1

MIGHT AS WELL BE the same day as yesterday, she thought. Who’s to say it’s not?

Pouting her displeasure, she sidled through limp and quiet rooms. Sun baked the east and south windows of her home in a blinding yellow glaze from morning until late afternoon. All of the windows were raised and rested on small wood-framed screens that let in the slightest air movement from outside. But steady breezes seemed to have disappeared with the endless heat wave. She was positive it would never rain again, and she decided this morning on leaving the filmy summer curtains closed.

“You can see through them just as well,” she told herself, “and even feel the heat outside, too.”

Sun scorched away as strong as ever.

Her dad once telling her, “A fella’s prisoner to heat when he’s dang fool enough to build square in the middle of a flat, dusty field.”

Talking about the house they now lived in and the fellow who had built it.

“Why’d you buy it from him, then?” she’d wanted to know.

“Cause I’m no better than he is,” her dad had said. “Cause I can’t get over that view down the field, either.”

That had sure tickled her and she’d laughed her head off.

Her dad telling: “I do like all that space between me and the neighbors, even when I sometimes fear the field will explode with fire from sheer hot weather. But some nights—I know you’ve seen it, Tice—the fireflies get to hovering in there and the next thing you know, that field is a haven a blinking stars.”

She had nodded in agreement. “But you like that old hedgerow clear on across the west property,” she’d asked him. “Don’t you just like it the best of all?”

Her whole family knew how much she cared for the hedgerow.

“Even better than the field a stars?” she’d questioned him.

“Oh, but sure, Tice,” her dad had said. “That’s the truth you are talking about right there. All of those twisting osage trees were just made for the finest sunsets this side of paradise.

“Every evening forever,” her dad, going on, “sun’ll go down behind our own, very own hedgerow—I picture him a bright-eyed old fella sleeping it off. And never once snagging his crimson-and-gold undershirt on them sticker branches as he slips on down below the horizon.”

This last had caused her to squeal with the giggles. Now the memory of it dissolved the pout and made her grin as she entered the parlor of her home and sat down a moment in her father’s easy chair.

Called Ticey or simply Tice by all in her family and in the neighborhood, her real name was Justice. “Justice is as Justice does” was something she told herself quite naturally nearly every day. She liked being Justice and did not find the name odd or strange unless some stranger came around and commented on it.

Now Justice snuggled in the chair and caught a feeling of her dad deep within it. She caught a whiff of his Aqua Velva after-shave, which caused her to summon up almost a shape of his joking and teasing. Then came to her a memory of wind swooshing through the side windows of his battered Oldsmobile.

The parlor was mussed from the previous night’s use. But not badly so, Justice decided. Newspapers were piled on the green footstool where her dad had left them. There was a black pocket comb fallen at the foot of the sofa. One of her mom’s books, Contemporary Crafts, lay open on an end table. Balanced half on and half off the same end table was one of her brother’s drumsticks.

How long had it been there like that? she wondered.

As she stared at the stick, something came over her like a slow chill. She pulled her legs up against her chest and scrunched deeper in the chair. She had a cold, uncomfortable feeling whenever she was alone and came across something belonging to her brother Thomas, like that drumstick.

Justice flicked her eyes this way and that. All else around the parlor appeared ordinary. The light of sun set the room aglow in corners and on the walls. It was an eerie effect, but not something she hadn’t seen before. The house was stifling, as it had been for weeks. But there was nothing odd about sunlight, about heat, at this early hour. Yet, since the summer started, she’d got the notion at times that something deadly strange was going on.

Maybe it just feels different, she thought, with Mom out of the house each day for the first time this summer. No grown-ups around from morning until way late.

She felt a pang of loneliness at being left all day and mostly on her own. Thomas’ drumstick caught her eye as, incredibly, it took a slow roll over the edge of the end table. As if someone had toppled it over.

Justice gasped.

Not someone, she thought, some thing!

The drumstick had plopped on the floor and lay still.

She began shivering uncontrollably, imagining a thing invisible moving away from the fallen stick to creep up behind her chair.

So real!

The hair on her neck seemed to crawl. Giddy with fear, she tried with all of her mind and will to control herself.

