Rain Is Not My Indian Name

Tasty Freckles

FROM MY JOURNAL:

On New Year’s Eve, I stood waiting my turn in the express aisle of Hein’s Grocery Barn, flipping through the December issue of Teen Lifestyles.

The magazine reported: 76% of teenagers who responded to our Heating Up Your Holidays survey indicated that they had French-kissed someone.

The next day was my birthday, and I’d never kissed anyone—domestic-style or French. Right then, looking at that magazine, I decided to get myself a teen life.

Tradition was on my side. Among excuses for kisses, midnight on New Year’s Eve outweighs mistletoe all Christmas season long. Kissing Galen would mark my new year, my birthday, my new beginning.

Or I’d chicken out and drown in a pit of humiliation, insecurity, and despair. Cassidy Rain Berghoff, Rest in Peace.

DECEMBER 31

That night, Galen and I jogged under the ice-trimmed branches of oaks and sugar maples, never guessing that somebody was watching us through ruffled country curtains and hooded miniblinds. We should’ve known.

Small-town people make the best spies.

As we tore through the parking lot behind Tricia’s Barbecue House, my camera thudded against my hip and I breathed in the chill, the mist, and the spicy smell of smoking beef. Galen’s cold hand yanked mine past Phillips 66 Car Wash, Sonic Drive-In, and up the tallest hill in town to N. R. Burnham Elementary. Chewie, my black Lab, led us to the playground, and Galen grinned at me like we were getting away with something.

I thought we were.

Of course Grampa Berghoff hadn’t given us permission to prowl like night creatures on New Year’s Eve. Earlier that evening, he’d shelled out twenty-five bucks for pizza delivery and entertainment, and said, Watch yourself.

But Galen drew his line at rom-coms, and I drew mine at Anime. Mercury Videos, CDs & Vintage Vinyl was a fun place to kill time, but there was hardly anything new in stock since our last visit.

Galen and I had gone out after the third phone call from his mother: the first to ask if he’d gotten to my house okay, a whopping five blocks; the second to ask if my big brother, Fynn, could drive Galen home—no problem; and finally to ask if Grampa and Fynn would be back from their dates before midnight. As if.

My high-tops smacked the playground asphalt, and I opened my mouth to catch a snowflake or two. Galen let go of my hand, and I dropped into the swing beside him.

We soared.

Below, Christmas lights outlined rooftops, shop windows, and the clock tower on the Historical Society Museum of Hannesburg, Kansas. Cottony smoke puffed out of chimneys and blurred into clouds. Plastic reindeer hauled Santa’s sleigh on top of the new McDonald’s.

Perfect, I thought.

Besides haunting the streets and swinging to the heavens, I planned to try out the filters Grampa had tucked into my Christmas stocking the week before. I hoped to compose some shots of my hometown in all of its hazy holiday glitter.

But that’s not what I was nervous about.

Glancing at Galen, I could still see my field trip buddy, the one who’d tugged me away from Mrs. Bigler’s second-grade class to find turquoise cotton candy at the American Royal Rodeo. I wasn’t a hard sell. With my parents’ pocket camera ready, I’d hoped to shoot whatever wasn’t on the guided tour. When we finally got caught, Mrs. Bigler sentenced us both to keep our noses to the brick wall for a month of recesses.

Through lemonade stands, arcade games, spelling bees, and science fairs, we’d been best friends ever since.

When Galen’s rock busted out the new streetlight, we both got a tour of the city lockup. When Galen climbed the water tower and couldn’t get back down, I’m the one who called the volunteer fire department.

But at Mom’s funeral, he was the one who answered for me when people said they were sorry and what a shame. Thank you for coming, he told them, just like a grown-up. And he’d asked Gramma Scott to check on me after I’d gone into the funeral home restroom and decided to never come out.

Galen was the one person who always understood me, the one person I always understood.

Over the past couple of years, though, something had happened. Something unexpected. Something that made me feel squishy inside. Galen’s bangs had draped to the nub of his nose. His sweeping golden eyelashes made my stubby dark ones look like bug legs. He’d grown so delicious, I longed to bite the freckles off of his pink cheeks.

