Part One

            In those days, we were who we were and there was nothing else. We walked in circles, knocking together like automatons without mind or meaning, set drifting through a nothing world. In those days, we were just us and everything beyond what we could see—physically see—was a wonder waiting to be explored.

            She came to our school and she had black hair and blue eyes and she was beautiful. She was sweet; kind. No one derided her for being different and she returned the favor. She was a golden girl from the start, all shy confidence and knowing eyes.

            I tried not to like her. I couldn't see why everyone wanted to be in the presence of a twelve-year-old girl. Older students, her classmates, and teachers alike were fawning over her dainty face and I couldn't understand why. A girl who everyone loved, and she was named Rue.

            It was strange. An entire school paid court to a little girl with stars in her eyes and infinity in her step. Before her, we were who we were and nothing else. After her, our world was suddenly colored with something beyond and the word 'wonder' lost all meaning.

            I had never been sociable. I didn't approach her, not like everyone else. My younger sister orbited her like a satellite, basking in her beauty and her praise. My teacher, Mr. Donaldson, asked her every few minutes whether she needed a drink or some food or anything; anything at all. I just watched.

            Rue saw me looking at her and caught my eyes and there was nothing, nothing, like her smile.

            Her step was so light, so soft, and her wide eyes so gentle. I was like a deer frozen in the lights as she came, inexorably, closer. She left behind a crowd of people that looked bereft at her absence, still hanging there as if caught in time, waiting for her return.

            "Gwen told me that your name is Liam," she said softly. "I'm Rue Matthews. I hope you don't mind... she invited me over to your house after school, and I—" Her eyelashes swept down to cover her eyes, her cheeks flushing, and in another girl her innocence might have seemed contrived. She drew a breath and gathered her courage, made awkward by my awkwardness, made discomforted by my discomfort. "I— just wanted to make sure."

            "I... you'd really have to ask our parents. It's not my job to decide who Gwen can invite over."

            She flushed even darker and I could feel Gwen's eyes boring into me as the palpable force of her anger. "I just didn't want to..."

            "It's all right. Uh..." I struggled for the words, trying not to make her even more uncomfortable. "It's all.. okay with me if you want to visit."

            She brightened and smiled again. "Thank you! I'll do my best not to impose!" she said, and in the strangest of all mannerisms, she bowed. I remember thinking that it was peculiar, but nothing else. Something about her was too charming to really think of as very odd and even I could do nothing but melt under the force of her smile.

            She walked home with us that day, her hands clutching her book bag before her and smiling blissfully at Gwen and at me alike. It was my job to make sure that Gwen safely got home from school every day, so I walked with them instead of going to the book store or the library, as was my preference. My headphones were around my neck for once instead of over my ears; I wanted to pay full attention to every word that Rue spoke.

            She talked of simple things, but unless pressed, she spoke not of family. What she said of her parents was little; what she said of her brother was spoken with fondness, but the words themselves still sparse in quantity. She did not say why they had moved or where to; she did not have to ask permission before going home with someone else after her first day at a new school.

            The entire way home, I kept catching glimpses of something out of the corner of my eye. Almost out of earshot, I heard snatches of laughter. It unnerved me, and the entire way back I said nothing. Then again, I so rarely did. Though I loved Gwen, it was the love of a big brother for his little sister; she was a fond annoyance, nothing more. The way back to our house was better spent listening to music or reading than to her chatter and the only reason that I hadn't been ignoring her at that time was because Rue was with us.

            When we reached the house, Gwen ran inside ahead of me with her hand linked with Rue's. Their laugh lingered in the air as I followed behind more slowly, listening to a piece of conversation just within my hearing as the girls begin to get out an after-school snack with laughing explanations about where things were followed by my sister's rapid-fire questioning.

            "Now?"

            "Not yet..."

            I looked out beyond the doorway, trying to see where the voices were coming from, and then shut it against them, turning my attention to Rue's hesitant, inviting smile.

            "Here," she offered, handing me an oatmeal chocolate-chip cookie. "I thought you might want one."

            I hated oatmeal chocolate-chip, but I took it all the same.

            I stayed in the family room for once instead of heading straight to my room. I could tell by Gwen's annoyed glare that she didn't know why. Rue bit into a cookie, her fingers holding tightly to the napkin that surrounded it. Her chipped green nail polish was in sharp contrast to the white and her small hands shook slightly. She seemed so delicate and frail, the very picture of someone who needed to be protected and coveted.