Saying out loud, whispering, “Justice is as Justice does.” It seemed to help a little. Putting her thoughts in order helped even more.

“It had to be on the end table since last night,” she told herself. “No one’s been out here yet this morning, I can tell. So why did that particular drumstick pick the particular minute I am sitting here to roll off the table?

“It didn’t pick, you dummy,” firmly she told herself. “It fell because it fell, that’s all. And I happened to be here to see it. Maybe coming in here like I did jarred it some. … Sure! It would’ve fallen whether it was me came in here or not.”

So there. It made sense. Just her and the drumstick meeting up with fate.

But a gnawing fear wouldn’t go away. Some thing she imagined still waited behind her chair. All alone, she realized she’d had the feeling before.

Yes, but never as strong as now, she thought. Before, it had been so vague, like a soft sound, and I had to glance around to see where it came from.

And it came to her, a pure intuition: whatever it was she imagined behind her chair was a part of something strange going on. The whole weird feeling had begun with the summer and being alone in the house with her brothers.

Least, I don’t recall the feeling before this summer.

She had an awful urge to turn around and see if something truly was in back of her chair; but, stubbornly, she refused. The feeling of something remained, as did her determination not to look. Vague and formless as it was, she felt it dare her to find it.

Ever so carefully, she got up from her dad’s easy chair, forcing herself not to look around. Casually, she slunk across the room and out, moving smoothly down the hall to the dining room. She let her fingers trail gracefully along the stippled yellow wall as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

Something’s very weird, she told herself, and then pretended she had not heard.

There were some neighborhood kids and grown-ups, too, who thought Justice’s family, even her house, were “weird.”

Because we’re set away from all the other houses, she told herself. That’s the reason they think that. I mean, every day and night we are protected by the hedgerow, but able to see all their backyards way down our field. It’s what Dad meant by the view from here. You sure do get to know secrets about folks from the view of what goes down in their backyards!

Justice giggled.

All the junk they pile up and think they are hiding. Fights spilling clear out onto the back porch!

And they can’t view us.

She had to smile.

Because, looking up the field, they only get to see this big wood fence around our backyard. We are so private at the end of our blacktop road, too. They are public on the street. That’s maybe why we’re “weird.”

But she knew better.

Oh, people are just so boring.

All except for Mrs. Jefferson, and her husband, and her son, Dorian. They were fairly new people in the old neighborhood near farmland, and they lived directly down the field from Justice’s home. She visited Mrs. Jefferson and her son quite often because her own mom was never home and she needed someone like Mrs. Jefferson, or at least that age, to be around.

But a lot of other people, other than the Jeffersons, were just so boring.

I mean, she began to herself, they don’t get upset when they see a tract of houses just alike. Or a forest of the very same trees. But they have to go and pay all that attention to Thomas and Levi. Phooey!

Thomas and Levi were her thirteen-year-old brothers. And on the outside they were identical.

Seeing the dining room after dawdling down the hall, Justice realized suddenly that she’d better hurry. By the time she entered the room, she was moving fast.

“Tice, where are you off to at this hour?” asked her mom.

“Wha—?” Startled, Justice had known her mom would be there, but, thinking so hard, she’d forgotten.

“I … Oh, you know I gotta get going,” she said, annoyed at having to defend herself at seven-thirty in the morning. Her mom looked bright and shiny without any makeup, Justice noticed, even though there were permanent creases at the corners of her eyes.

“But I still don’t know why you have to go,” her mom said, “or in what direction you’re going.”

She had seen her daughter going for the last two mornings since Monday and preparing to go again now. She’d heard from her sons that Ticey returned hours later, looking hot and sweaty but not really any the worse for wear. Tice would stay home for a while at lunchtime, but then would sometimes again disappear for another hour. Suddenly, Mrs. Douglass wondered if the boys were telling her the whole story.

“I told you,” Justice was saying, racing around the table to where her mother sat with an open book and a mug of strong Morning Thunder herb tea.

“You didn’t tell me anything,” Mrs. Douglass said. “And you haven’t had your breakfast.”

“I don’t want any breakfast,” Justice said. She searched in every corner of the room. She raced into the kitchen to do the same there and ran back to look under the dining-room table one last time. Crawling out from underneath, she accidentally bumped the tabletop. And looked on in shock as Morning Thunder splashed out of the mug.

