms me down or something.”

  “Seriously. Sharks calm you down.”

  I could see pieces of the everyday Emmy sneaking back into the conversation, but I didn’t mind. Maybe it meant this thing we were doing now, whatever it was, might not just go poof in the morning. “Not sharks specifically,” I said. “The whole being-underwater thing. I put myself there and float. Just, you know. Inside my skull movie.”

  “You have a skull movie? You could see yourself drowning. That’s relaxing.”

  “I don’t, though. That’s the one bad thing that for sure won’t ever happen to me.”

  “Because what? You took Junior Red Cross swimming?”

  I laughed. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t ever been swimming that much. In water that was deeper than like, an inch.”

  “And still you’re drown-proof, because?”

  I’d never told anybody the weird way I got born. But being awake in the dark with a girl was outside my normal. The whole world quiet. I tried to put it in the best light: I took Mom by surprise, coming out so fast I was still in the water bubble that protects babies in the before-life.

  “The caul,” Emmy said.

  “What?”

  “You were born in the caul. That’s the medical terminology. Mom saw it happen one time and said it even freaked out the doctors. You’d be amazed how many babies get born in the ER.”

  Nothing at all would surprise me as far as Aunt June and the ER. But I liked knowing what happened to me was real, with a name. “Yeah, that. I had the call. If that happens to you, it’s a guarantee you won’t drown. So the ocean is this giant thing that won’t ever defeat me.”

  Emmy laughed. “That’s just some old hillbilly superstition.”

  I got a little hurt at her for that. Even if she was right. “Your mammaw is the one that told me, so take it up with her. Ask about Jesus coming back from the dead, while you’re at it.”

  We’d been talking so quietly, our faces were just a few inches apart. Now I sat up. This whatever-it-was was over. Probably in the morning it would be a never-happened. But she didn’t go away. She sat up too, looking at me a while, and then said the words I hate: “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well. No big deal.”

  “It is, though. I could understand why you’d want to think about someplace totally safe. After everything you’ve been through. Your mom and all.”

  “My mom dying is not even the worst part. If you really want to know.”

  She sat facing me, waiting. She smelled like fruit shampoo. I wanted to say something mean, or just the truth. I wanted to tell her about my baby brother that was technically younger than the murder-family baby, and dead. I said that word: Sorry. “But you know what? If that kid ends up dying, it’s not the worst thing. Being dead is better than an orphan your whole fucking life.”

  “No!” she said, so loud she put her hand over her mouth. Then took it off and whispered, “He’s got grandparents. They’re in some other country, but they’re going to come get him.”

  “Good for him. Somebody wants him.”

  She reached over and touched me on the head. No person had touched me since Mom. My hair was on its own devices at that point, and I knew the sorry sight I was. With every part of me growing out of my sleeves or growing fuzz or changing shape that year, even the bone part of my nose, some way. And I was still sleeping in Tommy’s shirt.

  “Poor Demon,” she said quietly. “Can’t they find anybody to adopt you?”

  She’d only ever called me Damon before, like Mrs. Peggot and Aunt June, to show she was taking their side. I didn’t want to be poor anybody. But I felt like kissing Emmy. Or throwing up, from how mixed up I was. Possibly both. You’d want to do it in the right order, though.

  “Everybody thinks adoption is just automatic,” I said. “But there’s a lot more orphan kids in Lee County than people wanting them. My caseworker says it’s nothing personal.”

  “Is she nice, at least? Your caseworker?”

  Somehow, I knew not to mention that Miss Barks was a babe. Or that I saved up things to tell her week to week because she was the only person I talked to anymore. “She’s got a ton of kids she’s looking after. Mostly younger than me. So, you know. Nice, if she’s got a minute.”

  “That must be so hard.”

  We both lay back down, and she looked at me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I’ll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.

  19

  I was the person not invited at June’s house. That feeling hangs on you like a smell. I had put showers between myself and Creaky’s barn, but this is not something that washes off. You get used to it, not in the good way, to the extent of the entire world oftentimes feeling like a place where you weren’t invited. If you’ve been here, you know. If not, must be nice.

  June didn’t mind me though, or was good at being sweet whether she felt like it or not. Which they probably do teach you in nurse school. She read my mind, same as she had with going to the ocean place. Again she took us places I liked. The skateboard park, even though Maggot and Emmy weren’t into it because all we did was watch. But Jesus God. For kids with zero sidewalks in our lives, watching skateboarders on TV is just cartoons or sci-fi, you don’t buy in. But seeing them in real life? Shit. I about died of happiness. Like boys could fly.

  So that was June, seeing my little moments. Putting extra food on my plate at every meal. Not in the Lady Leaders way of “watch me being nice,” just on the quiet. I tried to use manners and not act like a person that’s been wanting seconds ever since around August.

