When I asked them where I'd been before, about 'Auntie,' they
looked sad and hurt and worried for me, and I learned to stop. They
hugged me and touched my wings and never said anything -- and never
wiped their hands on their pants after touching them. They gave me a
room with a computer and a CD player and a little TV of my own, and
asked me to bring home my friends.
"I had none.
"But they found other girls who would come to my 'birthday' parties, on
May 1, which was exactly two months after their son's birthday and two
months before their daughter's birthday.
"I can't remember any of their names.
"But they made me birthday cards and they made me breakfast and dinner
and they made me welcome. I could watch them grilling burgers in the
back yard by the above ground pool in the summer from my bedroom
window. I could watch them building forts or freezing skating rinks in
the winter. I could listen to them eating dinner together while I did my
homework in my bedroom. There was a place for me at the dinner-table,
but I couldn't sit there, though I can't remember why."
"Wait a second," Alan said. "You don't remember?"
She made a sad noise in her throat. "I was told I was welcome, but I
knew I wasn't. I know that sounds paranoid -- crazy. Maybe I was just a
teenager. There was a reason, though, I just don't know what it was.
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