On the first day of Seventh, Hayley Sampson leaned against my homeroom’s radiators. Her eyes said: “Do not blow my cover, Doobie, if you know what’s good for you.” The Rez school only took us to the end of Fifth, and then we were merged into the massive Junior High just beyond our border. There, among the nine hundred white kids and a handful of black kids, we each made decisions about how Indian we appeared, and we respected each other’s choices. Hayley snapped her eyes at the beadwork keychain on my backpack. Did she recognize it as one made by her aunt? Margaret Sampson, June 1975 was written on the soft tanned leather backing. Even now, a year after Margaret had made it, the keychain held up. It was the gift I’d received at the Moving Up dinner held at our elementary school. Adult Beadwork Class members, mostly City Indian gramma types and younger Rez ladies, made them for all levels of Indian graduates: Elementary, High School, and College. The class members were relearning beadwork skills they’d lost, or learning stuff their own mothers had refused to teach them. I didn’t have any keys yet, so I just looped mine on my backpack’s zipper tongue. My keychain was a Buck Head, and my last name was Buckman, so that was a cool matchup. The kids I should have left elementary school with, like Hayley, got a Turtle keychain at Moving Up. I loved mine, but the Buck Head reminded me that I’d failed Kindergarten. When you screw up Taking a Nap and Playing with Finger Paint, no one forgets. And if you did happen to forget, Carson Mastick had given me a helpful nickname: Hubie Doobie, the Flunked-Out Booby. We each adapted to our new lives differently. ot cut? This half blood allowed her to almost cover up any visible trace of us. She was better at her disguise than Carson, and he moved easily between groups, like he wore Skin Camouflage. The only thing giving Hayley away were her Indian eyes. I don’t mean that they had a melodramatic tear dangling out of them like a pull chain. They were just deep, deep brown, the color of a horse. Last Spring, after her mom died, Hayley had racked up enough Days Absent to win herself a Repeat Year, and so we became classmates again. I thought I’d show her the ropes about being an official failure. But that first morning in homeroom, Hayley sported a new, wild look beyond the usual human colors. Her face shimmered like a powdery pearl, slashed with maroon lips and lavender eyelids. Heavy black liquid gave her crow’s wings for eyelashes. Her purple-black hair was sprayed into an explosion on top of her head. It was like the white side of her had wrestled the Indian side down for the count, but they’d both come out a little rougher. Since she was now with kids a year younger than her, and we were the only Indians in our section, she knew no one but me. I was used to flying solo, since my place as The Big Indian Kid made white kids nervous. By the middle of the day, she’d begun to sit next to me. We just sat together, silently pretending that we didn’t live a road apart. I knew when it was safe to talk. Those Passing Indians, as soon as they got to the buses, suddenly they were Indian again, like Abracadabra. But if you tried to chat them up in school, prepare to be ignored. At the end of the day, I silently went to my locker and she went to hers. “So you look kinda different these days,” I said as we neared the safety bubble of Rez buses. “What’s going on up in here?” I motioned around her head. “Soon’s I can, I’m signing up for BOCES,” she said, as if she hadn’t ignored me all day. “Gonna get my cosmetology license. Then, fast as we’re out, I’ll have the perfect job training. Can’t sign up until Ninth, so right now I’m practicing on myself and my old Barbie Glscary Flying Head in the stories our gramps told. He claimed those heads cruised around the Rez to catch kids awake past bedtime. Buck Head keychain upside down, revealing her aunt’s signature. I could imitate Mr. Corker’s voice, asking her if she knew how to Label the Parts Using the Correct Anatomical Terminology. It was a Rez-style joke. Her friends wouldn’t get it, or they’d act all shocked and offended. With luck, I’d get her to laugh with me at stuff she used to find funny. Then maybe her makeup would smudge, just a bit. In my fantasy, I’d offer her my hand, its knuckles dark like my elbows and other parts. Together, we’d bust into Corker’s classroom, and I’d snag the jar of Noxzema and the tiny Kleenex pack from his desk. Bill and Andy would have come prepared with both, but I was no Boy Scout. I could pass these things to her. Even beyond our Rez bus, maybe she’d wipe away the glittering pale layers she’d learned to build up, practicing on those giant Barbie heads. I’d glimpse the Indian girl I used to know. I’d look into those dark brown eyes, press my fingers lightly to her neck, where the makeup was thinner, and linger to feel a pulse. Think about the references in the story about passing and Doobie's statement that “We each made decisions about how Indian we appeared, and we respect each other’s decisions.” How do Doobie and Hayley's choices about their identity contribute to the overall meaning of the story? Use evidence and examples to support your analysis.