Overlooked (Gives Light Series Book 6) Read online

  I made my way into the kitchen, grimacing because the clock on the wall said it was six in the evening. Probably I wasn’t going to sleep at all tonight. The sucky thing about lucid dreaming is it really messes up your sleep schedule. I think it has something to do with jumbling up your REM cycles, but I ain’t a math scientist.

  “Rafael?”

  Rosa crept into the kitchen. The house was very quiet, I realized, which made me wonder where Uncle Gabriel had gone. Rosa was quiet, too; but then that was her nature. She worried her lip when she gazed at me, her forehead wrinkling.

  “Want something to eat?” I mumbled.

  Rosa inched closer to the island. “I will cook,” she said.

  “S’okay,” I said. “I’ll, uh—I can warm frybread.”

  Rosa hesitated. “You know how?”

  I scratched my cheek, noncommittal. I shuffled around.

  “We will use the microwave,” Rosa decided.

  I frowned. Days ago Uncle Gabe had brought home this huge black contraption with a weird glass door. He’d planted it on the counter, plugged it into one of those wall-sprocket-things, and proudly declared that it was going to make all of our lives easier. Mary had burst out laughing. Uncle Gabriel was out of control.

  Rosa took a bowl of mattache out of the refrigerator. She put it inside the black contraption and pressed a bunch of beeping buttons. I tossed it a dark look. The glass door lit up and Rosa turned away from it. I shoved my hands in my pockets.

  “Um,” I began.

  I knew I had to apologize to her. It’s just that I hated the taste of crow.

  Rosa looked me in the face. Rosa looked away.

  “I didn’t mean to take advantage of you,” I said quietly.

  Rosa looked at me again. “I know.”

  The microwave hummed and whirred. I leaned back against the counter, awkward.

  “You are a boy,” Rosa said. “I’ve told you before that you are at the age when you meet yourself for the first time. It’s alright if you make mistakes.”

  My throat tightened with emotion. Great. I put my head down and pretended to read the lacrosse magazine Uncle Gabriel had left on the island. I hated lacrosse.

  “Is Mary alright?” Rosa asked. “She’s slept long.”

  “She’s okay,” I said. “Just feverish.”

  Rosa fretted. “If only it weren’t winter…”

  I didn’t know what she meant by that. My best guess was she was talking about willow leaves, a good fever alleviant. “Maybe we’ve got some in the bathroom.”

  The mattache in the microwave popped and banged. I jumped in my shoes. I glimpsed the glass door and it was covered in butter-and-pepper goop. Rosa opened the microwave and the scent of burnt corn wafted out. I sneezed.

  “Maybe we will stick to the wood-coal stove,” Rosa said skittishly.

  I cleaned the microwave with a dish towel and Rosa reheated frybread on the stovetop burner. If you don’t put cream cheese on your frybread, you don’t know what you’re missing. About ten minutes later Rosa took the bread off the stove and cut it in half. I asked her, haltingly, if she knew how to cook eggs.

  “Yes.” Rosa paused. “Would you prefer those?”

  “No,” I said. “I just—I wanted to know how to cook ‘em. For Sky.”

  Rosa’s face softened. I debated ducking and hiding.

  “I’ll teach you eggs over easy,” she said.

  She tried to, anyway. She greased two pans and put ‘em on the burners; she cracked two eggs, one for each pan. I watched her flip her pan like it was nothing, the runny egg sailing through the air. The hell was this, gymnastics? I picked up my pan by the iron handle, uncertain. I gave it a jerk. My egg splattered all over the red-hot stove.

  Rosa giggled. “That will happen.”

  I turned the stove off. I buried my face in my hands. “I suck.”

  “No, it’s alright,” Rosa said. “No one gets good at cooking without trying.”

  “Annie’s good at cooking,” I said.

  “I am sure she’s had practice.”

  “Why are they called eggs over easy if they’re so damn hard?”

  “That is a very good question.”

  Speaking of Annie: She visited me the following morning. I was already feeling antsy because being grounded meant being indoors, but the Weird Dreaming thing had kept me awake all night, itchy and restless. I paced the sitting room like a wild animal when Annie walked inside the house.

