I Love You – 1

Jamie is very bad at pretending he does not want another push.

He sits on the swing with both hands wrapped around the chains, sneakers dragging two crooked trenches through the mulch. Each time I look away, he leans back farther, like gravity might understand the request if he demonstrates it with enough tragedy. I wait until his whole face has scrunched up, then give his back one good shove.

He shoots forward. “More!”

“That was max power.”

“Go beyond.”

“You’ll fly off.”

“Come on. Higher, Aspy.”

I push him again, with super max power. The swing lifts, chains creaking, Jamie’s laugh going thin at the top before it comes back fat and delighted. The yellow raincoat Mom made me bring is knotted around my waist even though the rain stopped hours ago. Jamie's matches mine, except his is too big and the sleeves swallow most of his hands whenever he lets go of the chains. Nearby, someone’s dog terrorizes a squirrel while a little girl in pink rain boots pours sand down a slide because kids are evil.

The trees stand close to the playground, close enough that their shade reaches the swings in patched pieces. I have been watching them for the last eight minutes.

Jamie peeks at me. “What’s over there?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell meeeeeee—”

I stop the swing with both hands on the chains and look at him seriously. “Fine. Wanna be my assistant? I need to grab a good leaf.”

He tilts his head at me. “Do I get paid?”

I don’t answer.

Jamie squints at me. He is used to this enough that he does not look scared, which is good, because scared people make terrible assistants. “Okay, let’s do it.”

I crouch beside my backpack and unzip the small front pocket. My blue moth plushie is wedged between a pack of tissues and melted candy I should’ve thrown out. It comes out soft and a little flattened. One felt antenna bends forward like it is thinking. Its wings are a clean, useful blue, with a loose thread on the left side that I keep meaning to trim and never do. I hold it in both palms.

Jamie sighs. “The moth?”

“It’s a qualified member of the team.”

He twists in the swing until the chains cross over each other, which will absolutely become my problem in ten seconds. I ignore that for now and lift the moth to eye level.

“I need a good leaf,” I tell the moth. “Proper green, even if I take it. No holes. No weird bug eggs on the back.”

It’s autumn. Gray leaves crowd the ground beneath every tree. Plenty remain green on the branches. That does not mean they will stay green in my hand.

“No bug eggs,” I repeat. I turn the moth six times in my hands, slow enough to count, fast enough that I cannot decide the final direction on purpose. Then I toss it straight up.

It rises about two feet, flips once, and lands face-down in the mulch with one blue wing pointing toward the tree beside the bench. I lean over it. Jamie walks over and leans too, because despite all his disrespect, he loves results.

I pick up the moth, brush a piece of mulch off its face, and tuck it under my arm. Then I point two fingers at my eyes and then at Jamie. “Stay near the swings. Don’t run into the parking lot. Don’t eat a pink flower again. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m ten.”

“Yeah, stupid. You just hit double digits. Welcome to big kid lobbies.”

“I’m gonna swing.”

The tree is only a few yards away, with one root lifting the grass like it is trying to escape very slowly. Its leaves hang low enough for me to reach if I step onto the root and stretch. I find the leaf on the inner side of a low branch, half-hidden behind two larger ones. No bites or tiny circles on the underside.

I pinch it off carefully and climb down from the root. The stem gives with a tiny wet snap. I keep the leaf between my fingers and watch the broken end. No gray enters the veins. Perfection.

Jamie slows himself with his shoes. “Is that the one?”

“This is a very good leaf.”

“Bleh.”

I sit on the bench near the swings and lay the leaf across my knee. The blue moth goes beside it, watching with stitched calm. From another backpack pocket I take the little green sheath.

Jamie stops swinging.

The knife inside is tiny enough that calling it a knife feels like bullying. It is green too, with a sliding blade meant for boxes and tape. The sheath has a smiling frog sticker from when Jamie decided everything I owned needed improvement.

“Aspen,” he says.

“I know.”

“What are you doing?”

“A very small part.”