            "So tell me more about your brother," Gwen asked, kicking one foot back and forth. She sat beside Rue on the couch and, sitting together like that, the difference between them was astounding. Gwen was all bright colors and belligerent spirit. Unlike Rue, she hadn't bothered with a napkin and crumbs littered her plaid school skirt. Where Rue sat in a collected and neat way, Gwen splayed out and claimed the couch as her own. "You said his name was, uh... De-lye-ri?

            Rue smiled, but not mockingly. "Deliri. It's an E sound. It's actually short for Delirious. Our..." She faltered; it was just small hitch in her voice, but it was noticeable. "Our parents are very strange, naming us as they did. I suppose that our names are something of a... deviation from the norm." Her smile was tight now, strain showing around the corners of her lips.

            She spoke so differently from other eight-year-olds. It was hard not to notice. I knew that a normal child would not have said phrases like 'a deviation from the norm'. A normal child would not have worded things the way she did, but Rue wasn't normal. Rue was special, so although it was noteworthy I did not find it strange.

            "Deliri is the troublemaker of the family, I suppose." She laughed sweetly and it sounded like what sunlight glancing off water might sound like, if it could make a sound, or a thousand other joyous things. "I can't quite keep up with him. I haven't seen him in a long time, though..."

            Gwen blinked, finishing her cookie with a crunch. "Why? He sounds cool. Much better than my brother." She wrinkled her nose at me, sticking out her tongue. Rue gave a pained smile, much like before.

            "He's... staying with friends. I—" She shook her head. "I'm sorry to go so quickly, but I really need to get to the store at Jacob's Lane and Moorland. Someone is supposed to be picking me up when it gets dark."
            The sun was fading fast outside, the night slowly creeping inside our house to spread tendrils of graying light that would eventually disappear entirely.

            "Oh," Gwen said. Her voice was disappointed and her lower lip stuck out a bit. "Oh well. Liam can take you where you need to go. I can't leave the house once it gets dark and someone should go with you." She nodded firmly, bossing me as she always did.

            Rue turned to look at me. "If— if you don't mind, Liam?"

            I agreed almost before I realized it and she smiled; again, she smiled.

            I never really considered until later how convenient it was that I grabbed my backpack before I left. I had my uniform shirt and mp3 player stuffed around several books and notebooks. There were a thousand other useless little things in there like tissues and loose change. Everything in it was something personal, even the things that weren't.

            I shoved my hands into my pockets as I walked beside her. I was uncomfortable and a bit cold, the autumn chill swirling around the two us like the ghost of summer's past. She was uncomfortable too. Gwen had made her more at ease, but I still seemed to make her nervous. I always hated that about myself. I put everyone ill at ease without once meaning to do so.

            Her back straightened. "Do you like it here, Liam?" she asked. It seemed like a queer thing to say.

            "I... suppose so." I didn't really, but there were only so many things that you could say to that sort of question and just one of them was fit for polite company.

            "I like it here, but I like home better," she declared. Her eyes were sparkling. "Home feels cleaner, somehow." She grinned at me, a look far more unconstrained than her previous. "I think you would like my home, Liam."

            She began to walk more quickly. "There's my stop!" Sure enough, the crossroads stood, the Jacob's Grocer at the corner. It was a run-down building, the paint on the wooden siding peeling in some places, gone entirely in others. "I should be fine here. Thank you for walking me."

            "You're welcome," I said, but she was already gone. I started to head back in the direction from where we'd come. Jacob's Grocer was out of town a ways on a dirt road, lined by woods on one side and a swamp on the other. The road had the kind of silence that was loud. There were crickets chirping, even this late in the season, and the chitter of birds. After a few moments and above all this, I began to hear the whispering again. I stopped and stood still by the side of the road, facing the swamp. A laugh pealed out so loudly that a flock of birds fled from a nearby tree. It was fairly dark out now and I could just barely see where I was going.

            "Now?" one of the voices asked.

            "Now," the other confirmed.

            "Is he coming yet?" questioned a third. "Is he, is he, is he, is he..."

            I was annoyed now. The sounds had evoked a curiosity as well as a fear in me that I couldn't really understand. Then a light appeared over the swamp, flickering and pale.

            "Maybe," the first voice said teasingly. "If he dares."

           Blindly, angrily, I followed the light. Muck squelched around my boots as I walked and I tugged my backpack higher, feeling thorns catch against it. The dark had officially fallen and I could see only by the bright face of the moon and the strange light that was just out of my reach.

           "Now!" the third voice cheered childishly. I something flashed in front of me; I saw a cloud of white hair. After that, my world disappeared.