  What I dreaded was Christmas morning. The Peggots had brought presents they piled under Aunt June’s tree, but weirdly nobody discussed them, no shaking or checking tags to see who got the biggest. Because of me, the kid not supposed to be there. Awkward. I planned on making myself scarce Christmas morning. I’d fake a stomachache or take a really long shower until the presents all got opened. Mainly I just wished Christmas didn’t exist.

  The worst was at night, with me and Maggot lying practically under the tree with the presents. Which wasn’t a tree, honestly, just fake, small, set up on a table. You’d expect better from somebody so classy. But where are you going to go cut a cedar in Knoxville? At home, any farmer will let you come get one out of his fencerow. At Creaky’s we cut cedars out of the pastures to pile up and burn, because they’re too many and a nuisance. Why Aunt June hated it in Knoxville, being so far away from everything: from free Christmas trees, just for example.

  That’s where I was, thinking about shit like our last cedar bonfire at Creaky’s that got out of hand somewhat with Swap-Out and the gasoline. Maggot asleep. And all the sudden here’s Emmy touching my back. I almost shit myself, rolling over to see her lying two inches away. I’d not expected her to come back. She wasn’t just all about the murder baby this time, so that was a relief. We were quiet like before, and Maggot stayed asleep. Or else a good friend about it. He never said anything the next day, or any other day, because it happened every night after that. She didn’t surprise me again, either. I was always on the lookout.

  We talked about everything under the sun, lying on those pillows. What we liked, what we hated. I told her my bathtub thing, due to my dad dying at a place called Devil’s Bathtub. Actually I said it was only whenever I was small, being scared of them. She didn’t laugh though. She was scared about moving, leaving Knoxville. I couldn’t believe it. I told her there’s trees, mountains, rivers, birds singing in your ears, we’ve got the whole rest of the world over there, other than people, which are only one thing. Going wherever we wanted to without adults, even at night. The woods. I got caught up in telling her all this and almost forgot my messed-up life, because in some ways she was worse off than me. She’d never even seen a lightning bug. That is just tragic. I told her the different ones. One kind goes totally dark, then they all blink together, thousands, one big sparkly pop all up and down the creek. It can thrill a person senseless.

  In time we got into the darker side of things. My dead baby brother, for one. How Emmy ended up with Aunt June, for another. Complicated as hell. Turns out she had a mother out there at large all along, girlfriend of her dad, Humvee, that was killed. I’d heard people say a hunting accident. Emmy said yes, he was supposed to go get Pampers one day but instead ended up turkey hunting with some friends. Three men, three twelve-gauges, and a handle of fireball whiskey being one handle too many for the close quarters of a turkey blind, as anybody knows, except them evidently. Oh my Lord. She said it was Humvee’s shotgun but different stories, either he accidentally fired it or somebody sat on it. He was too messed up for the hospital in Pennington, they had to get him to Knoxville and too much blood loss on the way.

  Poor Mrs. Peggot. Given the fireball whiskey aspects, no wonder her having her policies on what she called demon liquor. For Emmy’s part, she said she herself felt somewhat to blame, as far as the stresses and strains of a baby on such a young dad. His girlfriend was home with her at the time, so not involved, just probably waiting a long time for those diapers. But being a teen mom and then total wreck from the incident, she turned into the all-around bad-news type of mother, so. The Peggots had to step in and take Emmy. Then the next year after Humvee was killed, their daughter Mariah went to prison on her own matters, and Maggot turned up needing to be looked after also. The family you could say hit a bad patch.

  This was news to me, that Mrs. Peggot had taken in not just Maggot but Emmy before him. Two tiny tots to raise. That’s the Peggots for you, doors wide open. I’d known them to take other cousins for whole summers before, including Hammerhead Kelly and his stepsisters after the parents split up, which was how Mr. Peg got him started on deer hunting. Emmy asked if Hammerhead still came around or had moved away with his dad in the split-up. I said he was still with the stepmom Ruby, June’s sister, and Mr. Peg’s favorite. I didn’t bring up hunting, given Emmy’s bad-luck dad, plus not knowing where she stood with the whole city-person outlook on shooting Bambi, but I knew Hammer and Mr. Peg still hunted together. Many a time in the fall I’d see Hammer dressing a buck in their driveway. It would kill you how big and gentle he looked, drawing his long knife up the middle of the carcass, easing the gut and lungs to slither out in a pile. Like he’s being sweet to that deer, even though dead.

  I told Emmy he went by just Hammer now, and came over to help with things Mr. Peg had got too old for, like gutters. He was basically a Peggot grandson, even though technically not all that related. I told her I was basically one too, raised by them as far as the more solid parts. I admitted that for the longest time I’d thought Mrs. Peggot was my real mammaw.