He puts one foot down, stopping the swing’s slow twist. “Are you cutting the leaf?”

“Nah.”

I slide the blade out only a little, enough for the smallest silver edge to show. It looks ridiculous. It also looks sharper than it should.

“It’s going to be tiny,” I say, using the big sister voice. “Like, less than a paper cut. It’ll close fast.”

Jamie gets off the swing. He does not come closer. “Why?”

He’d understand the words. I don’t think he’d believe the sentence they make. I put the leaf flat on the bench, stem toward me, tip away. Then I hold my left index finger over it. The moth was easy. The leaf was easy. I bring the blade close, stop, breathe, bring it closer, stop again.

Jamie watches me with his eyebrows pulled together. “You don’t have to.”

The fact that I know makes it easier. I press the blade lightly against the side of my fingertip, hesitate one more time because pain is persuasive even when it is small, then make the cut before my hand can campaign against me.

It stings. I hate that I hate it. A red bead gathers slowly, bright and round, much more dramatic than the injury deserves.

Jamie takes half a step forward. “Aspy.”

“Look.” It comes out sharper than I mean. “I’m okay. See?”

I turn my finger just enough for the drop to fall. It lands on the leaf near the center vein. Red on green. It beads instead of soaking in, and the red holds. I keep my finger over the leaf and think the want as clearly as I can.

I want Jamie to always know it’s me.

Saying it would make him ask what I mean. The bead loses its round edge and flattens over one of the leaf’s thin veins. The color reminds me of the sun. Jamie shifts from one foot to the other. “Can we go back to the swings now?”

Off the swing, with his hands half-tucked into his sleeves, he looks smaller. I slide the knife closed at once and put it back into its green sheath.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry. Let’s go back and play.”

His shoulders loosen. I fold the leaf carefully around its red center and hold it between two fingers so it does not smear. Jamie returns to the swing first, already recovering, already turning his head to check whether I am coming. I tuck the blue moth into the crook of my arm and follow him across the mulch. The cut on my finger throbs in a tiny, offended way. A stroller squeaks. The dog has lost its war with the squirrel and is pretending that was the plan.

He wraps both hands around the chains, leans back, and gives me the face again. The tragic face. The face of a wronged citizen under a tyrannical anti-pushing regime. He keeps trying to glance at my finger without looking like he is glancing at my finger.

“Can I get a super max push now?”

“Maybe.”

He grins. I tuck the folded leaf between two fingers, keeping the red center pinched shut, and step behind him. Jamie kicks his feet forward once, impatient, and I put my hands out toward his back.

“Super max ultra… push!”

My hand is smoothing Jamie’s hair.

The motion is already happening when I arrive inside it. My palm is cupped over the back of his head and flattening the hair that always sticks up at his crown. There is resistance against the webbing between my fingers where a few strands catch. My wrist turns automatically at the end of the stroke so my nails do not scratch him. Before I have decided to touch him, my hand lifts half an inch and settles again near his crown.

My feet are moving too. Right foot down. Weight rolls heel to the outside edge, then toward the ball. Left leg comes past it. My hips know what comes next.

Jamie walks beside me with one hand hooked through the loop of his water bottle. The bottle knocks against his thigh. Knock. Swing. Knock. Its plastic bottom catches sunlight every second step. He is humming through his nose, the same four or five notes without caring whether they make a song, and there is nothing interrupted about him.

My right foot takes another step. I stop it halfway.

For one stupid second, my weight lands forward on the right foot harder than expected. The sudden stop sends the backpack into me from behind, both bottles shifting forward and knocking softly against whatever else I packed.

Jamie's humming stops halfway through one of the notes. “What?”

There is a last little drag of hair across the pads of my fingers, then nothing. I stare at my hand—fingers slightly curved, still shaped around the back of his skull.

The swings are behind us, across the playground, small now between two trees. I can see the top bar through the bodies moving between us.

