He navigated the trail like a
mountain goat, while Mimi lagged behind, tugging his arm every time she
misstepped, jerking it painfully in its socket.
He turned to her, ready to snap, *Keep the fuck up, would you?* and then
swallowed the words. Her eyes were red-rimmed and scared, her full lips
drawn down into a clown's frown, bracketed by deep lines won by other
moments of sorrow.
He helped her beside him and turned his back on the mountain, faced the
road and the town and the car with its trunk with its corpse with his
brother, and he put an arm around her shoulders, a brotherly arm, and
hugged her to him.
"How're you doing there?" he said, trying to make his voice light,
though it came out so leaden the words nearly thudded in the wet dirt as
they fell from his mouth.
She looked into the dirt at their feet and he took her chin and turned
her face up so that she was looking into his eyes, and he kissed her
forehead in a brotherly way, like an older brother coming home with a
long-lost sister.
"I used to want to know all the secrets," she said in the smallest
voice. "I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little
things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big
things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or
medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water, your eyes
won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterward with lemon-juice
they won't stink.
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