Free Verse by Sarah Dooley

I comment.
    â€œI want chocolate,” he says.
    â€œWhere do you think we’re going?”
    â€œI’m just saying.”
    â€œYou’re just changing the subject, is what you’re doing.”
    He shrugs.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I point out my apartment as we pass.
    â€œThat was mine. Mine with the other Michael Harless.”
    â€œThe one that died,” Mikey says.
    I shrug.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    The chocolate chip muffins taste even better when we don’t put anything but chocolate chips in them. We eat sitting on the porch rail with our feet dangling, watching cars occasionally glide up Route 10. Right in front of Phyllis’s porch, there’s a pothole. About half the cars swerveand the other half lurch suddenly. When there are no cars, Chip fetches the stick we keep throwing for him. He’s a low-slung dog with stubby legs and crooked ears, but he can catch that stick midair almost with his eyes closed.
    Every now and then, he lopes toward the road for a drink of water out of the puddle that has formed in the pothole. A group of girls, who walk past in shorts too short for May, look sideways at the dog, like he might bite them. I can catch bits and pieces of their conversation:
“I don’t know, what do you think?” “It’s your hair, Tania.” “But what do you
think
?”
Underneath, I can hear the wind gathering and releasing the treetops in the woods behind town. This is the busiest time of day in Caboose.
    We throw more sticks for Chip and snack on chocolate chip muffins right down into the evening hours. We don’t talk a whole lot. When Mikey talks, it’s mostly about gruesome things: how creepy is it that human beings are just skeletons covered in guts covered in skin? And if zombies eat brains, how come they’re so dumb? When I talk, Mikey tilts his head at me like he can’t work out what language I’m speaking. We don’t do well together talking-wise, but we bake three batches of muffins, and by the third, I know how to preheat the oven and grease the pan and even how to use a pot holder safely.
    We sit on the porch rail till Hubert comes home from work. His truck grinds into the deeper gravel of the road’s shoulder. His door squeaks open. I hurl myself off theporch railing so quick I scratch my knees in the bushes. I dart across both yards to Hubert. I fling my arms around him. Even
I
have not expected me to do this. He almost falls backward and has to steady himself against the truck door. It squeaks again.
    â€œWhat’s that for?” he asks.
    â€œI thought you might die.”
    He makes a noise somewhere in his throat, like he’s got to clear it, and then he tugs me back into a one-armed hug. He smells like dirt and rocks, and I know I’m going to be streaked black when he lets go.
    â€œJesus, kid,” he says, shaking his head, eyebrows disappearing under heavy curls of black hair. “Nah, I’m okay. We’re okay.”
    Mikey sidles up and slips under Hubert’s other arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and the three of us head for the Harless house. For a minute, I feel kinship the way the dictionary defines it, not just shared blood but an actual family. The way I did with Michael and Ben, and maybe even Judy once. Hubert and Mikey are my kin. I still have kin.
    â€œWe’re okay,” I repeat, liking how it sounds.

12
    On Sunday it is pouring down sun. The kind of sun you can’t get away from even if you want to; it’s so bright, like orange juice, and it splashes into everything.
    Mikey and I lie on our stomachs on the porch boards with our chins hanging over the edge. He’s drawing in the dirt with a stick. I’m trying to figure out how to multiply unlike fractions. Stella’s chosen the small of my back as her perch. She’s vibrating her happiness, and I am beginning to get sleepy,