The tiny cut on my finger has stopped bleeding. A damp scrap of leaf no wider than my thumbnail clings to the heel of my other palm. The green that held after the stem broke is gone. The place where my blood spread has darkened almost to black.

I look from the scrap to Jamie’s hair, then to the pale concrete path continuing toward the street beneath us. We are at the park exit, and there is sweat drying under one backpack strap.

“Why are we leaving?” I ask.

Jamie shrugs. “Because you said we should.”

“Huh?”

“...Like, a minute ago.”

My stomach goes light and hollow. I pull out my phone. The screen wakes to the wrong number. Seven minutes have walked off with my body and nothing about them had looked missing to Jamie.

I look at Jamie. He is not scared. He is not even watching me carefully. He digs the toe of one sneaker into the cracked edge of the path and tries to scrape a leaf skeleton loose from the concrete.

“Where’s the leaf?” I ask.

He points vaguely behind us. “You tore it up.”

For a second my hearing becomes stupidly specific. Rubber sole rasping over pavement. The loose metal piece on his bottle strap ticking against plastic. A child shrieking somewhere behind us, not hurt, just happy.

“I what?”

“Are you dementia?” Jamie looks back at the playground as if he might be able to find the pieces from here. “Maybe this is why you’re not smart.”

“Why?”

“I dunno.” He swings the water bottle against his leg. “You tell me. Are you actually okay?”

I keep my face arranged. Lips together first. Jaw unclench. Eyebrows down.

“Did I say anything?” I ask.

Jamie finally looks up from the leaf skeleton. “Why don’t you know?”

I can still feel the remembered shape of Jamie’s skull in my palm, except remembered is the wrong word. “I'm... checking your memory.”

He considers that, then rubs the back of his head where I had been smoothing it. “You kept doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“My hair.”

“Did I say anything?”

“You said we should go.” He digs his sneaker under the leaf skeleton again. “And you tore your leaf.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t taking notes.”

I check my finger again, then the path, then the swings. My hand wants to go back to his hair and prove something. I keep it at my side.

The blue moth is still tucked into the crook of my arm. Its bent antenna points up at me, useless and cute. I do not ask it anything. It is for leaves and small directions.

Instead, I look up.

‘Where did I go?’

Clouds are moving over the park in torn white patches. For a second there is nothing there but weather. Then a clean opening of blue appears between them, round enough that my eyes find it again after I look away—right above the far tree line.

I know that direction. The treehouse is past that line of trees.

Jamie follows my gaze and squints. “What?”

I lower my eyes before the circle can become more than a circle. “Nothing.”

“Stop being weird.”

I shift the backpack higher on my shoulders. “We’re going home.”

“We were already doing that.”

I keep him on the inside of the path, away from the parking lot, and do not let myself look at the tree line again until the park is behind us.

Those fairies have done it again, and there is no déjà vu this time.

All night, the treehouse direction sits behind my closed curtains. By the next afternoon, the cut on my finger has become a small hard scab, neat and dark along the side of my fingertip. I keep touching it with my thumb while I pack.

Water first. Two bottles. Then the gummy fruit snacks. I check the packet for banana before putting it in. Fuck bananas. A notebook, flashlight, tape, blueberries double-bagged in plastic. The blue moth goes in the front pocket with its head sticking out a little. Red pen. Green pen. Blue pen. A red hair tie I do not use but may need.

I almost leave the yellow raincoat on the chair. Then I hear Mother's voice in my head and stuff it under the outer straps.

Jamie appears in my doorway halfway through some crackers. “Why do you have the big bag?”

I look back but don’t answer. His eyes move over the bottles, the notebook, the flashlight.

“Where are you going?”

I zip the bag. “None of your business.”

“I want to come.”

I stick my tongue out. “No.”

“You said I was your assistant.”

“...You got fired. Company policy.”

“Aspy.”

He says it without whining. I put the backpack on and tighten the straps until they dig a little.

“This is not playground assistant work,” I say.

“I can help.”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Then how long will you be gone?”

“Uh... an hour or two.”

