Archive of Our Own

They put their small blankets down like two halves of a bird’s nest, edges overlapped and patted flat with very serious hands. Scarlett pressed hers smooth and made a soft huffing sound each time the fabric wrinkled again, as if that would scold it into behaving. Glenda crouched on her heels, head bent, tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth while she lined up the corners.

“Mine’s got tiny stars,” Scarlett said, and held one corner up for inspection. “Teeny-teeny ones. Look, look.”

“I’m lookin’,” Glenda said, squinting as if the stars were hiding. “Mine’s got lines. Like… like the zebra at the zoo book.”

“Your zebra is ’dorable,” Scarlett declared, and then, because compliments were like trading cards at four, added, “You can share my stars if you want.”

“I wanna share everything,” Glenda said, very sure. “But not my sock. My sock is mine.”

They each inspected the other’s socks just to be fair, and then bumped shoulders and sat. Their knees made small tents beneath the blankets; their toes touched and then bounced apart like shy fish.

“Okay,” Scarlett said, voice official. “We do the order. First—nest.” She patted the blanket. “Then—snacks.” She looked around, found no snacks, and nodded anyway. “Then—story. Then—squeeze. Then—sleep.”

“What about the song?” Glenda asked, folding her hands and unfolding them again. “We need the song.”

“The song goes after the squeeze,” Scarlett decided, tapping her forehead as though checking a list. “Squeeze, song, sleep. And—wait—also the water sip.”

“We do tiny sips so don’t gotta pee like a racehoss,” Glenda said solemnly.

Scarlett laughed at “racehoss” and then tried saying it too. “Racehoss,” she whispered, and the word tickled both of them until they were leaning into each other, giggling with their faces pressed cheek to cheek.

They practiced their squeeze—two small hands linking, a count to three (one-two-free), then a little squeeze that went through fingers and wrists and into shoulders like a warm button being pressed. Glenda made the counting face, lips pinched, eyebrows up. Scarlett made the squeezing face, eyes scrunched, mouth in a tiny O. When they let go, their hands felt warm and buzzy. Glenda put her palm on her own cheek to keep the warm there.

“Now the story,” Scarlett announced. She lifted an invisible book and opened it very carefully, the way she’d seen adults open Very Good Books. “Once upon a time,” she began, “there was two girls in one nest house. They was named—um—Scarlett and Glenda.”

“That’s us!” Glenda gasped.

“I know,” Scarlett said, delighted. “They was in the nest and the nest was extra-soft. And there was a… a teddy bear what was the mayor.”

“What’s a mayor?” Glenda asked.

Scarlett made a face like someone pretending to know. “He’s the boss of the bears. He goes ‘ahem ahem’ and he say ‘order.’”

Glenda copied the serious throat clearing. “’Ahem, ahem. Order.’”

“And the mayor teddy said, ‘Everybody be kind,’” Scarlett continued, leaning closer until their noses almost bumped. “And they said, ‘Okay.’ And then the girls draw with the air.” She drew a windy line in front of them. “They draw hearts like this.”

Glenda traced the air too, the invisible heart wobbling, then fixing itself midair because they believed it could. “My heart is big,” she said. “Bigger than a cookie.”

Scarlett held up the smallest pinch of space between her fingers. “Mine is tiny-tiny.”

Glenda’s mouth fell open. “Why is it tiny?”

“For… for secrets,” Scarlett said, and then made the tiny heart jump to her other hand. “But I got the big one too. I… I got two hearts.”

“You do?” Glenda edged even closer, whispering as if two hearts was something to hide in a shoe. “Where you put it?”

“In my tummy,” Scarlett said. “It goes boom like this.” She thumped her belly, dead serious, then giggled because the thump felt silly.

Glenda thumped hers too, testing. “Mine goes boom too. We’re twins.” She liked that word, how it sat round on her tongue. “Twin hearts.”

They settled together again, shoulder to shoulder, and looked at their neat nest. The blankets met like friends shaking hands. Glenda smoothed the seam where they overlapped and made a tiny sound like “shh” to calm it. Scarlett matched the sound, softer, and the “shh” became their little tide going in and out.

“Wanna do the claps?” Glenda asked. They already knew the claps were for when waiting felt itchy.

“Claps,” Scarlett agreed. They held their hands up and made the pattern—slap thighs, clap hands, tap the other’s palms—slowly first, then faster. On the third round, Glenda missed and poked Scarlett’s palm with her pointer finger. The poke was so bright and specific that both girls laughed with their whole mouths open.

“Again,” Glenda begged. “Again, again.”

They clapped until the pattern felt like a song inside their hands. Then Glenda wriggled under her blanket and pulled it up to her nose. “I can smell laundry,” she said, her voice muffled. “Like clouds.”

“I smell you,” Scarlett said, also muffled because now her blanket was up too. “You smell like… like crayons.”

Glenda peeked out. “You smell like warm bread.” She didn’t know why that felt exactly true, but it did. Scarlett looked pleased and a little shy, and ducked back under.

Something quiet settled around them, the kind of quiet that makes whispering feel too loud. In that quiet, little details got big: the sound of their tiny breaths, the flutter of eyelashes when Glenda blinked slowly, the way Scarlett’s hair made a fuzzy halo where it met the blanket.

“Let’s do the guard,” Scarlett whispered. They had invented this part because being brave was a thing you could take turns with. “I go first. I’m the owl.”

“I’m the bunny,” Glenda decided. “Bunnies got big ears. I hear everything.”

Scarlett nodded under the covers as if her owl eyes could see through fabric. “Okay. I watch. I say the password if I need you.”

“What’s the password?” Glenda asked, thrilled.

Scarlett thought, then grinned so hard it made her whisper wobbly. “Moon-spoon.”

Glenda repeated it with reverence, like a grown-up word. “Moon-spoon.”

They lay very close, side by side, hands tucked between them like two little stones warming each other. Scarlett’s arm crossed over and found Glenda’s in the dark. Their fingers met without looking. Thumbs rubbed. It was the most natural thing—like checking, like counting: one, two, here.

“I know a song,” Glenda murmured, and sang a made-up melody so soft it was barely there, a line of hummed sound that went up on “you” and down on “me,” up on “small” and down on “we.” Scarlett hummed along after two notes, easily, as if she’d known it all along. When the song ended, they didn’t clap, just breathed and let it sit.

“Tell me a tiny thing,” Scarlett said, very curious and very sleepy.

Glenda thought hard. “Sometimes… I wear my shoes on the wrong feets.”

Scarlett turned her head, eyes wide even in the dim. “It feel funny?”

“Like my toes are… confused,” Glenda admitted. “But I do it fast so the shoes don’t know.”

Scarlett whispered, delighted, “Tell me ’nother tiny thing.”

Glenda put a hand on her own cheek again. “I like when you do squeezes,” she said shyly. “It put my tummy happy.”

Scarlett’s answering squeeze was gentle-gentle, no counting this time. “Me too.”

They practiced saying each other’s names the way the other said it. “Scarlett,” Glenda tried, careful with the r that always wanted to roll away. “Scaw-litt.” She giggled. “Your name is a tongue twister.”

“Glen-da,” Scarlett said, hitting the d too hard, then softer, proud when it came out right. “Glen-da.” She touched Glenda’s sleeve like the name might be stitched there. “That’s you.”

“Thas’ me.” Glenda smiled so hard it made her nose wrinkle. “I’m here.”

“I’m here too,” Scarlett said. “And if you roll away, I—” She reached and patted around demonstratively. “I catch you.”

Glenda nodded, satisfied. “If you roll away, I catch you back.”

Their faces were very close now, so close their eyelashes brushed when they blinked. Glenda bumped Scarlett’s nose with her own in a tiny kiss that wasn’t exactly a kiss, just a hello for noses. Scarlett did it back. Then Glenda did two bumps in a row and Scarlett did three and then they both lost count and laughed into the blankets, laughter rustling like small birds.

A quiet voice from somewhere not-them said something soft and kind that neither of them really heard because it was not part of their game. A hand tucked the blanket corners and patted their backs. Scarlett and Glenda nodded to the not-them voice the way four-year-olds nod to weather: yes, yes, okay. Their eyes found each other again as soon as the hand was gone.

“We do the promise now?” Glenda asked, voice tiny as a bee.

“Promise,” Scarlett agreed. They hooked pinkies, though sometimes they forgot which finger was pinky and used ring fingers instead. “Promise we be here.”

“Promise,” Glenda whispered seriously. “Even if we are sleep.”

“Even if we go all the way to snore,” Scarlett added, making a pretend snore so dainty it sounded like a kitten.

Glenda snorted a real laugh at the kitten snore and then yawned so wide her eyes watered. She wiped them with the back of her hand, surprised. “I think… I think my eyes are leakin’.”

“It’s the yawn,” Scarlett explained, expert. “Yawns make water.”

“You know lots,” Glenda said, impressed.

“I know the moon-spoon,” Scarlett said, smug, and Glenda giggled again.

They sang the song one more time, softer than before. Glenda’s voice wobbled on the last note, and she pressed her forehead to Scarlett’s for balance. Scarlett didn’t move away. Foreheads together was their hinge: two doors closed, safe and snug.

A little while after they stopped humming, Glenda’s body did a small jump, the kind that happens when sleep is sneaking up and tripping you. She blinked fast, startled. Scarlett’s hand, already there, rubbed slow circles on Glenda’s wrist the way they’d discovered once soothed hiccups and also worries. The circle rub worked on everything.

“D’you want the secret?” Scarlett asked after a bit, so quiet it was almost the thought of a sound.

“What secret?” Glenda’s eyes were closed now; her voice was a breath.

“The good-night words,” Scarlett said. “The special ones.”

Glenda’s mouth curved, drowsy. “’Kay.”

Scarlett leaned so close the words could fall in. “I say, ‘See you when the sun peeks,’” she whispered. “You say, ‘I’ll be here with my eyes still on,’” she added hastily, because she liked both parts and wanted them both.

Glenda, smiling, said the line wrong in the most perfect way. “I’ll be here with my eyes still… on inside.”

Scarlett nodded, very serious. “On inside.” She pressed their hands together palm to palm and felt how small they were, and how big, both at once.

“Say it again,” Glenda yawned.

“See you when the sun peeks,” Scarlett repeated, and waited.

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Glenda murmured, so content it sounded like a purr. “And if you roll away…”

“I catch you,” Scarlett finished. “And if I roll away…”

“I catch you back,” Glenda breathed.

Their hands drifted apart but not far. Scarlett tucked her thumb into the little valley between Glenda’s thumb and finger and left it there like a bookmark—so she would know where they were when morning came. Glenda’s breath evened out first, with a tiny whistling at the end that made Scarlett grin sleepy in the dark. Scarlett listened to it like a lullaby. She watched, owl-still, for a long time, guarding with her whole four-year-old seriousness until the guarding turned into dreaming, and in the dream they were still holding on.

Somewhere, a cup of water waited for tiny sips. Somewhere, their socks rested, brave and matched. But here, their nest was the whole world, just big enough for two hearts—one tiny for secrets, one cookie-big—and all the squeezes they needed. When their fingers twitched in sleep, they found each other without searching, and the good-night words, said already, kept echoing in the soft of their thoughts:

See you when the sun peeks.

I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside.

They had a shoebox between them and very important faces on. The lid was turned upside down to be the desk; the box itself was the “mail.” Scarlett held a stubby pencil like it was a wand. Glenda sat cross-legged and kept patting the box to make sure it didn’t slide away.

“We makin’ the secret words now,” Scarlett said, lowering her voice to secret size. “It’s the rule.”

“It’s the club,” Glenda agreed, nodding fast. “No tell nobody. ’Cept me. And you. And me again.”

Scarlett drew a big curvy S that looked like a snake and then dots all up its back for “sparkle.” She pushed the paper to Glenda with two hands, very official. “That’s a letter for your name.”

Glenda looked proud and a little worried. “I need my twisty letter,” she said. “The G what goes round like ice cream.”

Scarlett drew a big swirl with a tiny tail. It wobbled right at the end like it had hiccups. “There. That one is your slurly letter.”

“Swirly,” Glenda corrected, but she liked “slurly” so much she said it again softer. “Slurly.”

They both giggled, heads falling together briefly, then popped up straight again because this was business. Scarlett licked her finger and pressed it to draw a smudge heart. “Okay,” she whispered, eyes huge. “We gotta make a code. Shh. This paper is for when we can’t talk talk.”

“Like when somebody is doin’… faces,” Glenda said, making a grown-up face that had too much chin and too much eyebrows. Scarlett laughed so hard she snorted.

“Code is,” Scarlett said, tapping the box, “one tap means yes. Two taps means no. Three taps means ‘come here quick.’ Four is…” She paused, finger up, thinking. “Four is ‘I love you but I’m also bein’ silly.’”

Glenda practiced, tapping with her little knuckles: one, two, three, four, ending with a soft giggle for four. “What about five?”

“Five is too many,” Scarlett decided gravely. “If you do five, your hand will get tired and your finger will fall off.”

Glenda grabbed her finger, eyes widening. “Don’t fall off!”

Scarlett grinned. “I’m jokin’. That’s why number four got silly in it.”

They added hand-signs too because hands could whisper when mouths couldn’t. Glenda invented a nose-boop that meant “just playin’.” Scarlett made a little fish-mouth that meant “need water.” They made a slow slide of a fingertip along the wrist that meant “my tummy is twisty.” They made a zigzag in the air that meant “look!” They practiced all of them, trying not to laugh and failing every time.

“We need a password,” Glenda said suddenly, remembering how passwords made her feel like she carried a key inside her chest.

“We already got ‘moon-spoon,’” Scarlett said, pleased she could say it in one breath without tripping.

“We add a… a baboon,” Glenda proposed. “Moon-spoon-baboon.”

Scarlett blinked at the wonder of that. “Moon-spoon-baboon,” she echoed, and the rhyme felt like a trampoline they both bounced on. They whispered it three times and then looked around as if the word might make something appear. Nothing did—except their own smiles, which showed up right away.

“Okay,” Scarlett said, clicking the pencil on the lid. “We do mail now. You go over there and I put the mail in the box and you gotta read the secret.”

Glenda scooted exactly three scoots away because three felt lucky. She folded her knees up to her chest and made herself small, watching with bright eyes while Scarlett drew fast. The pencil made scratchy sounds that felt important. Then Scarlett slid the folded paper under the shoebox flap and tapped one time: yes, there’s a letter.

Glenda reached for it slowly, like it could fly. She opened it with both hands. Inside was a picture: a circle with little lines sticking out, a smile, and two lopsided hearts. Underneath was the snake-S and the slurly-G leaning on each other. There were three dots in a row.

“What it say?” Scarlett whispered, bouncing a little where she sat.

Glenda squinted, then grinned. “It say… ‘sunshine smile, two hearts, S and G, dot dot dot,’” she announced. “Dot dot dot means… there is more comin’.”

Scarlett clapped without making any noise. “Yes! It also means ‘to be continued.’” That was a phrase she had picked up and loved because it stretched like a rubber band into later.

Glenda folded the paper tiny, tiny, and tucked it under the strap of her sandal. “I keep it close.”

“Now my turn,” Scarlett said, scooting to the other side, not three but four scoots because four had silly in it and she wanted it to. She hugged her knees and made her eyes small like a spy. Glenda took the pencil. She held it too tight and then loosened her hand because the lines got shaky when she held hard.

Glenda drew a big cookie circle and inside it a tiny house and inside that a littler dot. She put one line that went from the dot to the edge of the cookie like a path. She added a little X at the end of the line, then a star that exploded all wrong and messy, which made her happy. She wrote a G that looked like a snail taking a nap. Then she slid the paper in and tapped three taps: come here quick.

Scarlett swooped in so fast her hair swished her cheek. She opened the paper and gasped. “It’s a… treasure map.”

“Uh-huh,” Glenda said, proud. “The X is… your knee. The treasure is… me.”

Scarlett made a noise that wasn’t a word because sometimes a noise did better. She put her hand on Glenda’s knee like it was obvious and glorious and perfectly correct. “Found you,” she said. “Gimme prize.”

Glenda leaned her forehead to Scarlett’s forehead. “Prize,” she said, eyes closed. It wasn’t really a kiss but it was a hello, and also a we-are-here. They bumped once, then again, and then Scarlett bumped too hard and their teeth clicked, and they both went “ow!” and then laughed because “ow!” sounded funny when you said it at the same time.

“More code,” Scarlett said, rubbing her tiny bump of pain with two fingers like a scientist. “We need letters that mean “hug” and “stop” and ‘don’t cry’ and ‘cry is okay.’” She drew a square and wrote a wiggly H inside and then a dot over it that was a tear. “That’s don’t cry slash cry is okay. It’s both. You gotta know which one.”

“How you know?” Glenda asked, curious and wanting the answer to be something she could put in her pocket.

“You look at my eyebrows,” Scarlett said, very sure. “If my eyebrows go up, then it’s ‘cry is okay.’ If they go flat, it’s ‘don’t cry.’”

