California(61)

“How can you say that? They think their son is dead.”

Micah said nothing, only stacked the cups and put the cap back on the bottle of liquor. There were only a few drops left; it would be empty in one tiny sip.

“You could have gone, too,” he said. “It took Hilda and Dada two years to agree to it. I would’ve thought you’d join them right afterward.”

God, she wanted to shove him off the tree. “I would never.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You never did live in reality, Frida. Or maybe I’m wrong, and that’s more Cal’s problem.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“Frida.”

“What?” She hated him saying her name.

He was looking right at her.

“What I did, my disappearing, it wasn’t selfish.”

“Sure, it wasn’t. You had a cause, you said that already.”

“No,” he said. “Well, yes, but also Hilda and Dada are comfortable now.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” She couldn’t describe to him how it felt to have first her brother taken, and then her parents.

“What else can I tell you?” Micah said after a moment.

“Can you guys procreate?” she asked. “Are the women infertile?”

“That’s what you want to know?” He laughed. “Wow, Frida. I never knew you were such a geek. You like zombie movies, too?”

“It’s a good question, and you know it.” This was the moment to tell him she was pregnant. Do it, she thought. But she couldn’t even open her mouth.

“We can procreate, yes. But that doesn’t mean we do.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You believe in containment.”

“Don’t make fun of our brand.”

This time, they both laughed.

“The containment stuff…does it have anything to do with blood?” she asked. “Like, you know…rejecting it?”

“Why?” But then he held up his hand to keep her from answering. “It’s not blood that’s the problem.” He paused. “It’s the color.”

“Red?”

Frida remembered Sandy. That first time, meeting by the creek. How Sandy had snatched Cal’s red bandanna from Jane. And, later, how Sandy had turned away from Frida in the shed so as not to see the red sleeping bag.

Like Sandy, Anika was afraid of a color. How had Frida not put that together?

Frida looked at Micah. “Why is she afraid of it?”

Micah smiled. “It’s a thing. She has negative associations.”

“What does she associate it with?”

“Pirates,” Micah said, and Frida reared back.

“What?” she said. “What do you mean? They’re real?”

“They’re nothing to worry about,” he said. “They were only a problem for the original settlers.”

So Sandy had to be an original settler. Bo, too.

Frida held her voice steady. “Tell me about Bo and Sandy.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“So you don’t deny knowing them.”

“I don’t want to scare you away.” He smiled. “Not yet, at least.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“For now.”

Her brother stood and held out his hand to help her up. His hand, she noticed, was unscathed, uncalloused, unworked.

“You’re the boss here,” she said.

“Somebody’s gotta be,” he said, and shrugged.



Once she and Micah were halfway across the field, Frida said, “I have a present for you.” She wanted him to wait while she ran up to her room. “I want you to unwrap it outdoors.”

“You mean the baster?” he said.

“You already know about it?”

“Nothing gets by me, Frida. That much should be clear by now.”

The look on his face. Years ago, when he announced to their family that he’d applied to Plank, he’d had a similar expression. There was a deliberateness to the look, a purposeful arrangement of his features, an anagram of emotions. If Frida stared at him hard enough, might something entirely different be revealed? She thought she had uncovered the old Micah when they were in the tree, talking freely, but she’d been wrong. He had himself under control. Frida couldn’t get to him.





12



Cal hadn’t taken a shower this good in years. He and Frida had never been able to get this much warm water on their own, and he’d never considered how comforting even a rudimentary wooden stall could be. He could’ve been in Cleveland again, showering in their cold moldy bathroom while his mother cooked breakfast in the kitchen. She’d be frying up the eggs his father had dropped off the night before. Cal leaned his head back, and the water fell across his face.

The reverie didn’t last. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Frida had talked to Micah the day before. She’d told Cal very little about it, just that it felt weird, hearing Micah talk so openly about the man who had died instead of him. “What happened to my brother?” she asked as they fell asleep, and then, “Why is he like that?” They weren’t questions anyone had answers to.