by Angel Lawson
“We’re twins. If she’s obsessed, I have little choice.” My brother shrugs his shoulders.
“He dreams about them, too,” I say, defensive.
“Okay, so maybe the program knew you were into this and the same with Sonja. I mean that’s kind of cool right? That they would try to encourage your interests,” Faye says. Her voice is artificial and sweet. “My writing sample in the application had a rune translation that mentioned crows.”
“Dr. Anders told me he assigned the subject to the group after he saw a drawing in my portfolio. But he didn’t mention Julian at all. Or you, or Sonja.” I say.
“This has to mean something,” Faye insists. “All of us together on this project. There’s a connection somehow.”
Ethan exhales a long, dubious sigh. “It’s all just a coincidence.”
“I want it to be, but I don’t think so.” I glance at Julian.
“Memory’s dreams have been getting worse. Scarier,” my brother tells Ethan, but when he turns to the next page in his journal, I slap it closed with an open palm.
“Look,” Ethan sets his elbows on his knees, leans toward me. “We all have weird habits. You have creepy bird dreams. Faye messes around with those stone runes and plants. I collect stuff. Sure, the fact you both dream the same thing is totally weird, but it’s not like you were separated at birth and ended up marrying another set of brother and sister twins or something.”
I can’t decide if he’s being dismissive or supportive, but he’s not meeting my gaze.
“They follow me,” Faye voice breaks the lull.
“What?” I ask. My roommate looks little, huge eyes staring down at the blanket on my brother’s bed.
“The crows. Like, all the time. No matter where I am, what country, what climate, every time I go outside they’re there. Five of them. Perched on branches or on the roof, haunting me.”
“The same ones?” Julian asks. “Do they do anything? Are they aggressive? Make any particular noise?”
She draws her knees up to her chest, boot heels snagging her skirt, and leans away from his quick-fired questions. “They aren’t malignant or anything, they’re just there, watching. They caw and let me know they’re around, like they’re keeping me company, waiting for something.”
“Always five?”
“Yes. I know it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t expect you to believe me.” A shiver runs up her arms, and she burrows deeper into her sweater. “My first step-mother called them my imaginary friends.”
“I’ve seen them. They do follow you.”
We all look at Ethan again. Before anyone else responds, I ask, “What do you mean? When?”
“In my photos. At first I thought it was a fluke, but they’re always there. Even when I don’t realize it.” Ethan pulls out his camera, flicks his thumb over the little screen. “See?”
We peer at the image. Faye is standing in the shadow of the chapel, a disgruntled scowl on her face, and sure enough, in the tree behind her, perch the crows.
“I only see four,” Julian says.
Faye makes an odd noise in her throat, points to a fifth, hidden in the tree.
“I didn’t notice them when I was framing the shot, but they didn’t like the flash when it went off,” Ethan says.
“They’re real,” Faye whispers. “I’m not crazy.”
“That’s why we keep track of our dreams,” Julian tells her, his voice gentle. “So we know we aren’t.”
She’s shaking, staring at the photo. I press my toe on my brother’s this time, because he’s looking at her like she’s glass, about to shatter. He glances at me, then back to her. I turn to Ethan. “What do you collect?”
“What?”
“You said you collect things.”
“Oh.” Ethan’s shoulders tense, defensive hackles back in place. “Just things. You know, crap I find around.”
“Like what?” Julian turns his head to Ethan, but he’s still watching Faye from the corner of his eye.
Ethan scowls, his jaw even tighter than a minute before. I’m surprised when he stands, shoves his hand in the front pocket of his pants, then holds his palm out. “See, nothing big.”
We all look at what he’s offering—a small silvery marble. Faye smiles a little and Julian goes back to his computer. I pluck the marble from his hand. I’ve seen this, or one of these before. “Marbles?”
“Shiny stuff. Little things. I just like them. And they like coming home with me.”
“Shiny?” asks Faye.