“Ticey!”

“Mom!” Tea spreading in a brown stain on the tablecloth. “You know I didn’t mean to. Where’s my jacket—please? Don’t you remember where I put it?”

“I should remember where you throw things?” her mom said. “Here, hand me those napkins.”

“You used to remember where I thro—put things, before.”

Her mom soaked up spilled tea. Justice helped her roll back the cloth to wipe the table.

“Meaning, I guess, before I had to study all the time,” Mrs. Douglass said.

“Correct,” said Justice, watching her mom make a pile of soiled napkins. Still on her knees, she peered over the edge of the table at the open book her mom had shoved out of the way of the spill. It was Lecturas Escogidas again. She knew what the title meant. It was Spanish for Selected Readings.

Her mom was a student at Marks College twenty miles away in some degree-completion program.

When she should have been home to help when Justice needed her to find things, was Justice’s opinion on the subject.

Her brothers, Thomas and Levi, thought it great to have their mom away all summer long, from nine in the morning until three and four in the afternoon.

“Think of the devilment you can do,” Thomas told Justice one day. He beat his drumsticks on the back of her chair. “I’ll keep a list of it to show Mom.”

The tone of his voice and those whirring sticks had caused Justice to suspect he would hit her deliberately. She had screamed at him, “I truly despise you!” And, unreasonably, she had burst out with, “If you ever touch my bike …!”

It had made him turn on her, screeching with laughter. Even Levi had had to go laugh at her. But no one could fake screeching and shaking all over quite the way Thomas could.

“You are a pickle,” he had said. It was the stupid nickname he had thought up for her. “Who’d want a dumb three-speed except a sour pickle?” Pounding his drumsticks so close to her ear she could feel the air move.

Now Justice rubbed her nose back and forth along the smooth dining table. She felt unsettled, nervous, inside.

He dislikes me enough to hurt me, Thomas does, she thought. Oh, phooey on him, and Levi, too.

But she felt uneasy all the same.

As soon as she’d found out that Thomas was planning a special event this coming Friday called The Great Snake Race, she had known what she had to do. This was Wednesday.

Gives me either one of two days, she thought, as a ribbon of fear uncurled along her spine.

Mrs. Douglass had cleared the table of soggy napkins and had sat down again with her book and tea. As she studied, she commenced running her fingers gently through Justice’s brown, curly hair. After a moment, she glanced sideways to find Justice staring at her, looking very sour.

“Tice, what is it?” she said. “What’s troubling you?”

“Nothing,” Justice mumbled. Thinking of her brothers and The Great Snake Race had made her glum and out of sorts. She did like the way her mom fluffed her hair, though. Her mom knew how to make it feel pretty and not at all tangly.

“Do you dislike my going to school so much?” asked Mrs. Douglass.

“No,” Justice said. It wasn’t a bother that her mom went to school.

But that she’s gone for hours and hours, Justice thought. And not here to help. To be on my side from Thomas.

“Shall I have a word with your brothers about calling you Pickle?” her mom asked.

Justice looked surprised. “Why do you have to know so much?” she said, not unkindly.

Mrs. Douglass smiled at her.

Justice stared at Lecturas Escogidas. “Guess you don’t know everything,” she said. “I could read a book that size in two days. It’s taking you forever.”

Mrs. Douglass laughed. “But it’s a study book, Ticey. You don’t read a textbook like this straight through.”

“Oh, right,” Justice said. “I knew that, but I just forgot a minute. You have to memorize stuff, same as I do.”

“Yeah,” said her mom.

Justice suddenly looked smug. “Here’s what I memorized this week: ‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, “This is my own, my native land.”

“The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” her mom said. “Well, I’ll be—are they still teaching that? But you said you just learned …”

Justice cut in on her: “And I know ‘They have tormented me, early and late, Some with their love and some with their hate. The wine I drank, the bread I ate, Some poisoned with love, some poisoned with hate …’”

“Yet she who has grieved me most of all,” Mrs. Douglass broke in on her, looking somewhat astonished at her daughter.

“She neither hated nor loved me at all,” finished Justice.

They were silent a moment as the echo of words seemed to flow about them.

