The Sky Below by Stacey D'Erasmo

headed to the car. She threw the keys at us over the rail, hard, metal striking gravel. Caroline picked them up, we got in, and she drove, not looking at me, one arm out the window on her side of the car. Her black hair flew up all over from the hot wind, like she was jumping down a chute. I felt as if the pressure inside my head was changing, as if my ears were popping, though the road was as flat as ever.
    We went down a road I didn’t know and pulled off at a place I’d never been. The ground seemed firmer than in the other swamps. The water, when I put my hand in it, wasn’t cold, but it had another note in it, a darker note. The sun kept moving in and out of clouds, as if it was restless. Caroline walked ahead with slow, intent steps.
    â€œLet’s go back,” I said.
    She didn’t reply. Usually, the swamp opened up at a certain point, and it was like being inside some sort of primordial
green plum. But this swamp was narrower, the trees overhead thicker and more entwined; when I looked behind us, I wasn’t certain I could find the way out. Dismally, stupidly, I wanted to go home, though I knew we couldn’t go back until our mother cooled down. I wondered if she was making a bonfire of the money, throwing bills into the flames one by one. My sneakers felt heavy on my feet. My balls itched; I discreetly scratched them. Caroline began whistling “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and it made a pretty, thin sound there in the swamp. There wasn’t much to eat that wasn’t poisonous in this one: a few stringy purplish leaves. I knew we couldn’t live here; I didn’t need Caroline to tell me that. Maybe, I thought, we could live in the car and buy food in plastic packages from rest stops. I could earn our keep along the way. Maybe we could start driving and never go back. Maybe we could head north until we turned into ice versions of ourselves, with snow for hair.
    Caroline was peering at the trees. She seemed to be counting. “This way,” she said tersely, plunging to the left. I followed her like a leaky balloon on a string. I felt like I was bleeding to death, invisibly.
    â€œOkay.” She stopped at the foot of one of the taller swamp trees. A brown fungus covered one side. The tree listed slightly. Grasping the trunk, Caroline began climbing it, reaching high above her head for the lowest branch. She pulled herself up, looked down at me. “Come on, let’s go, Gabe. Get up here.” She rested easily in the tree, as if they were the best of friends, leaning back to back. She scrambled up, reached above her for the next branch. One of her sneakered feet disappeared into the leaves.
    I was afraid she might leave me here forever, keep going straight into the sky without me. I grabbed onto the trunk and pushed and pulled, scraping my arms, scraping my knees through my jeans on the wet, tough swamp bark. I followed her into the tree. She twisted ahead of me, going up gracefully,
fast. When she got about halfway up, perhaps ten feet from the ground, she stopped. I made it onto the branch next to her, huffing.
    â€œAll right, Gabe,” she said. She looked straight into my eyes with a raw solemnity that she rarely let me see these days. This, I knew, was her deepest secret. I squirmed, not sure I really wanted to know her deepest secret. She reached into her back pocket, took out a plastic bag, dipped her hand inside, and briskly rubbed something all over her arms, as if she was putting on suntan lotion, though it was nearly dusk in the swamp, the day’s light rust-colored, shadows lengthening around us. She grabbed my hand and put something in it, a dab of some mushy, grainy stuff. “We don’t have that much time before it gets dark.” She closed her eyes, balanced perfectly on her branch, and extended her arms, turning her palms up. Her hands and arms were shining. “Shhhh.”
    Straddling my branch, I limply held up my palm with