I looked up.
There was a boy standing in the dirt road, watching me. His nose was twitching and his eyes were wide. They were blue and bright. Short blond hair. Tanned skin, almost as much as mine. He was young and small and I wondered if I was dreaming again.
“Hello,” I said.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Ox.”
“Ox? Ox! Do you smell that?”
I sniffed the air. I didn’t smell anything other than the woods. “I smell trees,” I said.
He shook his head. “No, no, no. It’s something bigger.”
He walked toward me, his eyes going wider. Then he was running.
He wasn’t big. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten. He collided with my legs, and I barely took a step back. He started climbing me, hooking his legs around my thighs and pulling himself up until his arms were around my neck and we were face to face. “It’s you!”
I didn’t know what was going on. “What’s me?”
He was in my arms now. I didn’t want him to fall. He took my face in his hands and squished my cheeks together. “Why do you smell like that?” he demanded. “Where did you come from? Do you live in the woods? What are you? We just got here. Finally. Where is your house?” He put his forehead against mine and inhaled deeply. “I don’t get it!” he exclaimed. “What is it?” And then he was crawling up and over my shoulders, feet pressed against my chest and neck until he clambered onto my back, arms around my neck, chin hooked on my shoulder. “We have to go see my mom and dad,” he said. “They’ll know what this is. They know everything.”
He was a tornado of fingers and feet and words. I was caught in the storm.
His hands were in my hair, pulling my head back as he said he lived in the house at the end of the lane. That they had just arrived today. That he had moved from far away. He was sad to leave his friends behind. He was ten. He hoped to be big like me when he grew up. Did I like comic books? Did I like mashed potatoes? What was Gordo’s? Did I get to work on Ferraris? Did I ever blow up any cars? He wanted to be an astronaut. Or an archeologist. But he couldn’t be those things because one day he’d have to be a leader instead. He stopped talking for a little while after he said that.
His knees dug into my sides. His hands wrapped around my neck. The sheer weight of him was almost too much for me to take.
We came upon my house. He made me stop so he could look at it. He didn’t get down from my back. Instead, I hitched him up higher so he could see.
“Do you have your own room?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s just me and my mom now.”
He was quiet. Then, “I’m sorry.”
We’d just met. He had nothing to apologize for. “For?”
“For whatever just made you sad.” Like he knew what I was thinking. Like he knew how I felt. Like he was here and real.
“I dream,” I said. “Sometimes it feels like I’m awake. And then I’m not.”
And he said, “You’re awake now. Ox, Ox, Ox. Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
He whispered, as if saying it any louder would make it untrue, “We live so close to each other.”
We turned toward the house at the end of the lane.
The afternoon was waning. The shadows were stretching. We walked among the trees, and up ahead, there were lights. Bright lights. A beacon calling someone home.
Three cars. One SUV. Two trucks. All were less than a year old. All had Maine license plates. Two thirty-foot moving trucks.
And the people. All standing. Watching. Waiting. Like they knew we were coming. Like they’d heard us from far away.
Two were younger. One guy was my age. The other guy maybe a little younger. They were blond and smaller than me, but not by much. Blue eyes and curious expressions. They looked like the tornado on my back.
There was a woman. Older. The same coloring as the others. She held herself regally, and I wondered if I’d ever seen anyone more beautiful. Her eyes were kind but cautious. She was tense, like she was ready to move at any moment.
A man stood next to her. He was darker than the rest, more like me than the others. He was fierce and foreboding and all I could think was respect, respect, respect, though I’d never seen him before. His hand was on the woman’s back.
And next to them was… oh.
“Mark?” I said. He looked exactly the same.
Mark grinned. “Ox. How lovely to see you again. I see you’ve made a new friend.” He looked pleased.
The boy on my back wriggled his way down. I let his legs go and he dropped behind me. He grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the beautiful people like I had a right to be there.
He started spinning his storm again, voice rising up and down, words forcefully punctuated without pattern. “Mom! Mom. You have to smell him! It’s like… like… I don’t even know what it’s like! I was walking in the woods to scope out our territory so I could be like Dad and then it was like… whoa. And then he was all standing there and he didn’t see me at first because I’m getting so good at hunting. I was all like rawr and grr but then I smelled it again and it was him and it was all kaboom! I don’t even know! I don’t even know! You gotta smell him and then tell me why it’s all candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome.”
They all stared at him as if they’d come across something unexpected. Mark had a secret smile on his face, hidden by his hand.
“Is that so?” the woman finally said. Her voice wavered like it was a fragile thing. “Rawr and grr and kaboom?”
“And the smells!” he cried.
“Can’t forget about those,” the man next to her said faintly. “Candy canes and pinecones and epic and awesome.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Mark said to them. “Ox is… different.”
I had no idea what was going on. But that wasn’t anything new. I wondered if I’d done something wrong. I felt bad.
I tried to pull my hand away, but the kid wouldn’t let go. “Hey,” I said to him.
He looked back at me, blue eyes wide. “Ox,” he said. “Ox, I have got to show you stuff!”
“What stuff?”
“Like… I don’t….” He was sputtering. “Like everything.”
“You just got here,” I said. I felt out of place. “Don’t you need to…?” I didn’t know what I was trying to say. My words were failing me. This is why I didn’t talk. It was easier.
“Joe,” the man said. “Give Ox a moment, okay?”
“But Dad—”
“Joseph.” It almost sounded like a growl.
The boy (Joe, I thought, Joseph) sighed and dropped my hand. I took a step back. “I’m sorry,” I said. “He was just there and I didn’t mean anything.”
“It’s okay, Ox,” Mark said, taking a step down from the porch. “These things can be a bit… much.”
“What things?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Life.”
“You said we could be friends.”
“I did. It took us a bit longer to come back than I thought it would.” Behind him, the woman bowed her head and the man looked away. Joe’s hand slowly slid back into mine, and it was then I knew they’d lost something, though I didn’t know what. Or even how I knew.