Amalee by Dar Williams

you’d have to get twenty-five shots in your stomach. My dad sounded like a kid who was still afraid of getting bitten, even though we’d been on lots of camping trips since then.
    He said, “Do you like snakes?”
    And she said, “Of course, I like snakes.”
    â€œWould you touch one?”
    â€œI have touched one. At the zoo. With my dad. Would you touch a snake?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said Dad, laughing like a boy. “I think I would at a zoo. But I wouldn’t touch it in the real world, if you know what I mean. We had a snake in our basement one night, and nobody would touch it. It wasn’t even poisonous!”
    She said, “That’s really scary! I mean, even if thesnake isn’t poisonous, it could still bite you. It could crush you.”
    They both squealed.
    The boy finished his story. “Anyway, my mom said my dad should deal with it, but he wouldn’t, so she called the fire department.” The girl laughed, and he went on. “She also called when there was a skunk, and she didn’t wait for him to deal with it!”
    They both continued to laugh. She imitated his mom. “Honey, really, DON’T deal with it!”
    This was strange. I had heard this story before. But never like this.
    I got closer to the door and heard the boy ask, “How did you get the name Phyllis?” I held my breath.
    She said, “My grandmother. How did you get the name David?”
    And he said, “My grandfather.”
    There was a pause, and then they talked about oceanography, and how they had always planned to make a ship out of unbreakable glass so they could always go below deck and see all the fish. Then Dad was giving Phyllis a lecture on what to do if she was attacked by a shark, as if we ever did anything besides swimming in lakes and creeks.
    I was amazed at what Phyllis had done. She had ledhim back so far into the past that he was opening up rooms full of childhood thoughts and memories he didn’t even know he had!
    He started yawning. “Hey, I’m really tired,” he said, sounding surprised.
    I saw him lean over and point to their high school yearbooks. “I really liked looking at those yearbooks,” he muttered as he drifted off to sleep. “I remember when you got pretty. You went away for the summer before ninth grade, and you came back pretty.”
    Then my dad lay down and started to sleep, curling up and snuggling with his pillow as if it were a stuffed animal.
    I backed away from the door so Phyllis wouldn’t see me, but she flung the door open as she left his room. She was her full-grown self with her full-grown voice, wiping some tears away. “Amalee!” she gasped, as she closed the door. “Did you hear that?”
    â€œI heard the whole thing,” I whispered. “Why are you crying? You know you’re pretty, Phyllis,” I teased, but then I realized she was crying because of his confession that he thought she was pretty in high school.
    â€œThat’s nice of you to say, Amalee. I just feel a little closer to fourteen than forty right now. And … and he never said I was pretty back then. He just stopped talkingto me for a year. But that doesn’t matter.” She looked at the closed door. “Now I’m scared I’ve exhausted him.”
    â€œI’m sure he’s fine,” I assured her. For weeks he hadn’t sounded as alive and excited as he had just now.
    â€œI don’t know what happened,” she whispered back. “I just had a plan. I couldn’t bear to see him so unhappy.”
    â€œI know. He’s been acting like he’s already a ghost,” I said.
    â€œOh, no, don’t say that, even if it’s true,” she muttered. I noticed her eyes welling up with tears again. “I know I talk a lot,” she went on, smiling nervously. “And I know you think I talk a lot and that I’m sort of a busy-body.