Izzy was used to strange things happening; her whole life had been strange. Growing up by a burping, sulfuric lake, an ossuary for the bones of a million rotted tilapia. Where dust storms turned a child’s lungs into those of a fifty-year old smoker with chronic obstructed pulmonary disease. And a fungus in the soil, stirred by the wind and inhaled, caused desert fever—coccidioidomycosis. A place where, once, bombs from the marine base detonated regularly in the distance. All strange. But this little girl shook Izzy, somehow, in a different way.

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Later that afternoon, the four friends went for lunch at the Ski Inn—the only real eatery in town. The low, awninged, orange building served burgers, fries, and beer, mostly. Seth ordered all three, Cyrus had a burger, Nephy ate a grilled cheese sandwich, and Izzy picked at some French fries—her body craved the salt, but the grease coated her mouth unpleasantly. They all sat by the bar with the glasses hanging upside down from the ceiling and dollar bills papering every square inch of space.

“Tell me something beautiful and something strange,” Cyrus said. It was a game he’d invented, an easy one for Izzy to play since almost everything seemed both beautiful and strange to her.

Seth put his hand on Nephy’s belly. “Beautiful,” he said. “And strange.” He took a pull on his beer.

His wife laughed, a little nervously, Izzy thought. “The garden’s beautiful,” Nephy said. She raised her glass of ice water in a toast. “That little girl was strange.”

Cyrus shrugged. “She’s just finding ways to make it out here,” he said. “You gotta start young.”

“To make it out of here or make it out here?” Izzy said.

He leaned forward in his chair, put his hands on his knees, then leaned back so his hands slid up the length of his thighs. He didn’t answer her.

“She reminds me of you,” Seth told her. “When you were a kid. Making shit up all the time.”

“She still does,” Cyrus said. “Not shit. Beautiful and strange things.” He leaned forward again, slung his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close so that she could smell the comforting, grassy scent of his sweat and feel the dampness through his cotton T-shirt. “Or I guess now you make it real.” He was talking about the items she created. She found porcelain and ceramic figures at flea markets and thrift stores—Buddha, Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary, cherubs, and roses—and made silicone molds of them, then poured in beeswax for candles or organic chocolate with different flavorings—rose, lavender, and prickly pear, the cactus with the pulpy flesh and bloody juice like a human heart. The chocolates and candles, along with Izzy’s part-time massage business, brought in cash to supplement Cyrus’s landscaping and construction work.

Izzy leaned into the curve of his arm, where it felt as if her bony shoulders had permanently carved out a space. “What about you, babe?”

“You are beautiful,” he said, looking down at her under the thick shade of his lashes. “I am strange.”