“You didn’t learn that in school,” finally her mom said.

“Nope,” Justice said. “I learned it from Levi. He’s always reading slushy stuff like that. When he’s up in the cottonwood, I climb up. He’s reading out loud and he sees me and says to me, ‘Tice, wanna hear? Then keep quiet and listen.’ So I hang on a limb and listen as long as I want.”

“That’s wonderful,” said her mom.

“I don’t like it much,” Justice said. “But I like Levi sometimes. Do you really like memorizing all the time?” she asked.

“Well, it’s more that I study until I get to know stuff well. And, sure, I like it. You will, too, I bet, when you grow up.”

She felt sleepy from the soft movement of her mom’s hand in her hair. But suddenly she leaped to her feet with slightly more drama than was necessary. “I shoulda been gone!”

“Should have been—Tice? Where are you off to?”

“Mom, I told you once. I have to practice.”

“Practice what?”

“Moth-er, I have to go—can’t you remember where my jacket is at?” She didn’t need the denim jacket. She knew the day would get blistering hot. But the jacket was familiar, like a second skin, tight and safe.

“Practice what?” Mrs. Douglass repeated. “Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on before you leave the house.”

“You never make Thomas or Levi give you a rundown.”

“Yes, I do, too.”

“Shhhh!” Justice whispered, although her mother had spoken in the same voice as before. “The boys might hear!” she whispered. Why did her mom have to become more difficult with each new morning?

“Then, what?” Mrs. Douglass, said, whispering.

“Mom, trust me, will you?”

“Tice, don’t sound so old,” Mrs. Douglass said in a normal tone. “And you can’t use that on me, either.”

“Mo-om, I just have to practice something on my bike is all,” Justice told her. “It’s something Thomas and Levi think I can’t do—and that’s the utter truth!”

“I only want to know where you go,” Mrs. Douglass persisted. “I’m not saying you can’t go.”

“I ride around, over to the playground, and over to the baseball field,” Justice lied. “Not around any cars, don’t worry.”

“Tice, now listen to me,” Mrs. Douglass said.

“Mom …”

“I can usually depend on you not to do anything foolish, so don’t do wheelies and stunts like that.”

“Moth-er! What do you think I am? Girls are different from what you were like as a kid—you know? And probably smarter, and they can do anything boys can do! I could do wheelies by third grade, for chrissakes!”

“No cussing, if you don’t mind,” said her mom, seemingly unperturbed, although she was impressed by her daughter’s ability to express herself. “And no riding double,” she added, “it’s against the law. Don’t ride with no hands down any streets—one slick spot in the road and you’ve had it.”

Save me from mothers! thought Justice.

“You think my jacket could be in the boys’ room?” she asked her mom.

“Not to change the subject,” Mrs. Douglass said, eyeing her daughter.

Justice thought it best not to answer. Her expression remained as childishly sweet as it could be.

“Dear Ticey, I know all of your tricks by now,” her mom said firmly. “I have no idea what you do every minute of the day and I’m not going to pump the neighborhood to find out. Just remember,” her mom finished.

“Oh, I remember,” Justice said. “How can I forget?” Justice is as Justice does.

She watched as her mom gulped the tea.

“I’m going to be late if I don’t get myself together,” Mrs. Douglass said. “I did see your jacket in the boys’ room, yes,” she told Justice. “Tom-Tom hid it up on the encyclopedia shelf. I meant to take it down. …”

“Brother!” Justice whispered. Him doing things like that all the time! Another reason I have to win The Great Snake Race. Boy! Only, how in the world do you race snakes?

She ran for the boys’ room and stopped dead still at the entrance. How many times had she come into their room in the morning to find something belonging to her, or to wake up Levi? So many she couldn’t count them. But this time she hesitated, not moving a muscle.

Why did Thomas have to take her things and hide them like that?

She’d seen it as just his way of being funny. But now she realized she might never have found her jacket.

Like he was being mean in earnest.

Cautiously, she tiptoed into the darkened room, counting on her brothers being dead to the world. In summer, Thomas stayed awake half the night watching science-fiction or horror films on TV, when he could find them. And from them he’d learned his sickening, screeching laugh and a lot of different personalities. These he used on Justice and other decent, normal, unsuspecting persons. He pretended he had himself made up certain dramatic characters. But Justice knew he was simply a copy-cat.

