He can’t lose his nerve now. We haven’t even gotten to the hard stuff, like shooting stars, which are ten times as hard on the rail. The distance between this stone and the next suddenly seems to widen before my eyes.

I shake out my hands, which have begun to fist. “Come on, Brother. It’s all muscle memory. ‘Tame the devil in your mind, and you can fly.’” I repeat Ba’s old phrase. “Remember?”

“It’s not my mind I’m worried about. It’s . . . this.” He gestures at himself.

“So you’re no longer spindly. But we’ve been growing all of our lives, and we’ve always taken it in stride. Why can’t you do that now? Practice and your body will figure itself out. Try the gunslinger again.”

“I doubt I can manage a two-arm handstand up there, let alone one.”

“You just have to work up to it.”

“Stop pushing me. I can’t do it all by tomorrow.” He grips his temples, his knuckles whitening.

I cross my arms. I feel Bo’s eyes on me and remember his comment about me ordering Jamie around. “I only push hard because I know what we’re capable of.”

“You know what you’re capable of.” Jamie glowers at me, and I glower back. Mum always said we were like the two sides of a railroad track; when one got hot, the other got equally hot.

“But I can’t do it without you.”

He sighs. Suddenly his glare loses its heat. Something has changed about him, a shift in attitude that leaves me feeling foolish and young.

“Want to know what I think?” Bo says quietly in Cantonese.

I’m about to say no, but Jamie says, “Yes.”

“Either of you walking on that rail is enough to turn heads. I think Jamie should do the basics and leave the fireworks to Valora.” Bo puts a fist over his mouth, the bump of his ring like a peeking frog’s eye. I definitely don’t notice how his arm muscles bulge. He catches me not-noticing them, and I quickly shift my focus to my big toe. “I bet she can handle herself.”

Jamie swabs his forehead. “What do you say, Val?”

“So . . . no double shooting stars? No gunslingers?”

Jamie slips on that old smile, which fits his face as easily as his cap fits his head. “We’ll think of something just as impressive.”

23

Drummer finds us a space to practice in a cargo hold with a rail like the one on the docking bridge.

After much vigorous discussion, Jamie and I agree on a routine that, like Goldilocks’s porridge, is neither too hot nor too cold.