Glenda nodded solemnly. “I can read eyebrows,” she promised. “I’m good at readin’ faces.”

“I’m good at readin’ your face,” Scarlett said. “It’s my best book.”

They took turns making more signs. Glenda drew three short lines like little steps—that meant “we go slow.” Scarlett drew a wavy noodle—that meant “dance while we wait.” Glenda drew a tiny circle inside a bigger circle—that meant “tiny you inside big me,” which she couldn’t explain but Scarlett understood anyway and put her hand on Glenda’s shoulder for a long second with no talking at all.

When the page got full, they turned it sideways and filled the margins. When the margins were full, they started a second page. The pencil got shorter. Their words got bigger.

A little tangle came when Scarlett tapped twice with a face that was both flat and not, and Glenda thought the twice-tap no meant “no I don’t want your note,” and Glenda pulled her hand back fast like it had been too near a stove. Her lips pressed tight. Her eyes got full, and the tears didn’t come yet but the shine arrived.

“No,” Scarlett said quickly, then shook her head because that was the wrong word. “Yes! I mean no—no like ‘no danger.’ Like… like… ‘no monsters.’ Two taps means ‘no monsters.’”

“You changed it,” Glenda accused softly, sniffling with a tiny, loyal sniff. “You changed it and I didn’t know.”

Scarlett scooted close, so close the shoebox bumped and made a cardboard sound. “I forgot to tell,” she said, honest as a doorknob. “I’m sorry, G.” She put her hand on Glenda’s, palm to palm, thumbs making little seesaws. “We make Version Two now. Version Two says two taps is ‘no monsters,’ and if we mean ‘no I don’t want,’ we do two taps and a nose-boop.”

Glenda looked down at the see-saw thumbs. The shine in her eyes shifted and turned into something else, like a puddle in sun. She tested it out: two taps and a nose-boop. Scarlett giggled at the boop. Glenda giggled too because the boop couldn’t help but be funny. The tangle loosened. The pencil scratched. Scarlett drew a little bandage on the paper-heart they’d drawn earlier.

“That’s the fix,” she said. “When code breaks, we put a bandage and then it’s better.”

“We can also put a sticker,” Glenda suggested, patting around for one and finding none. “Imaginary sticker. It’s sparkly and smells like blueberries.”

Scarlett inhaled dramatically. “I smell it,” she said, eyes big, and Glenda put her hand to her mouth to hide a grin that couldn’t be hidden.

They did “post office” again and again until they had a pile of notes—faces, hearts, noodles, steps, S snakes and G swirls, arrows, stars that looked like angry bugs, smile circles that made their own eyes smile back. Scarlett made a flipbook out of the corner of one page: a little stick figure waved when she flipped fast. Glenda shrieked softly, then tried to do it too and made a stick figure that fell over immediately, which made her laugh so hard she lay back and kicked her feet in the air.

“Okay,” Scarlett said at last, with the authority of someone who could tell when a thing was a whole. “We do the ceremony.”

Glenda sat up straight at once. “’Ce-mo-ny,” she repeated, like it was a long staircase she was climbing. “What we do?”

“We read the Letter of Friendship,” Scarlett intoned, then scribbled four big letters that weren’t the word but looked like it from far away. She cleared her throat, tiny and serious. “Ahem ahem. Dear Glenda, dear Scarlett. We are in the secret club. The rules are: one tap is yes, two taps is ‘no monsters,’ three is ‘come quick,’ four is silly love, boop for joke, fish mouth for water, slide-wrist for twisty tummies, zigzag is look, eyebrows tell the truth, bandage fixes code, and moon-spoon-baboon forever amen.”

“Amen,” Glenda echoed because it sounded like a period at the end of the sentence. She leaned in. “Now I read the tiny words.” She pointed to a blank spot and pretended there were tiny words there and read them anyway. “P.S. If we forget, we can ask. P.S. P.S. If we fall asleep, see you when the sun peeks.”

Scarlett looked happy and soft all over. “That’s the best part.”

They folded the “Letter of Friendship” into the smallest square they could manage and slid it under the shoebox lid again. It made a papery whisper, like it was agreeing. Glenda took Scarlett’s hand and squished it once, then twice (no monsters), then three times (come quick), and then four—silly love—laughing into the last squeeze so it melted and went warm.

“Can we practice the eyebrows?” Glenda asked, because she liked to be good at things. They leaned their faces so close it made their smiles tilt. They did up eyebrows (cry is okay) and flat eyebrows (don’t cry) and lightning-bolt eyebrows (just for fun) and sleepy eyebrows (which made both of them yawn immediately).

“We gotta put the code in our… in our bones,” Scarlett said, tapping her own wrist like elastic. “So even if we’re… not standin’ up, we still know.”

Glenda looked at her own arm like she might see the letters glow under her skin. “It’s in,” she said, convinced. “It’s soaked in.”

They went through the routine without saying they were doing the routine. Tiny sips of water—fish mouth first, wiggly eyebrows to make the other laugh, then the careful two-handed handing of the cup and the careful two-handed taking, like it was a secret present. Their blankets got pulled up to their chins, and their knees made little mountains again. The shoebox stayed right between them like a small, sleeping animal.

“Do you want a letter for scared?” Glenda whispered, looking sideways with shy honesty. “Sometimes it happens.”

Scarlett thought. “Yes,” she said at once. She drew in the air with her finger so they would both see it, even though nothing was there. “It looks like a… a cloud with a scribble in it.” She traced a cloud shape, then scribbled inside. “That means ‘I’m thinkin’ too much and it feels like bees.’”

Glenda made the same shape in the air. “And the fix?” she asked, eyes round.

Scarlett tapped her own forehead lightly. “Knock knock,” she said. “Then we say ‘who’s there?’ and the other one says ‘me’ and then we do… four squeeze.”

Glenda practiced with the blanket pulled up: knock knock on her own head, whisper-who’s-there, Scarlett’s soft “me,” then the silly love squeeze that made her giggle even while she was being serious. “It works,” Glenda decided. “I’m not bee-ish now.”

They lay there, the kind of quiet that has warm in it. Fingers wandered and found other fingers. They did small squeezes like punctuation. The shoebox made a tiny settling sound. Scarlett, already half-owl because she had declared herself good at guarding, whispered, “Password?”

“Moon-spoon-baboon,” Glenda breathed back, eyes closed but very on inside.

Scarlett smiled in the dark. “Okay.”

“Tell me a secret secret,” Glenda mumbled, words fuzzed by a yawn.

Scarlett’s voice went small and truthful. “Sometimes I’m scared I… I forget a thing and you think I don’t care.”

Glenda turned her face toward her. “I’ll ask,” she said, like reading from the tiny words. “P.S. P.S.”

Scarlett’s hand found Glenda’s wrist and slid along it: twisty tummy. Then four soft squeezes, one after another, each a little softer than the one before.

“Tell me a silly secret,” Scarlett whispered back.

Glenda’s grin showed in the shape of her cheeks. “Sometimes I eat the air,” she confessed. “I go ‘nom’ and it’s nothin’ but I’m pretendin’ it’s cake.”

Scarlett made a silent laugh that shook her shoulders. “What flavor?”

“Blue,” Glenda said, completely sure.

They made the good-night words into code, just to try. Scarlett tapped one time for yes (see you), Glenda tapped three for come quick (when the sun peeks), Scarlett did the zigzag in the air (look for me), Glenda did the slow slide along her own wrist (I’ll be here even if my tummy is twisty), and then four squeezes that were more like clouds than squeezes now.

Glenda’s breath found the tiny whistle it liked. Scarlett listened to it, owl-still, guarding but also not guarding, because the code was in their bones and the shoebox held their promises and the blanket seam between them was a road and a bridge both. Her eyes blinked heavier and heavier until they stayed shut by themselves.

Just before sleep, Glenda’s fingers twitched and missed Scarlett’s by a tiny bit. Scarlett, with her eyes closed, reached sideways and found them without opening anything.

Two taps. No monsters.

A pause, like a smile.

Tap tap tap.

Come quick.

Scarlett’s hand answered in the dark, sure as a key finding its lock, and stayed.

They decided the word “museum” felt round in the mouth, so they said it a few times—mu-see-um, moo-zee-um—until it turned into something they could hold. Then they made one.

Everything started with emptying pockets. Scarlett turned her little skirt inside out at the corners and shook: two buttons (one blue, one pretending to be), a folded candy wrapper that shone like a tiny lake, and a washer with a perfect hole. Glenda laid out her treasures one by one like a quiet drumbeat: a smooth, warm pebble shaped like a kidney bean, a tiny cork, a ribbon with a knot she couldn’t untie, and a bit of foil folded into a star that wanted to be a square.

“This is the Entry Hall,” Scarlett declared, tapping the windowsill and lining the buttons side by side. “Visitors come and say, ‘wow,’ softly.”

“Wow,” Glenda said softly, even though they were the only ones there.

“We need labels,” Scarlett added, already reaching for the stubby pencil. “Museums have labels so you know what you’re lookin’ at.”

Glenda dragged a little box over and made it into the label table. They tore paper into small flags. Scarlett printed careful letters with her tongue peeking out. Glenda watched and named things because she was good at naming.

“Button, blue,” Scarlett wrote, sounding it out. “Buh-tun bloo.”

“Button, not-sure,” Glenda said, leaning so close her hair tickled the page. “It’s pretendin’ to be blue but it’s… not. It’s shy-color.”

Scarlett bit her lip, then wrote: “Button (shy).” She added a dot-dot-dot because it looked sophisticated. “Visitors will be impressed,” she said.

Glenda made a slow nod. “Next one: Lake wrapper.” She smoothed the candy wrapper and it flashed a little.

“We can’t call it candy ’cause we already et it,” Scarlett reasoned. “So… ‘Mirror Paper. Rare.’”

“Rare,” Glenda repeated, tasting the word like a new fruit. “We need a ‘Do Not Touch’ sign.”

Scarlett considered the signs of the world she knew and then drew a tiny hand with a big X over it. The hand looked like a potato, but the X was excellent. “Do Not Touch,” she read out, and then under it, smaller, “Please.”

“Also a ‘Please Do Touch’ sign for other things,” Glenda decided, fair-minded. “’Cause some stuff is s’posed to be touched.”

They agreed that the bean-shaped stone was a “Please Do Touch,” since it was designed, in their professional opinion, to be held.

“We need rooms,” Scarlett said, arranging the washer and cork and foil star across the sill. “This part is Rocks and Buttons. That part is… Bones of the Sea.”

“Do we got sea bones?” Glenda asked, eyes huge, delighted at the idea.

Scarlett looked at the cork and made a decision. “Yes. This cork is a Sea Bone. It’s very light because fish don’t like heavy bones. Fact.”

Glenda nodded as if the museum’s imaginary plaque on Sea Bones would say exactly that. “We need tickets. No one gets in without a ticket.”

They cut more paper into tiny rectangles, and Glenda drew a wobbly S and G on each—S for Scarlett, G for Glenda, but also S for Secret and G for Good. Scarlett added numbers on the corners, not because they needed numbers but because museums had them. She pointed at the shoebox they had used for mail the year before. “That’s the ‘Donation Box,’” she announced. “Visitors can put… air pennies.”

Glenda immediately made the motion of plucking pennies out of the air and dropping them through the slit with a little “plink” sound. The sound was so satisfying they each donated a pocketful of nothing.

Scarlett took a breath and made her voice do the special Important Tone. “Ladies and gentle-peoples,” she said to nobody and to all the invisible somebodies who were lined up in their heads, “welcome to the Museum of Everything.”

Glenda swelled with pride next to her. “Our password is moon-spoon-baboon,” she whispered, because some things weren’t for the public.

They began the first tour. Scarlett was the curator; Glenda was the docent (a new word she liked because it sounded like “dozen,” and she liked things in a dozen). The two buttons stood at attention on the sill with their labels tucked under them.

“This blue button,” Scarlett said, pointing with a pencil tip, “is very old. Maybe from last week. It was rescued from… the Land of Under the Chair.”

Glenda held the “Please Do Touch” sign up like a tiny flag. “You can touch with one finger,” she instructed the air. “Only one. Two is too many.”

Scarlett moved them along to the Mirror Paper. “This is very rare,” she said. “If you look into it, you can see your future for one second.”

Glenda peered in and made a face like someone seeing a treasure map inside her own eye. “I see… cake,” she reported, solemn. “Blue flavor.”

“Ah,” Scarlett said, nodding like a scholar. “A very good future.”

They reached the washer, which Glenda had already decided was not a washer but “Saturn.” Scarlett wrote “Ringed Planet: Found Near Shoe,” and put it in the Space Exhibit, which was a fancy way of saying she moved it three inches and breathed differently.

“Do not touch Saturn,” Glenda warned their invisible patrons. “Your fingers will get space on them and it’s hard to wash off.”

They made a Cabinet of Wonders out of a small box turned on its side. Into it they placed the ribbon with the hard knot. The label said: “Ribbon of Forever-Knot (Unsolvd).” Scarlett added an exclamation point to “Unsolvd!” because it felt better that way. Glenda tried the knot again, gently, and when it stayed stubborn she set it down with respect.

In a quiet corner, they made an exhibit of Very Tiny Things: a breadcrumb that looked like a tiny continent, a piece of thread, a rubber band that had lost its rectangle and gone circle. The labels were smaller, the pencil marks lighter. Scarlett hunched over them and wrote, “Minny things. Look careful.”

Under the Very Tiny Things, they made a gift shop. Glenda arranged air-postcards (she would draw the real ones later) and air-magnets with the museum’s name, and a row of imaginary pencils that said “I SAW THE SEA BONE.” She rang them up on her palm with fast pretend clacking noises that were the opposite of quiet. Scarlett shushed her with a smile and pointed at their new sign: “Museum Quiet,” drawn as a finger near a pair of smiling lips.

They practiced their code in the museum way. One tap meant “yes, that is exactly correct,” two taps meant “no monsters in the museum,” three taps meant “tour beginning,” and four squeezes meant “silly love gift shop discount.” Glenda had added a new gesture—a little square traced in the air—that meant “put it in a case.”

“Case,” Scarlett said, drawing the square over the bean stone. She didn’t actually cover it, but the square in the air counted.

Trouble came when they both wanted the bean stone to be the first thing visitors saw.

“It’s the Welcome Stone,” Glenda argued, cradling it as if it could listen.

“It needs to be in the center so everyone knows it’s important,” Scarlett argued back, reaching with both hands open so it wasn’t grabby, just reachy.

The air between them got thick and particular. Glenda hugged the stone to her chest and looked down. Scarlett’s eyebrows did a thing that wasn’t up and wasn’t flat. They both remembered the tangle from when two taps had changed meanings. Glenda’s fingers slid along her own wrist—twisty tummy. Scarlett watched, breathed in, did two taps (no monsters), and added a gentle nose-boop to be extra clear.

“I want people to see it first,” Glenda said, voice small but steady. “It makes me feel… brave.”

Scarlett made her lips tuck in and out like she was chewing on brave too. She turned around the word with her whole face. “Okay,” she said after a moment. “We can do a loan. It can be the Welcome Stone for the hour, and then it goes to the center. We’ll make a label that says ‘On Lown’—”

“Loan,” Glenda corrected, but she was smiling again, relief cooling her cheeks. “On Loan. From the Collection of Glenda.” She rolled the words around, liking how they lined up like blocks. “I can share if it knows it’s still mine.”

Scarlett nodded hard. “We’ll give it a little bandage drawing, too,” she added, sketching a tiny rectangle with crisscross lines on the label because that was their sign for a fix after a break. “Bandage means we took care.”

Glenda placed the stone at the edge of the sill in the exact place where visitors would first rest their eyes. The label went right under it, and Glenda patted the words with two gentle fingers, like tucking. “On Loan,” she read. “From me.”

They had a ribbon-cutting with the Forever-Knot Ribbon, which was funny and perfect because you couldn’t really cut it, so Scarlett held one end and Glenda held the other, and together they pretended to snip in the middle with their fingers. “Snip,” Scarlett said. “Grand Opening.”

“Grand Opening,” Glenda echoed, breathy.

They marched the invisible crowd through again, adding new facts as those facts presented themselves. Scarlett found that if you turned the blue button to the left, it looked like a tiny planet. Glenda found that the Mirror Paper made her nose look like a mountain when she tilted it just so. They wrote down discoveries on their label scraps and stacked them into a book that wasn’t a book but felt like one. Scarlett titled it: “Cat-a-log.” Glenda added a tiny drawing of a cat because she was convinced that was part of it.

Between tours, they rehearsed the audio guide that only they could hear. Scarlett spoke in her “on the radio” voice, low and smooth. “If you look to your right, you will see the Ribbon of Forever-Knot,” she cooed. “It represents… um… the mysteries.”

Glenda put her cheek on her fist like a professor. “And on your left, a very rare Saturn from the Land of Near Shoe. Please do not touch unless you have space gloves.”

“Do you have space gloves?” Scarlett asked the air, and then she answered for the air in a tiny air-voice, “Yes I do,” which made Glenda choke on a laugh.