  “Your hair looks longer,” I said. It reached her shoulders now.

  “Yes, it’s funny that hair grows, isn’t it?” Annie carried a basket full of peyote petals on her arm. “I visited the Sun-And-Moon Crater recently. I thought your sister might make use of these.”

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching for the basket.

  Annie gave it to me. Annie wavered. When I touched her hand by accident I felt reluctance and resolution. Annie was more like me than either one of us cared to admit. Much as I hated the taste of crow, Annie refused even to sample it.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “That you wanted to come on the car ride.”

  Embarrassed, Annie took a while before she responded. “I suppose I just wanted to be invited.”

  I felt crummy. I knew what it was like to watch everyone else having fun without me, to wish that just one of them would look my way. The car ride hadn’t been fun at all, but that was beside the point. I told you Annie and I had too much in common.

  “I don’t mean to be so petty about this,” Annie said, flustered. “It’s just—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Well, I worry,” Annie said. “You and I rather loathed each other until fairly recently, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my face straight.

  “I know you didn’t always like me,” Annie said. “So I worry that… I worry that you don’t really think of me as your friend.”

  “That’s nuts,” I said, staring.

  “It isn’t,” she insisted. “I don’t have very many friends, don’t you see that? I know I’m a bit of a—well, I suppose I’m a shrew—”

  “Don’t say that,” I growled.

  Annie glanced at me, unfazed.

  “I didn’t ask you to come with us ‘cause I didn’t wanna go myself,” I said. “And anyway, I knew you would’ve thought the whole thing was stupid, and I care too much about what you think.”

  Annie’s face lightened. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Uncle Gabriel came inside the house with a bloody handsaw and a skinned calf quarter. He put the saw on the floor, muck and all, and hung the exsanguinated hank from the ceiling rafters. He said to Annie, “How are you doing today?”

  “Oh, fine, thank you,” Annie said, polite as could be.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Uncle Gabriel, who was a gentleman. “You know Rafael’s grounded, don’t you?”

  “He is?” Annie asked, the consummate actress.

  “He is,” Uncle Gabriel returned, the consummate intuitionist.

  Annie was 5‘1”, the kind of girl you wanted to pick up with one hand. Uncle Gabriel was 6‘5”. Annie had practically to bend over backwards just to look up at him. By contrast, Uncle Gabriel stooped low to return her gaze. He looked like the freaking Hunchback. It was funny, and it distracted me from the fact that Uncle Gabriel was about to send Annie home and leave me by my lonesome. But Uncle Gabriel never got around to that. Mary dragged herself out of her bedroom, yawning, her pillow under her arm. Her hair stood up in every direction, pajamas baggy on her bony body.

  “Whoa,” Mary said. “Nice welcoming committee.”

  “You look dreadful,” Annie said.

  “Aw, shucks,” Mary said. “Not too shabby yourself.”

  “Annie came over to give you these,” I said, thrusting the peyote petals at Mary.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Annie lied seamlessly, “I came to visit Mary.”

  There was nothing Uncle Gabriel could do. He went b
ack outside to wash off his saw at the water pump. I looked between Annie with her red aura and Mary with her nothing aura. Not for the first time, Mary unnerved me.

  Mary powered suddenly to life. She tossed her pillow aside and put the basket down. “I wrote you a song!” she told Annie.

  Annie shifted her weight. Annie frowned skeptically. “You did?”

  “Chyeah, it’s totally awesome! Come on, follow me!”

  The three of us went inside Mary’s room. Annie gaped at the nude girls on the closet door, with the result that I pulled the door open, just to hide them from view. Annie glanced discreetly at the mess beyond, fishnets and corsets hanging tangled on their hangers. Her face was pink and bothered.

  “Ahem,” Mary said.

  She picked up her pick and her bass guitar and shredded the shit out of that sucker. The cacophony ticked me off, because I knew Mary was actually good with that instrument, but she had to be a dope about it. I cringed and covered my ears. Annie did nothing at all, her lips pursed.

  “Well?” said Mary when she was finished, grinning.

  Annie sighed. “That wasn’t a song.”

  “Got you in my room, though, didn’t it?” Mary said, winking.

