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The child's small hands caressed the fabric of the dress, gently lifting it from the spot so no one would hear. Purple, his favorite color, with a bib front. The fact it was, at least nominally, the older sister's property mattered little. Taking it would relieve the pain knifing through the child's stomach, at least for a little while.

It doesn't fit her anyway, the eight-year-old rationalized. Besides, she hated it–she'd said so enough times to remove any lingering doubt. According to the younger sibling's straightforward sense of justice and fair play, therefore, any such item was up for grabs. So it wasn't really stealing, exactly. Just putting a neglected item to good use.

Slipping into the dress–an easy feat when one considers it was two sizes too large–the child faced an even larger problem.. Namely, making the fifteen-foot crawl to the other end of the hallway, then back downstairs–scooting in a seated position–to the waiting wheelchair at the bottom. In a comically overlarge dress, without being seen.

Joey McKinnon gave new meaning to the term “physically challenged.”

Feeling brave, even a bit reckless, Joey grabbed the plastic cylinder on the pink and white vanity table and painstakingly traced the contours of his mouth with the contents. Okay, so taking Bekka's lip gloss was stealing–she used that, after all, unlike the dress. But considering the way she treated him, Joey figured it was a fair exchange. He slipped the tube in the tiny pocket in the front of the dress, in case he needed to touch up his work later.

Checking the door at least fifteen times in a one-minute period, Joey pulled his body onto the stool next to the vanity and examined his handiwork. In the reflection was the face of a little girl, or so it would appear to anyone else. An almost elfin face, dominated by green eyes with thick lashes. A button nose, tiny yet full lips, and strawberry blond hair in barely-tamed waves completed the picture. Joey had to mentally caution himself against biting his lower lip in concentration as he viewed the image, which would spoil all his work. He didn't have time to start over.

Joey dropped to his hands and knees to begin the long trek back. The stabbing pain in his stomach now became a fluttery feeling, as his pulse started to race and a thin film of sweat formed on his forehead.

Can something feel both good and bad?

The excursion into his sister's bedroom should have been terrifying–any other day, it would have–but today it was sort of an adventure, a way of seeing just how sneaky he could be. He could pretend he was a spy in disguise. It was almost worth enduring the stomachaches The Girl gave him when she wanted to play.

Finding the hallway empty, Joey started his “dash” to the stairs, but soon noticed his normal half-crawling, half-scooting method of locomotion didn't lend itself well to extended travel in a long dress. The garment twisted as he moved, binding his legs at the knees and ankles, severely cutting down his traveling speed. Any faster and he could tear the fabric, and he'd really be in trouble. Though for the life of him he couldn't imagine it being much worse than the trouble he was already in.

Just a little bit more, and he'd be reach the stairs....

“You know, little one, if the niá±a wants to play, she ought to make less noise. I could hear her all the way in the kitchen....”

Head down, too absorbed in his task to pick up on his surroundings, Joey failed to see the pair of women's feet directly ahead of him. He curled his body into a ball, hoping perhaps to pull off a convincing imitation of a pile of dirty laundry. It took a second or two for the child to realize the feet belonged to his caregiver, Sonia.

“Since the niá±a is dressed for it, why don't we have a party? Hot chocolate and the cookies she likes?”

Joey didn't have to be asked twice. His reddish-blond curls bounced as he vigorously nodded.

Lifting the thin child on her hip, Sonia carried him downstairs to his chair. He rested his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes.

If he could relive any moment again and again, it would be this one.

The moment The Girl opened her eyes, she knew her host, Joey McKinnon, felt happy. She knew because she felt happy, too, and she couldn't remember the last time he shared such a feeling with her.

That was the first sign that things had gone seriously wrong.

Mostly, he only allowed her to feel angry, or sad. That was the deal, from the moment she first woke up inside Joey's mind. But this was too good, too wonderful a feeling for Joey to keep to himself. So it spilled over the barrier: first in dribs and drabs, then in a steady stream, then a full-out flood, crumbling away a portion of the barrier with it.

