Page 39 of In Her Own Rite

I smile. “So I ran over to see what it was. And I saw this little girl with long blonde hair and two kids from herfika, standing at the edge of that rock.”

I point up to the rock a few meters above the water, which we use to cannonball from in the summer. I can see it now: her in her yellow bathing suit, the one her mom made that she wore for three summers, even after it didn’t really fit. Holding her arms around herself, stepping backwards towards the edge as Seb and Gabe goaded her.

“And what were they like?” she asks. “The other kids.”

“Incrediblystupid. You could just smell it off them. Even now—”

She laughs softly, and I can feel something in the air warm.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “So then what?”

“I saw Seb holding a frog, trying to scare you with it. Gabe was kind of half-stopping him, but laughing along. And you were scared.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I did what I had to. I punched Seb in the face.”

She cracks up for real now, folding over with a hand on her stomach, the laughter echoing off rocks around us. “Agaayu, I still can’t believe you did that. And he’s never forgiven you for it.”

“Yeah, but he’s also never tried to scare you with a frog again, has he?”

“I guess not.” She looks up at me, and I see the warmth in her eyes.

“That was the first summer I was happy,” I say, before I can think about it.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No,” she says softly. “Tell me.”

I swallow. “I… I don’t know. I didn’t have a great home life. Nothing like you, of course. I know what you had to go through is—” I stop. “Anyway. I was just lonely, I guess. The summer I met you was the first summer I didn’t feel alone.”

She smiles. “It was the summer we became a family. Me and the guys, I mean. And you, I guess. It all changed when we met you.”

She looks back out at the water and tentatively leans her head against my shoulder. I feel a small part of my world fall back into place.

“Yeah?” I ask.

For a minute or two, she says nothing—so long that I almost wonder if she didn’t hear me. But finally, she speaks.

“I moved into thefikarigthe night after Mom died.” Her voice is quiet, and I can hear the emotion in it. The wolf inside her that she’s pushing away. “They didn’t like me. Seb and Gabe had their own thing—the only kids in thefika, and all that. And when I came, I was an imposition. They teased me a lot.”

I feel a growl escape from my inner wolf, and clear my throat to cover it.

“It wasn’t likeIwanted to be there,” she says, bringing her knees up to her chest. She’s still in her pajamas under the coat, and I watch as a few snowflakes land on the red flannel. “I would have done anything to be with her, instead. But, I don’t know. We were kids. And I guess because I wasn’t happy, when they teased me I’d cry, and that made it worse. So I stuck to myself. Or I’d hang out with Saga and make myself helpful around the house.”

I think about little Em, hanging out with the grown-ups. Helping Saga with her then-new business. Trying to make herself indispensable. Trying to earn her place in thefika.

“That summer… I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t know how to stand up to Seb, and when you did for me, I felt safe. Instantly. It was like you stood up to him and I just…”

She brings her hands together, like magnets.

“And then the real Em came out. So once you were there, the guys got to know me. That summer we got close for the first time ever. It was the first time I had a family after my mom died.”

I wrap my arm around her, pulling her closer to me.

“I feel that. You guys became my family, too. Especially once my parents split and my mom moved us to Saroe.”

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