Free Small Beneath the Sky by Lorna Crozier

there. I wished for that. Some afternoons as I pumped myself higher and higher on our tall wooden swing, which my dad had salvaged from a city playground when they replaced it with a stunted metal version, Larry would steal up from behind and start to push. He’d clutch the chains to suspend me high in the air and slide one hand over my bare legs. I wiggled and tried to kick him, and finally he’d let me drop to where my feet could touch the ground. I knew what he did was wrong, but I didn’t tell anyone. I feared what he’d do to get even.
    One Saturday morning I was walking down the alley to Lynda’s house, a chalk to draw a hopscotch in my jacket pocket along with a special stone to throw, when Larry came around the corner with one of his buddies from the Catholic school. In front of him, in both hands, Larry held a garter snake, green with a pale belly, a red stripe streaking down each side like threads of blood. It was too late for me to disappear. I raced towards my house, the boys chasing me, Larry’s friend yelling, “Drop it down her back!” I knew I’d up and die if the snake slid down my spine. When I stumbled, Larry grabbed me. One hand grasped my jacket by the back of the collar—how sick I felt—and the long slick belly sluiced across my neck. I twisted in his grip and screamed. Above the fear that roared in my head, I heard my brother’s voice: “Let her go.”
    Like a hero in a cowboy movie, he walked from our yard into the alley. He must have been on his way to baseball practice; the glove on his hand made his fist look like Popeye’s. The boys stared at him. Larry pulled the snake away. I hadn’t noticed before that the boy I didn’t know held a hammer. My brother reached for me, turned his back on them and led me down our wooden walk, past the swing and into the back porch. “Mom’s home,” he said. “Go inside.” He went out again past the boys and up the alley towards the baseball diamond. “I’ll see you later,” he said to Larry, who didn’t talk back.
    I waited a few minutes, then snuck out low and quiet and hunkered behind the woodpile at the back of our house. The boys had already forgotten about me. Larry handed the snake to his friend, who stretched it out to its full length—two feet or so—against a telephone pole. It glistened in the light like the new skin on my arms and shoulders when they peeled after a sunburn. Larry reached in his pocket, pulled out two nails and, with the hammer, pounded the snake into the wood. It twisted on those two metal spikes, unable to crawl out of its pain. Everything fell silent; even the wind lay down in the grass and held its breath. The boys stood not knowing what to do, their stupid hands dangling from their wrists, the beautiful green mouth opening, a terrible dark O no one could hear. I loved it then, that snake.
    After that morning, my fear of snakes left for good. By the creek I would seek them out, watch them sip water among the stones with a delicacy that made me shiver. Their thin red tongues seemed to taste the air, the morning and the evening, the darkness at the heart of things.

spit
    S pit , sb., a small, low tongue of land projecting onto water; a shuttle pin; a straight horizontal stroke used as a marking in books; the fluid secreted by the glands of the mouth. Orange Crush. I slid my dime across the counter at Bill Chew’s, and he pulled a pop wet from the cooler and put it in my hand. It made me greedy. I got maybe one a week, and I wanted it all. Even the bottle was beautiful—its long skinny neck, the raised green letters you couldn’t scrape away with your thumb—and worth two cents. The sun shone through the glass as I tilted the drink to my mouth. It tasted better than oranges, even the ones from Japan that came only at Christmas. There was always a kid who didn’t have a dime, who wanted a sip, so I spit in the