At the Donation Box, they shook the shoebox for the sound of invisible air pennies. “Thank you for your generousity,” Glenda told their visitors. She’d heard the word somewhere and added an extra syllable because it deserved one. “All money goes to… glue. And pencils. And snacks.”

“Snacks Exhibit opens later,” Scarlett said. “Featuring… crackers.”

They made security. Scarlett became the Owl Guard again, because that was her thing since four, and Glenda was the Bunny Guard with big listening ears. They invented a new alarm where three gentle taps-taps-taps followed by a zigzag in the air meant “Alert: mischief nearby.” They tested it, setting off a pretend alarm near the Mirror Paper, and then Scarlett came trotting with her owl eyes big, and Glenda made the fish-mouth sign (need water) because being a guard was thirsty.

In a lull between tours, Glenda made a little corner called “Found Words.” She wrote the biggest word she knew—LOVE—then a smaller one—YES—and under it she tried “WELCOME” and ended up with WELCUM, and thought it looked happy anyway. Scarlett drew arrows to them like spotlights and then put a tiny heart sticker in her head because they didn’t have real ones.

“Should we have a Museum Night?” Glenda asked, arranging the labels so they all lined up like tiny beds. “Where people come after dark and whisper.”

Scarlett’s mouth made a surprised O that turned into a grin. “Yes,” she said. “Yes-yes.” She wrote “Nite at the Museum” on a new tag, then added, “Ticket: Moon-spoon-baboon.” They both nodded, very satisfied that the password could also be a ticket.

A small argument flared and fizzled around the cork. Scarlett wanted it to be “Sea Bone: Whale,” and Glenda insisted it was “Sea Bone: Tiny,” because sometimes whales were too big for her and she needed the world to be tiny. They solved it by writing both words on the label separated by a dot. “Whale · Tiny,” Scarlett printed, and when they read it out loud together it sounded like a drum beat that made both opinions dance in the same space.

Before the Night at the Museum, they did the Ceremony of Dusting, which meant blowing a little air on everything and wiping with the corners of their sleeves. They giggled when the Mirror Paper winked at them for being so careful. They straightened the Cat-a-log that wasn’t a cat but had a cat on the front. They touched the Bean Stone once each—one finger, Please Do Touch—and pressed their lips together in little smile lines that matched.

“Ready?” Scarlett asked, eyebrows up (cry is okay if we need it), shoulders down (we probably won’t).

“Ready,” Glenda said, and slid her hand into Scarlett’s, interlacing fingers like pages of a book.

The night part of day crept in without either of them naming it. Their voices got naturally quiet all by themselves, like the Museum Quiet sign worked on them too. They issued two tickets—S1 and G2—and stamped them with an invisible stamp. They whispered to invisible visitors and also to each other, because whispering made everything feel close.

“Sometimes,” Glenda breathed, peering at the Ribbon of Forever-Knot, “I like that it won’t untie.”

“Me too,” Scarlett said, surprising herself, because sometimes not-knowing was a thing her body didn’t like. “’Cause then we have a mystery. And our job.”

“Our job,” Glenda agreed, leaning her temple to Scarlett’s temple. “Curator Bunny. Docent Owl.”

Scarlett laughed into her shoulder. “Switch,” she suggested. They swapped titles, just to know how it felt. Curator Bunny made her hands feel delicate and particular. Docent Owl made Glenda want to blink slowly and say big words. They both liked it, then swapped back so they could also like that.

They did passwords just because—it made the air different. “Moon,” Scarlett whispered.

“Sp—oon,” Glenda whispered, elongating it so it felt like a ribbon between them.

“Ba—boon,” they both finished, and then clapped their hands over their mouths like they’d summoned something. What they summoned was only their own giggle.

They tried the audio guide voice lying down, heads together, feet pointing different directions, like arrows. Scarlett described the Tiny Things Exhibit in a hush that made Glenda close her eyes and see them better. Glenda narrated the Space Exhibit in a round, careful voice, and Scarlett listened with a small smile because Glenda’s voice did that to her—made her want to keep listening.

Sleep came up slow, like a visitor who stopped to read every label. Glenda’s hand slid along Scarlett’s wrist—twisty tummy was gone now, just the sign, just the muscle memory. Scarlett tapped twice in the pocket of blankets (no monsters in the museum), then three (tour beginning), then changed her mind and did four quick squeezes in their old rhythm (silly love). Glenda returned the pattern like a mirror: squeeze-squeeze-squeeze-squeeze, softening at the end until it was just pressure and breath.

“Key,” Glenda murmured, feeling for something to keep. Scarlett looked around and found the washer—Saturn—felt its cool circle, then set it gently between them like a ring that couldn’t fall off because four small hands were the case.

“On Loan,” Scarlett whispered, eyes already shutting, the words crossing the space between them like a tiny bridge.

“From the Collection of Glenda and Scarlett,” Glenda finished, her mouth turning sleep-smiley at how right that sounded.

“Cat-a-log says,” Scarlett mumbled, half dreaming, and then forgot to finish the sentence because the audio guide in her head had become a lullaby. Glenda watched her face for a few more seconds, the eyebrows soft and not in any language now, and then her own eyes closed like a gift shop door that had a bell but didn’t ring, just breathed.

If their fingers twitched, it was only to check the washer was still there, the label still imaginary, the museum still open in the gentle way night opens anything. If a visitor came through in a dream, they were greeted properly, asked to make air pennies, shown the Sea Bone and Saturn and the Ribbon of Forever-Knot. The docents were excellent even asleep, and the password floated above them like a sign that glowed very faint:

moon-spoon-baboon.

They stood at the bottom of the big tree, necks bent, hands on hips like tiny bosses. Scarlett squinted up, measuring with her eyes. Glenda bounced on her toes and then stopped because bouncing made her look less official.

“We need a license,” Scarlett decided, tapping her lip with one finger. “A climbin’ license.”

Glenda nodded fast. “We can write it with sky,” she said, and traced a rectangle in the air. “Name: Scarlett. Name: Glenda. Permission: yes. Rule one: no fallin’.”

“Rule two,” Scarlett added, very serious, “tell me if your tummy goes twisty.”

“Rule three,” Glenda said, “if you get scared, you say ‘clouds’ and we do a break. That’s the code word.”

“’Kay.” Scarlett shook her hands like swimmers do before a race. “We do our taps. One tap is ‘good branch,’ two taps is ‘no monsters but it’s wobbly,’ three taps is ‘foot here,’ and four squeezes is… silly love from the ground if we need it.”

Glenda’s eyes sparkled. “And eyebrows tell the truth.”

“Always,” Scarlett agreed, and raised hers (up means cry is okay). Glenda raised hers back and smiled, because the code worked even before they started.

Scarlett tested the lowest branch with the flat of her hand, then with two fingers like a little drummer. “Good branch,” she reported, one tap on the trunk. Glenda went next, copying the two-finger test because it felt like science. She gave one tap too. Good.

They climbed with care and chatter. Glenda’s shoe slipped a tiny slide and she froze, then remembered her own rule and whispered, “Clouds.” Scarlett went still the way owls do and put her knee right where Glenda’s foot could go. Three taps. Foot here. Glenda placed her shoe, found the sure spot, and breathed out a balloon of relief.

“See?” Scarlett said softly. “You got it.”

“I got it,” Glenda echoed, and set her small jaw.

They made it to the first fork, where the branches made a V just wide enough for two small bottoms. They scooted in, legs dangling, hands wrapped fierce around bark. The world below went little. Glenda hummed without meaning to and then stopped, feeling the newness of being up.

“Okay,” Scarlett said, adopting her tour voice because it made her less nervous. “This is Level One. V-Seat. We sign the guest book.” She drew their initials on bark with her finger, not scratching, just tracing: S + G. “We can go higher if your eyebrows say it’s okay.”

Glenda arranged her eyebrows in a very brave shape. “Okay.” She un-brave-arranged them for a second. “But… wait. Lemme check my tummy.” She slid a finger along her wrist—twisty tummy check. “It’s… not twisty,” she declared, surprised and pleased. “It’s popcorn.”

Scarlett blinked. “Popcorn tummy?”

“Like little pop-pop-pops. Happy ones.” Glenda drummed a tiny rhythm on her own chest. “It’s a snack tummy.”

Scarlett smiled so big it made her nose wrinkle. “I like snack tummy.”

They kept going. Scarlett went first this time, stepping where she was sure, looking back every step like a lighthouse. She made a new signal—two little circles drawn in the air with her finger—that meant “go slow.” Glenda mirrored it, her mouth already copying the shape like her body wanted to help.

At the next perch, a branch had a bump just right for a heel. They named it Heel Hook because naming things made the fear shrink. Scarlett sat, legs swinging, and patted the spot next to her. Glenda bumped in, bumping Scarlett’s shoulder, then kept her shoulder there. The bump felt like putting a bookend next to a book so it wouldn’t fall.

“Level Two,” Scarlett said. She looked up. The higher branches criss-crossed, a maze for squirrels who had graduated. “We can stop here and do… our cloud thing.”

“Yes,” Glenda breathed. “Cloud-feelings.”

They leaned back until the leaves made little green holes and the sky looked chopped into puzzle pieces. Clouds were slow and bossy and going wherever they wanted. Glenda pointed. “That one is a turtle. Happy turtle.”

Scarlett squinted. “I see… a shark,” she said, and then frowned because sharks made her shoulders climb up. “But… like, friendly? With a… bow?”

Glenda giggled. “Shark with a bow,” she repeated, delighted. “Okay. We need a chart. Cloud feelings.”

Scarlett touched her finger to each cloud like she was taking attendance. “Happy is the popcorn kind. Mad is the pointy kind. Sad is the long blanket one.”

“Worried is skinny spaghetti,” Glenda added, tracing a thin snake across the sky. “Sleepy is the big soft pillow one.”

“Brave,” Scarlett said after thinking, “is the… empty blue. No clouds.”

Glenda nodded, then shook her head. “But sometimes brave is… a little bunch of clouds with a hole in the middle you can see through.” She used her hands to make the hole. “You look through and there’s still… sun.”

Scarlett tilted her face. “I like that better.”

“Me too.” Glenda looked at her own hands, surprised she’d made something so good. “Forecast?”

“Okay.” Scarlett straightened like a news lady she once saw. “Today’s forecast for Scarlett: popcorn with friendly sharks in a bow. Chance of spaghetti at higher levels.”

Glenda snorted. “You mean higher branches.”

“Same thing,” Scarlett said. “What about you?”

Glenda did her own news voice, which had a tiny squeak. “Glenda forecast: pillow cloud with popcorn sprinkles. Chance of rainbow if I don’t look down too much.”

Scarlett took Glenda’s hand for that, just because. “Rainbow chance ninety percent,” she amended, squeezing once, twice (no monsters), three times (come quick), and then a slow fourth because silly love always wanted to show up. Glenda squeezed back with soft fingers, her hand small and sure.

They climbed again, inventing more rules to keep everything feeling held. Don’t skip rung-branches. Count to three before moving the next hand. Whisper the password if a branch looked tricky. “Moon,” Scarlett whispered when a thin twig looked like it wanted to fool somebody.

“Sp—oon,” Glenda whispered, and waited for the sturdier branch. “Ba—boon,” they finished together, and the finish made the trickiness look embarrassed and try to be a regular branch again.

Halfway up, Glenda stopped. Her right knee got a tremble. She slid her finger along her wrist again: twisty tummy had arrived late to the party. “Clouds,” she said, soft.

Scarlett pressed her body steady and made her face a calm place. She did up eyebrows (cry is okay), then set her foot sideways so Glenda had a platform. Three taps. Foot here.

Glenda wanted to, but her knee shook again. “I don’t wanna be stuck,” she whispered in a voice that wasn’t crying but might have been friends with it.

Scarlett thought fast and kind. “We make a step that is not scary,” she said. “A pretend step. Put your foot on my shoe. It’s solid. It’s like a ferry.” She wiggled her toes so Glenda could see where. “Ferry takes you to the next shore.”

Glenda’s mouth did a brave line. She set her sneaker on Scarlett’s sneaker. It felt wrong for half a second and then right, like a secret handshake for feet. Scarlett held very, very still. Glenda pushed up to the next branch and got it under her palms. The tremble sat down and took a breath.

“There,” Scarlett said, in a voice that made the word a blanket. “Ticket punched.”

“Thanks,” Glenda puffed, cheeks pink with both effort and shame, the shame silly and shrinking under Scarlett’s look. “I’m sorry I… ferry footed.”

“Don’t be sorry, boats are cool,” Scarlett said, and tapped twice on the bark (no monsters). Then, because she remembered their fix from when two taps had once meant something else, she drew the bandage sign with her finger on the branch between them. “See? We put a bandage. It’s a Fix Branch now.”

Glenda smiled and patted the invisible bandage. “Fix Branch,” she repeated, and the branch felt more like a friend.

They reached a place where the branches made a little flat—well, flat-ish—if you squinted. They named it The Plate. They sat with knees crossed and toes touching. The clouds had moved and made new animals, a herd of sleeping elephants now.

“Wanna make a cloud book?” Glenda asked, licking her thumb and rubbing at the air like she was turning a page. “So we know what we’re feelin’.”

Scarlett nodded immediately, then looked at her empty hands. “We don’t got paper.”

“We got heads,” Glenda said. “We write it in our heads.” She tapped her temple. “Chapter One: Popcorn Tummy Means Happy But Also Nervy. Chapter Two: Sharks Can Be Friendly With Accessories.”

Scarlett laughed so hard she had to hold her belly. “Accessories,” she repeated, and it sounded like glitter in her mouth. “Chapter Three: Rainbows Happen Even If You Don’t Look.”

Glenda put her chin on her knee. “Chapter Four: If you can’t tie a knot, it’s a Forever-Knot and it’s okay.” She toyed with the end of the string on her sneaker. “We don’t have to tie everything.”

“Chapter Five,” Scarlett said, quieter, “If you need a ferry, I’m a ferry.”

Glenda reached across the Plate and put her palm on Scarlett’s knee. “Boat friend.”

They ate imaginary snacks because climbing made you hungry. “What flavor?” Scarlett asked, passing Glenda a pretend cookie with a flourish like a waiter.

“Cloud-flavor,” Glenda said, biting air with a serious face. “Blue.”

“Always blue,” Scarlett teased. She pretended to juggle three grape clouds and dropped one on purpose so Glenda could laugh at the drop noise. Glenda obliged, a peal that climbed higher than they had.

When they set off again, Scarlett pointed to a branch above them. “That’s Berry Branch,” she decided, because it had little nubs that looked like berries had once lived there. “If we get there, that’s Level Seven.”

“How many levels we on?” Glenda asked, already pleased because seven was her age and that made it feel like a birthday.

Scarlett counted on her fingers, then threw in a silly extra number and caught Glenda’s mock gasp. “Level Seven for seven,” she declared. “If we make it, we do the ceremony.”

“What ceremony?”

“We give the sky a bow,” Scarlett said. She didn’t know what that meant, but it felt right—like you had to thank things that waited for you.

They went slow and went sure. Glenda tried a new trick—count to three dragons before moving—and liked how the dragons held still while she did it. Scarlett tried a new trick too—blow out a pretend candle before the step—and liked how it made her muscles listen.

Berry Branch was near, and the wind tickled and told stories it would not repeat. Glenda felt the spaghetti cloud sneak thin in her chest and did the slide on her wrist to show it. Scarlett nodded and made the new square-in-air sign over the next handhold: case it. Then she tested it triple. One tap, then a rub with her knuckles, then a hug with her palm. “Good branch,” she said, and put her weight.

They both hauled, faces pink, breaths loud, arms small but stubborn. They got to Berry Branch almost together. Glenda hooked her leg and then she was sitting, and then Scarlett was sitting too, and they both went very, very still the way kids do when they’ve done something they would clap for if clapping wouldn’t make them fall.

“We did it,” Glenda whispered, and her whisper was bright.

“We did it,” Scarlett whispered back, and her whisper was warm.

They didn’t look down. They looked up and then at each other and then at their hands. Glenda put her hand on Scarlett’s, palm to back, fingers wrapping, not a squeeze exactly, more like a cover. Scarlett turned her hand so their palms met and pressed the heel of her hand into Glenda’s so they could feel each other pulse. The Beats, they called it, when they wanted to check if they were still here.

“Ceremony,” Scarlett breathed. They put their hands in their laps, bent at the waist very small—little polite bows to the sky—and then bumped noses because their bows had drifted sideways and found each other’s faces. They giggled, then tried again, better.

“For the record,” Glenda said, pretending there was a recorder, “Level Seven achieved, Berry Branch, age seven, S and G.”

“For the record,” Scarlett echoed, “forecast: brave with holes in the clouds for see-through.”

They made medals out of air: Glenda pinned one invisible circle on Scarlett’s shirt with two careful fingers, and Scarlett did the same back. “You get the Ferry Foot medal,” Glenda told Scarlett. “And the Owl Guard ribbon.”

