Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird

having a new, braces-free smile without the big funky gap in the middle that my old one had made me believe that this assignment would be different. At the bus stop on our first day of school, I found out big gap, no gap, braces, no braces, none of it mattered to civilians. We were outsiders. We were different.
    It was January, and Codie and I walked through a freezing wind thick with dust and gravel to the bus stop half a mile away. As we got to the stop, the three girls already waiting there watched us with sour expressions, like we were Christmas presents no one wanted. Socks or cotton underwear. Finally, a skinny girl with mean hillbilly eyes and thinlips asked Codie where we were from. We never knew how to answer that question. Whether to say the base we just left. Or the one we were born on. Or the town where our father’s parents lived, even though we hadn’t seen them since I was a baby. Or Missouri, since our mom’s parents lived there. So Codie just pressed “play” on our standard answer and started counting off the assignments. “Okay, we just moved from Idaho. Our mom was born on Clark Air Base in the Philippines. But that base is closed now. I was born in Germany, but then we moved to California, where Luz was born, then San Antonio. After that was Nevada, then back to Germany, then …”
    I watched the girls’ eyes narrow as the litany of countries and states went on. The bright light of the group, a girl with the congested voice and under-eye shadows of someone with chronic sinus problems, stared hard at Codie’s antique gold skin and her cloud of espresso-brown hair, then observed with canny, shitkicking arrogance, “You don’t look German.”
    Her friend, wearing a “Support Our Troops” T-shirt, said, “They’re base kids,” in a way that meant,
They’ll be gone soon, too soon to be friends with. But not too soon to bully.
    While they studied us, I saw my future in Wichita Falls like it was showing on a crystal ball: me getting picked on for the next two years by these inbreeds, and I mentally started erasing them. Codie saw the same vision, and, never one to erase or ignore, dropped her weight back and sank down into The Stance. My sister would have been a killer jock if we’d ever stayed anywhere long enough for her to get on a team. Instead, she channeled all her natural athletic gifts into martial arts. It was her major bond with our mom. Some mothers and daughters scrapbook or read
Little House on the Prairie
together. Codie and my mom sparred. In her prime, my mom was a female Bruce Lee, and she taught Codie her own mix of karate, kung fu, street brawling, and some system from Israel called krav maga. So, essentially, my sister could kick your ass in half a dozen languages. She could knock your hat off your head with the back of her foot, then crush your windpipe with her elbow when you reached for it. The girls circling us at the bus stop had enough animal cunning to be able to read serious danger coming off of Codie like stars and squiggles from a KO’d cartoon character.
    They backed off and even let Codie and me get on the bus first. Thosegirls never spoke to us again the entire time we went to that crappy school. Hardly anyone else did either. But I didn’t care. I had Codie. Codie was my hometown.
    I follow the curve in the shoreline until the fire disappears from view and there’s no sign at all of the kids on the beach. The shoreline straightens out. I stop and let the tide wash in over my ankles. Ahead of me moonlight paints an avenue of silver across the waves so broad that it seems I could simply stroll across it.
    Where do you want to be buried?
    That question is the mind-fuck version of the hometown/where-are-you-from one. Brats hate it even more, since it highlights the fact that not only are we not from anywhere, but some of us have nowhere to go back to.
    We had Codie’s funeral in Hawaii. The air force took care of most of it. An honor guard of soldiers wearing