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do a group presentation on the orographic effect; Sam wrote the report while Lian drew and colored in all the pictures. When Miel got her period a week early, Chloe had, without comment, slid her a tampon under the bathroom stall. They were neither rude nor warm; they just preferred one another’s company to anyone else’s.
    Now maybe Ivy was lonely enough that she’d talk to anyone. Chloe had been gone for months. She’d missed Lian turning eighteen and Peyton turning fifteen. (Ivy, sixteen, wouldn’t have her birthday until December.) Now that Chloe was back, Miel imagined everyone as formal and careful, so attentive to Chloe that she felt smothered and the rest of the sisters felt both jealous and grateful not to be her. Lian and Ivy and Peyton would have crowded together not to miss her, to make it less obvious that she was gone. Now they would all try to shuffle apart to make room for her.
    Chloe had been sent away the same week she started to show. Her baby now lived with the aunt she had stayed with these past six months, and, likewise, the boy she’d been seeing was sent to live with relatives in a town so far away Miel had never heard of it. Her sisters must have both missed her and considered her a stranger. This tall young woman who was now a mother, who was angled in her arms and nose but soft in her hips and breasts.
    â€œIvy,” Miel called out.
    Ivy turned.
    Miel was one of a hundred girls who would sleep better if the Bonner girls lost their peculiar power. But she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Ivy.
    â€œIf you ever need anyone to talk to,” Miel said.
    Ivy paused, and then nodded, saving Miel from having to say the rest, and herself from having to hear it.

 
    sea of islands
    His mother knew.
    She’d stayed the night before at the Hodges’. Mr. and Mrs. Hodge were in the city until morning, so they’d asked her to watch their children. She’d probably told them bedtime stories about a brother and sister crossing a forest guided only by stars, or a girl learning the language of Kashmir stags and musk deer. Or one Sam had heard from his grandmother, the story of a girl named Laila and a boy called Majnun.
    Now his mother stood in the doorway. As soon as she looked at him, he caught the slight lift of her chin, half a nod, that told him she understood.
    She looked tired but not wearied, this morning’s kohl drawn over the smudged echo of yesterday’s eyeliner, so soft gray ringed her eyelashes. The kohl, and the way she painted it on, was one of the few traditions from their family she’d held to, that one from her mother’s side. Her father, Sam’s grandfather, had given her washed-out blue eyes that looked even paler the way she lined them.
    Neither surprise nor disappointment crossed her face. Only a breath in, a steadying. As much as Sam wanted this to pass by without comment, he knew better.
    Finally, she said, “Well, I hope you were both safe.” She set down the red and blue tapestry bag she’d taken over to the Hodges’. “I’d hate for you to get that girl pregnant. Aracely would murder me.”
    He was supposed to laugh. He knew he was supposed to laugh.
    But he couldn’t force out the sound.
    He wished he were different. He wanted to laugh off her words, to say back, Oh, very funny. Short of the kind of miracles Aracely taught Miel out of her Bible, Sam wasn’t getting anyone pregnant.
    â€œAnd you trust her,” his mother said, more checking than questioning.
    Of course he trusted Miel. She knew everything that could wreck him, but acted like she didn’t.
    When he was eight, and she walked in on him changing, she didn’t scream, or run down the hall. She just shut the door and left, and when he pulled on his jeans and his shirt and went after her, he found her sitting on the back steps. Her expression was so full of both wondering and recognition, as though she almost