“You get the Rainbow Chance badge,” Scarlett told Glenda. “And the Bandage Artist star.”

They took a nap that wasn’t a nap, just quiet with eyes open and mouths doing small movements that weren’t words. A small scratch appeared on Glenda’s shin where bark had whispered too hard. She noticed it when the quiet gave her back her body.

“Oh,” she said, and poked the scratch to see if it had feelings. It did. “Ow, a little.”

Scarlett leaned in, doctorly. “It needs… a bandage drawing,” she decided, and drew the rectangle with crisscross lines right on Glenda’s skin with her finger. She blew on it once—the official seal. “Fixed.”

Glenda watched Scarlett’s face while she did it—the concentration, the carefulness. “I like you,” she said, simple as a glass of water.

Scarlett’s ears turned pink. “I like you,” she said back, exact same simple.

They took the long way down because down asked for extra thinking. They made a new code—two taps and a hum meant “wait, I’m looking.” Hum because your mouth was busy holding concentration if you were looking, but your throat could hum anyway. They used it three times. It kept them patient.

Near the ground, Glenda’s shoelace betrayed her and made a loop where none was needed. She stepped on it, stumbled, and thumped down onto her butt with a little huff that sounded offended. Scarlett’s eyebrows did lightning bolts—not in the code, just for comedy—and Glenda laughed before her pride could decide to cry.

“Bandage?” Scarlett asked, ready with her finger.

Glenda checked. “No bandage. Just… dust. I fell with style.”

“You did,” Scarlett agreed, nodding very solemn like a judge.

At the bottom, they stood back where they’d started, necks straight again, hands on hips the same, but different on the inside. The big tree looked like a friend who had finally told them a good joke.

“We need a certificate,” Scarlett said, tracing a big ribbon in the air. “Certified Climbers, Level Seven, with Honors in Ferry Foot.”

Glenda stamped it with her pretend stamp, tongue peeking out for accuracy. “Approved,” she said. “Expires never.”

They pressed their foreheads together because you do that when a thing is both big and done. Scarlett whispered the good-night words out of habit, even though it was day and their eyes were very on. “See you when the sun peeks.”

Glenda answered, because the answer belonged to everything they did. “I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside.”

“Forecast?” Scarlett asked, one last time, liking how the question arranged her chest in a good way.

Glenda looked up at the hole in the clouds where the blue smiled through. “Sunny with… bandages and bows,” she said.

Scarlett grinned. “Chance of ferry.”

“Chance of rainbow,” Glenda said, and then, just to hear it, “Moon.”

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett whispered.

“Ba—boon,” they finished together, as if the password put a little invisible seatbelt across the day. Then they put their palms together, pressed once, and parted—still touching at the edges, like their hands had learned how to hold on without holding.

They laid the scraps out like a picnic—two old shirts, a pillowcase that had a soft corner, a fat handful of fluff that looked like a small cloud, a jar of buttons with clinks inside, needles in a tomato thing, and thread that was the exact color of “shh.”

“We need a pattern,” Scarlett said, already tracing ear shapes in the air. “We can draw it on paper and then cut the paper and then draw around the paper and then sew the draw.”

Glenda nodded hard. “We need a license,” she added, because important things had licenses now. She drew a rectangle in the air and whispered as she wrote invisible letters. “Sewing License for Scarlett and Glenda. Permission: yes. Rule one: slow hands. Rule two: ask for help if your tummy goes twisty. Rule three: don’t sew your finger to your animal.”

Scarlett made her eyebrows do up (cry is okay) and then flat (don’t panic, we got this). “We also need our stitch codes,” she said. “One tap means ‘that stitch is good.’ Two taps means ‘no monsters but it’s loose.’ Three taps means ‘pull here.’ Four squeezes means… silly love so we don’t get grumpy.”

Glenda grinned. “And the bandage draw is for when the thread makes knots that are forever-knots.” She drew the little crisscross rectangle in the air. “We can bandage the mistake and keep goin’.”

They chose animals without looking at the jar, because the choosing was already in their hands. “I’m makin’ an owl,” Scarlett decided, because owls had been her since forever. “It gets a heart pocket. For notes.”

“I’m makin’ a bunny,” Glenda said, touching the soft corner of the pillowcase the way you pat a real head. “It gets ears that flop for when it’s listening to secrets.” She paused, then added, “Also… a tail that’s a puff.”

They drew their patterns on paper—Scarlett’s owl was a sort of rounded triangle with a flat bottom; Glenda’s bunny was a bean with long raindrop ears. Glenda’s pencil kept making the ear too thin; Scarlett put her hand on Glenda’s wrist, not to stop it but to steady it, and the next ear was perfect in the way that happens when someone’s hand is a fence for your hand.

“Okay,” Scarlett breathed. “Cut time.” She kept her tongue between her teeth and cut slow, following the line so tight it squeaked. Glenda cut with her mouth doing tiny o’s on the hard corners and little hmms on the soft ones. When she got to the tip of an ear she whispered “don’t be mean” to the scissors and the scissors minded.

They pinned the paper to fabric with pins that looked like tiny candies. “That’s too many pins,” Glenda said, counting eleven on Scarlett’s owl.

“It’s armor,” Scarlett said. “For while we’re cutting. Then we take it off so it can breathe.” She paused. “We should also breathe.”

They both did one big in-out and got the giggles because their shoulders went up at the same time.

Threading the needle took a whole year that was actually three minutes. Scarlett licked the thread and squinted and missed and missed and then got it and made a sound that was both victory and relief. Glenda held her breath the way you do for someone blowing out birthday candles and then clapped with no sound. When it was her turn, she made a tiny fish-mouth (need water) and then tried again and then slid the thread through as if the needle had finally remembered to be a doorway.

“Knots,” Scarlett said, tying a knot at the end that looked like a dot on a sentence. “Not big-big. Just enough big.”

“Dot big,” Glenda agreed, and made her knot exactly dot big. She wiggled it with a fingernail to be sure. “Okay.”

They put two body pieces together, right sides kissing. “We start with a ladder stitch,” Scarlett announced in a voice that was copying someone kind and patient. “It goes up a rung and across and up a rung and across.”

“I like ladders,” Glenda said. “’Cause you can stop and rest.” She made the first stitch and it pulled too far and crumpled the edge like a frown. She froze, eyebrows somewhere between flat and lightning.

Scarlett tapped twice on the fabric (no monsters) and added the bandage drawing with her finger on the air above the mistake. “We fix,” she said gently, and showed Glenda how to pull the thread back a whisper. “See? The frown turned into just… mouth.”

Glenda exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “Okay.” She tried again. Up, across. Up, across. “I’m makin’ rungs. It’s like the tree, but tiny.”

“We can rest at every five,” Scarlett said. “Count to five rungs and then stop and wiggle your toes so your feet don’t get forgetful.” They counted aloud together—one, two, three, four, five—and then did the toe wiggle and laughed because their toes made shadows on the fabric like puppets.

The jar of buttons made its clinky music when Scarlett opened it. “Eyes,” she announced. The blue button from their museum days rolled to the top like it had been waiting. “Oh!”

Glenda picked it up with a pinch. “It’s shy-color,” she remembered. “We can ask if it wants to be an eye.”

Scarlett held it to her cheek. “Do you want to be Owl Eye?” she asked in a whisper. Then she nodded, because the answer was yes in her head. “Okay, Shy Eye.”

“That means Bunny Eye is… Mirror Paper?” Glenda looked for something that had mirror in it and found a flat gray button with scratches that made it look like it remembered water. “This one’s old. Old feels good for bunnies.”

“Old is soft,” Scarlett agreed. “We do different eyes so they can see different kinds of things.”

Glenda pricked her finger then. It wasn’t awful, just a dot, but her breath grabbed. She slid her finger along her wrist—twisty tummy alert—and held up the tiny hurt for inspection like a person presenting rare treasure.

Scarlett’s eyebrows went up (cry is okay). “Permission to say ow,” she said softly.

“Granted,” Glenda said, and said “ow” in a very small, polite way. Scarlett took Glenda’s finger and put her own thumb on the place next to the prick, not the prick itself. She rubbed slow circles like she was winding a little music box. Then Scarlett drew the bandage rectangle on Glenda’s skin with her finger and blew on it, the official seal. “Fixed.”

“It does feel fixed,” Glenda said, surprised, then wiggled the finger like waving at the pain as it left. “Bye.”

They sewed again. Scarlett’s stitches lined up like little ants carrying crumbs. Glenda’s stitches were bigger and then smaller and then bigger again, and Scarlett watched them and said, “I like your heartbeat stitches.”

“They go boom… boom… boom-boom,” Glenda demonstrated, tapping the rhythm on the table with her pinky. “It means I’m thinkin’ about you while I sew.”

Scarlett flushed happy. “Okay, well, mine are ant marchers and they’re thinkin’, ‘Don’t drop the crumb, it’s for Glenda.’”

They left a mouth to turn their animals right-side out. Glenda pushed the bunny through the gap with her fingers and then with a pencil, slow, slow, so the ears came out like secrets being told. Scarlett did the same with the owl, and when the owl face finally bloomed right, she giggled from the throat like a hiccup that liked itself.

“Stuff time,” Glenda sang. “Clouds go in the belly.” She tucked fluff in gently with two fingers, handing it in like serving. Scarlett did three small puffs, then a bigger one, then smoothed the owl with her palm until its shape felt like a good word.

“What’s your name?” Scarlett asked the owl, head tilted. “You can tell me.”

Glenda cupped the bunny like you cup water that you don’t want to spill. “Mine is from… my grandma’s grandma story,” she said softly. “The one where she sewed a dress with teeny stitches when the light was bad and she made it good anyway.”

Scarlett nodded. “The tiny-stitch lady.”

“I wanna name the bunny Stitch-Lady,” Glenda tried, then tasted it and shook her head, smiling. “No. That’s silly. I wanna name it after her for real, but… we can make it a kid name. Little… Liddy.” She liked the sound. “Little Liddy.”

Scarlett smiled with her whole mouth. “Little Liddy. Perfect.”

“What about yours?” Glenda asked, smoothing the bunny’s ears so they listened.

“My owl is for the one who carried the stories in her pocket and gave ’em out,” Scarlett said, remembering a lap, a voice. “The one who said, ‘Tell it true and sing it if you can’t say it.’”

Glenda’s eyes got warm. “Pocket-Stories.”

Scarlett’s head bobbed. “I like… Pocket. Just Pocket.” She put a finger to the owl’s heart and pressed a tiny square of fabric there. “Pocket gets a pocket.”

They cut the heart pocket tiny-tiny, stitched it with ladder steps, and left the top open. Glenda slipped a scrap inside with an S and G on it. “Now he’s carryin’ us,” she said.

“And we’re carryin’ him,” Scarlett answered, pressing her palm against the owl’s back. They both liked that.

They anchored the eyes with careful X’s that made each button stay. Scarlett used the shy blue for Pocket’s left eye and a smaller brown for the right. The owl looked like it could see two kinds of things at once. Glenda stitched the scratched gray to Liddy’s face and found a smaller pearl for the other, and when the bunny looked up it looked like it knew old jokes.

“Tail,” Glenda remembered, rolling a fluff ball between her hands until it was a middle cloud. She stitched it on with the tiniest bites she’d ever made—bite, bite, tie, hide the knot. “Don’t fall off,” she warned the tail, and the tail agreed.

“Ears,” Scarlett said, pinching the top corners of Pocket’s head and adding little felt triangles. She sewed them on with the bandage crisscross on purpose, because that was their fix stitch and now it could be a badge. “This is the Brave-Ears stitch,” she declared.

“Bunnies get Brave-Ears too,” Glenda said, adding two crisscrosses at the base of each ear like earrings made of thread. “So when the sky is noisy, they remember bandages exist.”

They embroidered tiny mouths. Scarlett’s mouth was a soft arc with a dot. Glenda’s mouth had a tiny dimple on one side because jokes. They both leaned back and considered their creatures: halfway real, halfway them.

“Ceremony,” Scarlett whispered, because this wanted one. “We do the Names.”

Glenda nodded, solemn. “Okay.” She set Little Liddy on her lap facing Pocket. “This is Little Liddy. Named for my tiny-stitch lady.” She looked at Scarlett and had to swallow because the next part was important. “I share her with you.”

Scarlett’s face made the shape it makes when she wants to hold a thing carefully. “This is Pocket,” she said to Liddy. “Named for the story lady.” She tapped the heart pocket. “He keeps our S and G.”

They touched the animals’ noses together—owl beak to bunny nose—in a tiny hello that also meant we’re family now. Then they let the animals bump their foreheads together the way they do with each other. Glenda giggled at how serious Pocket looked; Scarlett giggled at how ready-for-jokes Liddy looked.

“License check,” Scarlett said, very official. “Rule one: slow hands. Did we do slow?”

“Mostly,” Glenda said, honest. “Except when we got excited, but then we fix.”

“Rule two: ask for help if tummy goes twisty.”

“I did twisty,” Glenda admitted, wiggling the finger that had gotten the dot. “You did bandage.”

“And I did spaghetti in my chest when my knot got wild,” Scarlett confessed. “You did the bandage draw in the air and it worked.”

“Rule three: don’t sew your finger to your animal.”

They looked at their hands as if to be sure. Ten fingers. None attached to owl or bunny.

“Pass,” they said together, relieved.

They made adoption papers on tiny scraps. Scarlett wrote POKIT at first and then giggled and squeezed the C back in. Glenda wrote LIDEE and then, liking how it looked, left it. They stamped the papers with their thumbs—press press, little swirls—and stacked them under the tomato pin cushion like a filing cabinet.

“Pocket needs a letter,” Scarlett decided, remembering the mail days. She wrote a note on a sliver: “Dear Liddy, please be nice to my person, she needs extra squeezes on lightning days. Love, Pocket.” She folded it small and slid it in the heart pocket.

Glenda made one too: “Dear Pocket, tell Scarlett to drink water with the fish-mouth sign. Love, Liddy.” She kissed it, because someone had to, and tucked it under Pocket’s wing.

They practiced the care codes. One tap on the animal’s head meant “I see you.” Two taps meant “no monsters, just a noise.” Three taps meant “come sit on my lap.” Four squeezes—on the paw or wing—meant “silly love, everything softer.”

“Show me eyebrows,” Scarlett said, lifting Liddy to face level. Glenda, without thinking, did her eyebrows up toward the bunny, and then Scarlett did hers up too because it felt like making a tent where crying could be warm, not bad.

They tried the animals on their shoulders like parrots. Pocket rode Scarlett’s left side and made her sit taller. Liddy rode Glenda’s right and made her lean her head, listening. They walked back and forth two steps and turned around and walked back, very grand.

“Liddy says you need snacks,” Glenda reported, doing the bunny voice that was just her voice but whisper-thicker. “Blue flavor.”

Pocket’s voice was Scarlett’s voice but slower. “Pocket says maybe purple today,” she intoned, and both girls made a face like hmm maybe.

They decided the animals needed something that was theirs but also theirs. “A secret stitch,” Glenda proposed. “On the inside, under the seam, where only we know.”

They turned the animals and found the underside seam and stitched four tiny slashes—////—in the same place on both, like a barcode only their fingers could feel. Scarlett tied her knot and hid it like a magician; Glenda tied hers and pressed it flat with a thumbnail. They ran their fingers over the slashes and smiled because sameness was a warm thing.

“Night practice,” Scarlett said, though it wasn’t night. They lay side by side on their blankets with the animals between them, noses almost touching, eyes bright. They did the good-night words with the animals saying them too. “See you when the sun peeks,” Scarlett said as Scarlett.

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Glenda answered as Glenda, and then as Liddy in a small hush, and then laughed because three voices made a braid.

They whispered the password with their animals’ mouths, just to see if it changed the feeling. “Moon,” Pocket said (Scarlett’s whisper).

“Sp—oon,” Liddy said (Glenda’s whisper).

“Ba—boon,” all four of them finished—two girls, two soft creatures—and the sound felt like a tiny seatbelt across the moment.

They tested bravery. Scarlett moved Pocket slowly toward Glenda’s pricked finger. “Bandage remembered?” she asked.

Glenda nodded and let the owl kiss the healed dot with his beak. “Remembered,” she said, watching her own chest not jump.

They made a chart on the back of an envelope: FEEDING: hugs, words, tiny sips of water, gentle cheeks pats. BEDTIME: head near head, paw/wing on arm. EMERGENCIES: two taps, eyebrows up, four squeezes, bandage draw, breathe.

“Breathe is important,” Glenda said, breathing big. “If I forget, make rabbit noises at me.”

“Ribbit?” Scarlett teased.

“RAB-bit,” Glenda said, scandalized, then snorted. “Okay, ribbit works too.”

They made a game where Pocket had to find the note inside his pocket without Scarlett peeking. Scarlett squeezed her eyes shut and made her hand wander like a blind mouse until it found the paper. She unfolded it and read with her serious radio voice, then looked at Glenda and did the fish-mouth sign like a reminder promise. Glenda nodded and pretended to drink. They swapped and did it again the other way because fairness was a habit now.

