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suddenly larger, magnified.
    A different world underwater. Galen’s hands giant, his skin a tight sack holding his vital mush, his precious bit of warmth. He was a planet moving in a cold, weightless vacuum. Airless, impersonal, with a different relation to light. A thin membrane all that was keeping him alive.
    He picked up the lance, heard it scrape against rock, sound magnified. Life on land a lesser life, everything muted, made small and dull. He looked around at stone and sand, root and dark earth along the bank, all of it expanded and luminous. The sunlight shifting and rippling, washing over in bands.
    He had to come up again for air, his chest tight, and then he submerged and tried to relax, use less oxygen. The trout were all around him. If he could calm enough, he would feel their movement. Trout brothers, he thought. I am here with you now.

Chapter 9
    T hey were all in rocking chairs on the front deck.
    He’s a chameleon, Jennifer said. He’s all white now. What happened to the red?
    What did you do? his mother asked.
    Fishing, he said, but his voice came out hollow and shaky. His teeth were chattering. He was careful up the porch steps, set his lance beside the door. He felt bony.
    I guess we’ll be feasting on trout tonight, then, his aunt said, and Jennifer laughed.
    Today was just to figure out where they’re at, Galen said.
    They’re in the creek.
    Stop, his mother said.
    That’s okay, Galen said. I saw the creek today in a way you’ve never seen it, Helen. You have no idea what the creek is.
    I’ve only been coming here my whole life.
    That’s the problem. Your whole life you’ve been only half waking.
    Honestly, she said. What are you going to do when you have to go out into the real world?
    The way you’ve done? Don’t you live in a crap apartment paid for by Grandma? He was still having trouble getting the words out, his chest hollow. He really needed to warm up. I’m taking a bath, he said.
    You’ll have to turn on the water heater, his mother said. Takes about twenty minutes to warm up.
    Fuck, he said. I’m really cold.
    Galen, his grandmother said.
    Sorry.
    Are we leaving today? his grandmother asked. She looked suddenly worried.
    No, Mom, Galen’s mother said. We just got here. We have plenty of time.
    Oh, she said, and settled back in her chair. I hate it when I can’t remember.
    Galen stepped inside and ran into the hide-a-bed. Can’t you wait and put out the bed at night? he yelled.
    You entitled little shit, his aunt yelled back.
    Helen. It was a chorus from his mother and grandmother.
    Galen climbed over the bed. In the bathroom, he flicked the switch for the water heater, closed the door and slumped against it and felt so sad suddenly. He’d never fought with his aunt, never in his life. The best of his early memories were with her, in fact. An inflatable pool on his grandparents’ lawn, and she ran around the edge of it dragging him by the arms, making a whirlpool. Her laughter then always generous and real. He didn’t know what had happened. Some mistake, something that shifted the wrong way in the last couple days. She’d made comments before, but he’d thought they were just in fun.
    Galen didn’t understand how lives were supposed to overlap. He had brought each of these people into this incarnation to teach him a specific lesson. But if his aunt had a spirit or a soul, too, then she had her own lessons to learn, and how did all of this line up? How could it be synchronized?
    Maybe a person could be put on pause. His aunt still angry about her childhood. She hadn’t realized yet that memory was only an illusion. Maybe you could remain stuck forever if you refused to learn a particular lesson. But she hadn’t seemed angry before. Maybe it was Jennifer growing older. Maybe that was the difference. She was fighting for Jennifer now. In his earliest memories of his aunt, Jennifer