The dirty, almost feral child with the matted, wavy hair stared at the scene in front of her, her green eyes wide with astonishment. Something, somehow, created a crack. A narrow crack, to be sure, but a crack nonetheless. She hadn't been summoned--she couldn't remember the last time she had. Yet there the crack was, just the same.

The barrier had been there so long, she'd accepted its presence as an inviolable law, like "water is wet." Oh, she'd been let out now and then, true. But it was like letting a chained dog run around the yard for awhile.

But now the impenetrable wall had been breached, for the first time since the beginning of her exile. If something like that could happen....

Closing her eyes, The Girl took advantage of the new pathway to focus on Joey's memories, evoking half-remembered images from a time in his childhood outside his conscious mind. Instantly, the rocky, monochrome landscape transformed; colors--some garish, some incongruous, some quite beautiful--spilled over the void like paint onto a child's coloring book. Groves of violet trees with yellow leaves sprang from what had been barren promontories. A strip of beach appeared, alongside a narrow inlet, beyond which stood the remainder of the barrier. Warm sunlight beamed down upon her from a purple sky, while magenta butterflies flitted about, sometimes deigning to land on The Girl's hand.

Next, she set to work on herself. A vortex of primary colors surrounded her, evaporating the grime from her body and fabricating a yellow sundress to cover her previously naked form.

She basked in the warmth, let it envelop her like a hug, giggling as the surf lapped at her toes. She ran up and down the length of the shore, sometimes doing cartwheels, sometimes skipping. She climbed to a perch on a nearby rock, chewing a strand of her hair as she stopped to consider what this might mean. Whatever it meant, one thing became immediately clear.

Her escape was only a matter of time.

Tomorrow, she learned, was the last school day before Christmas break, but she knew from scanning his mind that for him, the fun would begin a day earlier than it would his poor deskbound classmates. He and his friends Aimee, Sarah, and Moira won the charity drawing, and had been picked to go on a special field trip--a free skating lesson for disabled kids at the Pettit Ice Center in Milwaukee, followed by lunch downtown. That was good enough. What made it even better was that they were the only third-graders picked to go.

But best of all was Aimee, Sarah and Moira. When they were around, The Girl knew she'd be free to come out and play.

Perhaps--she dared hope--forever.

Sonia Alvarez, CNA, cursed her car's less than adequate windshield wipers as they made timid swipes at the drizzle dotting her windshield, turning it to half-frozen rivulets on the glass instead of clearing it away. The mixture of rain and sleet wasn't a hazard, yet, but it was enough to make the roads a challenge to morning traffic. A challenge Sonia doubted her tires were up to, judging from the way her car fishtailed with every turn.

She pulled up the collar of her coat and shivered. The car's heater wasn't helping much either. She might make more money as a private-pay CNA than she ever did in a nursing home, but with a daughter in college in Texas, that monetary cushion didn't last. The plane ticket to El Paso ate up what little was left. She thanked God at least for the fact she was in good health–she didn't know what she'd do if that took a sudden downward turn.

Squinting at the blobs of light coming from car headlights in the predawn light, she could barely make out the sign that marked the exit to the section of town in which her young charge, Joey McKinnon, lived. She turned off the wipers, deciding they were doing more harm than good. Only the prospect of a week at her sister's house, in the relative warmth of El Paso–and with it the chance to see her daughter Inés–sustained her.

Though she might question moving to Wisconsin, a place climatically and culturally at the opposite end of the spectrum from her native Guatemala, she never questioned her choice of profession. Her job, as she saw it, extended beyond caring for her clients' physical needs. She could still hear the voice of the RN under whom she'd trained. “These people are not your friends. You have to maintain the proper professional distance.” In Sonia's view, she might as well have said, “these people are little better than houseplants, and should be treated as such.”

To her, a nurse's assistant had to be a companion, a sounding board, someone with whom a person could share their joys or vent their frustrations. She chatted with them when their families wouldn't, took them shopping when they otherwise might never have seen the inside of a store, fixed their hair when they couldn't afford to have it done.

For the younger ones, Sonia had to be equal parts parent and playmate. She'd probably read every children's book ever written, in both English and Spanish, and played every conceivable video game. She liked children generally, far preferring to work with those at the beginning of life than at the end. Yet, save for her own daughter, there was only one child she could honestly say she loved.

