The Key to the Golden Firebird Read Free Page B

“Thanks.”
    She walked around the house, straight to the back of the yard, to the narrow, secluded space behind a bush that separated her sisters’ pitchback and the shed. It was a damp, spidery spot, but it couldn’t be seen from the kitchen window. She sank down into the grass and leaned up against a pile of cinder blocks that someone had stacked there six or seven years ago and never bothered to move. She started to laugh. It was completely automatic and spastic and so forceful that she actually gagged once or twice. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there. It could have been five minutes or two hours. She didn’t hear anyone approaching.
    â€œMay?”
    May looked up to find Pete, now dry and dressed, standing next to her. He must have followed along to their house with his mother; she would have gotten the message as well. And of course Pete would know to look for her here. This had been a long-standing hiding spot in all kinds of games when they were kids. As for the incident at the pool…that had been sometime in the distant past or in another dimension.
    Pete watched her. No jokes this time. Somehow having Pete standing next to her with a serious look on his face made the whole thing a little more real. And the real was horrible. Thereal made her panic. The pressure of his stare caused her laughter to evolve into a different, more logical emotion. She wanted to run, but she knew that she couldn’t. Her legs, her arms—she didn’t really know how they worked at the moment.
    â€œHey, Pete,” she said as the last of the laughter died out of her voice, “I have your wallet.”

Babysitting
    Since there’s a baby in it, you’d think babysitting only meant babies. Then again, it also has a sitting. It’s one of those things you can’t get too literal about.
Something I first offered to do when I was four or five years old. I told my parents that they should go out because I could take care of Pawmer and Bwooks. They laughed and said that was really cute of me. I think they took it seriously on some level, though, because I feel like I’ve been doing it ever since. So it’s also one of those things you have to be careful about volunteering for.

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    May Gold’s actual name was Mayzie. As far as she knew, this was not a real name. It was a made-up, moon-man-language name based on Willie Mays, one of the most famous baseball players of all time.
    All of the Gold girls were named after baseball players, a testament to their father’s obsessive love of the game. Brooks was named after Brooks Robinson, twenty-two-year veteran of the Baltimore Orioles. Palmer was named after Jim Palmer, who was considered to be the best pitcher in Orioles history. May’s sisters’ names had relevance in their lives. They played softball. (Palmer was, in fact, a pitcher.) Also, Brooks and Palmer were kind of cool-sounding names. May could imagine a Brooks or a Palmer working in a law firm or becoming a famous artist. Mayzie was someone who had a washing machine on her front porch and turned up on some trashy talk show for the “My Mom Married My Brother!” episode.
    So when the driving examiner, a woman with a helmet of tight, steel-gray curls, a state police jacket, and aviator glasses, came across striding across the lot, calling for “Mayzie Gold!” May nodded stiffly and felt the first tingling of nervous perspiration. She hated hearing that name announced in public.
    â€œGet in, please,” the woman said. It wasn’t a friendly request.
    May opened the driver’s side door of the green minivan andtook her position behind the wheel. This was just a test, she told herself. An easy little test. And if there was one thing May was good at, it was tests. Okay, so she hadn’t exactly prepared for this test so well. Who needed more than three or four sessions behind the wheel, anyway? She tried to relax, tried to release the