“Yeah,” he seems a little embarrassed, taking the glass out of my fingers without touching my skin, stashing it back in his pocket. “Metallic or glass or silver or whatever.” He fishes something out from his other pocket and tosses it into Faye’s lap.
“My earring! I was looking all over for that. You stole it?” She grins up at him.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t really look it.
“Klepto,” I snort. I wonder what else he has hidden away, and if I’m missing anything.
Julian pushes his glasses up his nose. “You do realize crows habitually collect and hoard shiny objects.”
“Everyone knows that,” Ethan says, with a shrug. “So?”
My brother sees an opening and won’t let go. “So, basically, you act like a giant, scavenging bird. Or just a petty thief.”
Silence presses down from the ceiling, and I’m a little concerned that my twin has pushed this volatile boy too hard, but Ethan leans his head back against the wall, stares up at the ceiling, a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth.
“When I was little, it was cool, y’know, to have a bit of treasure in my pocket. Made me feel secure. Like I was one of the rich kids.” But then his smile disappears, and he sits up straight again, tense, like he’s revealed too much.
Faye toys with her earring. “But this is bigger than that. There’s something else here, and you’re a part of it, too.”
“Don’t start with that again. It’s coincidence. And I’m not a part of anything—how would this place know I have a habit of picking up junk?” He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest, like he’s putting distance between us, the spectator watching the freaks.
But the images in my head are flipping fast, movie stills on old-fashioned film, reeling back to the first day here, and a black photo album, the first page open to a seven-pointed star with a strange shadow cast over the points.
I stand, move to the bed, sit down next to Ethan, and lean close. He goes still.
“Liar,” I whisper into his ear, loud enough for the others to hear. I snatch his portfolio album from his open bag. He moves to take it back, but then sets his fists back into his lap, and looks away. I flip the cover to the first image, and trace the silhouette that is not so abstract, now that I know to look.
“It’s the shadow of a bird,” Faye whispers.
I turn two more pages, to the ones he wouldn’t let us see. A winter tree, backlit and skeletal, is covered in fat spring buds, but no, they’re hundreds of blackbirds perching in the branches.
“You lying bastard,” Julian says. He grabs the portfolio, flips the page, and shows Faye and me a two pic spread of crows on a telephone wire. I stand, look over his shoulder as he turns the next page, a face front-on portrait of a raven, its shadow on the wall at a perfect ninety degrees, beak to tail in full profile. The next is another close up of the same bird, one beady blue eye reflecting the sky. “Crows. It’s nothing but crows.” My brother throws the portfolio down where I was just sitting.
Ethan leaps up, the portfolio hugged to his chest like a rescued baby, and looms over my brother. He’s not much taller, but he’s huge, filling the room with his sudden anger. “What’s your problem?”
Jules doesn’t back down. He points to the album, arm at odd angles, like a stuffed straw scarecrow. “You sat here, trying to tell us this is all a coincidence, acting all cool as shit, like you’re some kind of normal in us weirdoes, when you, you—” He’s so furiou
s he’s shaking. “You’re just like us.”
Ethan takes a step back. “No, man, I’m not. I have a few pictures of crows, that’s all. Anders must have placed me in with you guys for that, nothing more.”
Faye whispers an odd syllable into the tension, a bird’s croak, and both boys glance down at her. I grab Julian’s arm, and place my palm on the larger boy’s chest. I’ve never seen my brother this angry, but Ethan could break him in two.
“Why did you hide them, then?” Julian demands of him. “Why didn’t you want us to see?”
“Because I don’t share my shit with the world, okay?” Ethan grabs my wrist, and presses my hand down to my side, and my face heats with the memory of our kiss. He flashes me an electric glance, grabs the camera bag and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
My brother sits back down in his chair. Faye twists the sleeves of her sweater. My hand is still warm from the heat of Ethan’s body. I’d felt his heart beating hard, and my fingers throb with the memory.