Joey.

The little boy with the heart and soul of a girl.

A child who on the surface might seem doubly burdened. But his biggest burden was not his disability, or the girl inside him struggling to break free. No, that honor would go to his family, particularly that woman who called herself his mother. Sonia wasn't sure, but in order to qualify for that title, one would think a woman had to spend a certain minimum amount of time actually mothering. But she hadn't seen anything approaching it from her in the three and a half years she'd known her.

Sonia tolerated the nitpicking, the obsession with image, cleanliness, perfection and order, for Joey's sake. If not for her, he'd revert to the sullen, mute shell of a child he'd been when she first saw him. Smothering him in his sleep would be kinder.

The woman not only demanded she remove her shoes upon entering, she'd marked a line in carpet tape–an actual, literal line–on the oak floorboards of the converted farmhouse, beyond which shoes dared not enter. That might be tolerable if she merely did it to remind the kids not to track in mud. She only put it up after Sonia, during a busy morning, unknowingly brought in a thimbleful of dirt. As if she were an errant six-year-old. From then on, Sonia loathed that line.

How Brenda McKinnon tolerated Joey's chair was anybody's guess. Sonia was sure that if Brenda had her way, she'd keep Joey and his chair out in the garage, as if he were a stray dog too filthy to let indoors. Packed in bubble wrap like her damned lead crystal goblets.

As Sonia turned toward the driveway to the McKinnon home, she saw the door wide open. That could only mean one thing–Brenda was on one of her cleaning tears, sweeping the front entryway. Only one more day of this, Sonia reassured herself, though it wasn't quite soon enough.

“Oh, there you are,” Brenda said, with just enough of a hint of sarcasm to be irritating. “It's already seven-thirty. I could swear you said you'd be here at seven-fifteen.”

“The roads were a little bit icy this morning,” Sonia said as she placed her shoes just behind the notorious carpet-tape line. “I had to take it slow.”

Brenda smiled that sickening smile that Sonia hated, and said in her most artificially pleasant, syrupy tone, “Well, dear, you really must anticipate these things. I always check the online forecasts before I go anywhere. If you'd just start earlier on days like this....”
Sonia cut her off. “I understand, Mrs. McKinnon. I'll go check on Joey.”

Sonia's mouth tightened into a thin line. She'd love to remind her that the only truly predictable thing about Wisconsin weather was its unpredictability, but decided she wanted her paycheck more. The moment Brenda turned to do battle with the kitchen range top, Sonia looked down at the shoes she'd just placed behind The Line.

Then, ever so subtly, kicked them over it.

"Levá¡ntate, sweetie, rise and shine. We have to get you ready for your trip this morning, and I know how slow you can be." A sharp rapping on the handle of the wheelchair next to the bed soon followed.

Joey's head turned toward the familiar voice, which both he and The Girl knew belonged to his caregiver. The Girl felt his joy at seeing the middle-aged Latina--all the more intense given the crack in the barrier--and knew Joey loved her. His smile, if only for a moment, brought broad splashes of primary colors, crayon-box colors, to the far horizon of the realm to which she'd been involuntarily exiled.

But The Girl loved Sonia most of all, because Sonia knew she was there.

" ¿Cá³mo está¡s, mariposa?" Sonia said, smiling.  ¿Dormiste bién? You sleep good?" Joey nodded, his eyes having turned the deep, iridescent green they became whenever he, or The Girl, became really excited. Placing a plastic tray of water on the wheelchair seat, Sonia handed him a wet washcloth to remove the remnants of sleep from those eyes.

It had long been Sonia's habit to refer to Joey as her mariposa--butterfly. An odd epithet for a boy, certainly, but it fit the delicate eight-year-old. Not simply because he loved them, giggling when he coaxed one to come to him. It was that Sonia, unique among the adults around him, knew his secret--the Girl who dwelt inside. From her perspective, he seemed much like a butterfly, if still cocooned to most of the world. She alone knew of the beauty that had yet to be released.