“When are you ever gone for just an hour or two?”

I look at him, and there is my hand on his hair at the park exit. 'You tore it up.' His face accepting a version of me I did not remember being.

“I’m not taking you anywhere.”

He gets very still, like he does when he is trying not to look small. Then his eyes go wide.

“But you always say the forest isn’t dangerous.”

Always smart when you don't need to be. “Just stay home, Jamie.”

He waits for more. I do not give it to him. “This is why you stink.”

“But I smell like strawberries.”

He leaves the doorway and walks down the hall with hard, careful steps. I stand there for three breaths and do not follow him, because if I follow him I might say more.

Don’t make this hurt, Jamie. I...

⬤

Aspen doesn’t know how to sneak.

She thinks she does because she gets quiet. Quiet people still step on crunchy leaves if they are thinking too hard, and Aspen has been thinking too hard since yesterday. She walks faster when she is scared, too, which she must think nobody knows. Stupid. I am her brother. I know.

I wait until she walks past our neighbor's house, then I follow. I should not have been fired. I am also not fired because I never agreed to that.

She stays far ahead, not running, just walking weirdly fast. Every few seconds she touches the strap of her bag or pats the front pocket where the blue moth is sticking out. I walk near the fences, far enough back that if she turns, I can hide behind them. I never have to though, because she does not turn.

She just stares at the sky.

When we leave the neighborhood path and get closer to the trees, I almost go back. Not because I am scared. Because if she catches me now, she will do the calm voice. The calm voice means she already decided, and if I keep arguing then somehow I’m the baby. She has been using it more lately, mostly when she comes home with dirt on her knees and blue stains around her nails and says nothing happened.

I don’t know why she likes this forest so much. It’s full of leaves, bugs, heat, and the bad smell near the little creek. She walks through it all like she has a map in her head. Must be a big-kid skill. I nearly step on a branch and have to freeze while she stops ahead of me.

She does not turn. She is looking at a tree. There is a small triangle cut into the bark, point aimed straight up.

I duck behind a different tree and stare at it from the side. It looks like someone carved it with a knife. Something blue has dried inside the grooves. At first I think paint. Then I remember the plastic bag of blueberries on Aspen’s bed and feel my face make the expression Mom says not to make at dinner. I wonder when we’ll have dinner again.

Aspen touches the triangle with two fingers before she moves on. Six trees later, she stops again. This mark is different. A yellow circle sits at about Aspen's shoulder height, one blunt line rising into it from below. No knife-cut underneath. It sits on the bark, bright enough that I can see it from where I’m hiding.

Aspen puts two fingers against the circle. She doesn't check it the way she checks the berry marks. She presses her fingers there and stands still for one breath, like she's waiting for something to stay put.

Then she keeps walking.

A few steps later the path splits, with blue fingerprints smeared across one of the roots. Aspen crouches, checks them, and takes the left side without hesitating.

Why would you rub blueberries on trees? If I were to ask, she would give an answer like trees need tasty food too. I’m not stupid, so I don’t ask.

The forest gets quieter the farther we go, though maybe that's only because I'm trying not to breathe loudly. I lose Aspen behind some bushes and panic for about four seconds before her backpack appears between two trunks.

The next marker is a flat stone with a blue-stained circle scratched into it. A jar of mashed berries sits beneath a nearby root. Aspen checks it, closes it, and wipes her thumb on her shorts. She has been doing that a lot lately—getting her hands dirty on purpose and pretending she hasn’t.

I do not like this. I do not like the triangles. I do not like the jar. I do not like that Aspen knows which trees matter and which ones do not. I… am I scared? No. Come on, big J. I keep following her.

A treehouse appears through the branches before I am ready for it. I know it exists. Everybody knows it exists. She made it a year ago, but it is old and crooked and technically not allowed, which means Aspen likes it. But from here, after the triangles and the berry marks, it does not look like a place someone goes to read or hide snacks.

Aspen stops below it. She looks up at the sky through the branches. I look too. I see clouds and sky. Nothing worth staring at.

