Free Wild Heart by Patricia Gaffney

and taking slow breaths through his nose.
    She said, "A shipwreck?"
    He nodded, although he wasn't sure. "Everyone died in the water. But not me."
    "When you were a child? A little boy?"
    "Yes. Like Sam."
    "Sam's seven."
    "I was like Sam."
    When she looked away from him, he could look at her. She said very softly, "My God."
    He couldn't remember exactly who God was. Did he belong to her? But O'Fallon said, God damn you, and the professor said, Good God. It was confusing.
    "How did you survive? How did you live?"
    Another question he couldn't answer. He thought of the dark-skinned people who had found him the first winter and had given him food. But the old woman died in the summer and the two men went away and left him. He was alone for a while, then he lived with the wolves, then a white man caught him in a trap, and then he was alone again, with no one but the old wolf.
    But he couldn't say any of those things to her.
    He asked her a question. "Are you with your father?"
    "With him?"
    'Together. You and your father and Mr. West. Are you with them?"
    "Oh." That meant she understood. He could see she was thinking. "No. I'm not with them, I'm by myself. With you."
    "With me." He smiled. So did she, and it was a real smile he wanted to keep or to touch. But he wasn't allowed to touch her at all, so he sat on his hands.
    The sun was going down behind the water. "The sun is going down," he said. It was strange to say out loud something you could see with your eyes. But they—people— did it all the time, said things, explained in words what they already knew.
    She said, "Mmm. It's a beautiful evening."
    There. Could she tell what his thoughts were? "Yes, it's a beautiful evening," he repeated. He didn't understand how he could sound so calm, as if nothing new was happening to him, when inside his head everything was flying in circles.
    "Michael," she said, "did you talk when you were in the wilderness?"
    Wilderness. He liked that word. "Yes. No. I didn't talk with my mouth." He whispered a secret to her. "I forgot my name."
    She leaned close to him. "But now you've remembered it?" He nodded. "How?"
    "Once I heard Sam talking. Not to any person, to himself. Talking loud."
    "Yelling."
    "Yelling. His name, at the lake. For nothing—for fun."
    "Yes," she said, smiling.
    "Then I remembered, yelling my name over the water where I was. Michael MacNeil—I yelled it over and over.
    I was little, like Sam. Scared. I didn't want to forget my name." He took a deep, slow breath. "But I did forget. I didn't call myself anything. T—not even 'I.' Nothing. I just. . ."
    "You just were." She sounded funny again. Was she sad? He didn't want to make her sad. Could he ask her what was in her head? He couldn't remember, but he thought there might be a rule against it in his book. They were friends now, but not like Sam was his friend. She was different. She made him feel ... he didn't know the words. But he had to be careful with her, because so much was not allowed. One wrong thing and she might go away.
    His stomach made a noise. "I'm hungry," he said.
    She smiled with her whole face. "It's dinnertime." They got up and started to walk back toward her house. O'Fallon followed them. "What do they give you to eat?" she asked as they walked.
    He made a funny face, like Sam. "Food."
    She laughed, and it was the best sound, the happiest sound. "Don't you like it?"
    He tried to explain. "It's human food."
    Something happened. She kept walking, but inside she went still, and he knew he had said a bad thing. Because people hated what he ate—used to eat. He ate their food now, and it wasn't raw, not warm and bloody and pulsing. They stopped walking and he looked at his feet, wishing he could take back the last words they had said. There was a distance between them now. Even after such a short time of being with her, he didn't want to be alone again.
    "Sydney! Dinner!" Sam's voice, coming from the house.
    "I have to go," she said. Her face was clear