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special ed teacher for extra help with his math and spelling instead of going to gym class with all the other kids and that is why he sucked at almost every sport except wrestling and sprinting and long-distance running which he had plenty of practice at from getting chased home or beaten up. The next day Gran took all four pairs of roller skates back to the Salvation Army and traded them in for a bat, three baseball gloves, and a grass-stained softball, even though Chris sucked at baseball too. The only fair thing to do was to give all of us something none of us wanted, and disappointing all of us equally was the only way to keep everyone happy. I knew it wasn’t her fault that we had gotten on her last nerve and she had to wash her hands of it all and teach us a valuable lesson so we would think twice next time before risking our necks when she had enough to worry about as it was. I couldn’t stay mad at Gran. I blamed God for all of it.

Three Left Turns
    THE AIR SHIMMERED AND TWISTED where it met the earth. The road beneath the tires of my bike was a ribbon of dust, hard-packed and hot, a backroad race-track, and I was gaining on him.
    His BMX was kicking up a cloud of pretend motorcycle smoke. I smiled and pedalled through it, teeth grinding grit and lungs burning, because the stakes were so high.
    If I won, I was faster, until next time, than my Uncle Jimmy. And if he lost, he was slower, until next time, than a girl.
    Is the little brother of the woman who married your father’s brother related to you? I called him my Uncle Jimmy, regardless, and he was my hero.
    He was four years older and almost a foot taller than me, and I don’t think I ever did beat him in a bicycle race, but the threat was always there.
    Just allowing a girl into the race in the first place raises the possibility that one might be beaten by a girl, so the whole situation was risky to begin with. We all knew this, and I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to tag along as much as I did had I been older, or taller, or a slightly faster pedaller.
    Girls complicate everything, you see, even a girl like me, who wasn’t like most; you can’t just pee anywhere in front of them, for instance, or let them see your bum under any circumstance, or your tears.
    There were other considerations, too, precautions to be taken, rules to be observed when girls were around, some that I wasn’t even privy to, because I was, after all, a girl myself.
    It was the summer I turned six years old, and I was only beginning to see what trouble girls really were.
    But I, it was allowed by most,
was
different, and could be trusted by Jimmy and his friends with certain classified knowledge. I was a good goalie and had my own jackknife, and could, on rare occasions, come in quite handy.
    Like that day. That day I had a reason to tag along. I had been given a job to do, a job vital to the mission.
    The mission was to kiss the twins. For Jimmy and his skinny friend Grant to kiss the twins.
    The twins were eleven, and blonde, and from outside. Being from outside was a catch-all term used by people from the Yukon to describe people who were not from the Yukon, as in:
    Well, you know how she’s from outside and all, and always thought she was better than the rest of us
, or,
I couldn’t
get the part and had to send it outside to get fixed, cost me a mint
, or,
well, he went outside that one winter and came back with his ear pierced, and I’ve wondered about him ever since
.
    The twins were only there for the summer. Their dad was there to oversee the reopening of the copper mine. They wore matching everything, and also had a little sister, who was seven.
    That’s where I came in.
    The plan was a simple man’s plan, in essence. As we worked out the details, we all stood straddling our bikes in a circle at the end of Black Street where the power line cut up the side of the clay cliffs.
    We were all going to pedal over to where the twins and their little sister lived. We had