She touches a mark on the trunk, then climbs. I stay behind a tree with a split in it and hold my breath whenever the ladder creaks. The treehouse swallows her backpack, then her legs, then the shoes. A board shifts above me. Something thumps softly. She is inside.

For a while she does not say anything.

Then her voice comes through the floor.

“Seven minutes now.”

I press my back against the tree. No one answers. She laughs once, small and annoyed.

“Why would you rip the leaf up? Is this funny to you?”

The woods do not answer. A fly lands on my arm. I do not slap it.

“You're the one who ripped it,” I whisper, too quietly for her to hear.

Above me, she moves again. The old boards creak. “You let me take that leaf. Then you ripped it apart. Why? What kind of sick fucks won't even respect my blood or the proper color. You wanted me to ask, so here. I’m asking.”

My stomach feels bad. Aspen doesn't talk like that when I'm there.

Her voice drops lower. “Show yourself.”

A hand settles on my shoulder.

The raincoat gives a soft plastic crumple beneath her palm. Her warmth comes through the yellow.

Mommy stands behind me.

“Mommy.” The word comes out before I turn around. “Aspen fired me.”

I remember the more important part. “And she’s being weird.”

Her hand slides down the oversized sleeve until it finds mine. Her nails are red. The chipped thumbnail presses lightly against my knuckle.

I look back once and the treehouse sits below us and the treehouse is creaking and Aspen is inside. Mommy gives my hand a small tug, and I try to remember what I was mad about. Aspen fired me, which is still unfair, but I can tell her off later. After a nap. Maybe after food.

A gray bird flies by my ear. I wave at it once, slow, and miss.

Home sounds nice. Me and Mommy.

⬤

Nothing shows itself.

I stand in the middle of the treehouse with both hands on my hips and my heart beating too fast.

A plastic container of markers sits beside the crate I use as a table. If I look only at them, I can almost make the last two days into something I'll laugh about after twelve hours of sleep and enough water. But the circle is still there.

It sits near the center of the floor, the one place I have never been able to fix, cover, sand, stain, ignore, or explain. A perfect round gap in wood that should not have perfect anything. I crouch beside it, careful not to put my hand too close.

At first I thought the shadow around it had changed, but then I saw the blue. Mold, maybe. That is the first word my brain offers because my brain is a coward with a biology textbook. It traces the circle in a thin uneven ring, wet-bright blue working into the grain and collecting in the tiny cracks between boards, not fuzzy exactly, not powder either.

I set the backpack down slowly. The blue moth peers out of the front pocket with its bent antenna and stitched, useless face. I kneel beside the circle and take the little green knife from my bag. The blade slides out with its tiny, pathetic click. The frog sticker on the sheath smiles at me from the floor.

“Not helpful.” Saying it feels better.

The blue mold glistens around the circle. It has grown thickest where the wood should be hardest to reach, as if it started from below and found the edges by touch. I set the knife point into the floor a few inches from the gap and scratch a triangle around it, correcting one crooked side before I sit back on my heels.

I sit back on my heels and wait for the floor to do something impressive or horrible or at least rude.

Nothing happens.

“Okay. Physical test.”

There is a pebble near the wall, one of several I brought up here weeks ago for reasons that were probably excellent. I drop it through the circle.

No tap below. No brush through leaves.

I knock twice on the boards beside it. My ears work. The world still knows how to receive small impacts when it feels like it.

I drop another pebble.

Nothing.

For a few seconds I keep my face very still. Then I lie flat on my stomach, set both palms on either side of the triangle, and bring my face close enough to look through the circle.

I can see the ground under the treehouse, the old roots, the flattened patch where I step off the ladder, the scattered leaves, the thin grass that survives mostly out of spite. The shapes are right. The distances are right.

But everything is gray. Gray has covered the grass, the bark, the dirt, the leaves, the roots. My eyes try to separate leaf from soil and keep sliding off.