On the other hand, her brother Levi was a light sleeper. He couldn’t drift off with the television going full blast in the parlor. So he would end up wide awake, watching the films, also. He would never tell Thomas to shut the box off. He never complained.

Justice never called her brothers Tom-Tom and Lee, as most of the neighborhood kids did, and as did her mom and dad.

Wonder why I won’t? she thought.

She found her hands were trembling. She was standing right next to Thomas’ bed. She could see part of his face and his dark, curly hair on the pillow. She heard his breath come in a gentle snore. It took all of her nerve to move, to climb onto the desk chair and then onto the desk in front of the bookcase.

What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing to be scared of.

But she was, and she quaked inside.

At the far end of the room she glimpsed the round, shadowy forms of Thomas “instruments of torture,” as she called them.

Yuk, she thought. And then: Better keep your mind on what you’re doing, too.

She reached above her head as high as she could.

“Darn!” she said, before she thought. And held her breath as Levi stirred on the top bunk. He flung himself over in bed. He caught a glimpse of her as he turned to the wall, and let out a groan.

“Great,” he said sleepily. And suddenly he rose up in alarm at seeing her above his head.

Justice smiled brightly. Putting a finger to her lips, she motioned to him to be quiet.

Levi stared at her. He next peered down over the side of his bunk to find that Thomas below him was still deep asleep.

“Oh,” he said softly, pulling the covers up again. “What are you doing up there? What time is it?”

“Shhh!” she whispered. “Early. You can go on and sleep. But first will you get my jacket where Thomas put it on the shelf? I can’t reach it.”

“What?”

“Shhh! My jacket, I can’t—reach—it!”

Groaning, Levi rose up with a sheet wrapped around him. On his knees, he was tall enough to reach the jacket shoved to the back of the highest shelf.

And handed it to her. “Where you going, anyway?” He spoke softly again.

Shaking her head to dismiss the question, she said nothing as she began her climb back down.

Of her identical brothers, she much preferred Levi, who was more likely to be nice to her. Often he could be kind when Thomas wasn’t too close by. Thomas appeared to have a weakening effect on Levi. And since their mom had been in school, Thomas had seemed tense around Justice.

Guess I get in the way of his bad temper, she thought, as she stepped from desk chair to the floor. He and Levi are to look after me this summer, Mom says. To know where I go and to feed me when I’m hungry. I don’t mind—they do let me have my way. And if they get to go somewhere, I get to go or one of them has to stay home with me. So phooey on them! So if there’s to be a gang and a snake race, I get to be in on it all! So there.

“I know where you’re going,” whispered Levi from his bunk.

Justice stopped still.

“You’re scared if you go with us Friday, you might crack up on the Quinella. You going to practice riding down it!”

“Shut up,” Justice whispered back.

“Huh?” It was Thomas. Justice was practically standing in front of him, whispering. “Wh-what is it?” Opening his eyes. He saw Justice and yelled: “G-g-gehht outta h-here!”

She raced from the room.

Brother. I despise him, I truly do, she told herself, once she was a safe distance away. And shoved her arms into the denim jacket, straightening the collar. She checked the sleeves to see if her arms had grown any longer, something she felt obliged to do each day. Nope. They hadn’t.

I’ll be a shrimp all my life, for Chrissake. The shortest eleven-year-old in the world.

The thought made her both angry and sad.

She returned to the kitchen and her mom on a wave of injured feeling. At the counter, she drank the glass of tangerine juice waiting for her, and avoided looking at her mom. The juice was good and cold, but it did little to ease the hurt Thomas had caused.

Mrs. Douglass studied her daughter’s sullen face. She had heard yelling and she surmised it had come from Thomas, since Levi seldom raised his voice. She reminded herself to have a word with Thomas about his ongoing treatment of his sister.

“They look so much alike,” Justice said, finally, as she had said so many times before about her brothers, “so why are they so different?”

Mrs. Douglass smiled sympathetically. She knew Justice wasn’t really asking. So she stayed quiet while preparing a lunch to take along to school.

