you’d rather play with school supplies? “The Numbers” was one melodrama mentally rewound so often I’m surprised the tape kept working. See, 3 and 4 were the elderly parents of 5, who was good and sweet and desperately in love with 6, the innocent beauty who herself was in love with 7 and never realized her secret power over 9, the billionaire brat who was betrothed to 8, who, of course, kept herself busy plotting against 6 and lusting after 7. I can’t remember what 1 and 2 did. Directed, probably.

There was this one time when Frances, anticipating an early start the next morning, trusted me to get myself up and ready for school. A second-grader reading on a fourth-grade level, I awoke feeling so over it. What was all the fuss about? I’d be fine. Picked out a white sundress paired with purple snow boots because it was January.

This was also the same day I “forgot” to wear panties. Flowy dress, meet the wind. Wind, meet my tiny bare ass cheeks. Why six-year-old me decided to go grade-school commando escapes me. If I had to guess, somehow underwear seemed unnecessary. When I met up with the kids that lived a few doors down to walk to school, nobody said nothing.

It was as if I’d been dressing like a Russian child prostitute all my life. School pictures were that day. The A’s, being down in front, were given the star treatment, totally unmissable. Unfortunately, sitting Indian-style, so was my hoo-ha. Mrs. What’s-her-guts couldn’t wait to dime me out to Frances. Jerk. Apparently there was a seasonally appropriate pink sweat suit waiting blatantly on the downstairs couch that I’d completely missed in my rush to be grown.

Mrs. What’s-her-guts, stool pigeon that she was, had a bunch more to report: I’d been cheating on our class book assignment for months—tracing my mother’s signature on the “how many pages I read today” thingy she sent home every week. Plus, I frequently erased myself from the chalkboard reserved for naughty names; plus, I cheated at Heads Up Seven Up; plus, I was sneaking unauthorized Sprite into my lunch canister and telling people it was water. Needless to say, I never saw my legs or the light of day again that winter, and when the subject of moving to Spain came up, I was hardly in a position to whine it down.

“Do they have Fraggle Rock?” Watching singing mole men construct a never-finished underground maze of scaffolding was my only prerequisite for flying around the world with her.

“Yes, little brown-eyed girl, they’ve got everything in Spain,” she said, playing piano on my ribs as I stood accusing her in our kitchen—the first we’d had with a dishwasher. I wouldn’t let myself laugh or give her the satisfaction of knowing I’d follow her anywhere.

“Is it in Spanish?” I asked, slumping down to the floor away from her tickling fingers, realizing that our lives would always be like this: move here, move there, move here, move there.

“Yes.” She didn’t sound defeated. She knew she was abominable.

“Then I don’t wanna go,” I said, fingering the grooves between the tiles on the floor. This was one of the first real house-houses that we’d ever lived in. She had a real job. I’d gone to the same school for almost an entire grade. She’d bought me a wild pony that I never rode once because, umm, it was wild, but I loved it fiercely. We kept Misty, named after a cousin I barely saw, at a stable not too far from our house-house. At six, I was finally ready to be settled, and here she was once again, all too ready to be restless.

I got back at her by fixating on my death, constantly asking Frances what she would do when I died suddenly in my sleep or crossing the street to school. The countdown to Spain became a macabre advent calendar with questions about my imminent demise decorating each new day. If I didn’t ask about her life without me, I thought it might come that much sooner.

“What would you do if I died tomorrow?”

“Oh, I don’t know, little brown-eyed girl.”

“I’m serious! What would happen?”

“I don’t know. I’d probably gather up all your pictures and your clothes and your toys and I’d move way up in the mountains somewhere.” Good answer, lady. Because if I didn’t exist, then she couldn’t either. More than a package deal, we were Siamese. Maybe Spain wasn’t such a crappy idea after all. We’d