age of the three by a single mom (who happened to have an older biological daughter with a life-threatening disease), Angie was disturbingly wise beyond her years. Either that or just disturbed.
“I hope these have a really long, uh, shelf life or whatever, because I don’t have acne and Mr. Right isn’t anywhere around,” I said. “Or even Mr. Wrong, for that matter.”
“I was thinking about Rob Dorn,” Mom said.
“So have I, but he thinks about Juliet.”
“Are they …?” Angela put her fork down. Spaghetti sauce was way too volatile a condiment for this conversation.
“Most certainly negatory,” I said. “Rob has as much of a chance with Juliet as Howard.” (This in reference to a custodian of indeterminate age, who had worked at the hospital and clinic since shortly before time began. All of us knew Howard because he never really seemed to leave. Any time any of us had ever been there, he was either pushing the big rubber dumpster through the halls or lying down inside it, singing some of his favorite religious hits.)
“I just thought you should have them,” Mom said.
“Isn’t this the kind of thing you’re supposed to find hidden away somewhere? Then start crying and saying your little girl is all grown up?”
My mother sighed. “That would be conventional,” she said.
Even now, I couldn’t tell if she would be happy if I actually took the birth control pills or if I didn’t. So I kept them in my underwear drawer. I was the one who almost cried whenever I saw them, because I knew I was the last person on earth who would ever need them.…
Juliet’s voice came down from above like a mortar shell.
“Live once!” she shouted. “Ready?”
“For a year now,” Rob muttered. “What stupid thing is she doing?”
“She’s okay,” I said, and I called softly, “Ready, Juliet!”
“She doesn’t have a light,” he pointed out.
“You don’t know that. She could have had it in a fanny pack under her sweater.”
Until recently, my little sister actually assumed that people with XP could see better in the dark, like cats. Which is absurd: on average, we probably see worse. A lot of people with XP damage their eyes with light when they’re little before they even know they have it. Rob and Juliet and I kept miners’ headlamps and little Maglites in our backpacks if we had to pick a lock or peer down a ravine or around a dark corner.
“Are you right where I left you?” Juliet called, very far away. “You have to watch every second of this. You’re my witnesses!”
I called back, “We’re right here!”
One of the things you learn pretty quickly if you live your life at night is that—unless you’re literally standing on someone’s front porch—you can pretty much be as loud as you want. No one will hear you or see you. Definitely, no one will care. We had Juliet’s dad to thank in part for our freedom, of course. Tommy Sirocco was one of the Iron County sheriff’s deputies, and he worked the midnight shift solely because his family’s life was set up around his daughter. Whenever he spotted Rob’s Jeep, Officer Sirocco would quietly turn his squad car away to give us privacy.
I heard a shuffling and loud scraping above. Rob tensed. Juliet was making her way across the flat graveled roof of Gitchee Gumee Pizza. The Indian name for Lake Superior is Gitchee Gumee; that wasn’t just something Longfellow made up for a poem. (Hiawatha was real, too, by the way.) The second floor of Gitchee Pizza housed the apartment of its owner and founder, Gideon Brave Bear—also a genuine Indian, a Bois Forte Chippewa; he got pissed if you used the term “Native American.” Every kid in town ate at least one meal a week at Gitchee. Fortunately, in addition to being a very good purveyor of pizza, Gideon was also a very stereotypical drunk. He wouldn’t have heard Juliet if she had been up there setting off fireworks.
We heard the scraping again, and then a few short taps.
“Juliet!” Rob cried out. “What the hell?”
Then Juliet jumped.
FOR A SHATTERING instant, I thought I was a witness to my best friend’s death: a spectacular original suicide, for an audience. It was just the kind of stunt Juliet would pull. My mind slowed to syrup as I waited for her body to hit the ground between Rob and me. Juliet had always sworn she would die her own way. Not in some bed in the darkened living room