The first thing anyone noticed about the youngster was the eyes, the eyes of an “old soul”, who'd endured more than those five times his age. Sonia chuckled as she watched him try to blow a stray tendril of hair away from them. But good luck getting him to agree to even a trim.

The Girl, because she held Joey's less-desirable emotions, usually sabotaged any efforts by his mother to shear his hair to the scalp, flailing and screaming until both the barber and his mother could convince Joey to take off just a little. Though normally unable to leave her little realm on her own, threats to her or Joey's person--real or perceived--were a necessary exception. The Girl always got him in trouble that way. That, unfortunately, was the downside of their little bargain.

It proved even less tolerable for The Girl herself. To have the barrier part for those few tantalizing moments, and even then emerge only when Joey's anger and fear reached critical mass, disheartened her. It eroded her hope month by month, year by year. She'd been "called up" on a few good occasions--if one could call them that--when Joey's aching desire to be who he was outweighed his fear of punishment and humiliation.

But those moments occurred less and less often, and even then, Joey fought her. She couldn't truly enjoy an afternoon with his sister Bekka's old dolls, or an hour rifling through forgotten boxes for her old outfits. Not without being interrupted by a wave of anxiety from her host, jumping out of his skin whenever he thought he heard the front door slam, or thought his sister was fast approaching.

Bad emotions, ugly emotions, hurt her, and every time she was hurt, it took longer and longer for the hurt to go away. Many times she'd sat huddled in the vastness as her wounds threatened to eat through her, making her believe that this time, she would dissolve into mere pinpoints of light.

But today...today. She had the keys to the candy store--or at least, a back door into Joey's consciousness.

All she had to figure out now is how, and when, to best use it.

"You ready to go on your trip today?" Sonia said with a smile.

Joey practically bounced to the edge of the bed, "I sure am. I get to stand up in a walker and skate on the ice, and we're all gonna do face painting. I wanna be a tiger...." Putting his "claws" in the air, he lets out his best attempt at a roar. What came out, however, came across as comically gentle.

"OK, cá¡lmate, my ferocious little cub..." Sonia interjects, laughing. "Maybe we ought to take care of that diaper first?"

An enraged preteen voice smashed through the relative calm of the morning."WHERE'S MY LIP GLOSS?"

Ah, Bekka. If the town's tornado-warning siren ever broke, they could use her for a backup.

An auburn-haired girl of about twelve burst through the doorway. Her face still had enough baby fat to pull off innocence, but judging by her current expression, one could be forgiven for thinking she could commit a murder and stuff the body in her book bag. Pushing her way past Sonia, she snatched up a small cylinder on Joey's desk next to a small white hand mirror. "I KNEW you had it, you little freak! If you slobbered all over this, I'm gonna take your chair apart and spread the pieces from here to Chicago! And there's the mirror I've been looking for all week!!"

Taking a quick sniff of the air, she wrinkled her nose. "Ewww. Don't tell me the freak messed his pants again...." The faint, impatient sound of a horn cuts her rant short. "Great...NOW I'm late...!" Turning toward Sonia, she remarks, "Looks like the fun's all yours. I'd help, but gotta go...."

Sonia put out a restraining arm. The penetrating glare coming from her eyes gave Bekka enough of a message that moving even an inch more was not a good idea.

"'Why, good morning to you too, Bekka dear. I'm so glad you could help me with Joey!" The irony of those words was, of course, so thick even a slightly mentally-challenged paramecium would have caught it, though she seriously doubted Bekka's ability to do so. "You're not going anywhere yet, princess, so it looks like you won't miss out on 'the fun' after all...." With that, she thrust the container of wipes into Bekka's hand.

"B-but the bus! I- I do have to go...."

"Then your little diva self will have to walk, no? It's a great day for it--it's beautiful out there...."

Joey's green eyes, which moments before had been so bright with anticipation, lost their luster as Bekka wiped his bottom--a little too roughly, but he didn't even flinch. The Girl, however, did, perceiving his discomfort as an ugly orange flash in the virtual sky. Joey refused to look at Bekka, but he could imagine the expression of disgust on her face--and knew it wasn't just from the disagreeable task she had to do.

