Free Klickitat by Peter Rock Page A

flickered there, as the other people tried to light something, to smoke something.
    A person stood next to me. At first I just looked at the feet, rubber sandals and dirty white socks, a hole in one toe. Torn-up jeans, a flannel shirt. It was a girl, shorter than me. Her black hair was all different lengths, jagged, and the mascara and makeup were thick black around her eyes.
    â€œWho are you?” she said.
    â€œI won’t be here long,” I said.
    â€œThat’s your sister, over there?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’m fourteen,” the girl said. “My name’s Taffy.”
    In the firelight, then, I could see the white line of a scar that stretched up out of her shirt and up around, back behind her ear.
    â€œHenry,” she said. “One time he talked to me. I still remember it. He reached out and held on to my arm, right here, and he said, ‘It’ll be all right. There’ll be other people for you.’”
    I just looked into the fire, the curling flames. I didn’t say anything.
    â€œYour sister’s pretty,” the girl said.
    â€œShe didn’t always look like that,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t really look much like her.”
    â€œI said she doesn’t always look that way.”
    â€œI had a sister whose name was Valerie,” the girl said. “But she died.”
    â€œWas she older or younger?” I said.
    â€œJohnny and Isabel were our parents,” she said. “But they died, too.”
    Behind us, two guys started fighting. The dog barked and people shouted. Henry stepped over into the middle of the fight, then, and everything calmed down again.
    â€œWe’re going away from here,” I said.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œI can’t tell you,” I said.
    â€œAnd Henry, too?”
    â€œLet’s go!” Audra shouted, then.
    â€œGood-bye,” I said, stepping away from the fire.
    I walked with Audra and Henry, out beyond the circle of firelight, past all the people, some calling Henry’s name behind us. We started up the slope, back through the trees.
    â€œWho was that girl?” Audra said. “I told you not to talk to anyone.”
    â€œHer name was Taffy,” I said. “Her sister and her parents died.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell her your name?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œHer family got electrocuted,” Henry said. “Up under that overpass, right over there. They tapped into an electrical line, and then there was a lightning storm, a surge.”
    It was too dark to see if he was pointing. The bushes and trees were thick.
    â€œHer whole family?” Audra said. “Her parents?”
    â€œThose weren’t her real parents,” Henry said. “It was a street family, one they made up.”
    â€œIs that what we are now?” I said.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    We started up the slope, the three of us finding our way through the trees.
    â€œDo you have parents?” I said to Henry.
    â€œVivian,” Audra said.
    â€œI did,” he said. “Not anymore. I have two brothers. They’re younger—twins.”
    â€œIn Alaska?” I said.
    â€œWe should get going,” Audra said.
    â€œYes,” Henry said. “That’s where they are, but we don’t call it Alaska. We just don’t think of it quite like that.”
    â€œWhat do you call it?”
    â€œLet’s go,” Audra said.
    â€œOur families used to live in the city,” he said, “in Alaska, and we left the city to live a different way, out by ourselves.”
    â€œYou see?” Audra said to me. “Enough.”
    And then he climbed away, up ahead, gaining distance as we headed into the neighborhoods, out under the moonlight, the streetlights.
    Later I’d find out that what we’d been doing at the bonfire was getting a new name for me, a Social Security number, an older age. The people Henry bought it from spent their