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brighter, almost like candied apples on the fattest part of her face. When she’s embarrassed, it’s more of a light blush that starts at the line of her hair and disappears underneath the neck of her shirt. It’s the shade of her ballet slippers. But when she’s getting ready to slug someone in the face, which she’s done to me before, it’s more the color of chewed bubblegum before all the sugar is gone. The very tips of her ears get just a shade darker, like raspberry flavor.
    Her color now tells me these two jerks better watch it—she’s ready to punch someone’s lights out.
    “Do you even know what a heifer is, heifer?” Mark Flinn taunts, following “the hole’s” lead.
    We call Tommy Johns “the hole” behind his back because he got stuck in an abandoned well when he was five. Dumbass thought he could shimmy down there with a coil of rope tied around a tree trunk. Only he was five. He couldn’t tie off a knot to save his soul. Was in that dark, dank dungeon for darn near two days. Almost died. I’m not a mean person, and I hope God doesn’t strike me down for thinking this, but I don’t think the world would be a worse place without “the hole” in it.
    “Nah…she’s too dumb to know what a heifer is,” “the hole” jabs.
    In slow motion Maverick looks up from the tunnel she’s been digging. Standing leisurely, her burning eyes not leaving Tommy’s face, she brushes the snow stuck to her mittens off on her jeans. I watch tiny bits of frozen water float to the ground, knowing “the hole” is about to join them, probably face-first.
    Which means that Mavs will be sent to the principal’s office. Again . And she’ll get grounded. Again . Maybe even get kicked out of school, which she’s come close to before. This will probably get her suspended because there’s no way this is ending without blood now. At only seven and in the second grade, she is already trouble, the whole damn word capitalized, not just the “T.”
    “Why don’t you slink off in a corner and lick the heifer manure from your stinky-ass shoes, hole,” Mavs smarts back, taking one step forward.
    Shitballs.
    She’s really going to do this.
    It doesn’t matter that she’s right. “The hole” lives on a cattle farm five miles outside of town. And his shoes do stink. I’ve smelled them before in the lunchroom. I usually hold my breath when I’m near him.
    I now have about two point five seconds to make a decision here: let this scene play out or take matters into my own hands, saving Mavs from herself. She needs to be saved a lot. At least she has me. She needs me more than she will ever know.
    So I do the only thing I can—the same thing I’ve done my whole with life with this reckless, fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants, infuriating girl. My girl.
    I reach out, grab the back of “the hole’s” winter coat, and throw the first punch.

W hen I was eleven I almost died.
    It was New Year’s Day.
    Jilly and I had each received the most perfect pair of white leather ice skates for Christmas. In typical stuck-up Jilly fashion, she thumbed her nose at the gift and threw the skates in the corner of her closet.
    “Oh my gosh, Jilly, don’t you love the skates? They’re my favorite present!” I squeal.
    “Love them? I hate the cold. It makes my skin dry,” she says in her snotty-ass voice.
    She never took them out of the box. Once.
    I, on the other hand, loved mine. As usual, we each had a giant pile of presents we didn’t need and most I probably wouldn’t use. The skates were the least expensive of my gifts that year, but I treasured them as though they’d been dipped in gold.
    I remember that year as if it were just yesterday.
    Both Killian and Kael had been distant. Killian turned sixteen in September and had gotten his driver’s license. He was never around. He’d dropped out of our homegrown band, which we thought we’d smartly named DeSheps, a combo of our last names. And since he was the drummer and none