"Y'know, freak, I oughta show these to your little friends so they can see what a baby you are...." Bekka said as she taped the clean diaper in place. Those green eyes of Joey's met hers with a hardened stare she'd rarely seen from him. The muscles in his face and jaw tightened, and he clenched his teeth. The sight unnerved her enough to cut her taunting off in mid-sentence.

"OK, go...go! I think you've done enough...." Sonia said, shaking her head as she put a pile of clothes on the bed. With a grunt of frustration, Bekka gladly complied, stomping out of the room as quickly as she'd entered. The sound of her whining to her mother about needing a ride grew fainter as she as the sound of her footsteps traveled in the direction of the kitchen. But just barely.

Inside Joey's mind, The Girl shivered, rubbing the sides of her ethereal body as the virtual wind gathered speed, and all color drained away. She tried concentrating, honing in on Joey's emotions to forestall it, but it came at her too fast. Jagged, rocklike formations sprang up from the pristine landscape like stalagmites. No, don't get mad now, please....please don't! I don't wanna feel mad! Not today!

“NO!!”

Her scream reverberated across the expanse, bouncing off innumerable tiny facets, echoing back to her from infinite directions. She rocked slowly back and forth, head down, knees drawn to her chest, until the sound faded away. Her pupils dilated; her pulse would have quickened, if she had one. A searing pain tore across her body from her shoulder to her abdomen, leaving a welt-like, lightning bolt-shaped streak where it passed.

Doubled over from the pain, she scanned Joey's memories for more pleasant thoughts, settling on an image of Katie, Joey's rag doll when he was two. Instantly, an exact replica of the toy, down to the tiny rip in its left arm, appeared. She rocked back and forth with the toy, anticipating the vertigo that inevitably preceded her being “called up.” But to her surprise and relief, it didn't happen.

In a span of time that could have been thirty seconds or an hour--The Girl had no way of judging such things in her realm--rays of sunlight poked through the metallic gray clouds, and color once again filled the landscape. Only when the purple sky once again came into full view did the child's anger and fear dissolve into mist.

And if The Girl had her say, it would never return.

"Joey? Joey, look at me, little one..."

Joey slowly turned his head to meet Sonia's eyes. His face was a mask, inscrutable, but Sonia had known the child long enough to see the hurt in it. Stroking his cheek, she asked, "What's wrong, child? Dime que pasá³..."

Not having the vocabulary to express the full range of feelings locked within his mind, Joey could only mumble, "Nothin'."

Sonia raised an eyebrow at his answer, but guessed at the underlying cause of his mood. Bekka....

"Might it be because of these?" Sonia said, patting the package of diapers on the dresser. "Or maybe The Girl inside you that took Bekka's things?"

Joey nodded, still expressionless.

There's nothing wrong with having to wear those diapers, little one," Sonia said softly. "Your muscles don't work right, so you can't 'hold it.' That does not make you a baby, no matter what your sister says." She took Joey's small hand into her much larger one and smiles. "You know, I used to have to change a grown man, eighty-five years old. And I'm not sure, but I think that's quite a lot older than you...." She punctuated her final word with a tweak of Joey's nose, making him giggle in spite of himself. "And as for having a girl inside you--well, there's nothing wrong with that either, as long as she isn't a girl like your sister...."

That made The Girl shudder a bit, but Joey's laughter obliterated the last of the gray, filling her world with magenta, lilac and mauve. To her, they were all just different kinds of purple, and she loved purple. She twirled in the vastness as colors, pretty colors, danced around her.

"Sonia! Sonia!"

The caregiver flinched at the sound of Joey's mother. She had a certain intangible quality to her voice that seemed genetically tailored to trigger Sonia's migraines.

Brenda entered, stoop shouldered, with a box full of used clothing pressed up against her thighs to absorb some of the weight. With a weary grunt, she dumps it in the far corner of the bedroom under Joey's window. "Oh, good. You have Joey up. Listen, I realize this is short notice, but...."

Sonia rubbed her eyes as a pinprick of pain formed on the bridge of her nose. Did every sentence that woman uttered have to start with that?