  “I’m leaving now,” Annie announced.

  When Annie was gone it was just Mary and me. Mary hole herself up in her closet while she changed clothes, rambling through the door to me about the time her band had headlined for Raging Skinflints, no joke. I narrowed my eyes at the lewd girls hanging on the closet door. That was when I had my epiphany. Mary strutted out of the closet in a spiked collar and heavy black slacks. I confronted her.

  “Annie’s got a boyfriend,” I said.

  “So?” Mary said.

  “Mary,” I said, irritated.

  “I’m just having a little fun,” Mary said. “Relax.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I gave up; not because I wanted to, but because I wasn’t itching for a fight.

  “Are you going to the hospital?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Mary said. “Thought I’d kill Paul instead.”

  I stared at her.

  “I’m kidding,” Mary said. “You think an old dog can’t learn new tricks? Speaking of, I’m not going to kill Paul while you’re dogging me. Maybe I’ll do it while you’re asleep.”

  Yeah, great. The result was that I didn’t sleep that night, either. I sat awake in the hallway with eyes open, paranoid. My scalp itched and my fingers shook. Every time my head drooped, my chin digging in my chest, I jumped. I don’t know how I didn’t wake the rest of the house. It was sunrise before Uncle Gabriel found me, and he crouched on the floor, forlorn. He shook me by the shoulder, a yelp dying in my throat. He hushed me, his finger in front of his mouth.

  “Rafael,” Uncle Gabriel said. “For God’s sake, get some sleep.”

  “Mary’s gonna kill Paul,” I said wildly.

  “I’m watching her,” Uncle Gabriel said. “You don’t have to watch her.”

  The orange lights around him hurt my weary eyes. I asked Sky if he wouldn’t mind turning them off. Uncle Gabriel gave me a strange look.

  “Sleep,” Uncle Gabriel said. “I’ll wake you in a few hours. We have to have a talk, anyway.”

  I don’t remember dragging myself into my bedroom. I must have. I must have passed out before I hit the mattress, because when I woke up I was lying on the floor, my copy of The Secret of Platform 13 in my arms. The hell? I’d heard of sleepwalking, but never sleepreading. I stole into the bathroom and washed my face. I combed my hair, or pretended to, skimming it with lazy fingers. When I went out into the kitchen Uncle Gabriel was sitting on one of the tall chairs. He stared so intensely into the bottom of his coffee cup he probably wouldn’t have reacted if the house had fallen down. He hadn’t heard me walk in.

  Watching Uncle Gabriel like this felt unsettling, because I had a front row seat to the face he’d never let me see in the past seventeen years. He looked so young. The hair on his cheeks did little to disguise his age. Was he afraid? He rarely showed fear, but everyone was afraid of something. The family Uncle Gabriel had grown up with was completely gone. His dad was dead. His sister was dead. His mother lived all the way in Idaho. I didn’t know what that felt like. I didn’t want to know what it felt like to realize the people who had shaped my childhood were all gone.

  “Uncle Gabriel,” I said. My voice was hoarse.

  Uncle Gabriel looked up. Uncle Gabriel smiled. It made me feel sad.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’ve done enough apologizing,” Uncle Gabriel said.

  I rubbed my arm, uncertain.

  “Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Uncle Gabriel said. “Because you’re not.”

  I nodded. I sat down across from him.

  Uncle Gabriel rubbed his wrists. “I’m letting you go to the winter pauwau,” he said. “But only because your grandmother wants you and Mary to stay with her after Christmas. She said you could bring a friend. Just try not to overdo it. It’s hard on her now that your grandfather’s gone.”

  I didn’t much look forward to the prospect of spending time with Grandma Gives Light. She was a formidable woman, as old Plains ladies often were. She scared the shit out of me. On the other hand, if Mary was in Idaho, it was one less opportunity for her to hurt Paul.

  “Do you understand why I’m really angry with you?” Uncle Gabriel asked.

  “Because I lied to you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Uncle Gabriel said. “And no. This isn’t just about the car. And this isn’t your fault alone.”

  I couldn’t see that Uncle Gabriel had done anything wrong.

