“I just don’t.”

You can’t get away with this, even when you’re eight. Merle, passing by, said, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, push down your hair.”

Edmund giggled. “You can’t let it down. It’s too frizzy.”

“Say it,” said Polly.

“No.”

A nasty little boy wanting things his way, his way, his way. Or was she the nasty little girl? Edmund, who had hay fever, wanted only to be left alone. He was sticky and tired, sick of doing what Polly wanted to do. Now she was eating the last of the SweeTarts.

“I’ll play swords,” he said. “Or kickball. Or I’ll be the one to ask for television.”

“Say it.”

“No.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes itched so badly he wanted to scratch them out.

“Say it and I won’t eat the last two.”

“You don’t even have long hair.”

“You don’t even have a brain cell.”

Edmund roared and jumped for the tree, swinging up onto the first branch as Polly scuttled higher. He grabbed her foot and she kicked at his face, lost her balance, and started to fall, clutching at branches, following the SweeTarts down to the grass.

Later, while she felt her bruises, Polly would think of Dee falling, not dropping the ivory moon, not peeing her pants. She hit hard and stared up. Edmund was still dangling from the branch. She would have cried, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the battlefield, the candy in the grass next to her. Polly lurched toward the pieces and stuffed them in her mouth as Edmund gave another shriek of rage and jumped down and tried to pull the candy out. She bit down but he found one, scratching her tongue as he pried it out, and shoved it into his own mouth.

Polly spat at him, blood and bits of sugar. Edmund smiled and chewed, lay down on the grass, and looked up at the sky through the branches.

“You’re not a princess. No one would rescue you. No one would even lock you up.”

They didn’t talk for three hours. That evening, they lay in their bedrooms, with matching open windows looking out at the crab apple tree, while May moved back and forth between rooms. Polly, tired with her rage and bored, could hear Edmund murmur to the cat, and then she heard a different voice, like an old woman’s: O little boy O little girl.

It was the green parrot, calling from the crab apple. They both got out of bed and stuck their heads out the windows.

O stupid cat.