The boys were as identical as two peas in a pod, and it was also true they were as different as night from day. They had the same brown eyes and the same arch to their dark brows. Same black, curly hair, same hands and feet, same walk. Levi liked books and would read anything he could get his hands on. He loved music and poetry. However, Thomas led everybody and told everyone what to do and what not to do. All the kids did whatever he told them. He had a highly developed rhythmic and percussive ability. He also had a terrible stutter.

Justice looked solemn. Something nagged at her, and slowly she found the words to speak about it.

“I look at one and then the other,” she said. “Mom? I get to thinking one of ’em is inside a mirror—do you ever? It’s Levi trapped in there, and he can’t get out! It’s so creepy.”

Concerned, Mrs. Douglass crossed the space between them. She wrapped Justice in her arms as a worried look rippled over her features.

Justice felt like a baby standing there holding on to her mom. But, she had to admit, she enjoyed every minute of it. She knew nothing could hurt her, threaten her, with her mom so close.

“Oh, well, Tice,” her mom said, “it’s easy to imagine all sorts of things. Especially when Tom-Tom and Lee seem so self-contained in their own private realm. Have you ever known two boys to get along so well? But it gets hard keeping things settled down when even adults have to go make up stories.”

She chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to upset her daughter any further, but she did want Justice to understand exactly what her brothers were.

“We who are their family have to keep in mind certain things,” she said.

“Like what?” Justice asked.

“Well, that your brothers don’t only look alike, Tice. They also have identical inherited information called genes. They have the same blood group and the same brain patterns. They came from one fertilized egg, just as you did. But the two of them came from one egg and it divided into two identical parts. And that’s as close as two people ever get to being, feeling, seeing and looking like one another.”

Mrs. Douglass took a deep breath, calming herself a bit. Justice wondered why she seemed so excited, and she watched her mom closely.

Mrs. Douglass continued, “You weren’t far wrong when you said one was like a reflection of the other. But it shouldn’t seem creepy. Because for them it’s natural. Their kind are known as mirror identicals.”

“Really?” Justice said.

Her mom nodded. “Tom-Tom is left-handed,” she said, “and Lee is right-handed. Tom-Tom parts his hair on the right while Lee parts his on the left.”

“Right!” Justice said. “I knew that, but I never kind of put it together.”

“Well,” Mrs. Douglass said, and paused a moment. “I myself have been guilty of thinking there’s something odd—you know, I’ve told you stories. But perhaps odd is normal for them. Just remember that nearly every moment each one has to face the spitting image of himself. Levi once told me it felt like he was seeing himself and someone exactly like himself at the same moment. He said it was like ‘feeling double.’ And I could almost understand what he meant.”

Justice laughed suddenly, and nodded. “Must be like when I look in a mirror. I sometimes can feel myself looking at myself. I’m the reflection, and the reflection is me. I can ‘feel’ both going on and on forever. Boy, but for Thomas and Levi it must be really weird.”

They were quiet a moment. Then Justice said to her mom, “Tell me about them again.”

She loved the stories her mom could tell. Funny and sometimes strange things about the boys when they were babies. She pulled away from her mom to lean against the counter.

“Tice, I don’t think I have the time today,” Mrs. Douglass said.

Justice slowly pivoted, turning halfway from her.

“Maybe I should stay home this morning,” her mom said, studying her.

Justice peeked around. This was something unexpected—her and her mom together for an entire day, the way they used to be.

“Oh, but I can’t, hon, not today. Tice, I’m sorry! There’s usually a quiz in the middle of the week. Anyway, I shouldn’t miss classes when they charge you an arm and a leg to take them.”

She watched her small, dark-eyed daughter suck her fingers.

“Ticey.” Mrs. Douglass came over to her. She gently turned her daughter to face her. “You’re my favorite girl, you know that, don’t you? And your dad’s, too. You’re the girl we always wanted.”

“Mom!” she managed to whisper. Her face flushed and she covered it with her hands as her eyes began to tear. But with great effort she managed to control herself.

“I gotta go,” she said, finally. She did not enjoy having her mom leave her, and she felt much better about it when she left the house first, rather than the other way around. Also, she didn’t like being home with her mom not there to make it safe.

“You sure you’re okay?” her mom said. She peered at her daughter.