As Chewie barked at us from the playground below, I shivered on my swing and scolded myself for leaving the house in only my ladybug-patch jeans and the black silk blouse Aunt Louise had sent me for Christmas. But the silk made me feel more sophisticated somehow, and I’d worn it, figuring I could use all the attitude I could get.

My watch read twelve minutes until midnight. Almost time, I announced.

Hey, birthday girl, Galen called, guess what I got you.

I told you ten times that I give up, I answered, pumping my legs, trying to outswing him. Besides, I’ll find out tomorrow.

Galen and I had both been holiday babies with birthdays outside of the school calendar, and so sometimes people forgot about celebrating us. That’s why he’d promised to always remember my birthday, New Year’s Day, and I’d promised to always remember his, the Fourth of July. We’d spit-shook on it.

Galen’s taste in presents, though, was adventurous. Over the past few years, he’d given me a frog skeleton, a bag of rock-hard gum balls, and a midnight blue Avon perfume bottle swiped from his mom’s bathroom. Last year, he’d gotten ahold of eleven cardboard stand-ups of Star Trek characters and talked eleven downtown merchants into featuring them in the shops’ storefront window displays. Each stand-up held a sign reading TELL RAIN BERGHOFF, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

I’d been so embarrassed that I didn’t leave home for a week. Four months later, people had still been wishing me a happy birthday.

Galen laughed, slowing his swing by dragging his shoe soles against the wood chips, and I did the same. I thought he might be cold. I thought maybe he was ready to head back home.

But then Galen reached inside of his shirt pocket and handed me a jewelry-sized gift box. It was wrapped in violet tissue and tied with a metallic black ribbon.

Does it bite? I asked, looking at him sideways.

Galen shook his head. You see any airholes?

I frowned. It’s not dead, is it?

He shook his head again, innocentlike. Nope.

Will it publicly humiliate me in any way?

He laughed again, this time nervously.

Suspicious, I thought. I almost asked another question, but I caught a glimpse of pink rising on his cheeks. It’s just the cold, I told myself. But I could’ve sworn he was blushing. To the best of my memory, Galen never blushed.

Opening the box, I lifted a necklace from the puffed cotton. A black suede pouch, in the shape of a half-moon and as small as my thumbprint, lay between dangling leather ties. Seed beads in daybreak colors—crimson, yellow, and burnt orange—lined the curving seam, sealed with white crisscross stitches. Larger daybreak-colored beads flanked the pouch, bordered by even more beads—two plastic midnight blues and two scalloped metal silvers. The necklace smelled smoky, bittersweet, and granny-ancient.

I remembered seeing it last June, displayed on a Lakota trader’s table at a powwow in Oklahoma City. Aunt Georgia had taken Galen and me on a road trip to visit family, and he had trailed after me down crowded aisle after aisle.

Later, with fingers sticky from an Indian taco, I’d focused my camera on a girl turning with a rose-quilted shawl. I shot her two ways, first to capture one footstep, one flying rose, and then slower to preserve the blur of her dance, the rhythm of the Drum. Meanwhile, Galen had ditched me on a popcorn run to shop.

Tying the necklace around my neck, I realized it was the furthest thing from what I’d been expecting, that it was the kind of gift you might call romantic.

Leave it to Galen to be the brave one first.

His blue eyes had lost their usual mischief, and it was clear that something had changed when he looked at me. But right then, I didn’t have the words, and I was pretty sure he didn’t, either. So we did the only thing we could have. We began soaring again.

As the swing carried me up, I had to bite the insides of my chapped lips to keep from grinning. My toes tingled with stardust. Even if I chickened out at midnight, this let me know I could bide my time. Maybe Galen and I would be like Gramma and Grampa Scott, high-school sweethearts who’d never belong to anyone else.

I told myself that if Galen had ever looked at another girl the way he was looking at me, it had just been for practice. It absolutely didn’t count.

Later, Galen shot by me on his swing, yelling, I’m going to jump.

You’re too high, I said, trying not to sound like his mother.

Galen let go of the chains and flew, shouting, Happy New Year!

Snow fell like parade confetti. Ten from the Chinese judge, Galen called, sticking the landing and raising his hands high. Nine point five from the French.

He jogged down the hill, and Chewie circled him, tail wagging.

A lousy eight from the American, Galen added, spinning in the soccer field with