The Game of Boys and Monsters by Rachel M. Wilson

still looks pitying.
    â€œOr we might all move there,” I say.
    â€œYour mom would never leave Birmingham,” she says. “Her whole life is here.”
    â€œShe went away for college.”
    That’s how Mom and Dad met. But Mandy knows my mom almost as well as I do, and I’m pretty sure she’s right. When my parents moved here, Mom bought two rocking chairs for the back porch. When things were good, they would sit out there to watch the sun set behind the woods, have a drink, and chat. Mom always said she hoped that was how they’d spend their “twilight years”—in those chairs, side by side.
    I don’t want to leave Birmingham either, especially now that I’m at the academy. I want us all to stay happy in our same house, for Mom to get her “twilight years” wish. It seems like such a simple, small thing to ask.
    Mandy goes back to twirling her leaf.
    â€œIs your dad so pissed you’re going here?” she asks.
    I shrug.
    My parents fought about the academy—a lot. They fought about other things, but there was that one night in March . . . Mom had let me audition for the academy in secret, and when Dad found out—brutal.
    Months later, when Dad said he had to go, Mom told him, “If you’re leaving, you don’t get to argue with me about Caddie’s school,” and I guess he agreed. I still worry he’ll hold it against me—that even if he does come back, things will never be the same.
    But I can’t say that to Mandy.
    â€œDo you still take dance?” I say. Friends ask each other things.
    She purses her lips like she swallowed something nasty. “On weekends. Mom’s got me taking voice lessons too. I’m supposed to be a triple threat.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    She smiles at my ignorance, not in a mean way, but it’s a reminder of how much more time she’s had in this world. “It means you act, sing, and dance. You have to be a triple threat to be on Broadway or do regional theater even and have a career. It’s all musicals. . . . Here, watch me do a smoke ring.”
    The smoke comes out a shapeless mess and Mandy laughs at herself. “God, Caddie, I don’t even like musicals.” She inhales, then talks through her exhale. “They say movies are all waiting around, but I still think it’d be cool.” Her eyes go misty.
    â€œSo go be in a movie. Tell your mom she can be her own triple threat.”
    Mandy laughs. I made Mandy laugh.
    â€œI’m scared I don’t have the look for it.”
    I’ve never known Mandy to be scared of anything, but I like her for saying it. “You’re the best-looking person I know.”
    She laughs again. “No,” she says. “I mean, even if I look all right here—and I think I look all right—this is Birmingham. We’re tiny.”
    I follow her eyes to downtown, just visible through the tree cover. Our tallest buildings hardly scrape the sky, but they form a decent-sized grid stretching north and south of the train tracks. Most cities form around water, a lake or a river, an ocean port, but Birmingham’s river was a railroad.
    On the edges of the city are the smokestacks and furnaces. Now, a lot of these have been shut down. Graffiti artists have outdone themselves, tagging the highest pipes in jewel tones that complement the rust.
    Most of what people call Birmingham is miles and miles of villages with names that play on nature words: “ridge” and “valley,” “crest” and “dale,” plenty of “red” for the iron. Toss in “Cahaba” and “Cherokee,” the occasional “English” or “Avon,” and you’ve got it covered.
    Up here in Redmont Park over Avondale, the cicadas sing louder than the downtown traffic.
    Mandy’s been still for a long time, but it doesn’t feel wrong being quiet with her.