Justice hid away her feelings of apprehension. “I’m okay. Bye. See you later, Mother-gator.” She gave her mom a quick kiss on the cheek.

Mrs. Douglass gave her a nice one back. “Bye, sweetie. I’ll call to check around noon.”

Well, I won’t be here, Justice thought. She paused at the kitchen entrance. “Can’t you tell me just the one?” she said. “About what happened when you’d call one of them for something?”

“What?” But quickly Mrs. Douglass understood what Justice was referring to. “I don’t have the time, Tice, I really don’t.”

“Yes, you do, too. I don’t care if you tell it fast.”

“But you know that story,” Mrs. Douglass said.

“I know I know it. At least, I do when you tell it. Just tell it—please?”

Mrs. Douglass sighed. “If that’ll get me to school faster …”

Grinning, Justice ran to stand before her.

“Okay, here it is,” her mom began. “The boys were about three years old when I happened to notice something. I’d call out for Thomas to come to me. In summer, the screens would be in like now. He usually would be outside and he’d hear me and he’d come running. Well, I’d call for Levi the same way. You’d find him either in or out with Thomas—he never seemed to prefer indoors or outdoors, he was satisfied as long as Thomas was with him. Anyhow, I’d call for Levi, and Thomas would come to me. I’d tell Thomas to tell Levi I wanted him. And back would come Thomas by himself. If I wanted Levi for something, I’d have to go get him. Otherwise, I’d get Thomas every time.”

Justice stood there, fascinated. “Age four,” she said.

Without a pause, Mrs. Douglass continued. “When the boys were four years old, there was a slight change. I’d call for Thomas and he would come. I’d call for Levi, but I would get Thomas pretending to be Levi. Or I would call for Levi and both boys would show up. That’s it.”

Justice had listened with rapt attention. She knew the story by heart and she still loved it. But, for some reason, this time she had to know more.

“What does it mean?” she asked softly.

Her mother shrugged. “I think probably they were just trying to sort out who they were,” she said. She sighed and hurriedly turned back to her work at the sink, where she began rinsing lettuce for sandwiches.

“Well, do you think they’ve sorted it out by now?” Justice asked. And then sucked in her breath as a sudden inspiration came to her. She didn’t wait for a reply, but said, “You know what I think? Age three or age four, you always got Thomas when you called. But you never got Levi of his own free will—right?”

Her mom didn’t answer. With the water running and her mind on getting to school, she might not have heard.

So Justice went on her way. She did have her own business to attend to. She swept through the house in strides much too long for her short, muscular legs. Walking as if she were seven feet tall made her sneakers squeak importantly on the hardwood floors. Thomas had repeatedly warned her that sneakers made black marks on the paste wax.

“Liar—liar!” Justice had singsonged right back at him. Just the other day, too.

By the time Mrs. Douglass realized that her daughter hadn’t had anything substantial to eat, it was too late and Justice was out of the house. Outside, thoughts of her sometimes peculiar brothers and even her mom receded for Justice as she stood in the shade of the front porch.

“Oh, nice. Neat!” she said.

The sun beat down on grass and driveway. It was the sort of glaring light that made their white house with black trim look brand new.

“Bet there’s not a cloud.” She leaped from the porch out over the steps onto the short walk to the driveway. She saw that the sky was a forever blue. Just the kind they say in Ohio country is a California sky. Her dad liked to say that the forever blue with no moisture must arrive from westward by hopping a dawn freight train of the B&O Railroad.

There were a few clouds, Justice noticed. White, fluffy things, hardly moving, like sleeping puppies of the sky.

“It’ll get hotter’n hell,” she cussed to herself, “but I’ll be back home by then.”

Unlocking her bike at the edge of the steps, she afterward tucked the chain-lock key on its cord under the neck of her T-shirt. And hopped onto her bike, as agile as a cat on a fence. Bike-riding three-speeds thrilled her and took most of her time and energy. Justice rode all of the streets in town—once in a while with two or three girls from school. She’d ridden some distance out along country roads, past farmhouses and long lanes, all by herself.

Best of all, she liked biking on her own, to stop wherever she pleased. But today she had no time to freewheel. Like yesterday and the day before, Justice had sure, awful work to do.