A little silence came and sat with them, the nice kind. Glenda stroked Liddy’s ear and looked at Scarlett and then at Pocket and then at Scarlett again. “Do you… feel brave?” she asked, not because she didn’t but because asking made it real.

Scarlett thought about her belly. “I feel… like popcorn but no sharks,” she said. “The blue kind.”

“Me too,” Glenda whispered. “I think the brave is in the bandages. Like, knowin’ we can fix.” She touched the crisscross on Liddy’s ear. “Fix stitches make brave spots.”

“Fix stitches on me too,” Scarlett said quietly, touching her own chest where the pocket would be.

Glenda scooted closer and touched the same place with two fingers, very gentle. “Bandage,” she said, drawing the tiny rectangle right there through the shirt. Scarlett’s eyes went warm. She drew the same on Glenda, same place, with the same careful blow to seal it. Glenda closed her eyes and smiled like a light turning down to cozy.

They packed up—thread into the tomato, needles asleep, buttons back to their clinky jar—but kept the animals out like honored guests. They made one more thing, because one more thing is always possible: tiny scarves. Two strips of ribbon, two knots, two bows. Scarlett tied Glenda’s because bows are easier on someone else. Glenda tied Scarlett’s and then retied it because she wanted it more even and then decided she liked the first way better and left it a little crooked on purpose.

“Certificate,” Scarlett remembered, fingers tracing a ribbon in the air. “Certificate of Welcome. This certifies that Pocket and Little Liddy have been adopted by Scarlett-and-Glenda, which is one person that is two people.”

Glenda stamped the air with the invisible stamp. “Approved. Expires never.”

They put Pocket’s pocket against Liddy’s ear so the note could whisper through cloth. Then they put their foreheads together because that’s how you close a day even in the middle of it.

“Forecast?” Scarlett asked, out of habit and joy.

Glenda looked at the soft creatures between them, the bandage stitches, the secret slashes under the seam. “Sunny with… tiny rungs,” she said. “Chance of blue popcorn. No sharks. Maybe whales—tiny.”

“And accessories,” Scarlett added, smiling. “Like scarves.”

Glenda giggled. “And pockets.”

Scarlett tapped once on Liddy’s head (I see you), twice on Pocket’s wing (no monsters), three times on Glenda’s wrist (come quick), and then made the four squeezes with their joined hands, each squeeze softer than the one before until it felt like breath.

“Moon,” she whispered.

“Sp—oon,” Glenda whispered.

“Ba—boon,” they finished, eyes bright, animals tucked, stitches holding, everything fixed that needed fixing and the rest allowed to be a mystery with a ribbon on it.

They popped their shoes off at the same time and lined them heel-to-heel like parked cars. Socks went in the shoes, toes wiggled free, and for a moment they just looked at each other’s feet like coaches inspecting gear.

“Yours got tiny brave spots,” Scarlett observed, pointing to the pale, tougher ovals in Glenda’s soles.

“Yours got the owl curve,” Glenda said, tracing the shape of Scarlett’s arch in the air. “Means you’re good at perching.”

Scarlett drew a rectangle in the air—licensing never went out of style. “Desert-Feet License for Scarlett-and-Glenda,” she intoned. “Rule one: we talk if anything feels too much. Rule two: one toe tap means ‘warm,’ two toe taps means ‘too hot,’ three finger taps on the wrist means ‘ferry me.’ Rule three: four squeezes if we start getting mad at rocks.” She made four gentle squeezes in Glenda’s hand to lock it in, each a little softer than the last.

“Approved,” Glenda said, stamping the invisible paper with her thumb. “And we drink water if I do fish-mouth.” She demonstrated: silent gulping like a small goldfish. “Also… we can bail if eyebrows say so.”

Scarlett lifted hers (up means cry is okay), then flattened them (don’t panic, we got this), then lifted again. “Okay,” she said, and rolled her shoulders like an athlete in a very serious movie. “Course layout?”

They built it out of what was there: a line of sun-warmed stones making a curvy path, a square of lighter dust where the ground held its heat differently, a darker patch where shade had licked and left. They named the stations because names made fear smaller.

“This is Pancake Rock,” Glenda declared, patting a flat one. “It looks like a breakfast.”

“Dragon Scale,” Scarlett said, touching a scalloped stone. “Frypan is the shiny one. Kind Rock is that one that stays shady.” She set Pocket the owl and Little Liddy the bunny by Kind Rock on a folded shirt—judges on their velvet bench. “You two watch; no jumping in unless it’s an emergency.”

Glenda saluted the stuffed animals like they were officials. “Pocket’s got a whistle,” she whispered. “Liddy’s got the trophy.”

Scarlett dipped a hand over Pancake Rock, testing. “Back of the hand says ‘warm-warm.’ Toes check?” She touched with the tips. One toe tap. “Warm.”

Glenda balanced on her heels and did the toe test like tapping a door politely. Two taps. “Too hot.” She drew the bandage sign in the air over the rock’s idea, a rectangle with crisscross, their signal for “we’ll fix.” “We can skip that one on lap one.”

“Shadow step,” Scarlett offered, and moved to cast her small shade across Pancake Rock. “Step in my shade—it’s like a tiny umbrella.”

Glenda grinned. “Ferry foot,” she said, and put her foot in the borrowed shade. One toe tap now. “Better.”

They rehearsed the rescue before they started—Scarlett’s sneaker placed as a ferry platform if needed; Glenda’s hand open like a handle, not a grab. Three finger taps on the wrist to ask. Bandage drawing ready in the air. “Password?” Scarlett whispered because passwords made the air behave.

“Moon,” Glenda said.

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett answered.

“Ba—boon,” they finished, and the course felt like a game instead of a dare.

Scarlett went first, slow. Heel down, then ball of foot, toes last. She counted quietly to keep her brain from making up loud stories. “One, two, three.” She tried Dragon Scale. One toe tap. “It’s fine.” She crossed to Kind Rock and set both feet there like a cat stepping into a sunbeam. “Kind Rock is living up to its name.”

Glenda followed, quick-light, almost dancing. She did a little hop onto Pancake Rock’s edge—one toe, then the other, then off. “It’s like the floor is lava but real,” she whispered, thrilled. “I’m good at not-touching.”

Scarlett gave a two-tap on Frypan. “Too hot.” She reached an arm out, and Glenda’s hand slid in. Three taps from Glenda: ferry. Scarlett offered her sneaker. Glenda set her foot on it for exactly the time it takes to say “ferry,” then launched to the next friendly spot.

They made it halfway. Heat rose around their ankles like a thought that won’t go away. Glenda paused on Dragon Scale, lips pressed, eyebrows doing a tiny dance that wasn’t code yet but could be. She slid her finger along her wrist: twisty tummy visiting. “I think… frypan is trying to fight me,” she admitted.

Scarlett nodded and pointed to Kind Rock. “Water station,” she said, fish-mouthing. Glenda copied and pretended to drink; the pretending worked enough to let the breath in. Scarlett tapped twice on Glenda’s wrist (no monsters) and lifted her eyebrows (cry is okay, even if it’s tears you can’t see). Glenda smiled without showing teeth, that quiet smile that meant “I hear you.”

“Ready?” Scarlett asked.

“Ready,” Glenda said, and they both believed it.

Second half. Scarlett tried a trick she invented between steps: blow out a pretend candle before putting her foot down. It made her foot patient. Glenda started saying the names of stones like teammates. “Pancake. Dragon. Kind. Spare me, Frypan.” Giving Frypan a funny look took away half its power.

Then it happened—the sprint. Glenda stepped onto a patch she thought was shade and it wasn’t, not enough. Heat jumped. She yelped, an honest dog-bark yelp, and then laughed as her body took over in six perfect running steps. “Hot-hot-hot-hot—hot!” Her feet made little puffs of dust, a cartoon without the drawing. She landed on Kind Rock and did a hoppity shake, blowing on her own toes, laughter and ow tangled, not a cry but a very good AHH.

Scarlett’s eyebrows did lightning bolts just to make Glenda snort mid-ow. “That was—” She had to breathe for it. “—fast.”

Glenda held her feet up like rare birds. “I flew with my feet.” The pink had risen, but not scary-pink. She touched the warm and pulled her hand back and then touched again in a braver way. “I’m okay. It surprised me. It was like… like the pan shouted my name.”

Scarlett put her palm next to Glenda’s sole—not on, just near—and waved a little fan of air. “Bandage?” she asked.

Glenda checked in with herself. “No bandage. Maybe… a ribbon.” She made the crisscross in the air anyway because it felt sweet. “Honor ribbon for not dying.”

Scarlett laughed and then got serious in the way they liked, the way that meant one person is going to say the exact right thing and the other is going to keep it. She climbed onto Kind Rock too so they were hip-to-hip. “Hear this decree,” she announced in her radio voice. “I, Scarlett, Owl Guard and Ferry Foot Captain, do hereby name Glenda Swiftfoot of the Hot Path, Defender of Yelps, Queen of Quick-Landings, for bravery and comedic sprinting.”

Glenda straightened her shoulders like the decree weighed wonderfully. “Accepted,” she said, solemn, then grinned. “In return, I name you Shadow-Thrower of the Desert, Maker of Safe Spots, Ferry of the Left Shoe.”

Scarlett bowed, a little dramatic. “I will wear that sash.” She tore a thin strip from a scrap of cloth and tied it around Glenda’s wrist like a ribbon, then looped another around her own ankle, knot firm. “Royal gear,” she explained. “Rank visible.”

They let their feet cool on Kind Rock, comparing soles like maps. Glenda’s showed a new tiny brave spot, pinking toward tough. Scarlett’s had a crescent where Dragon Scale had pressed. They traced the places with fingers, gentle, like reading braille that said “you did it.”

“Lap two,” Glenda said after their breath got smooth again. “We do it together. No sprints unless necessary.”

“Hand,” Scarlett said, and Glenda’s hand arrived like it had been waiting in the air between them this whole time. “Count.”

They invented a together-count: one for lift, two for place, three for look-up, four for notice-bodies. On “notice-bodies,” each of them checked—shoulders somewhere, breath somewhere else, eyebrows telling whether crying would be okay. It was okay. They went.

Side by side, they found a rhythm where the path stopped being separate steps and started being one thing they were making as they moved. Scarlett offered shade like a magician flicking a coin into existence. Glenda tested for both of them like a taster who trusts her tongue. “Warm. Warm. Skip. Ferry. Kind.” Their code piled up like breadcrumbs and then dissolved because they didn’t need them at that exact second. Then they needed them again. It was easy to pick them up.

At Frypan, Glenda paused, not afraid now, just respectful. She did one toe tap—surprisingly only “warm,” as if Frypan had gone to think about its behavior. “Hey,” she said to it, “no yelling my name.”

“Good rock,” Scarlett added, patting the idea of it.

They crossed without a sprint. Glenda breathed out a laugh that wasn’t relief so much as joy showing up for work. “We did it,” she said, and it was true and also not the end yet.

At the finish, which was just the folded shirt with Pocket and Liddy, they stepped off together and then kept holding hands another breath longer because together didn’t need to stop at the line. They both looked at the judges.

“Scores?” Scarlett asked, lifting Pocket with two hands.

Glenda lifted Liddy. “Liddy says ten for the yelp, five extra for not crying when it would’ve been totally okay to cry.”

“Pocket says nine for the ferry foot, one extra for the decree language,” Scarlett reported. “Bonus for sashes.”

“Fair.” Glenda touched Pocket’s head. “Also, judge, please note: Frypan apologized.”

Pocket’s head did a little nod in Scarlett’s hand. “Noted,” Scarlett said in Pocket-voice, slow and important.

They made a medal ceremony because medals help your body remember later. Glenda cut circles from the soft corner of the old shirt, and Scarlett drew tiny suns on them with a stub of pencil. They tied the medals on with thread—over or under the sash, it didn’t matter, it looked perfect both ways.

“Speech?” Scarlett asked.

Glenda cleared her throat like a mayor. “I’d like to thank my feet for not quitting, and my brain for remembering to yell in a funny way.” She pointed at Scarlett. “And my ferry for being a boat.”

Scarlett did her speech in an announcer whisper. “I’d like to thank shade, the ghost of it and the real of it, and my partner for letting me be a moving umbrella.”

They tested their soles on the coolness of the folded shirt, just to feel the change. It felt like reward. Glenda pressed the side of her foot to Scarlett’s side of foot and they stayed like that, foot to foot, hands still holding, bodies like parentheses around a sentence that said “we did a thing together.”

“Forecast?” Scarlett asked out of habit; asking made her chest tidy itself.

Glenda looked at the stones—which were just stones again now that they were done yelling—and at Scarlett’s ribbons and at her own. “Sunny with quick dashes,” she said. “Chance of shade appearing just in time.”

“Chance of decree,” Scarlett added, nodding at Glenda’s wrist sash.

Glenda tilted her head. “Side note,” she said in her librarian voice. “Swiftfoot of the Hot Path feels like a knight. Knights need crests.”

Scarlett’s eyebrows made a slow excited wave. “Yes.” She traced in the dust: a tiny foot with a ribbon, a little owl casting a shadow, a bunny ear listening, and four crisscrosses—their bandage mark—in the corners. “Crest,” she announced. “If we forget, we can draw it again.”

Glenda drew it again beside Scarlett’s, matching line for line like they were playing copy-cat in a mirror. “If I step wrong later and it surprises me again,” she said, honest but not worried, “will you do the eyebrows and the bandage?”

“Automatically,” Scarlett said. “Before you even ask. My body already knows.”

Glenda smiled the kind that starts at the eyes and works downward. “Mine too,” she said, and then rubbed her thumb along Scarlett’s wrist where three taps meant ferry—the path their bodies knew by now. “I’m proud of us.”

“Me too.” Scarlett leaned their foreheads together, because even standing, that was the hinge. “Password?” she whispered, just because it always made the day click shut nice.

“Moon,” Glenda breathed.

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett answered.

“Ba—boon,” they finished together, Pocket and Liddy tucked against their ribs like small, soft judges who had decided the day was beautiful.

They didn’t say the good-night words, not exactly, but the shape of them flickered there anyway, curling in the space between their brows as their hands loosened and then linked again for the walk back across ordinary ground. If their feet found a warm patch, they used their new trick—ferry or shadow or five slow counts—and then the trick wasn’t new anymore, it was theirs, part of the way they moved through the world: four squeezes when needed, eyebrows telling the truth, bandage signs drawn on air, and an honorary decree that would last as long as feet and days and jokes.

They decided the job needed a name, because names make your hands steadier. Scarlett wrote it on the top of a scrap with a thick pencil: STORM KEEPERS. Glenda underlined it twice, then once more for luck.

“Duties,” Scarlett said, the way she said that word when she was in charge of something tiny but important. “One: set up the Night Table. Two: keep calm in our pockets. Three: log the storm so we can remember it right and laugh later.”

Glenda clicked her tongue once, the sound she used when she approved. “Four: shadow show if required. Five: squeeze protocol if panic.”

“Squeeze protocol is evergreen,” Scarlett agreed, and squeezed Glenda’s hand once, twice (no monsters), three times (come quick), four times (silly love), the fourth a soft dusting of a squeeze, the way you close a book gently.

They laid the Night Table with small treasure like servers plating a very serious dessert. A button from the jar that had become museum exhibits once. The ribbon with the forever-knot (still forever). A smooth stone they both liked to hold when talking. Pocket the owl and Little Liddy the bunny sat on folded cloth like juniors in a court, ready to vote with their soft faces. Glenda made labels on tiny slips and stuck them down with spit and stubbornness. “Welcome Stone. Ribbon of Not-Yet. Pocket. Liddy.” Her letters were rounder now, but she still bent close to get the lines to obey.

“Flame,” Scarlett said, checking the tiny battery lantern that hummed its quiet hum. She turned the knob until the light wasn’t so so bright. The small gold circle it made on the table looked like a coin that never got spent. “We’re allowed to press the button,” she said, pleased. “Keeper of Small Lights.” She gave herself the title with a solemn nod.

“Listener-in-Chief,” Glenda added, touching her ear and then pressing it to the table for a moment to feel the faint hum, the way she liked to listen to puzzles. “I’ll call thunder types.”

A sound like a fingertip drumming on a window announced the practice round. They both went still, smiling, because the first drops had that playful voice, more chat than shout. Scarlett lifted her eyebrows (cry is okay if it needs to be) and Glenda lifted hers back and grinned. Outside-their-two started talking louder, that soft-slow conversation turning into a fast one, and then the drum rolled gentle across the roof (they didn’t say roof; they just heard it and had the picture together).

“We need a symbol key,” Scarlett said, opening their battered pencil book to a fresh page. She drew a tiny lightning zigzag. “We count between flash and boom, like scientists on a picnic.”

“I’ll be the picnicker,” Glenda said, pencil poised. “You be the scientist.”

Scarlett took the counting duty, the way she took ferry duty when feet needed a boat. “Okay. Flash—one one-thousand, two one-thousand—boom. Two,” she reported.

