The Color Of Light. Emilie Richards

      Isaiah lifted a yellowed leaf off the ground beneath the sycamore and gave it to Dougie, talking about the shape, using his hand to explain what palmate meant. “Squirrels like these trees because the branches twist and turn, and that helps them feel safer from predators. Without the leaves you can see the branches better.” He pointed up.

      “How do you know so much?” Shiloh asked.

      “I spend a lot of time outdoors when I can. Trees interest me.” He inclined his head. “What interests you?”

      “A roof over our heads?”

      “What else? When you aren’t worrying, which is rare, I know, but what interests you both that has nothing to do with your situation?”

      The question was so direct and so, well, interesting, that she couldn’t tell him to shove off. He seemed to really care about her answer.

      “I like to run,” Dougie said. “As fast as I can, and I’m fast. I really, really am.”

      “I just bet. Do you like sports?”

      “He wouldn’t know,” Shiloh said. “Running’s free, and you can do it anywhere.”

      “So you can. And it’s good practice for everything else, too.”

      “If bad guys come, I can get away,” Dougie said.

      Isaiah looked sadder, but he nodded. “Well, I was thinking more of baseball and football. That kind of thing.”

      “I like to fish. My dad fishes, and he used to take me with him when I was really little.”

      Isaiah nodded again, as if Dougie’s words were somehow profound. “And you, Shiloh?”

      The question should have been easy, but it wasn’t. She had packed away everything that interested her, like the boxes from their home that went into a storage unit until they couldn’t afford to pay the rent anymore. Now all those things were probably gone forever, her childhood toys, the quilts her grandmother had made. Gone. And with them anything she had once liked to do.

      She could see he understood that she wasn’t just being stubborn. She had given up being interested in anything other than survival.

      “I think you like to read,” he said.

      “Shiloh gets magazines out of the recycling,” Dougie said. “For her and for me.”

      “That’s the best kind of recycling,” Isaiah said. “What magazines do you like?”

      “Whatever.”

      “Everything, in other words.”

      “I guess. I like news. It makes me feel better.”

      “Because you realize things could be worse?”

      She nodded, just a little. She was surprised how much he understood. “I hate People magazine. Those kinds of magazines, you know? Those people have no idea how good they have it, and they’re always whining.”

      “You don’t like whining.”

      “If I say yes, I’ll be whining.”

      He laughed, a deep laugh like his voice, and she knew it was genuine. She liked Isaiah Colburn, although of course, he was a stranger and that meant he was still suspect.

      “Why are you here?” she asked. “Are you here to volunteer or something?”

      “No, I came to see Reverend Wagner.”

      “She won’t be here today. It’s her day off. I have her cell phone number, though. She gave it to me and told me to call anytime.”

      “Then she thinks you’re special.”

      “She would be wrong about that.”

      “Probably not. But you’ve saved me from going inside. I’ll come back another day.”

      “Are you her friend? Or do you need counseling or something?”

      He took a moment to answer. His expression changed as he seemed to sink somewhere deep inside him. “Both,” he said at last.

      “Nobody calls her Reverend Wagner. At least nobody I would like. She’s Reverend Ana.”

      “I’ll remember that.”

      “I guess she’s a good friend to have. She’s been nice to us.”

      “She would be.” He said goodbye and did a fist bump with Dougie, then he extended his hand to her once more.

      “Think about school,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, it’s the only way out, Shiloh. And deep inside you’re too smart not to see that.”

      They shook. Then he lifted that hand in goodbye and started back to the parking lot.

      “I like him. He’s nice,” Dougie said.

      “I guess.” Shiloh considered, then said it again with a little more enthusiasm.

      “You don’t like most people.”

      She wondered when that had become true. Maybe she had packed that box away and it, too, was at the county dump.

      That seemed sadder than almost anything else that had happened to them so far.