I lifted my good hand to wipe the sweat from my brow. It was one of those close, humid days that we get in late summer on the east coast. The sky was hazed over with clouds. It hadn’t rained yet, but there was that feeling in the air, like the tension in the head of a drum. Something was going to break soon. A violent storm might come rolling in at any second, roaring up the river, bringing water from the ocean.

“Which way do you want to go, Maddy?”

Roger’s voice pulled me out of my reverie, and I looked around. We’d reached the bottom of Benefit Street again, its steep hill rising up toward Brown University. The one-way traffic heading north was thin. The sky and the heavy air around us were still threatening. Anamakeesuck sokenun. Soon it will rain. That is what Grama Delia would say in Narragansett.

As soon as I thought that, it reminded me of where those words in my dream probably came from. I didn’t remember Grama Delia saying them to me, but I probably just picked them up without knowing it. After all, she’d been teaching me a bunch of words and phrases like that. Ever since I moved to Aunt Lyssa’s house after being released from the hospital, Grama Delia had made a point of giving me little language lessons every time she came up from Charlestown for a day or two to visit. She said knowing our language would make me stronger. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that. I couldn’t see how Indian words could actually protect me. But I loved the feeling of Narragansett on my tongue. Grama Delia doesn’t come visit all that often, though. She thinks that Aunt Lyssa is uncomfortable when she sticks around too long.

She’s right about that. Aunt Lyssa gets as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs whenever Grama Delia comes to visit. Maybe it is because even though Aunt Lyssa is my closest living relative and my court-appointed guardian, she’s still a little uncertain about her role in my life. After all, she never expected to have a stubborn teenager to take care of, especially one obsessed with the supernatural. Sometimes I think she’d be happier just to have her quiet librarian life back again. Other times, though, I think she’s really threatened by Indian stuff. Like she’s afraid that the more Narragansett things I do and learn, the farther away from her I’ll get. Like I’ll be stolen by the Indians. Like she felt that my mother—who was her little sister and best friend—was stolen away from her by my father. So I try not to say any Narragansett words around her.