Glenda wrote it carefully: 1st BOOM = 2. She added a star. “Type?”

Scarlett listened to how the thunder was shaped. “Barrel-roll,” she decided. “Smooth. Friendly dragon in the distance.”

“Barrel,” Glenda wrote, and drew a tiny barrel that looked like a square with a curve problem. “Next.”

The next flash brightened the little gold circle on their Night Table and the next boom came quicker, a spoon on a pot, bang-bang with a crack in the middle that lifted both their shoulders a little before they remembered themselves.

“Pan-crack,” Glenda said, more breath than voice. She wrote PAN-CRK and dotted it hard.

“Up eyebrows,” Scarlett reminded, lifting hers. Glenda lifted hers too and a laugh escaped like a small animal that had been hiding in her chest.

They tested the calm kit in a mock drill because drills made your body obedient. Fish-mouth (drink water) without real water. Two taps on wrist (no monsters) because thunder isn’t a monster, it’s weather being loud. Bandage sign—crisscross rectangle—drawn over the little jump in Glenda’s shoulders. “We can fix,” Scarlett said softly. It wasn’t a promise so much as a thing that already belonged to them.

“Names,” Glenda said, sniffing like she was lining up facts on a shelf. “We have Barrel. We have Pan-crack. We also need—” She paused as a long, low roll went like someone sliding a heavy trunk across the floor of the sky. “Drawer-Drag.”

Scarlett’s pencil made a scribble that looked like motion. “Drawer,” she wrote. Then she held the pencil still for a second. “There’s also Blanket,” she added, when the rain turned from dots to sheets and the sound went hush-hush-hush, steady like breathing when you finally quit worrying.

“Blanket,” Glenda repeated, and her shoulders dropped that last little distance to where rest lives. “Blanket is my favorite.”

They strung the bandage garland with the ribbon and thread and bits of paper. Four little crisscross rectangles, spaced like notes. Scarlett tied because she liked knots; Glenda held because she liked the feeling of being in the knot without having to make it. They lifted it together and hooked it to a nail someone else had left in a good place long ago. The garland sagged in a kind way, a smile over their Night Table.

“Decree,” Scarlett said, always ready to pronounce something official when fear was sniffing around the edges. She put her hand on the table like a judge swearing in. “We, the Storm Keepers, declare that loudness is allowed and we will be louder if necessary. But our kind of loud,” she added, tapping their squeeze chart. “Not shouting. The squeeze kind. The eyebrows kind.”

Glenda nodded and added, “And the shadow kind.” She moved the lantern behind Pocket and Liddy and made an owl shadow with her hand, a soft-eared shape bobbing on the wall like a story in motion. “Good evening, citizens,” Owl Shadow said in a voice that was just Glenda’s voice a little lower. “We are here to keep the calm inside the noise.”

Scarlett made Bunny Ears with her hand and bumped Owl Shadow with a rabbit nose. “We brought snacks,” Bunny Shadow said gravely. “Blue flavor.”

Glenda laughed and then stopped because a flash lit up the little room in a rude way, white edges on everything. Both girls made the password on breath alone, not really sound. “Moon,” Scarlett breathed, not even meaning to.

“Sp—oon,” Glenda breathed back.

“Ba—boon,” they finished, and the big boom crashed right then, like the sky had been waiting for permission. It was so close it put its hand right in their stomachs. Glenda’s fingers clenched on the pencil. Her eyes went shiny in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with tears and everything to do with chemistry happening all at once.

“Knock-knock,” Scarlett said, quick, gentle, the way you throw a small rope to somebody who’s wobbling. She tapped Glenda’s forehead with one knuckle, light as a fairy’s toe. “Who’s there?”

“Me,” Glenda said in a small rush, like remembering a house key under a mat. Her shoulders fell back into their right places. “Me is here.”

Scarlett touched their bandage garland with a satisfied little pat. “Logging: One Scare—fixed.” She wrote it down with the pride of a med student completing her first perfect stitch: PAN-CRK CLOSE = knock-knock fix. She added a tiny heart. “Science,” she said. “With art.”

Glenda breathed out long, then in slow. “We should do a weather song,” she said, careful not to make it too sing, just a hum, because their songs were mostly humming and spine and breath. She hummed a shape that went up only when the rain got bossy, then came down to sit when Blanket took over. Scarlett joined, but held a low note under it, a floor for the sound to stand on.

Between hums, they played at radio—the old game—but tonight their broadcast was just to themselves. “This is Storm Station S&G,” Scarlett whispered in her announcer voice. “Current conditions: generous rain, occasional pan-crack, blanket trending.”

“This just in,” Glenda reported, cupping her hand as if receiving a secret from the air. “Listener reports a stomach doing light popcorn. Recommendation: switch to slow pretzel.” She crossed her arms, hugged, and relaxed.

“Pretzel accepted,” Scarlett said, hugging herself too so Glenda wouldn’t be doing anything alone.

They added to the log every time the sky made a statement. Barrel. Drawer. Pan-crack. Blanket. Scarlett started drawing little faces next to each one—a happy face for Blanket, a surprised face for Pan-crack, a thinking face for Drawer, a brave face for Barrel. Glenda added ticks for the counting and got fast at hearing the boom right when it counted to one or two or three.

“Educational content,” Glenda said, teacherish, then tried to explain the mile-per-second thing and got it half-right and half-wonderful. “It’s not science science, but it’s feelings science,” she concluded. “I can tell close thunder because it puts its hand on my belly. Far thunder is polite.”

“Polite thunder would send a note,” Scarlett said. She took a scrap and wrote: “Dear Storm, thanks for the show. Please be respectful. Sincerely, S&G.” She folded it tiny and tucked it in Pocket’s heart pocket. Pocket and Liddy got deputized every storm because they had the faces for it.

Another flash; another not-so-far boom. Glenda answered with ritual instead of flinch. Fish-mouth. Two taps—no monsters. Bandage draw. Four light squeezes. It worked like muscle memory now; her body did it while her brain was busy noticing how the lantern halo made their labels look official.

“Shadow show, now,” she suggested, that good bossy tone that meant something fun would also be helpful. They moved the lantern and made their hands do an owl with antlers and a rabbit with a pirate hat, and then a ferry boat that had legs for when it needed to walk. They narrated in whispers. The owl with antlers took the scary noises, put them in its antlers like ornaments, and shook them until they tinkled instead of slammed. The rabbit with the pirate hat listened for pockets of quiet and mapped the way there with hop-hop gestures. The ferry boat with legs carried any overfull heart to the Night Table and let it sit on Welcome Stone until it felt like a comfortable shoe again.

“I wish we could teach storms,” Glenda said between characters, thoughtful. “Not to be quiet. Just to be kind with their timing.”

Scarlett nodded, her hands paused in mid-shadow. “Maybe we are. A little. We’re teaching us, and the storm overlaps with us, so it learns by accident.” She smiled at how good that sounded and shrugged like okay if it wasn’t science, it was something.

They changed roles without saying: Glenda took the pencil; Scarlett took the listening; each went to the other’s skill because that was also their job—to switch and be fine at both. Glenda’s log got neater; Scarlett’s ears learned when a Drawer was about to become a Blanket.

“Forecast?” Scarlett asked after a long smooth stretch of rain where Blanket reigned. They had always liked forecasting not because it was right, but because it shaped your spine in a hopeful way.

Glenda squinted at the page of symbols and at the way her chest felt like the inside of a seashell. “Blanket with occasional friendly barrels,” she said. “Pan-cracks decreasing. Chance of sleep creeping in without permission.”

Scarlett wrote SLEEP CHANCE: HIGH and underlined it. “We should prepare the Good-Night With Weather,” she decided. “Weather edition of the words.”

They paired everything with small motions. “See you when the sun peeks,” Scarlett said, touching the bandage garland once like a blessing. “Through the hole in the blanket,” she added, because that was the day they’d named brave: the hole where blue came through.

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Glenda answered, pressing two fingers to her closed eyelids—not hard, just a check—then touching her chest where they’d once drawn invisible bandages on each other. “Even if the sky talks in its sleep.”

They turned the lantern down until the coin of light was only a ghost. Pocket and Liddy got tucked side by side, a paw on a wing the way their care chart liked. Scarlett slid their log book under the Night Table edge like a seed planted. Glenda set the ribbon of forever-knot so the knot faced outward, like a guard wearing a sash.

“Last checks,” Scarlett whispered. “Password integrity.”

“Moon,” Glenda said, sleep-rough, happy to say it again because it always tidied the air.

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett breathed.

“Ba—boon,” they finished, and the nearest thunder answered with a Barrel that sounded like a big cat purring in a low room—present, not mean.

They lay down where they always ended up by the time the games turned real: shoulder to shoulder, foreheads a hinge for a second, the hinge opening to make room for breath. Scarlett’s hand found Glenda’s wrist (three taps: if you need me ferry, I’m already there). Glenda’s hand found Scarlett’s palm (one tap: I see you; two taps: no monsters; four soft squeezes: even if I dream I remember).

“Tell me a tiny thing,” Scarlett said, the way she said it to close her own eyes.

Glenda thought for a moment, listening to the Drawer move a trunk that wasn’t really there. “When I’m older,” she murmured, “I’m still going to put bandage stitches on things that aren’t broken, just to keep them brave. Like… like earrings on ears or crisscross on a pocket.”

Scarlett smiled in the dark where Glenda could hear it even if she couldn’t see. “When I’m older,” she answered, “I’m still going to count between flash and boom, even if no one cares about the number but me.”

“We’ll care,” Glenda said, already half dreaming. “I’ll write it down. PAN-CRK decreasing… Blanket is best…”

“Blanket is best,” Scarlett echoed, and the storm, like a big breath that had shown off enough, agreed by settling. The bandage garland didn’t move but it felt like it was watching kindly. Pocket’s pocket had their note, a tiny folded promise from earlier days that kept renewing itself without asking.

If thunder grumbled again it did it like someone who had learned to tap twice—no monsters—before speaking. If lightning came it did it with manners, a polite flashing of a visitor’s badge at the door. The Storm Keepers, off duty but not really—because their bodies knew what to do now—drifted with the sound into the soft middle of sleep, their job clipboard set between them in the shape of two hands that had nothing to hold because everything was already held.

And if either of them twitched—as bodies do when dreams try to sprint—four quieter and quieter squeezes answered, the last one just a brush of pulse against pulse, enough to say remember:

See you when the sun peeks.

I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside.

They decided they needed a new kind of license, because turning eleven deserved paperwork. Scarlett drew it in the air first—habit—and then on a scrap in thick pencil:

POETS’ LICENSE

Scarlett & Glenda

Rule 1: Tell it true.

Rule 2: Secret parts allowed.

Rule 3: Perform if brave. Hide if needed.

Approved: S & G (expires never)

Glenda added a tiny crisscross rectangle beneath Approved—their bandage sign—then blew on it like a seal. “So if a line comes out too sharp, we can fix it without throwing it away,” she said.

“Exactly.” Scarlett dated the corner with both their birthdays because the poems were for both, even if tonight’s would be hers for Glenda and Glenda’s for her. “We should set the stage.”

“Or the nest,” Glenda said, softer. “I like nest better for poems.”

They arranged their nest the way a tailor lays cloth: blankets overlapped and smoothed with the old two-palms slide; Pocket the owl and Little Liddy the bunny sat up front as patient audience; the smooth “Welcome Stone” from the Night Table came over because it liked to be held during first lines. Their stubby pencil had been promoted to “the pencil” and lived in a folded bit of paper like a sheath. Scarlett tested its point on her thumbnail. “Ready to be important,” she murmured.

Glenda set down two folded sheets like wrapped presents. Hers had a crooked ribbon of thread looped through the top corner; Scarlett’s had four tiny //// slash marks in one margin—their secret stitch drawn instead of sewn, so the page would match all their other made things.

“Rules of reading,” Scarlett said, slipping into announcer voice because it stopped her hands from floating away. “One: you can stop mid-line if your eyebrows say so.”

Glenda lifted hers (up: cry is okay), then flattened (don’t panic, we got this), then lifted again anyway because permission felt good. “Two,” she offered, “you can substitute a code-word if the actual word is too much. Like… ‘blue’ for the kind of feeling that’s nice but also big.”

“And three,” Scarlett said, “after we read we do the four squeezes so our chests don’t keep the extra electricity.”

“Deal.” Glenda tucked her legs under and looked at the page like a teammate, not a test.

“Who goes first?” Scarlett asked.

Glenda looked at the ribbons of thread on her page. “You,” she said. “I’m still knotting in my head.”

Scarlett touched the Welcome Stone. Pocket and Liddy watched like judges who only ever gave tens. She cleared her throat, tiny—a ceremony more than a sound—and unfolded her paper. The first line was careful, letters a little taller than usual so they could carry weight.

“For Glenda,” she read, voice low and even. “Swiftfoot, Ferry—” She paused and glanced up; Glenda’s smile moved forward like she’d been named in the exact right way.

“Go on,” Glenda said. “I like it already.”

Scarlett continued, couching shyness in the radio hum she’d practiced all her life. “You are the girl who calls a rock kind and makes it true,” she read, “who marks a branch with bandage light and climbs it anyway.” She stopped and looked over. “I didn’t rhyme on purpose,” she explained quickly, as if apologizing for not playing a certain game.

Glenda shook her head. “It sounds like us,” she said. “Keep.”

Scarlett’s hand trembled once; she pressed her thumb to the //// in the margin and found the steadiness that lived there. “You collect the loudness and make it into jewelry for an owl,” she read, thinking of the shadow show and laughing a little in the middle. “You plant a pocket in an owl and put a note inside that says ‘drink water’ because sometimes people forget their throats.”

Glenda made the fish-mouth to prove she hadn’t forgotten; both of them laughed under their breath.

Scarlett turned the page. The next part had dents where a pencil had pressed too hard and then pretended it hadn’t. “You are the bandage drawn on air,” she read, and the words were almost too much for her mouth. Up eyebrows; Glenda matched them without a word. “You are the yes that taps once under the table and the knock-knock that always brings me back.”

Glenda blinked and looked down for a second like a person catching something delicate, then back up. “I like that part. I want to put that part on my forehead,” she said, half-smiling. “Keep.”

Scarlett glanced at the last section—the one she’d written fast and then covered with a hand for ten minutes because it felt like a sparkler, bright and loud and too much if you held it wrong. “This is the secret part,” she warned. “I might… code.”

“Blue is allowed,” Glenda said. She nudged the Welcome Stone closer to Scarlett’s hip, in case it wanted to help.

Scarlett read, softer. “Some days you are the only reason the world doesn’t feel like a pan-crack,” she murmured. “Some days I am a ferry made out of your shadow. When I forget how to be a person, I copy your eyebrows.”

Glenda let out a breath that shook once and then steadied. “That’s… blue,” she said, smiling without showing any teeth. “Good blue.”

Scarlett finished gently: “When the sun peeks, I always already know one person who’s awake inside.” She folded the page on that sentence and put the pencil across the fold like a bar so no more words could spill out.

Glenda didn’t clap. She put her fingers on Scarlett’s wrist and tapped: one (I see you), two (no monsters), three (come quick—here I am), four softer squeezes that traveled from glove to glove until both of them were breathing easier.

“Your turn?” Scarlett said, when her chest had let go of enough.

Glenda picked up her paper. It had smudges where she’d erased hard, then returned the erased words anyway because erasing didn’t make them less true; it just made them shy first. She held the page in both hands the way you hold a letter from someone you love and began.

“For Scarlett,” she read, voice steadier than she expected, “Owl Guard, Maker of Shade Where There Isn’t Any.” She smiled because the title fit and felt earned. “You are a calendar that says ‘expires never’.”

Scarlett had to put her mouth sideways to hide the sudden grin. “Keep,” she whispered.

Glenda’s next lines came like steps, sure-footed now that they’d started. “You count between flash and boom so I know how to wait,” she read. “You wear a sash made of nothing and it still stays on. You draw a bandage on my skin and it turns into a door.”

“A door,” Scarlett echoed, surprised by the image; she liked it immediately. “Door is good.”

Glenda nodded. “It is. I put it in on purpose.” She scanned for the part she’d argued with and then left in anyway. “You don’t make me smaller when I sprint,” she read. “You name me Queen of Quick-Landings and tie a ribbon so my knees remember to be brave.”

Scarlett pressed the ribbon around her ankle as if it could feel its own history. “I do do that,” she said, half-bashful.

Glenda smiled. “Secret section,” she warned, and her thumb worried the thread loop like it was a worry stone. “Code allowed.”

“Blue allowed,” Scarlett echoed.

Glenda took a breath that had to come from somewhere below her heart. “Sometimes you are the only reason my laugh shows up,” she said, the words small and exact. “Sometimes I’m a museum with no labels until you point and say, ‘This is rare.’ Sometimes my hands are full of nothing, and then you give me a pocket.”

Scarlett’s eyebrows went up. “I’m keeping that line forever,” she said. “My face knows it should.”

