I’d stared at the hovering flies, the opossum fur, patches of it matted with dried blood. One of the animal’s mouths was wide open, its teeth pointy, its tongue swollen and purple. Under the hind leg of that opossum, something squirmed, and I screamed. “Did you see that? Did you see, Rod? There’s something wiggling by the leg.”

Rodney, so comfortable with gross things, didn’t hesitate. He pulled the leg back and revealed a gaping hole. As if I could feel my own thin tissue stretching, I winced.

“Eww,” I yelled. “Worms. They’re worms.”

He elbowed me in the head, hard enough that I rubbed the spot with my hand. “Not worms,” he said. “Opossums carry their babies in their pouch.” He stuck one of his hands in the hole, ignoring the flies landing on his hand, his arm. One landed on his face. I backed up, disgusted. I didn’t want those flies touching my skin.

He picked the babies out, placing them in the palm of his hand. They were tiny, hairless, some barely moving, some statue-still. Gross.

“They’re like pink jelly beans,” he said, his eyes lit with some fierce emotion. Desire? Delight? Fury? He walked around to the front of the house with those baby opossums.

I stood frozen, horrified. What was he going to do with them? Mother them? Use them as fish bait? I imagined him popping them into his mouth like jelly beans.

*  *  *

Later, maybe a month, maybe two. Grass was still green, but leaves littered the ground. It must have been early fall because the leaves were golden and edged in fiery pink, soft to the touch. If it were mid-fall, they would have been browning and dried out, their edges curled and crunchy.

I sat on the front porch after school, my sticker book spread open in my lap. I loved that sticker book, with its cellophane pages and treasures inside. Stickers puffy like marshmallow dreams and scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers that were more vibrant and delicious than real smells: pickle smells you kept going back to for another sniff, banana fragrance you wanted to lick, buttery popcorn scents you wanted to climb inside. Smelly stickers were a preview to the internet—more enticing than real life. I traced my finger over a scratch ‘n’ sniff sticker of pink jelly beans, hot pink and creamy pale pink, and thought of those baby opossums.

I had forgotten about those babies. What had Rodney done with them?

He’d probably carried them into the back garage. I was scared to go back there by myself. There was a single lightbulb dangling from a cord, so it was dark. I’d seen mice stuck in snap-traps back there, their necks broken, their bodies frozen in contortion.

He should be home from school soon. I’d wait here and ask him.