"Yes, Ms.McKinnon?”

"Could you be a dear and take this box of old clothes to the St. Vincent de Paul? I'm chairing the neighborhood clothing drive, but I don't have any room in my car...."

"Yes, I'll be glad to do that, Mrs. McKinnon." Sonia's migraine began to creep up to her forehead. To Brenda's mind, the line between caregiver for her child and personal maid was very thin indeed.

Joey eyed the contents of the box with an unusual interest. Most of them were Bekka's, outfits often worn two, three times at best, then shoved into the "Twilight Zone" area of her closet, never to be seen again. It was then that Joey saw It.

The outfit. The one he had to wear, now, or die.

The cream colored top and the jeans with the little flowers along the side. Right there on top of the box, begging to be taken..There was the small matter of the little flowers on the jeans, but Joey figured the the chair would cover up most of their incriminating girliness. Just as Sonia was about to put his plain boy jeans on him, he finds the courage to speak:

"Could--could you maybe put those clothes over there on me? The jeans with the little flowers on them, and the shirt?"

The Girl paused in the middle of her purple reverie, and didn't know whether to laugh, shout or cry. She loved that outfit--she had asked Joey to wear it before, lots of times, when it hung forgotten in Bekka's closet. But she could never get him to do it, stomachaches or no. Now he was practically begging to wear it. If it was going to be this easy, she'd be picking out the perfect dress and leggings to wear to Joey's school come January.

She could read what he was thinking much more easily, too. Normally, it was like listening with cotton in her ears, underneath a heavy layer of gauze--she picked up feelings, pictures, colors, but she usually didn't pick up words unless he let her. She couldn't do anything unless he let her. That was one of the rules, too, almost as important as the anger one. Now it was if he were sitting next to her, whispering in her ear.

And if he could talk to her....

She was going to have a few things to say to him.

"Sonia?..."

As Joey finished up the last of his peanut butter on toast, Brenda poked her head in through the kitchen door, fully armed for the day: purse on her right shoulder, cell phone in her left hand, coffee mug in her right. Sonia smiled a bit at the comical image of her opening the door with her elbow. "I just wanted to tell you the van's here..."

"Thank you, Ms. McKinnon--let me help you with your coat, little one..."

"Did you pack lunch for him?"

Sonia valiantly fought the reflex that would have sent her eyes rolling upward. "He's going to be eating on the field trip. I told you that!"

Brenda's eyes glazed for a moment, then sparked to life again as recognition dawned. "Oh....right. You did. OK, 'bye, kiddo. Be good today!”

Before she took two steps, her head snapped around again: "And Sonia, before I forget..."

Sonia inwardly groaned, waiting for the inconvenient and time-consuming request that inevitably followed. "Would you be available to take care of Joey tomorrow afternoon? I know you're flying out to see your daughter, but it's just for a couple of hours...."

Oh, yes. The migraine was in full bloom now. Well, it could have been worse. "I think I can manage it," she said, forcing a smile. "I'm officially on vacation as of noon tomorrow, so there's nobody else on my schedule, and I think the little one would like having me...." Joey quickly nodded his assent.

The last sounds Joey heard from his mother was her angry arguing into her ever-present cell phone: "Look, Herbert, I turned in that article on antique nutcrackers three days ago! Don't blame me if you don't check your e-mail...."

The color began to drain a bit from The Girl's domain. She didn't even hug us goodbye....

Brenda McKinnon was a devoted disciple of the art of control. Taking a last-minute look into her rear-view mirror for any defects she might have missed, the slightest of smiles formed on her face when she found none. Lipstick, unsmudged? Check. Mascara, unclumped? Check. Hair? Wait a moment....

An auburn strand escaped her notice, dropping down along her jawline when she least suspected. That would not do.

She brought the rebellious strand in line quickly, her hair clip precisely centered. If someone took a carpenter's level to it, they wouldn't find it one millimeter off the plumb line. Only then did she judge herself to be ready for the day.

