I washed my hands at the laundry room sink and went upstairs to my bedroom. I could hear Beatrice’s soft snore from Ellen’s trundle and see the shape of Ellen in Marie’s bed. Beatrice still liked to spend nights in our room. I left the light off and tried to change in the dark, sitting next to Beatrice on the trundle, taking my sneakers off first. My hand touched something warm and sticky on the top of the right sneaker, and without thinking I put my hand toward my face. It smelled of earth and metal. I carried the sneakers into the bathroom, turning on the light. The right foot of my new white Converse was smeared in blood that had already started to brown. I looked at my reflection and saw I had a streak on my cheek from where I had lifted my hand. I turned on the hot tap and wiped my face and hand repeatedly. I put the shoe into the sink and started to rinse it with hot water that steamed, and then remembered that it’s best to use cold water to get blood out. I had a strange feeling in the bathroom, like this was happening to someone else at nearly three in the morning, standing there at the sink with a strong scent of iron or metal from the deer but also something else, a smell like pine needles.

I climbed across Beatrice into my own bed and lay down in the dark, Beatrice snoring just a few inches below me.

“Libby?” It was Ellen. “What did Wilson do?”

17

I had slept in. The girls’ voices and my mother’s drifted up from the kitchen. I opened my eyes and it took me a minute to focus on the shape across the room from me. I leaned up on my elbow. Ellen had nearly finished Beatrice’s parade costume. She’d created a headless life-size mannequin by stuffing newspaper into legs and pillows into the torso. It was propped up on Marie’s bed, facing mine. The legs were striped in circles of red, white, and blue. Its blue denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt were Ellen’s. She’d stitched a vest to wear over it from the red and blue strips of fabric. Ellen must have been sewing half the night. On top of her dresser sat a giant blue top hat made from the poster board; she’d rolled it into a cylinder and stuck it into a cutout circle of cardboard. Against the wall was a huge sign on white poster board, the text done exactly like in the Dr. Seuss books: I Am Sam, Sam I Am. Beatrice was going to be a Dr. Seuss Uncle Sam on her bike.

I went down to the three of them seated around the table, Ellen and Beatrice eating Wheaties and my mother sipping a cup of tea.