Glenda glanced at the last bit, the one that embarrassed her in a nice way. “When I grow bigger I’m still going to write your name on my inside seam,” she read—quiet-quick, like if she said it fast it couldn’t catch fire. “////. Same place as mine. So I don’t forget who to be in the middle.”

They didn’t talk for a few heartbeats. They let the air do the clapping—little invisible hands tap-tapping the sides of their ribs. Then Scarlett reached without looking and pressed her forehead to Glenda’s for one second, exactly the hinge they always needed at exactly the hinge time.

“Addendum,” Scarlett said, because sometimes you had to formalize your softness. She took the pencil and wrote at the bottom of both poems: READ ONCE A YEAR OR WHEN NEEDED. She underlined WHEN NEEDED twice.

Glenda wrote in the margin next to that: OR WHEN BLUE.

Scarlett circled BLUE and drew the bandage sign next to it. “We should make covers,” she said, lighter now, craft-brain waking up to tidy up what the word-brain had scattered. “Chapbooks. Tiny books.”

“Titles?” Glenda asked, already angling the thread to make a useless yet necessary bow.

Scarlett considered her own poem. “Bandage Light,” she decided.

Glenda nodded like the choice had been waiting. “Mine is Inside Seam,” she said. “I’ll draw the slashes on the corner.”

They did—little covers from thicker paper, folded and pressed with knuckle bones. Scarlett lettered BANDAGE LIGHT with patience; Glenda lettered INSIDE SEAM with a flourish that made the M look like two people standing shoulder to shoulder. They punched a hole and tied thread through, the knot sitting like a small star at the top of each.

“Now the hard part,” Scarlett said, softer. “Public version or pocket version?”

Glenda chewed the inside of her cheek the way she did when choosing jellybeans. “I can do public tomorrow,” she decided. “Like, two safe stanzas for laughing people. The secret lines—” She tapped Inside Seam. “—pocket version. Right now, just us.”

“Pocket version for me too,” Scarlett said. “The world gets the shade and the sash. You get the bandage door.”

They built a little ceremony because things went in better with ceremonies. Pocket and Liddy presided, solemn. The Welcome Stone sat between the chapbooks for a moment, warming them. Then they slid both books into Pocket’s heart pocket to “swear them in,” as Scarlett put it. Pocket bulged with promises and looked proud. Glenda kissed her fingers and touched Liddy’s ear; Liddy was listening, as usual.

“Copy for redundancy,” Scarlett said, pulling the books back out, half mocking her own carefulness, half honoring it. She dug in her bag and found the other folded paper they kept just for these moments: a little envelope with S & G drawn like a gate. They tucked the chapbooks inside, then debated where to hide them.

“Not too hard to find,” Glenda said. “Future-us will forget the trick.”

“Not too easy either,” Scarlett countered. “Future-us likes a quest.” She thought, then snapped—small, pleased. “We put it where our squeezes end. Between our pillows. It’ll live in the hinge.”

“The hinge,” Glenda repeated, liking the shape of the word now that it belonged to their foreheads, their poems, their everything. “Perfect.”

They slid the envelope into that exact seam, where two blankets overlapped and two skulls often met. It disappeared and somehow felt more present, like a word you put under your tongue to keep.

“Public practice?” Glenda asked, tucking hair behind her ear in the grown way that surprised her every time she did it. “Two safe bits.”

Scarlett stood, then sat right back down because their stage was better on the floor. She smoothed Bandage Light and read the less-blue section, the one about naming rocks kind and counting between flash and boom. She read it bigger, with humor tucked in where the audience would need it. Glenda did her “crowd laugh” quietly at the right places, then took her turn and read the sash made of nothing line and the ribbon-for-knees line and the part about writing //// inside—she said “four little stitches” out loud and flicked her eyes toward Scarlett for the pocket-coded rest. They both laughed softly when “ferry made out of your shadow” floated through the room like a boat that knew the route.

“Score?” Scarlett asked the judges.

Glenda consulted Liddy’s serious face. “Ten for telling the truth without letting your neck shake,” she said.

Scarlett consulted Pocket’s long memory. “Ten for saying the secret and living,” she said solemnly.

“Living gets tens,” Glenda agreed, and breathed out that last tight thread from her chest she hadn’t noticed was there.

They were quiet again, the good quiet. Glenda turned on her side and looked at Scarlett like she was reading her book in a soft chair. “Forecast?” she asked, because habit had become comfort.

Scarlett considered, not the weather outside but the weather in. “Clear with blue sneaking in on purpose,” she said. “Chance of performance tomorrow. Chance of quick eyebrows if I forget which lines are for the world.”

“I’ll be your eyebrows,” Glenda said. “You can borrow mine.”

“You can borrow my radio voice,” Scarlett answered. “We’ll trade.”

They lay on their backs then and spoke without looking at each other because sometimes your mouth is braver when your eyes aren’t watching. “Do you ever… think about the people we’ll be?” Glenda asked, careful like stepping on stones she’d already tested.

“Only if I can write their names first,” Scarlett said, half joking, half not. She held up a hand and traced four small slashes on the air. “They’ll have this on the inside for sure.”

“Inside seam forever,” Glenda said. “And bandage light for when we forget.”

Scarlett turned toward her. “Tell me a not-tiny thing,” she asked, which was new, and felt eleven.

Glenda considered, then spoke quietly, steadily. “I’m not scared of being big,” she said. “I’m scared of losing our words for it.”

Scarlett didn’t flinch from that; she let it sit between them. “Then we’ll put them in more places,” she decided. “Chapbooks. Pockets. Inside seams. And if all else fails—” She tapped her eyebrows up. “—we’ll draw them on our faces.”

Glenda smiled and did hers up too, creating a small tent where everything was allowed to feel like something. “Password before sleep?” she asked, though it wasn’t entirely sleep time yet; it was just the time when the hinge wanted closing.

“Moon,” Scarlett breathed.

“Sp—oon,” Glenda breathed back.

“Ba—boon,” they finished, and the syllables clicked into the room like a latch. Four squeezes followed—counted in their wrists, softened until the last one was only pulse against pulse.

Scarlett lifted her chapbook again, tempted to read one line she loved to herself. She didn’t; she pressed it under the envelope in the hinge and patted the place twice (no monsters). “Good-night words?” she asked, and it felt right to say them after words like these.

“See you when the sun peeks,” Glenda said, and then added, because tonight had earned an amendment, “and when the poems remember us.”

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Scarlett answered, “and my eyebrows up just in case.”

They lay there like a sentence that had found its period, soft and certain. Pocket’s pocket had carried their promises; Liddy’s listening had caught every crumble of voice without dropping any. Their Poets’ License lay where the pencil had left it: expires never, approved by girls who understood that rules were scaffolds, not cages, and that language could be a rope, a door, a pocket, a bandage, a hinge.

If sleep made either of them do the little sprint dreams always do, the other one caught it early with a small tap and a press and a code-word whispered without needing sound. And if morning arrived in its usual way—shy, then suddenly present—the chapbooks would still be in the hinge, the public versions already picking their lines for sharing, the secret parts warm in the seam where two foreheads meet and make a door you can walk through and come back from, any time, forever.

They made a radio out of the table.

Not really, but that’s how it felt when they laid everything out the way a station would: the portable recorder in the middle like a small animal that eats voices; a stack of index cards with topics; the pencil (the pencil) freshly sharpened; a paper sign Scotch-taped to a cup that said ON AIR in block letters; Pocket and Little Liddy turned to face forward, dignified listeners in the front row.

“License,” Scarlett said automatically, because important things behave better with a title. She printed on an index card in thick letters:

BROADCAST LICENSE

S&G RADIO (“The Hinge”)

Rule 1: No lying unless it’s the ad voice.

Rule 2: Signals: eyebrows up = keep going; flat = pause; fish-mouth = water.

Rule 3: Four squeezes if our throats do thunder.

Approved: S & G (expires never)

Glenda signed with a flourish, then drew their tiny crisscross rectangle under Approved—the bandage sign—and blew on it. “To patch dead air,” she said, grave.

They tested levels with nonsense. Scarlett leaned to the recorder’s silver grill. “Moon,” she said at normal talking volume.

Glenda watched the red light. “Sp—oon,” she said a little softer.

They both finished in radio whisper, perfectly together: “Ba—boon.”

Scarlett hit stop, rewound with her thumbnail until the tape clicked, and hit play. Their voices came back slightly tinny and, to their surprise, slightly older. Glenda blinked. “I sound like… me, but on purpose.”

“You sound like you reading a bedtime story to a crowd wearing socks,” Scarlett decided, delighted. “That’s a compliment.”

Glenda took her post-it labeled HOST and stuck it to her shirt. Scarlett took PRODUCER and put it sideways on her sleeve. They traded it back and forth twice just to feel the switch happen and laughed because it felt like a handshake.

“Jingle,” Glenda declared. “We need an opening jingle so listeners aren’t scared when the words start.” She tapped a rhythm on the table with a knuckle—tap, pause, tap-tap, hold. Scarlett hummed a three-note shape over it, then added a low hum underneath like a floor. They practiced until the table felt like a drum that knew what to do.

Scarlett cleared her throat softly, glanced at Glenda (eyebrows up: go), and pressed Record.

The jingle came first—tap, pause, tap-tap—and their two-voice hum braided itself around the little red eye. Then Glenda leaned toward the grill and smiled the way you can hear. “Good evening, hinge-listeners,” she said. “This is S&G Radio, The Hinge, coming to you from… right where we always are.” She grinned because saying “right where we always are” made it bigger than a location. “I’m Glenda.”

“I’m Scarlett,” Scarlett said warmly. “Tonight’s programming includes the forecast, one interview, several important commercial messages, and the Midnight Hinge.”

Glenda shuffled an index card without looking at it. “First, the news.” Her voice went announcer-bright. “Welcome Stone remains in service and accepting hands. Bandage Stitches are trending. Pocket continues to carry: today’s pocket contents include a folded note and two new promises.”

“Two,” Scarlett echoed, counting with her fingers in the air. “Also in the news, the Ribbon of Not-Yet continues not to be a bow, and we respect it.”

“Now the forecast,” Glenda said, slipping easily into the role they had invented at nine and kept because it fit. “Cloud feelings: Blanket trending, occasional Barrel-rolls, low chance of Pan-Crack unless someone slams the door—” She paused, then added, “—which we will forgive.”

“Listeners are advised to breathe like pretzels and accept blue if it shows up,” Scarlett said, soothing. “Our hotline is open for eyebrows.”

Glenda flashed her eyes up (go on) and reached for the cup with ON AIR to make it feel official. “Sponsor break,” she announced, mouth curving. “Tonight’s show is brought to you by Ferry Foot—‘When the path gets shouty, borrow a shoe you trust.’”

Scarlett dropped into her ad voice, half serious, half making herself not laugh. “Ferry Foot: now with adjustable shade. Side effects may include dignity and getting where you meant to go.”

Glenda tried not to, but she snorted. “Additional support provided by Bandage Light,” she read from her card, fully committed. “For when your insides need a tiny door. Apply by drawing in the air; seal with one gentle blow.”

“Bandage Light,” Scarlett intoned. “Not a toy. Actually, yes, a toy. But also real.”

Glenda set her card down, pleased. “Back to you in the studio,” she said, pivoting. “Interview segment?”

Scarlett lifted PRODUCER off her sleeve and stuck it to the recorder. “Guest is ready,” she whispered. “We will treat her with all respect and also ask at least one question we didn’t practice, to be brave.”

A knock as quiet as a bird’s foot came and then a familiar voice: “My children on the air?” Lozen leaned in the doorway with that smile that always looked like she knew jokes you hadn’t heard yet. She nodded at the rigged table studio and the ON AIR cup. “I’m late but I brought the truth,” she said, coming to sit on the edge, hands folded. “How do I behave on radio?”

“Like yourself but with commas,” Scarlett said, deadpan. Glenda gestured to the recorder. “We’re live. We do eyebrows if you need.”

“I have my own,” Lozen murmured, raising one (blue allowed) and then the other (also blue).

Glenda straightened, held the Welcome Stone in one palm like a microphone, and leaned forward. “Our guest this evening is Lozen: seam goddess, knot translator, teacher of Brave-Ears stitch. Welcome.”

Lozen inclined her head to Glenda, then to Scarlett. “Thank you for the grand title,” she said. “My actual job is noticing and not making a fuss.”

Scarlett’s mouth twitched. “We like noticing.”

“First question,” Glenda said, glancing at her card and then away because it felt better to look at Lozen’s face. “When you taught us to sew our animals, you gave us the bandage stitch. What do you call that, really?”

Lozen thought for half a beat. “Invisible mending,” she said. “It’s a promise stitch. It says, ‘We will not quit just because it isn’t perfect.’”

“Promise stitch,” Scarlett repeated, writing it down with satisfaction. “Next question from the producer.” She sat up straighter, voice a little lower. “What would you say on the radio to kids who want to make pockets in things that don’t have pockets?”

Lozen smiled as if she’d been asked her favorite food. “I would say: pockets can be places, not just cloth,” she said. “You make one every time you say ‘keep this for me’ and someone says ‘okay.’” She glanced between them on that okay. “Inside seams work for people, too.”

Glenda’s eyebrows went up, automatic; her eyes went shiny then comfortable. “We have those,” she said, lightly.

“Final question for this segment,” Scarlett said, feeling the edge of too-much and steering toward exactly-enough. “Is there an emergency stitch for when the tape tangles?”

Lozen laughed. “Pencil as spindle,” she said, pointing. “Turn gentle. Don’t yank. Smooth the snarl first with your thumb. You know this already.”

Glenda held up the pencil like a trophy. “We’ll do it live if it happens.”

“Don’t you dare,” Lozen said, amused, and patted their ON AIR cup like a pet. “Break a leg, but not the cup.” She gave their forearms a quick, warm squeeze (one, two, three, four), then sat back to listen, letting their voices be the show again.

“Station ID,” Scarlett murmured, hitting the pause button, then record again. They re-sang the jingle short, just two notes, so the tape would know where it was.

“Call-in hour,” Glenda announced. “We take questions from real listeners and also the ones in our heads who are just as important.” She put on a voice from the far side of her throat. “Hi, long-time listener, first-time caller, uh, what do I do if my brain sounds like a pan-crack when nothing is wrong?”

Scarlett made her counselor-radio voice. “Great question. First, we accept that brains like to be loud sometimes. Second, bandage light. Third, ferry foot—ask someone for a shoe to borrow while you cross the hot part.”

Glenda switched callers with a head tilt. “Yes hello this is Mrs. Drawer-Drag, I can’t stop thinking about the thing I said yesterday and now it weighs a hundred pounds.”

Scarlett put her palm on the table and tapped: one (I see you), two (no monsters). “Mrs. Drawer-Drag, we recommend the Hinge Method: say ‘knock-knock’ to your own forehead. When you answer ‘me,’ put the heavy in the pocket of a friend for one minute.”

“Okay thank you,” Glenda answered herself, genuinely relieved.

They took one more—Lozen, doing a delightfully plain version of a call-in. “Hello, this is an auntie with a practical question,” she said. “How long should hemming take when the wearer is impatient?”

Scarlett looked at Glenda, shook her head, then nodded yes, then laughed. “As long as it takes to make it stay,” she said. “Play them a radio show during.”

Lozen made a sound that was almost a cackle and almost a blessing. “Copy that.”

The tape snagged then, like it knew it had been invited. The sound went warbly, then thin.

“Technical difficulty,” Glenda said, calm. She hit stop. Scarlett got the pencil ready and gently wound the reel, thumb smoothing the wrinkle like a person petting a cat that had an opinion. Bandage rectangle drawn in the air; quick, official blow to seal it. They looked at each other. Eyebrows up? Up.

“Back,” Scarlett said into the recorder when the red eye steadied. “We were briefly underwater. We have returned to land.”

Glenda checked her last index card, then surprised herself by pushing it aside. “Midnight Hinge,” she said quietly, without the announcer shine. “That’s our last segment.”

They knew what it was without explaining. Scarlett reached for the lights and turned the lantern low until its circle of gold ran out of edge and just pooled. Pocket and Liddy sat like two commas inside the dark. The recorder’s red dot felt like a small moon.

Glenda lowered her voice to the level you use for promises. “This is for the people who forget how to sleep,” she said. “And for us, later, when we play it back.” She looked at Scarlett, eyebrows up (blue allowed). Scarlett nodded and let her throat unclench.

“Close your eyes,” Scarlett said, her radio voice gone, her real voice doing the job by itself. “Put your hand on something that doesn’t need you to hold it up. A blanket. The edge of your shirt. The table. A pocket.”

“Breathe like a pretzel,” Glenda murmured. “Arms make the loop, then let go.”

“Think of the last thing that made you laugh without your mouth,” Scarlett said softly. “Keep it. Put it in your inside seam.”

Glenda added, “If a sound outside booms, tap twice with your finger: no monsters. If a thought gets heavy, knock-knock. Answer: me.”

“Password,” Scarlett whispered into the grill because it wanted to be there. “Moon.”