I jerk back so fast my elbow hits the crate. I scramble to the window-hole. Outside, the forest is green and brown and sunlit. Leaves move. Bark holds its ordinary dark ridges. A strip of yellow tape I tied around a branch last week hangs exactly where I left it, obnoxiously visible and not gray. I look back at the circle. I look out the window again. My mouth tastes like metal.

I run to the hatch and pull. It gives a finger-width and stops—even though the latch is open.

I kick the side, pull again, then brace one foot against the floor and haul on the ring with both hands. The rope bites into my palms. A finger-width, every time, followed by the same deep stop—as if someone beneath it has set their whole weight against the door.

The treehouse gets smaller around me.

I go to the window and look down. The ladder is right there, nailed to the trunk in its familiar stupid unevenness. I could fit through the window if I had to. Maybe. Probably. I would have to put my head through first, find the trunk blind with one hand, and trust my weight to follow. Not doing that.

“Hello?” I call.

The forest answers with leaves.

I call louder. “Hello!”

Nothing. My voice comes back thin from the trees. I pound on the hatch with the heel of my hand. “Hey! Is anyone out there?”

No one answers. Did the fairies trap me? Wait—am I an idiot? What about Jamie?

“Jamie!”

The shout tears my throat a little. I wait. The forest moves in pieces. Leaf, branch, insect, heat. No Jamie. Okay, at least he didn’t follow me. He would’ve replied.

Fuck.

“Jamie!” I call again, louder, stupidly, as if volume can reach home and past it and into whatever seven missing minutes had already touched. “Jamie, if you’re out there, answer me!”

The woods do not answer. I pull myself back inside. Looking at the window now, all I can think about is having to put my head through first. My hands are shaking too much to be useful. Panic is producing no information. Am I panicking?

“Stop,” I tell myself. “Stop. Question first.”

I sit against the crate, drag the backpack close, and open the plastic bag of blueberries with hands that keep missing the seal. Several berries roll into my palm, dark blue and soft-skinned, staining the creases near my thumb. I hold them there and force the words to come out slowly enough that they count.

“If Jamie is in danger right now, be sour.”

I almost eat them, then stop.

“No. Wait. If Jamie is in danger right now, as in presently, currently, or something is after him, be sour. If he is not in danger right now, be sweet.”

I shove the berries into my mouth before I can hate myself for doing it. They burst sweet. Sweet all the way through, soft and ripe and almost syrupy, sugar filling my mouth so completely that for a second I forget to chew.

My shoulders drop. I close my eyes and swallow too fast. One laugh gets caught behind the berry pulp and comes out ugly, almost a cough.

“Okay.”

Sweet.

I swallow. “Not right now.” My brain immediately tries to turn that into safe. I try not to let it.

I press the heel of my hand to my forehead and let myself have it for a few breaths. Whatever this is, it’s only happening to me. I’m not dragging anyone else into it. The window is still open. I turn away from it and breathe until my hands work again.

Then I take out the red pen and the green pen. Red and green fit better in my hands, one in each, facts and wants without me having to say so. I use the capped ends first, scraping at the mold around the circle. It smears instead of flaking away, blue dragging across the floorboards in thin greasy arcs.

“Leave me alone.”

The mold clings to the grain. I scrape harder, bending over it until my hair falls into my face and my knees hurt against the boards.

The red pen slips and hits the edge of the gap. I almost drop it through. My heart punches once, hard, and I tighten my grip until the plastic creaks.

“Is this fucking funny to you? Are you going to do my hair when you take over again?”

Blue gets under my nails. It stains the caps. It gathers where the triangle lines meet, brightening instead of thinning, as if I am spreading it correctly by trying to ruin it.

I throw the pens down and go back to the hatch. Still stuck. I pull once, twice, uselessly, then wipe my hand on my shorts and turn back to the floor.

The pens are blue. Both of them.

I stare at them from across the treehouse. The cheap labels are gone. The bite mark near the cap on the green pen is still there, only now it dents blue plastic. The notebook is normal. The flashlight is normal. The red hair tie is still red, curled at the bottom of the bag like a sleeping worm.