  Emmy put her eyes square on mine. It scared me almost, getting looked at like that. “You’re wishing she really was, aren’t you?” she said. “Then they’d have to adopt you.” She kissed her finger and touched my cheek.

  “They probably wouldn’t, though.”

  I wanted her to say I was wrong, but she rolled on her back, looking at the ceiling. I watched her thinking it over. I’d never had that close a look at another person’s face before. She had brown-sugar freckles and a little silver line through one eyebrow where she said a cat scratched her. The tiniest furrow plowed through her eyebrow hairs, never to grow back.

  She rolled back to face me. “I don’t know. They didn’t legally adopt either one of us. For Matty they’re just guardians. His mom is still his mom.”

  “Not that she’s doing much about it in Goochland,” I said. “No offense to anybody.”

  But Emmy was off someplace else, thinking of her own messed-up past. I was pretty shocked of it. Given the Peggots being so decent. “Having both of us was too much,” she said. “Think about it, he’s a newborn and I’m a toddler. Poor Mammaw. She really needed Aunt June to take over with me. I never gave it much thought till lately, but I mean, who does that? Take over raising your dead brother’s two-year-old, while you’re still in nursing school.”

  June Peggot, was the answer. The Peggots had brought in the trailer next door so she could have her own place with Emmy and still be all one family while June finished up school. That was the same trailer that soon would be Mom’s, then Mom’s and mine, after June got her hospital job and moved with Emmy to Knoxville. Emmy’s bad-news real mom still would turn up at the Peggots’ every so often, threatening to go to court and get Emmy back. She was in no position now as an IV drug user, homeless etc., but that didn’t stop her from showing up in the middle of the night, banging on the door, raising Cain to see her kid. The Peggots kept quiet about Emmy being in Tennessee so she wouldn’t go after June and try to steal Emmy back. That’s why the big secret. But Skank Mom had finally agreed to sign Emmy over for good. Amen and hallelujah on Aunt June finally winning the mom war.

  I asked how that felt, given away by her real mother. Emmy said she had all the mom a person could want. She didn’t care if she ever laid eyes on the other one again.

  The upshot of all this talking was me getting pretty much in love with Emmy. She was beautiful and like a grown person. In the daytime we didn’t let on. Hanging out with her and Maggot, I tried to be normal, but sometimes said things to impress her. Like how the other foster boys thought my cartoons were good. And the football hero Fast Forward that was my friend. She just said something polite, but Maggot chimed in on how awesome this guy was. I’d forgotten Maggot knew him from that time they came to the farm. This got Emmy interested to the extent of saying she’d like to meet this famous Fast Forward.

  So we played it cool, and I wondered if the other was real or just some after-hours game she was playing. But then she would let me sit on the couch with her while she was reading, and under the blanket her feet would touch my feet. She’d look up from her book and smile at me and, oh man. Utterly wrecked. Back in the summer she’d announced the one time about us getting married, which was kid shit. Like somebody giving you Monopoly money and saying “Here, go buy a house.” But now all I had to do was think of Emmy, her face or her toothpaste smell, and it would give me these waking-up feelings as regards the guy downstairs. Not kid shit. At night we’d be talking and I’d get obsessed on kissing her, even though not having the nerve. It was her finally that did it. She asked if I wanted to go to second base, which of course I did, except for not knowing exactly where that base was located. I’d heard different things. I said okay, and she took my hand into the neck of her gown and put it on her chest. Nipple and everything, warm and soft. Christ. Now I had a whole new body function to be terrified of doing on accident, from being that mixed up and happy at the same time. But I held it together. I just told her I loved her and that kind of thing. I told her whenever she moved back to Lee County, we could take walks together with Aunt June’s dog Rufus.

  After that I had a new brain-Lysol to calm myself down: walking in the woods with Emmy. I’d picture us holding hands, maybe with our own dog. Being grown-ups. It would be so much safer than being a kid.

  For Christmas breakfast they invited Mrs. Gummidge, which was the cat lady downstairs where Emmy slept over on Aunt June’s night shifts. Emmy still wasn’t old enough to be on her own in the stranger-danger building overnight, even though graduated from daytime babysitting and Popsicle-stick-type shenanigans. I figured this cat lady wouldn’t get presents either, so we could sit together watching the others, and I wouldn’t have to stay in the shower.

  Emmy warned me about Mrs. Gummidge being a sad human being and not to laugh at her, or Aunt June would kill us. I said I was in no position, being star player on the sad-sack team. But listen, this lady was in her own league. We were all, Merry Christmas Mrs. Gummidge! And she’s like, “Well, it might be, I don’t know. I been feeling so poorly.” Aunt June asked how are Cain and Abel, which were her cats, and she said, “Well, they’ve both been at death’s door for a good while. But it’s for the best. If I pass away first, I don’t know who would take them.”