Glenda answered, breath on the metal. “Sp—oon.”

They finished together. “Ba—boon.”

Scarlett looked at Glenda’s face and saw the way her eyebrows had already done the tent. She reached over without looking and found Glenda’s wrist. One tap (I see you). Two (no monsters). Three (come quick). Four squeezes, softer, softer, like the volume turning down.

“Good-night words,” Glenda said to the recorder, to Scarlett, to whomever was holding this later. “See you when the sun peeks.”

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Scarlett answered, and pressed Stop.

The sudden quiet felt huge, then normal. They both exhaled and laughed at themselves for exhaling like they’d just run when they had only talked. Glenda peeled HOST off her shirt and stuck it to Scarlett’s forehead like a sticker. Scarlett peeled PRODUCER away and put it on Glenda’s shoulder like a badge.

“Playback?” Glenda asked, careful—sometimes hearing herself made her want to hide in her own sleeve.

“Start in the middle,” Scarlett said, knowing exactly which part needed hearing first. She held down Fast-Forward until the wheels whirred a little, then rewound to before Lozen laughed and pressed Play.

They listened as if it were weather: the jingle, their names, the way Glenda didn’t rush, the way Scarlett’s low hum tucked under things like a floor, the tiny snags that became a joke instead of a panic, the Midnight Hinge whisper. When the good-night words arrived in their own voices, both of them went very still like their future selves might be listening through them.

Glenda reached for the pencil at the exact moment Scarlett did. They looked at each other over it, smiled, and each let go into the other’s hand. Scarlett took the tape out, touched the little reels with a reverent finger, and wrote on the label with block care:

S&G RADIO — THE HINGE

AGE 12 — MIDNIGHT SHOW

LOZEN, ADS, FORECAST, PASSWORD

Glenda drew four tiny slashes on the corner of the label—////—and slid the cassette into Pocket’s pocket for swearing-in. Pocket bulged with importance. Liddy got a gentle ear rub so she wouldn’t feel left out.

“Archive or pillow hinge?” Glenda asked.

“Hinge,” Scarlett said. “So we can find it with our faces.”

They tucked the cassette where their foreheads meet when the night wants to close, that seam that had started being a place for books and had turned into a vault. The ON AIR sign came down and went onto the back of the cup, ready to be flipped again tomorrow or whenever they needed to hear themselves being brave.

“Forecast?” Glenda asked as they lay down, voices ordinary now, all the radio evaporated except the part that stayed in their bones.

Scarlett thought, felt her chest and the way the tape label had steadied something that wasn’t a thing. “Clear with blanket,” she said. “Chance of replay. Chance of us laughing at the ad copy and then crying a tiny bit because the ad copy was true.”

Glenda reached across and tapped Scarlett’s wrist, not as code but as punctuation. “I like when we sell things we actually use,” she said.

Scarlett smiled into the almost-dark. “Bandage Light,” she said softly. “Now in pocket size.”

“Ferry Foot,” Glenda whispered back. “Now with adjustable shade.”

“Pocket,” Scarlett added. “Now with us in it.”

They did the four squeezes for real, not as broadcast, each one landing like a soft stamp—approved, approved, approved, approved. The tape on the hinge wasn’t heavy; it was proof. If either of them twitched with the small sprint of dream, the other already had a hand halfway up, eyes open inside, ready to say what the radio had said, ready to press Stop on the noise and Record on the breathing, ready to be The Hinge: voice carried, catch made, line open, signal strong.

They made a sign for it, because changing anything about themselves felt like a ceremony.

SUMMER SHADE DEPARTMENT

(Scarlett & Glenda)

Rule 1: Test strand.

Rule 2: If eyebrows say bail, we bail.

Rule 3: Four squeezes if throats do thunder.

Approved: S & G (expires never) ////

Scarlett held the card up like a decree; Glenda blew on the drawn bandage sign to seal it. The bowl sat between them with paste the color of warm bread. A lemon stood by like a little sun they’d stolen. The portable spritzer they’d cobbled from a bottle wore a tape label that said HIGHLIGHTER in block letters, which made both of them grin.

“We’re not doing ‘new person,’” Scarlett announced, rolling her sleeves with fake sternness. “We’re doing ‘same person, turned slightly.’”

Glenda tapped the bowl with the back of a spoon. “Slightly is my favorite amount,” she said. “Slightly feels like a wink.”

Scarlett pointed the spoon like a wand. “License check. Rule one: test strand.”

Glenda bent her head and lifted a piece of hair in the back. “You go first. I gotta see your face when you see me.”

“Okay,” Scarlett said, settling behind her with the brush. “Password?”

“Moon,” Glenda murmured.

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett answered.

“Ba—boon,” they finished softly, and the air clicked right into place.

The first stripe went on slow. Scarlett worked the paste down the strand with two careful fingers, like letter-writing in hair. Glenda breathed steady, eyes closed, hands in her lap. Two taps on her wrist: no monsters. Then a third: come quick if you need. Scarlett’s forearm pressed gentle to Glenda’s shoulder in the physical version of “I’m here, already.”

“What if it goes, like, too copper?” Glenda asked, eyes still shut. “Like penny-head.”

“Then we call it a medal,” Scarlett said promptly. “You’ll be award-winning.”

Glenda snorted. “Okay. Medal is a plan.”

They wrapped the test strand with a strip of torn cotton that looked like a tiny bandage. It felt right. Scarlett rubbed the air with her free finger in the little crisscross. “Invisible mending,” she said, adopting Lozen’s phrase. “Promise stitch.”

Glenda lifted one eyebrow—blue allowed. “Do mine now?”

Scarlett held up her own hair, hesitated, then laughed at herself for hesitating. “Yes. But if I end up with paprika head and you end up with honey head, I call a rematch.”

“Deal,” Glenda said. “We can also invent the word ‘paprikahoney’ and pretend we meant it.”

Glenda brushed the paste into Scarlett’s strand with a steadiness she didn’t always show for her own projects. “Chin up, citizen,” she teased, snapping a pretend photo. “Be brave for the record.”

“I am brave for the record,” Scarlett said, halfway serious. “My eyebrows can testify.”

They sat with their tiny bandaged strands ticking quiet seconds. Glenda squeezed the lemon into the spritzer. The citrus smell broke an invisible something and made both of them grin again for no reason. “Sun juice,” she said, delighted.

“Apply modestly,” Scarlett read in an announcer voice to no one, turning the bottle in her fingers. “Side effects include very good summer.”

“Warning: may invite compliments,” Glenda added, then softened as if bracing. “It’s okay if they do.”

“It’s okay,” Scarlett said. “We practice not ducking.”

They rinsed the test pieces in a bowl and leaned heads together to inspect in the shimmering mirror of their palms. Glenda’s strand went a shy ember, not loud, just warmed. Scarlett’s turned not paprika and not honey, something like toast with sunlight on it.

“Hello,” Glenda told the strands, genuinely pleased. “You’re invited.”

“Okay,” Scarlett said, feeling her spine quit pretending to be older than she was. “Full commit.”

They parted hair with a comb and took turns—one misted lemon along the top layers while the other painted paste from ear to ear in soft sections. They worked in easy silence with little islands of talk.

“Rule two,” Glenda said after a minute, a check-in. “Eyebrows okay?”

Scarlett lifted hers (cry is okay) and then flattened them (we’ve got this) and then lifted them once more just because she could. “I’m good. You?”

“I keep thinking about school people and I don’t want to,” Glenda said, honest and matter-of-fact. “I want this to be us-only.”

“Then it is,” Scarlett said, making the idea a fact. “We can write invitations and only invite us.”

“We invited the lemon,” Glenda conceded, smirking.

“It RSVP’d ‘zing,’” Scarlett said, and they both laughed quietly.

They turned the sign to RINSING HOUR and took turns with the pitcher. Glenda shielded Scarlett’s eyes with one hand and poured with the other. Water ran in copper-honey zigzags. Scarlett shook her head like a dog and then looked sheepish about the dog part. “Sorry. Animal instincts.”

“Approved,” Glenda said. “Dogs are on the board of directors.”

Glenda’s turn. Scarlett tilted the little sun-bottle a last time and then poured. Glenda breathed out like she’d been holding something she could finally set down. “I didn’t tell you the other piece,” she said in the middle of water and joking. “It’s dumb.”

“Tell me dumb,” Scarlett said. “Dumb is often treasure with its hat on crooked.”

Glenda shut one eye against a trickle and said it fast: “I think I might like someone. Concurrently. And also maybe nobody. It’s like weather. I can’t decide if it’s a crush or just a… forecast in my lungs.”

Scarlett’s hands stilled just a breath longer than usual. Two taps (no monsters). “You can like three someones and also zero,” she said. “Our license covers it.”

“I know,” Glenda said, grateful and still frowning at her own inside. “I don’t wanna be mean to anybody by existing wrong. I know that’s—”

“—not a thing,” Scarlett said, finishing gently. “Existing isn’t mean.”

Glenda smiled like the water was warmer. “Right.”

They squeezed water from each other’s hair with towels, moving slow on purpose because slow kept the words intact. When the new color revealed itself in the light, they went quiet and then did the most modest ooooh two teenage girls can do while still being sincere.

“You look like you got caught in the good part of a campfire,” Scarlett said. “Not the smoke; the toast.”

Glenda leaned in and peered. “You look like you sat under a story and it stained you a little in a nice way.”

They made a certificate because even hair needs paperwork.

CERTIFICATE OF SLIGHTLY

This certifies that Scarlett has achieved Shade: Story-Toast, and Glenda has achieved Shade: Medal-Ember.

Issued by Summer Shade Department, signed S & G (expires never) ////

Glenda stuck it to the pencil sheath with a tiny dab of paste and declared the Department adjourned. “Next on the agenda: Future, music, etcetera.”

“Etcetera is spicy,” Scarlett said. “We could start with the small version.”

Glenda nodded, squeezing water from the ends of her hair with two hands. “Small version of the future: we keep the hinge.” She knocked their foreheads together lightly in the place the chapbooks and tapes lived at night. “We keep the radio. We keep the poems. We add… something.”

“Mixtape,” Scarlett said immediately. “We make it for us, but also like a postcard to who we’re going to be. Not the world-world. The small world that fits in a pocket. Pocket will literally hold it. It’s his brand.”

Glenda laughed. “Mixtape is a yes.” She tilted her head, eyes slitting in thought. “Also… little jobs. Not jobs-jobs. Roles. You’re Chief Shade Thrower still. I’m Listener-in-Chief. We add—” She looked at Scarlett’s face. “You’re also the Spiral Unspooler when my brain goes drawer-drag.”

“And you’re the Crowd Quietener when I start performing to avoid saying the true thing,” Scarlett countered, exposed and unbothered by being exposed.

“Deal,” Glenda said, and they shook on it solemnly over the towel.

They made bracelets with leftover strips—two tiny knots tied low on the wrist where the //// would go if skin were cloth. Scarlett tied Glenda’s; Glenda tied Scarlett’s. The knots looked like secrets with their hair up.

“Okay,” Glenda said, clearing her throat because it was turning into the late-hour where feelings come dressed as theories. “Tell me a theory.”

Scarlett took a breath like a diver. “Theory: we can be in love someday without becoming less funny,” she said, both feet planted in the speculation. “And we don’t have to audition for anything we don’t want to be in. And we can like one day and three days and zero days; there’s no math exam.”

“I subscribe to this newsletter,” Glenda said immediately, warmed by how specific and firm Scarlett’s voice was. “Addendum: we also remember that we’re allowed to not know for a while.”

“Especially that,” Scarlett said, relieved. “Not-knowing is a protected class.”

They put the portable recorder on the table because you don’t threaten to make a mixtape and then not start. Glenda rolled the blank cassette’s little reels with her thumb, tranced by the motion. Scarlett labeled the spine with careful letters: S&G — AGE 13 — SLIGHTLY. Four tiny slashes at the end. ////.

“Track one is voices,” Glenda said. “Just breath and our names. So the future knows who picked up the phone.”

They leaned to the mic and said their names like a newscaster and a person who would always recognize the newscaster, then breathed visible, audible, patient breaths. Scarlett hummed a note that wasn’t a song yet; Glenda put another note under it like a floorboard. They stopped before lyrics could trap them.

“Okay,” Scarlett said, tapping her temple. “Hard mode.”

Glenda made a face on purpose to make them laugh before hard mode. “Okay.”

“Tell me one thing you want, out loud, record on.”

Glenda’s eyebrows went up, then flat, then up—yes, yes, yes. “I want a table where we always have a seat. Our seat. Even if we go away and come back different-height.”

Scarlett closed her eyes just enough to see better. “I want to make something that helps someone I love put their shoulders down.”

Glenda nodded like a prayer, and the recorder heard it. “We already made it,” she whispered.

“We’ll keep making it,” Scarlett said, as if renewing a contract.

They pressed Stop like it was a bow at the end of a tiny show. The lemon bottle went back to being a lemon bottle. The bowl, empty, looked like a full moon.

Night. The nest remade with practiced hands. Pocket and Liddy took their places like ushers who had memorized everyone’s favorite row. They lay on their sides facing, hair damp in new shades, bracelets drying, the hinge between.

“Small dread?” Scarlett asked, because thirteen had more little dreads than twelve and naming them helped.

Glenda watched Scarlett’s mouth so she wouldn’t have to look away while saying this. “Being mean to my own face,” she admitted. “By accident. I don’t want to pick on it.”

Scarlett lifted her own eyebrows up and then did Glenda’s tent with her fingertips—two fingers peaking above Glenda’s brows, a silly touch that worked anyway. “New code,” she said. “If you say something mean about your face, I’ll say ‘source?’ like a journalist. If the source is your brain being a raccoon, your brain has to write a retraction.”

Glenda laughed so hard she snorted. “Retraction: Glenda’s face is fine.”

“Fine plus,” Scarlett said. “And on brave days, you must add one extravagant compliment that sounds ridiculous until it doesn’t.”

Glenda exhaled that particular 13-year-old relief that happens when a friend gives you a workaround. “Okay. Extravagant compliments coming soon.”

“And if I start getting clever instead of honest,” Scarlett said, turning the light on herself, “you say ‘footnotes,’ and I have to cite an actual feeling.”

Glenda agreed that this was fair and good. “Footnotes,” she said, trying the word out like a tool in the hand.

They did the four squeezes without counting out loud—wrist to wrist, pulse to pulse. On the third, Scarlett’s breath skipped and returned. On the fourth, Glenda’s shoulders let go that last half-inch.

“Tell me a secret goal,” Glenda said into the not-dark.

Scarlett considered, let the room get a little bigger, then trusted it. “I want to sing something that makes a stranger cry without making me feel like I broke them.”

Glenda smiled, a small private light. “You already know how. You always hug the cry after.”

Scarlett tilted her head on the blanket. “What’s yours?”

Glenda swallowed, not because it was hard but because it was tender. “I want to still be listening when people think I’m done,” she said. “Like, in fifteen years, and twenty, and forty. I want to be the kind of person other people get to keep talking in front of.”

Scarlett’s voice went soft and factual. “You will be,” she said. “You’ve been that since five.”

They threaded the day back through themselves with little strings of talk. Track lists for the mixtape went from joke titles (“Ballad of Slightly”) to real ones they would write later. They assigned future credits—Scarlett, Shade; Glenda, Listen; both, Bandage.

“Forecast?” Glenda asked, because the night likes routine.

Scarlett let her eyes close. “Clear with glints,” she said. “Chance of compliments that don’t feel like traps. Chance of us forgetting and remembering and forgiving.”

“Chance of medal,” Glenda added, twirling a damp end of hair between finger and thumb.

“Chance of story-stain,” Scarlett said, twirling hers.

Password, because the hinge wants the latch.

“Moon,” Glenda breathed.

“Sp—oon,” Scarlett breathed back.

“Ba—boon,” together, as always.

“Good-night words?” Scarlett asked, almost a whisper.

“See you when the sun peeks,” Glenda said, and then added, because thirteen had made her brave in a new way, “and when the mirror tries to lie, I’ll do ‘source?’ and call you.”

“I’ll be here with my eyes still on inside,” Scarlett answered, then tagged on a footnote in a grin, “and my footnotes ready.”

They laughed, the small quiet kind, and went gentle. If one of them twitched with a sprint toward some imagined embarrassment from three months ago, the other tapped twice—no monsters—and drew the little crisscross in the air above the place where the feeling hurt. If either of them turned over and forgot to turn back, a hand went out—reaching, not grabbing—and found hair that smelled faintly like lemon and bread, found a wrist with a knot-low where //// would go in cloth, found the seam where everything they’d made together lived: chapbooks, tapes, licenses, bracelets, passwords, bandages, and the new certificate of Slightly.

The mixtape spine dried in the hinge. The lemon bottle clicked when it cooled. Somewhere in the dark, their future selves tuned in for a second, heard breath and names and the kind of laugh you only laugh when you’re thirteen and safe, and then signed off, satisfied, while the nest did what the nest always did:

approved, approved, approved, approved.