Page 77 of My Girl

Roderick Galloway

Age 9

“Why didyou put it up there?” Gage squeaks.

I carry the ladder to the upper shelf by the rafters. Mrs. Galloway—I haven’t been allowed to call her my mother since Gage was born—puts baskets of dead flowers up there, saying it brings life into the house. I don’t know about that, but I do know that she never goes up there, not even to dust. The dead rat has been safe there for over a day now.

Gage’s blue eyes blink up at me, so little and sweet. For a second, I feel good, like I’m the protective older brother I’m supposed to be. He doesn’t get the difference between blood and adoption yet, so he still listens to me. Big brother perks and all.

Can I even call him a brother, though? I was adopted into the family while he was born into it.

“Look,” I say. “I’m too heavy. It’s better if I hold on to the ladder. You can go up there and see it. There’s a rope up there. You can hold on to it if you get scared.”

Gage’s eyes zigzag across me, like he’s not sure if he should believe me. He’s four, but he can already tell that what we’re doing is probably not allowed. It’s annoying. It’s notreallya lie. Heislighter, and it is better if someone stays down here, making sure the ladder stays stable.

That’s not why I’m telling him to do this, though.

“Trust me, okay?” I say.

“Mom will get mad at us,” he says.

“Mrs. Galloway won’t know if we do it quickly,” I argue. “You want to see it, right?”

He scratches behind his ear. “Yeah. I do.”

“It’s really cool.” I smile. “You can see the bones in its stomach.”

“Really?”

I grin. “I’ll be right here. Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared.”

He straightens, eager to prove that he’s cool like his big brother. He climbs the ladder, and I keep it steady at the bottom. My skin buzzes like I’m full of static electricity.

He stops at the second rung from the top.

“Roddy?” he asks.

“You see that rope?” I ask.

A length is tied to the rafter, long enough that it’ll reach him. Gage puts it around his arm, hooking into it. It took me a while to figure it out, but it’s just like the magazine I took from the grocery store.

The rope around the woman’s neck.

Her eyes round, popping from her head like a bug.

The veins bubbling under her skin.

“No,” I say. “Put it around yourneck.It’ll hold your weight better. It’ll be balanced.”

“Balanced?”

“Your neck, Gage.”

Gage does as he’s told, and the rope becomes a necklace.

“Okay,” he says. “Now what?”