She put the key in the ignition and dropped her cell phone in her “Louis Vuitton” bag–a knockoff, but few in this backward town would likely know that. Their idea of a designer bag is a canvas backpack with a Packers logo, she snarked to herself, smiling with a mouth full of perfectly uniform teeth at her little wisecrack.

She counted the seconds as she waited for the idiot van driver to back out of her driveway and get her son to school. That driver's taking longer every morning, she thought with no shortage of contempt. She'd have to take up the matter with the school board. Perhaps they could contract with a transportation service that was a bit more punctual.

Make no mistake. She might seem absent-minded to some, but only because she remembered what she needed to remember, saw what she needed to see. Anything else, frankly, wasn't worthy of her attention.

And she could swear she saw her son in clothes that only twenty minutes before had been at the top of the clothing donation box. Bekka's clothes.

Oh, dear God. Not THIS again. That damned doctor assured her....

She couldn't very well confront the child and force him to change. That would take more time, and the word “late” was not in her vocabulary. But she'd make sure a certain young man–she took care to emphasize the word–would be aware of her displeasure that evening.

The doctor had been right about one thing. Too much female influence. Not that she could help it, especially with Joe senior gone. But it's not as if she could parade new candidates for the role of Joey's dad through her living room, and with her schedule, dating was a fantasy.

That Sonia woman–she encouraged this! She tried to pretend otherwise, but Brenda knew. Doesn't she realize, Brenda thought, that she was only trying to protect the boy? Isn't having cerebral palsy alone difficult enough for anyone to handle, let alone a child? Why add this..this thing he does to his growing list of challenges? With the proper amount of control, discipline and hard work, he could overcome it. She was certain. Those three things always served her well.

Brenda might not be able to bring a man in. But she'd see to it that one woman would soon be out.

The Girl heard Joey's thoughts as he gazed, stonefaced, at the image of his mother in the front seat of her Prius, too preoccupied with her own image to look in his direction. One came through loud and clear.

I wish Sonia could be my mom instead...and I wish my real mom and Bekka would go away!

Sonia wasn't privy to his or The Girl's thoughts, but she could feel their pain, and saw an almost imperceptible tear form in Joey's eye as he sat on the lift waiting to be loaded. She ruffled his strawberry blond hair, saying gently, "Vente, mariposa. Dame un abrazo...."

"Give you a hug? I'll give you a squeeze!" Joey said. Child that he was, the horrible wish of a moment ago was quickly forgotten, swept away by more pleasant thoughts.

“Be sure to tell me all about the trip today, OK?”

“Seguro que sá­,” the child said, with a smirk of self-satisfaction. Sonia laughed. It sometimes surprised even her how bright he was. She couldn't remember teaching him that phrase.

“OK, quit showing off, my little genius.” With that, the driver wheeled the child into the van, and the doors closed. Sonia waved goodbye through the window.

Color trickled back into the Girl's world, slowly, but The Girl just stood, arms folded in front of her. Kneeling down, she idly scratched into the wet sand beneath her with her finger. She had wishes of her own, wishes too important to simply blurt out. She couldn't sort them out unless she wrote them down. With that in mind, she writes the first of her wishes, in a scrawl that was typical "kid."

The Girl paused, chewing idly on a tendril of strawberry blonde hair as her brow furrowed in thought. No, a LOT more important than that.

She gazed into the virtual sky. For all its beauty when Joey had happy thoughts, it paled in comparison to the world outside. A world she'd only rarely been allowed to glimpse. In an instant, her second wish came to her:

She frowned. What did that mean? What made someone real? It wasn't like the Velveteen Rabbit, the story she and Joey both loved. No--real people had one thing she didn't.

A name.

Crossing out what she'd previously written, she scrawls the words I want a name.

She smiled slightly, quite pleased with herself. It turned to a pout when she realized that having a name didn't mean anything if she stayed there, alone, where nobody to call her by that name. After another few moments spent chewing her lock of hair, she knew just what to say. Underneath the other wishes, in letters too big to be ignored, she wrote just three words:

No, she thought. She'd been out before, but only for a little while. Not like that.

Sinking her finger back into the wet sand, she writes one more word:

Now if only Joey would listen.