*
I spend the evening with Jeremy in a gazebo by the lake. I don’t want to think about crows, or projects or Sonja and her creepy house. I don’t want to feel the rawness of revealing impossible secrets. I let myself get caught up in the roughness of the scratchy stubble on his chin and the way his palms curve around my shoulders. I’m halfway in his lap when he eases me back, fingers lingering on the sides of my breasts.
“Wow,” he breathes. “You are... wow.”
I lean in again but he holds me at bay. I give my best hurt eyes, and bite my bottom lip.
“You trying to get me fired, sweetheart?”
The nickname irritates me. “No, I’m trying to have some fun.”
“You’re doing a great job, but we’re in public out here, and you are a student, after all. I’m pretty sure it was in my contract to keep my hands off you.”
“Section three, bullet point five.” I kiss his jaw anyway. “No romantic or intimate relationships between students and staff.”
“Huh?”
“I read your contract online.”
He laughs, impressed, and that earns him another kiss. I pull back the collar of his shirt to find the smooth skin of his collarbone and trace the mark there. “What’s this?”
“Oh,” he says, reaching a hand up. “Er. It’s a henna tattoo. It’ll wash off, eventually. Some of us partied the first night. I hardly remember it.”
“Too much to drink?” I touch the mark with my fingertips.
“Something like that. Teacher initiation, I guess. Zoe and some of the others have them too.”
“I like it.”
“You would.” He kisses me between words, soft, no white-hot explosions in my brain. And despite his protests, his fingers drift higher, hands cupping. “You sign up for anything tonight?”
“Not tonight. Poetry tomorrow.”
He laughs, warm breath down my cleavage, thumbs searching. “I can’t see you reciting angry femme poems.”
“My roommate is performing.” I shake my head at the idea of tiny Faye perched on a stool in the student lounge. “Should be interesting. You never know what’s going to come out of that girl’s mouth.”
“She’s the little hobo girl, right? You think she’ll be bad?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. She can be outrageous. Like she’ll wear some fertility goddess phallic necklace thing under her dress and ugh, those awful sweaters. I’ve seen her changing, though, she’s got a killer body hiding in all that frumpy mess.”
Jeremy tilts his head, openly ogling. He wets his lips and says, “I doubt it’s as killer as all this.”
I raise an eyebrow, and open another button on my dress. “It’s hard to top perfection.”
13.
Extraordinary
After dinner, I’ve a couple hours to kill until I’m required in the kitchen. I spend a nice thirty minutes of that with Danielle, who brings me her dessert. She doesn’t require me to talk, or think about things I don’t want to, or risk a parole violation. Her lips are soft and taste of the peach cobbler, and smile beneath mine when I untie the pink strings of the bathing suit top that’s hidden under her t-shirt.
“This way,” she whispers, linking her fingers through mine, pulling me toward the lake, but when we get near the gazebo, she stops and pouts. “Crap. Someone beat us to it.”
Low laughter slides between the shadows and the crickets. I recognize both voices.
“Ow, easy,” Danielle unlaces her fingers from my fist. “C’mon. Let’s go to the little church. Where you took my picture the other night.”
“Um,” I stall, looking toward the dorms, and then the opposite direction, to the copse of trees that shade the chapel. “I don’t have—”
I stop, because I don’t know how far she wants to go, and girls get mad when a guy assumes too much, but protection wasn’t on the list of what-to-bring-to-SHP, and Mary hadn’t added a box of condoms to the dopp kit that contained soap, sunscreen, and to my surprise, a razor. I doubt Julian has any, either, and I sure as hell am not going to ask Jeremy.
“Oh, did you sign up for an EA?” Danielle misunderstands my pause. “Bummer. I hoped I could be your evening activity.”
“Didn’t you sign up for something?”
“My group is organizing the poetry reading tomorrow, but I was going to bail on them. If you weren’t busy.”
I want to be busy. With her and that barely-there bikini, but I’ve got kitchen duty and I’m pretty sure Constance has a low tolerance for being stood up for work detail. “Yeah, I signed up with my team, too.” The lie comes easily.
She fumbles inside her shirt and pulls the pink strings through the collar. I tie them in place, and then loosen them when she squeaks.
