He ran to his room and then back with his bird almanac. “It’s a Northern Cardinal,” he read. “Size: eight to nine inches. Range: eastern half of United States and west to the great plains. Food: seeds and fruit. And it’s a male because it’s red.”

“Hmm,” Josie muttered. “What other animals are out there?”

“I’ll go look,” he said, and dashed out the door.

He was only gone a minute when he ran back, breathless. “There are no other animals. Just ants. Ants are insects.”

“I see,” Josie said. “Why don’t you go count them?”

“I tried,” he said. “There are too many, and they’re crawling too fast on the bird.”

“What?” She turned and looked at him. “They’re on the bird?”

He nodded.

“Where’s the bird?”

“On the ground.”

Josie sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She stood and walked outside. It was bright and she squinted in the sunlight. “You didn’t touch it, did you?”

“No.”

“Where is it?”

Tyler led her to the cardinal. It was lying on its side beneath the oak tree, its bright red wings tucked close to its body, its bill wide open. It hadn’t been dead long, but the ants had already begun to swarm in and around its chest.

“Oh, God,” Josie said, and turned her head.

“What’s wrong with it?” Tyler asked.

“It’s dead,” she said.

“Oh.” He was staring intently at the bird.

“Do you know what dead means?”

“It means it’s not alive,” he said.

Once they had gone to the park with Phillip and Katie and seen a dead squirrel on the sidewalk, but Phillip had said it was only sleeping and Josie had just added “for a long, long time.” Now, she placed her hand on Tyler’s shoulder. He stiffened, and she removed it. “Do you know what alive means?”

“It means it’s not dead.”

Josie smiled. “Yes.” She looked at the bird, its bright red chest puffed unnaturally out. “I think we should bury it. We can find an old shoebox and dig a hole under the tree.”

“Why?” he said. He was still staring at the bird, and Josie took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain this.

“Dead means not here anymore,” she said and realized this was obviously untrue. “The body is here, but it doesn’t work anymore, so we bury the body.”

“Why doesn’t it work anymore?”

“Well….” She took a deep breath. “When things get old, they sometimes stop working. Like cars.” She closed her eyes and grimaced. “And animals.” She paused.

“People are animals,” Tyler said.

“That’s true.” She wondered how she could possibly be this bad at explaining what death meant when she could speak for hours on what the living did with the dead.

“When do animals stop working?” he asked.

“When they’re old, Tyler. When they’re very, very old.”