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hooyah-ing. Then the mine fell down on our dad and everything stopped. Now certain things were starting again—I was going to school, Michael was backat work—but there was no more working out and no more talk of going anywhere and Michael hardly ever smiled. We played a lot of Frisbee. We hiked, too, and ran sprints, and we were building a fence between our building and the house next door, but it was only half finished, because we ran out of wood and energy.
    Michael hated Caboose. Always had. Some of my earliest memories were of Michael telling me stories about Someplace Else. He told me all about how in
real
places, there were trains that ran under the city and that they could take you anywhere you wanted to go, and nobody had to drive an old pickup truck that broke down every two days. How in some places you could live in a house up on stilts so the ocean could drift in and out underneath. He told me about planes that landed on water, and about night skylines that made the stars look faded. There were a lot of places Michael wanted to go, but they all sounded awfully far away.
    Even now that he’d stopped talking about leaving, he couldn’t help but mutter under his breath about how much he hated Caboose: “Only place I know where kids can have a game of Frisbee and a dang séance in the same five minutes.” I wasn’t sure what a séance was or why he sounded so bent out of shape about it. He threw the Frisbee so hard, I heard it whistle past my ear. I ran to catch it. I’d missed it about thirty times already, but Michael hadn’t given up on me yet.
    â€œWatch out!”
    His warning came a second too late. My shin connected with a gravestone, and the Frisbee and I were suddenly side by side, airborne. I snatched the bit of plastic out of the last six inches of air before it would have smacked into the grass. It never touched a blade, only the grass stains on my fingers. I lay still, catching my breath.
    Michael’s footsteps pounded up behind me. “You all right? Hey . . .” He dropped to his knees next to me. He looked mad, but not at me. He’d been mad a lot lately, ever since our dad. He got sad a lot, too, but I don’t think he knew I could tell. “Hey, sorry,” he said, helping me up to sitting. “I’m sorry, sis, I didn’t mean to throw it so hard.”
    I was pretty sure I could taste mud in my mouth, and I couldn’t get my breath to go back out all the way. I sat for a minute, gasping, before my air all came out in a whoosh. Michael ran a shaky hand down his face, leaving a trail of mud to match my own.
    â€œYou all right?” he asked again.
    â€œI got it,” I said, holding up the Frisbee, and his eyes moved from my face to the toy and back again. I waited to see what he would do next. Ever since he got to be my only family, I could never tell how he would act about things.
    A grin spread across his muddy face, and I could feel my own grin come out.
    â€œWell, you play Frisbee like you doggone mean it, Sasha,” he said with pride in his voice.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    For some reason, after I smash the guitar, I can’t stop thinking about that Frisbee. Can’t stop thinking about Michael’s pride when I finally caught it. He gave up everything for me: his dreams of the military, of college, of subways and ocean views and living someplace better than here. At eighteen, he took over being my parent and he never once complained. He wanted me to catch the doggone Frisbee, and even back then, I think I’d have flown if it meant doing what he asked me to.
    And Michael asked me to do a lot of things over the years. Ace my spelling test. Read a chapter a night.
Brush your doggone teeth before they fall out of your head!
But there was one thing he asked for more than any other, and he spent the last few years of his life getting me ready for it.
    So I’m a little glad he