“Let’s go gargoyle hunting.” Mrs. Yates got to her feet without groaning or pushing herself up, the way Gran and other old people did. She just stood, as easily as he would, and started for the door. “Now remember, I can’t point them out to you. That’s against the rules.” She leaned down and whispered, “But I might give you a hint for one. Just one.”
Behind them, the other elders chuckled, and Bobby and Mrs. Yates headed out into town.
Hefound one more gargoyle to add to his list, and he didn’t even need Mrs. Yates’s hint, so she promised to keep it for next time. They were going back to the diner and the promise of milkshakes when Mrs. Yates glanced down the walkway leading behind the bank.
“I think I hear the girls,” she said. “Why don’t you go play with them a while, and then bring them to the diner and we’ll all have milkshakes.”
He hesitated.
“You like Rose and Hannah, don’t you?”
He nodded, and her smile broadened, telling him this was the right answer, so he added, “They’re nice,” to please her.
“They’re very nice,” she said. “It’s not easy for some children to find playmates. Some boys and girls are different, and other children don’t always like different. You’ll appreciate it more someday, when being different helps you stand out. But children don’t always want to stand out, do they?”
He shook his head. She understood, as she always did. His parents lied and tried to pretend he wasn’t different. She acknowledged it and understood it and made him feel better about it.
“Do you want to go play with the girls?”
He nodded. Hedidlike the girls—Hannah, at least. What bothered him was the prospect of sharing Mrs. Yates with them later. But it would make her happy, and he was still her special favorite, so he shouldn’t complain.
“Off you go then. Come to the diner later and we’ll have those milkshakes.”
Mrs.Yates said Hannah and Rose were in the small park behind the bank. They were often there on the swings, and when he rounded the corner, that’s where he expected to see them. The swings were empty, though. He looked around the park, bordered by a fence topped with chimera heads. Walkways branched off in every compass direction. He heard Rose’s voice, coming from the one leading to Rowan Street.
The girls crouched beside a toppled cardboard box. Hannah was reaching in and talking. He liked Hannah. Everyone liked Hannah. His mother said she reminded her of the Gnat, but she couldn’t be more wrong. Yes, Hannah was pretty, with brown curls and dark eyes and freckles across her nose. And, like the Gnat, she was always laughing, always bouncing around, chattering. But with Hannah, it wasreal. The Gnat only acted that way because it tricked people into liking her.
Rose was different. Very different. She was a year younger than Bobby and Hannah, but she acted like a teenager, and she looked at you like she could see right through you and wasn’t sure she liked what she saw. She had black straight hair and weirdly cold blue eyes that blasted through him. She wasn’t pretty and she never giggled—she rarely even laughed, unless she was with Hannah.
Rose saw him coming first, though it always felt like “saw” wasn’t the right word. Rose seemed to sense him coming. She stood and when she fixed those blue eyes on him, he quailed as he always did, falling back a step before reminding himself he had done nothing wrong. Rose only tilted her head, and when she spoke, her rough voice was kind.
“Are you okay, Bobby?”
“Sure.”
Her lips pursed, as if calling him a liar, then she waved for him to join them. As he stepped up beside the girls, he was chagrined to realize that as much as he’d grown in the last few months, Rose had grown more. She might be only seven and a girl, but he barely came up to her eyebrows. She moved back to let him stand beside Hannah.
“See what we found?” Hannah said.
It was a cat, with four kittens, all tabbies like the momma, except the smallest, which was ink black.
“Show him what you can do,” Rose said.
Hannah glanced up, her forehead creasing with worry.
“Go on,” Rose said. “Bobby can keep a secret. Show him.”
He looked at Rose, and she nodded, giving him a small smile—a sympathetic smile, as if she knew what he was going through and wanted Hannah to share her secret to make him feel better. He bristled. He didn’t want Rose’s sympathy. Didn’t need it. But he did want the secret, so he let Rose cajole Hannah until she blurted it out.
“I can talk to animals.” Hannah paused, face reddening. “No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s not like Dr. Dolittle. I don’t hear them talk. Animals don’t talk. But they do…” She turned to Rose. “What’s the word you used?”
“Communicate.”
Hannah nodded. “They communicate. I can understand them, and they can understand me.”
He must have seemed skeptical, because her cheeks went the color of apples in autumn.
“See?” she hissed at Rose. “This is why I can’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’m crazy.”
