Dylan and Miranda’s parents always put the sprinkler up when it turned summer. Whenever the day would turn to a smoldering ninety degrees and the sun would cause their skin to redden and later burn, both Dylan and Miranda’s parents would peel off the drying skin on their children’s backs. On a certain ninety degree Tuesday, in the summer of 1997, Miranda became bored with the ragged, yellow sprinkler that tossed its water back and forth.
Miranda and Dylan Splice, two siblings in the neighborhood of Brookhaven, Iowa, began jumping back and forth over the spurting water. The water protruded from the small holes in the long, but thin metal strip connected to the yellow plastic pieces that held the bar. The grass strained out from the cracks of their toes each time they landed on the ground on the other side of the sprinkler. Sometimes they would pretend this water was a secret passage way to a different world, sometimes they would pretend it was a forcefield that they had to break down with the force of their jumping bodies and most of the time, they pretended the water was water.
Now as the wall of sprinkling water slowly waved toward the house, with a soft glistening cool stream, and away from Miranda, she dug her feet in the ground, the mud squashing between her toes and as soon as the water rose with a pull from the metal strip, she lunged and hit the ground.
The moment Miranda fell to the ground, she lay still. Her body was twisted and limp as if each bone in her long limbs disappeared. The wet grass was curled up along her side and each pale, water dripped arm flung over onto the ground, one arm lapping over the other. The way Miranda was laying, her hips twisted toward the sky but the rest of her body was laying on its side into the ground.
“Miranda?” Dylan’s voice cracked.
Miranda didn’t move and her stomach, wrapped in the blue and yellow flower print bathing suit, wasn’t moving either.
As Dylan flung to the ground, he grabbed for Miranda. Both of his palms clutched her wet skin, one hand grabbing the dip of her elbow and another to her shoulder. He was shaking with a fierce push from his hands and with each shake, her head rolled back and forth, left to right. As her head rolled back to the left, one damp strand of her hair slid away from her check to join the rest.
“Miranda - Miranda... c’mon...”
The skin of Miranda’s body under his arms was warm and red from the spots of where her bathing suit stopped. As he tried to shake her, his hands slipped along her skin and into the grass, lurching him forward closer to her. Dylan’s hands slipped into the grass above her shoulders, each strand of grass coursing through the cracks of his fingers. His nose could feel the heat from Miranda’s nose, but no breath coming through her lips.
“Miranda!”
Dylan felt the panic rushing into his gut. Every time he yelled her name, he felt his mouth fill up with saliva which dripped through the corners of his lips, over his chin and into the air. His eyes were becoming blurred and burning.
That panic turned to white, burning rage the moment Miranda’s chapped lips split from laughter. “You’ll believe anything!” Dylan withdrew his hands from near her and lay back in the grass, staring up toward the canopy of leafs sticking to the branches of their backyard tree. Each grass strand tickled his back, and he felt the dirt which was now mud, stick to his skin the way ice cream does when it melts along his fingers.
“You’re so gullible! I hit the grass, did you think I could have killed myself?” Miranda sat up and folded her legs. “Now help me up! I’m feeling a little... faint!”
Dylan crossed his arms tightly over his bare, pale and thin chest. His ribs were lines on his sides, and his stomach pumped rapidly up and down with angry breaths. He was listening to her laughing, and the ticking sound of the sprinkler still waving back and forth across the grass, feeling the mist sprawling across him as he laid by its side.
He didn’t bother to look up when he heard Miranda’s laughter stop and her breath hitch in a small gasp. “I’m not falling for anything, anymore!” “Oh, oh, ew--...Dylan!” Miranda’s arms flailed wildly in front of her, as if each finger was on fire and she was trying to wave her limbs to extinguish the burning, but instead her rapid movements were of panic and disgust.
“No, Miranda, I don’t care.”
“No, Dylan, I’m serious, come here, oh, ew, ew.”
Dylan lifted his head with a strain on his thin, bony neck. He watched Miranda pushing herself up to the ground with a hurried shuffle. Her legs were kicking herself off of the ground, twirling around with a pattering of her feet. Each foot would step back and forth, in front of her and then in back, each of her arms bracing in the air. To Dylan, it looked like she was tap dancing.
“What is it now?” Dylan moved up from the ground, rubbing his hands together to get off the clinging, caking mud that was acting as if they were gloves to his hands.
“That--that, I, I fell on it!”
Miranda kept spinning and now, instead of stepping and smashing the grass to a flatten, rough surface she decided to start hoping. Her bath suit bottoms were stained from the dirt, and her thighs had long lines of dribbling water falling from her inner thighs and past the inners of her knees, before down to her ankles.
“Fell on what, Miranda? I just want to go inside.” Dylan walked past Miranda and toward the house, where near the bottom was a small wheel. That wheel was hooked to a long green, winding hose that was heading toward the sprinkler. He turned it to the right and the wall of water turned into a small drizzle.
Miranda let out a final noise, a small high pitch squeal that came from down in her tightened throat. She curled her arms into her flat chest and dug her face into her hands, shaking her head back and forth. “I killed it, I landed on it, I flattened it!” She made small, whimpering noises that were muffled by her palms.
Even though Miranda Splice, who was only two years older than her eight year old brother, loved to play tricks but there was something about the way she was making those sounds that didn’t seem fake.
With a sigh of anger, Dylan tightened his arms across his chest and turned toward his sister. He didn’t see what was the big deal, till he looked toward the ground and there it was. There was a feeling of disgust pinching his gut and he felt his forehead attempt to become wrinkled, but his taunt young skin wouldn’t allow it. “Miranda!”
On the ground, now squashed and flattened with its mouth gaping open and a small moist, pink tongue slipped out from its mouth was a dead frog.
