Delaney and Jenna sat at the lunch table with the fortune cookie like it was waiting for one of them to to open it, Jenna had taken it from her families take-out last night and it was still in plastic wrap and slid it across the table with a face like she was giving away something large and important.

"Go ahead, open it, it won't bite you," Jenna said.

Delaney picked it up and broke it apart, pulling out the little strip of paper in the same way that she always did, already expecting something generic. Something about patience or prosperity, yet instead it said: You aren't who you think you are, which was weird.

She stared at it for a second, then laughed and flipped it around so Jenna could read it.

"Okay that's kind of creepy," Jenna said.

"It's just a fortune cookie," Delaney said, then without thinking any more about ot she put the paper in her jacket pocket. But she did keep thinking about it and the words remained in her mind like a splinter, small and unseen but painful whenever she turned the wrong way.

The school day passed, which had been busy but also somehow loud and unremarkable, her friends and the rest of her classmates went on their way as the last bell had rung. Delaney had gotten into the rhythm of an afternoon, knowing she had a job that she need to go to.

The Blakes lived next to Delaney, and their three‐year‐old son, Archer, was constantly trying to make every room in the house resemble a tornado had gone through it. Delaney had been babysitting Archer for almost 15 months, so she was very much used to it. In fact, she enjoyed it, there was something refreshing about a child saying what he wanted something, and meaning it. If only more adults were like him.

As needed for dinner, Delaney fed Archer the mac and cheese his mother had prepared, wiped his face twice which was because he wanted to wear it, too, and spent close to an hour and a half playing with his plastic dinosaurs on the floor of the living room with him. Delaney liked how Archer to express himself, and when it was time to clean up his toys, Delaney counted the toys, making a game of it, and Archer enjoyed helping to clean, which was an incredible since he no longer complained about it.

The afternoon was fine. Normal. But the strip of paper in her pocket didn't feel normal, and she couldn't stop thinking about it in the background of everything else.

She was home by six, and her mom wasn't back yet. Peggy Kennedy, her grandmother, was in the living room in the chair she had claimed when she moved in four years ago after Delaney's dad died. She didn't look up when Delaney came in.

"Your mother's late again," Peggy said.

"I know," Delaney said.

"The dishes from this morning are still in the sink."

Delaney put her bag down and went to wash them without saying anything else, because that was easier. The kitchen felt different when her mom wasn't in it. Smaller. Peggy's presence had a way of filling the rooms she wasn't even in.

Juliette Kennedy came home at seven-fifteen still in her work clothes and pulled the leftovers from the fridge and ate them standing over the sink. Delaney watched her from the hallway for a moment before she came in. Her mom's hands looked tired, which was a strange thing to notice about hands, but it was true. They moved slowly.

They talked for a little while. About Delaney's day, about nothing important, the way they did when they were both too worn down to get into anything real. It was still good. Delaney would take it.

Peggy appeared in the doorway at some point and said something about the state of the house and what Delaney's dad would have thought about it. Delaney's mom went quiet in the careful way she always did and then Peggy moved on and the kitchen felt like it could breathe again.

Later Delaney went back to the Blakes to finish out the evening while Mack and Lydia went to dinner. Archer was already getting sleepy. She got him through his bath, into his pajamas, and had him down by eight-thirty. Then she sat in the quiet of their living room and did homework until Lydia texted that they were on their way.

She was back home by ten. The house was dark except for the kitchen light. Her mom had gone to bed. Peggy's light was off.

The washing machine had run over while she was gone. Not badly, just a little water on the laundry room floor and a towel that had been sitting in the drum too long. Delaney wrung it out and took it to the backyard to hang on the fence so it would dry overnight. The air was warm the way that nights are, heavy and close, and the yard was dark.

She was reaching up to hang the towel when she saw it.

A light on the fence post. Small. Blue and warm at the same time, which didn't make sense, but there it was. She went still and stared at it and it hovered, just sitting there, and she couldn't figure out what she was looking at.

Then the phone rang inside the house, her mom's phone cutting through the dark, and whatever it was vanished. Gone. Not hiding, just gone.

Delaney stood there with the damp towel in her hands and the fence post empty in front of her.

She went inside. Locked the back door. The fortune strip was still in her jacket pocket. She'd forgotten about it entirely.

The story hadn't.

The next evening Delaney was in the backyard again. She told herself she was just getting some air, which was technically true. She also stood near the fence post and looked at it more than a person with no reason to look at a fence post should.

The light came back.

It appeared the same way it had the night before, settling on the post like it had always lived there, that same blue warmth that didn't make sense as a combination. Delaney stayed still this time. She didn't reach for it. She just looked.

And then it wasn't just a light.

He was about the size of a hamster, round as a ball, and blue, the kind of blue that a gas flame is, deep and certain. He had ears like a baby rabbit, soft and tipped forward, and small tufts of green growing from him that looked less like fur and more like leaves, like something living. His eyes were enormous and they blinked at her like she was the unusual one in this situation.

Delaney's first thought was that someone's exotic pet had gotten loose.

She reached toward him slowly, the way you'd reach toward an animal you didn't want to startle. He watched her hand come closer and then he cleared his throat.

It was a real throat-clearing. Small and deliberate.

She pulled her hand back.

"I am not a pet," he said. His voice was higher than she expected, formal in a way that felt almost old-fashioned. "My name is Bokopawa."

Delaney stared at him. "Are you a bug?"

He looked offended in a way that was impressive considering how round he was. "I am a jiimarian."

She had never heard that word in her life. She turned it over in her head and it didn't connect to anything. "A what?"

"A jiimarian," he repeated, as if the second time should clear things up. When it didn't, he seemed to recalibrate. "Some would say sprite, though I find that term imprecise."

She had also never really heard the word sprite used to describe something real. She thought about it. "Okay," she said finally, because she didn't have a better response.

Bokopawa straightened himself, which was something to see given his shape. He had the manner of someone about to deliver information they considered very important, precise and unhurried, and he looked at her with those big eyes without blinking.

"I have been assigned to you," he said. "You have something sleeping inside you. It is time for it to wake up."

Delaney looked at him for a long moment. "What does that mean?"

"You got it from your dad," he said simply.

She went still. Not the careful still of trying not to startle an animal. A different kind. The kind that happened when something landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to land.

Her dad had been dead for four years. Cancer, when she was twelve. The kind that moved fast and didn't give anyone enough time to adjust to what was coming. He used to call her his girl, said it the way people say things they mean completely. She still heard it sometimes, in the quiet.

She opened her mouth and didn't know which question to start with. There were too many. She picked one. "What do you mean my—"

The phone rang inside.

Her mom's phone, loud through the kitchen window, cutting right through everything. Delaney's head turned toward the sound without meaning to, just reflex, and when she looked back at the fence post Bokopawa was gone.

Not hiding. She could tell the difference somehow, even though she'd known him for about four minutes. He wasn't behind the post or underneath the fence. He was just gone.

There had been something like a ripple in the air where he'd been, there and then not, like a door she didn't see opening and closing.

Delaney stood in the backyard in the dark and held the question she hadn't finished asking.

After a while she went inside. Her mom was still on the phone, turned toward the kitchen window, her voice low. Delaney went to her room and sat on the edge of her bed.

She didn't know what a jiimarian was. She didn't know how something that small could look at her that seriously. She didn't know what was sleeping inside her or what waking it up meant.

She knew her dad was gone. Had been gone. That part wasn't new.

It just felt new tonight.