Marley laughed like I was so obvious. Like I’d ever do anything but agree with her. “Maybe we’re different. Not this place.” She cupped the railing with her palms. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been anywhere else.”

“Neither have I.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t a follower. I had my own thoughts, and I’d prove it. “I think it’s both. This place is special, and so are we. Me and you.”

“Oh, Ollie.” She patted my head. I don’t know how. My hands were glued to the rail. If I let go, I’d fall. “You’ll learn.”

“I’ll learn what?”

She shook off the thought. “It’s so ugly here,” she said, even though the sky was turning pinkish-orange, and I was positive neither of us had ever witnessed anything more magnificent than the lazy rise of that morning’s sun.

I tried again to be brave. Challenge her. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“No, you don’t,” she informed me. “You’re what? Nine? You don’t know any better. Wait ’til you’re fifteen like I am. You’ll get it.”

She knew full well that I was eleven—she’d given me a very nice handmade birthday card earlier in the year—so I said nothing about her error. Because she was the oldest, she always hurled my youth against me when she didn’t have a better point to make. “You don’t know any better either. You just said so.”

“I was exaggerating. My mom’s driven me to other states for pageants. Nevada and Arizona, mostly. Utah once. You’ve barely left Cadence.”

Of all the things she’d said to me, this hurt the most. How could I leave Cadence? I only had a bicycle. The next town was more than ten miles away. Leaving Cadence wasn’t up to me.

I wouldn’t want to, anyhow. Things were different here. I had no proof other than what my heart knew to be true. I’d really meant it when I said that Cadence was special, and so were we. Marley also saw the life inside that long-dead bird. That couldn’t be how it was in every town.

“Plus,” Marley continued, paying me no mind, “I can see what isn’t even here. If I close my eyes, I can see the whole world at once.”

“I don’t have to close my eyes to do that,” I told her. If I wanted, I could make the mountains shrink into nothing. I could pull the tide of the Pacific Ocean in until it washed up to where we sat, hundreds of miles from shore. I could make its frothy waves clean our dirty feet. I could rescue that California quail from his perch and set him free, watching him fly until he disappeared into the clouds. My imagination always lifted me up above reality and into a better, brighter world.