I walk her to the quad, force a chuckle when she murmurs “Maybe tomorrow?” hot in my ear, and head back to the dorms, all kinds of irritated.
*
Julian is at his desk, muttering at his laptop. He’s got books and notebooks all around him, on the bed and on the floor. He grunts a “Hey.” without looking up.
“Hey.” I keep my tone easy, testing the mood, but his silence seems due to the book he’s absorbed in, rather than our earlier argument.
I change out of my dishwater-soaked shirt, and sit cross-legged on my bed, grabbing the military surplus bag that the pawnshop guy threw in to sweeten the deal when I bought my camera. The yellow envelope from Sonja’s house gets stuck in the strap, and slides out into my lap.
The package has some weight to it, and jingles a little when I shake it. I stare at the writing on the front.
“This is weird,” Julian mutters.
“What is?” I watch the back of his head as I speak, flip the envelope over, coax the self adhesive flap open.
“This book Dr. A. gave us. I’ve seen it before, or at least parts of it.”
“Well, you do read a lot, dude.”
A tangle of silver spills into my hand. It’s one of those bracelets women wear with the miniature things hanging off; Mary has several of them. This one has stars and a little wire nest with pearl eggs, and a half inch cage with a bird swinging inside. The chain is solid, sturdy links of antiqued metal, and in between the charms lay five black birds, with a tiny metal disk attached to each tail. The flat pendants are old, precious metal glowing under tarnish. I’ve seen them before somewhere, or ones like them; they’re etched with jagged letters I can’t read.
The one in the center gleams at me, its symbol an arrow pointing up. I rub my thumb over the surface, and the patina wears away, leaving mirror-shine silver. With no pressure at all, the rune slips from its link, and the arrow winks at me from my palm.
“This is can’t be right,” Julian says.
“What isn’t?” I slide the bracelet back in the envelope, seal it back, and drop it in my bag. The bit of metal goes in my shirt pocket.
My roommate crouches on the floor, and starts dragging milk crates out from under the bed. “S through V, no, G through L, no, her
e we are. A.” He fumbles through notebooks and loose leaf binders, and digs out three.
“Dude, you really have six crates of books under your bed?” I ask him.
“Eight.” He flips one open and thumbs through the pages.
“You need a girlfriend, man. Seriously.”
Julian looks up, startled, then shrugs, and grins. “Nah, they’d cut into reading time.”
He really needs a girlfriend. I turn my camera over in my hands, looking for damage to the body, but nothing is broken. I remove the lens and then dust it and the zoom with the little brush attached to the rubber squeezy bulb that blows air. I sight through both lenses, a wide pan view of the room, books stacked on every flat surface, and then zoom in on Julian’s ear.
No mysterious sofas.
I change the batteries in the camera, take out the memory card, check the camera settings then put the card back in. The shots are all there. No extras.
I pull out my portfolio. I flip through the prints, checking against what, I don’t know, but needing the reassurance that nothing weird had popped up there, either. I lift my camera again, trying to think back, to figure out how I could have seen what was going on a block and a half away. Faye and Memory were already there, at that point. Cherry had grabbed my hand, pulled me after her, excited but fearless—
My vision shifts. A quick shutter view of blond hair, yellow stubble on a sunburned neck, pale stripe where a lanyard sits. But Jeremy is nowhere near our dorm room. He’s in the gazebo, making out with—
“So how long have you noticed them?” Julian’s voice cuts through the chaos in my head.
“Noticed what?”
Memory’s legs? Her skirt wrenched high, light tanned skin draped all over my bed like she belonged there, when I walked into the room? No, even before that, walking along the sidewalk, not on it, on the way to the cafeteria—
“The crows,” her brother says.
Oh. Right.
“After my father, after he died, I guess.” I stand, restless, looking in the mirror, though I don’t want to, at the features that show very little of my mother’s too-delicate bone structure. Julian is watching me in the reflection. I rub my palm over my scalp. The hair is now long enough to move with the friction.