Billy got big enough to walk, then big enough to pick mushrooms, then big enough to chase squirrels. He was big enough to play hide-and-go-seek with, big enough to play twenty questions with, big enough to horse around in the middle of the lake at the center of the mountain with.
Alan left him alone during the days, in the company of their parents and the golems, went down the mountain to school, and when he got back, he’d take his kid brother out on the mountain face and teach him what he’d learned, even though he was only a little kid. They’d write letters together in the mud with a stick, and in the winter, they’d try to spell out their names with steaming pee in the snow, laughing.
“That’s a fraction,” Brad said, chalking “3/4” on a piece of slate by the side of one of the snowmelt streams that coursed down the springtime mountain.
“That’s right, three-over-four,” Alan said. He’d learned it that day in school, and had been about to show it to Billy, which meant that Brad had remembered him doing it and now knew it. He took the chalk and drew his own 3/4—you had to do that, or Billy wouldn’t be able to remember it in advance.
Billy got down on his haunches. He was a dark kid, dark hair and eyes the color of chocolate, which he insatiably craved and begged for every morning when Alan left for school, “Bring me, bring me, bring me!”
He’d found something. Alan leaned in and saw that it was a milkweed pod. “It’s an egg,” Bobby said.
“No, it’s a weed,” Alan said. Bobby wasn’t usually given to flights of fancy, but the shape of the pod was reminiscent of an egg.
Billy clucked his tongue. “I know that. It’s also an egg for a bug. Living inside there. I can see it hatching. Next week.” He closed his eyes. “It’s orange! Pretty. We should come back and find it once it hatches.”
Alan hunkered down next to him. “There’s a bug in here?”
“Yeah. It’s like a white worm, but in a week it will turn into an orange bug and chew its way out.”