The blue moth watches from the front pocket. Its stitched face is still stupidly calm. One antenna bends forward as if it has been waiting all day for me to return to its department.

I take it out and hold it in both hands. This is a bad idea. This is also an experiment. I stand in the middle of the treehouse, the circle at my feet, the hatch shut, the forest green through the window and gray through the floor. I hold the moth to eye level.

“If you’re answering me,” I say, “point at me.”

I turn the moth six times, slow enough to count, fast enough that I cannot decide where it will land. My hands shake by the fourth turn, and I have to start over because this must be perfect. Six turns. No cheating. No deciding. I toss it.

The moth arcs badly, hits one floorboard wing-first, bounces, and lands directly over the circular gap. Its soft blue body covers the gray. One wing stretches out across the scratched triangle and points straight toward my knees.

The treehouse creaks once in the heat. My mouth opens, then closes.

“Then give me something I can fucking recognize.”

I kneel to pick up the moth. Before my fingers touch it, I smell nail polish. Not fresh enough to belong to a bottle. Faint, chemical, familiar in the back of my throat, mixed with the sharp ghost of remover and the warmer smell of someone sitting at the kitchen table with one hand spread on a paper towel.

My fingers stop above the plush. My shoulders rise slowly. I know that smell. I do not want to know it. I lift the moth away from the circle.

A fingertip is coming up through the gray. The nail appears first. Red polish, glossy even in the dimness under the floor, with one tiny crescent chipped from the outer corner of the thumbnail. The exact chip. The one she always said she would fix after dinner and then did not fix because dinner became dishes, or phone calls, or me standing too near the sink with a towel in both hands.

Please no.

The fingertip rises farther. Then another. Index finger. Middle finger. They rise until the first joints should meet the wood.

The opening is smaller than my palm. Mother’s hand is larger than mine. I wait for the knuckles to catch.

They come through.

I blink hard enough that color sparks behind my eyelids. I lift my head, change the angle, lower it again. The geometry does not become smarter when I look from somewhere else. The thumb appears. The hole has not widened.

The thumb clears the edge. I snap back. The red nail turns toward me. This has the same faint crease beside the knuckle that I have seen a thousand times while watching her hold a mug, a steering wheel, Jamie’s chin when he would not look up. Anybody could make a hand. Anybody could paint the nails red. But the wrist is wider than the circle.

The fingers flex once, gently, as though testing the distance. Then the hand glides toward me. I scramble backward until the back of my thigh hits the crate. The impact knocks something inside it against the wall. Plastic rattles.

The hand follows with gentle patience, extending farther than the arm beneath the floor should allow. Gray remains around the wrist. The rest of it does not emerge. Only the hand comes through, red nails and warm skin and the chipped thumbnail moving toward me as if I have spilled something and need help cleaning it up.

It finds my injured hand. The muscles from my neck down into my upper arm tighten so hard they begin to tremble. I try to pull backward and feel the tendons in my forearm stand out under the skin. The hand moves with me for maybe half an inch. Then stops.

My arm freezes too. I pull harder and get nothing. The pressure around my fingers does not increase. She does not need to squeeze.

Her thumb brushes the side of my index finger, not on the scab at first, but beside it. The chipped red nail rests near the dried brown line from yesterday’s cut.

My stomach folds and the blueberries come up before I understand that I am going to throw up. I turn too late. Purple-blue pulp spills over the floorboards, over my wrist, over part of the hand still holding mine. Berry skins cling to the red polish. My throat burns as I drag in air.

Her hand does not pull away.

Her thumb keeps moving beside the scab in that same small, careful stroke, the chipped red nail sliding through blueberry stain. Where the colors cross, the polish flashes briefly purple-pink. Her thumb passes on.

I hear her voice, gentle and familiar from somewhere just beneath the floor.

“I love you.”

My chest feels good. I cannot trust this smell.

But Jamie loves it.