  Uncle Gabriel scratched his elbow. “If I couldn’t see how strongly you felt about Skylar, what else have I missed?”

  “I don’t—what do you mean?” I asked.

  Uncle Gabriel shook his head.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, angry. “Don’t be Shoshone right now.”

  “Alright,” Uncle Gabriel said. He looked me in the eye. “I’m scared that I’ve been inattentive toward you and your sister. I’m scared I haven’t been a good parent.”

  I was supposed to reassure him. I was supposed to tell him about all the good things he’d done for us over the years, about how many sacrifices he’d made and how much we appreciated them.

  Instead I said, “You’re not our parent.”

  The moment the words left my mouth I felt ashamed; I wanted to kick myself. Uncle Gabriel closed and opened his eyes in a rapid blink, like someone had sprayed cold air in his face.

  “I might have worded that wrong,” Uncle Gabriel said. “I’d never presume to replace your mother or father. But—”

  “Then why did you say that?” I asked, my voice unsteady. “Why would you say you’re our parent?”

  Uncle Gabriel took a long pause. “I’ve had you since you were eight,” he said quietly. “I may not be your father, but I think that makes me something of a parent.”

  I touched my glasses. I stopped. Uncle Gabriel had given me eyesight. Uncle Gabriel had given me shelter and purpose and a childhood—that childhood he’d lost too quickly.

  “I thought I was something of a parent,” Uncle Gabriel corrected, rubbing his face. “Now I don’t know anything.”

  What was I supposed to say to him? “It’s okay”? It wasn’t okay that the more years that passed, the more I thought of Uncle Gabriel as my father. No matter the horrible things my real father had done, Dad was the man who had made me. It wasn’t like Dad had been born evil. It wasn’t like Dad could have helped himself. Nobody was born evil; and nobody became evil just because it sounded like a good idea. Evil was something you fell into, the way people fell into debt, or love.

  “How do I fix this?” Uncle Gabriel kept saying. “How do I take better care of you?”

  “Stop,” I begged. He hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t know how to admit that.

  “Maybe I should have let your grandmother take you,” Uncle Gabriel said. />
  “Are you getting rid of me?” I asked, frightened.

  “No, I couldn’t bear that,” Uncle Gabriel said. He rubbed his face again. “Stupid,” he said, almost inaudible. “I was so stupid.”

  I was the stupid one. I couldn’t think of a way to comfort him without dishonoring my father. So I didn’t try it. That’s something I really hate about myself. To this day I hate that I didn’t put my arms around my uncle, or mollify the scared child in him. All of us are children. That’s the truth. Grown ups are just big children taking care of little children, making loving mistakes along the way.

  Christmas came to Nettlebush almost without my noticing; which wasn’t very fair, because Christmas was my favorite holiday. It wasn’t about the presents or anything—we didn’t really do that in Nettlebush—and it definitely wasn’t about the weather. I don’t know; I guess it was a spiritual time. The day before Christmas Eve a bunch of dads put together a collapsible stage in the windmill field for the children’s annual pageant. Reverend Silver Wolf hung red curtains from the rods and Shaman Quick helped him, although you could tell he really didn’t want to. Every family decorated the doors and windows of their houses with white holly, which made me think of holy ghosts. I loved those ghosts. I loved them because they were with God now, but God was right here on Earth.

  On Christmas Eve the reservation’s church held a late night mass. Velvet, violet midnight darkened the stained windows, the walls glowing with dozens of candles. The pews were the most crowded I’d ever seen them, twenty people scrunched in where fifteen were supposed to fit. Nobody uttered a single sound, not even Reverend Silver Wolf as he tossed bundles of braided cedar on top of the altar candles, the sweet incense settling over us like the breath of our ancestors.

  In silence there was music, and kindness, and love. The love was so palpable it rooted me to my seat. Christmas was a time when people genuinely cared that their neighbors were doing well for themselves. I could see it in the auras that hung around their shoulders, sparkling and clean. I could feel it when strangers looked at me, or when they touched me in passing, so much benevolence that for a moment, I was their child. I was loved, and I loved them, and I felt it thrumming in my skin, drilling in my bones, the kind of love that feels so good it hurts.