All the Birds in the Sky

by Charlie Jane Anders

  If Laurence didn’t know better, he would think Mr. Rose was studying him. Like a bug. Then the moment passed and Mr. Rose looked friendly and supportive again.

  “It seems to me,” the guidance counselor said, “that the other children see you as an easy target, because you’re so noticeable, and yet so defenseless. You have two options in this situation: to make them respect you, or to become invisible. Or some combination of the two.”

  “So,” Laurence said, “stop standing out so much? Stop eating lunch in the cafeteria? Build a death ray?”

  “I would never advocate violence.” Mr. Rose leaned back in his pleather chair with his hands behind his smooth head. “You children are too important. You are the future, after all. But find ways to make them see what you’re capable of, so they respect you. Keep alert and always know your escape routes. Or try to blend into the shadows as much as possible. They can’t hurt what they can’t see.”

  “Okay,” Laurence said. “I sort of see what you’re saying.”

  “Children,” said Theodolphus Rose, “are adults who haven’t yet learned to make fear their hand puppet.” He smiled.

  7

  A BULLFROG JUMPED out of Patricia’s locker. A big one, too large to cup in your hands. It croaked, probably something like “get me out of here.” Its eyes looked strangulated with panic, and its legs—awfully little, to support such a bulbous frame—twitched. It wanted to find its cool wet nest and get away from this white hell. Patricia tried to catch it, but it slipped through her grasp. Someone must have spent hours catching this thing, gotten up at dawn or something. The frog gave a vengeful grunt and took off down the hallway, heading god knew where, as all the kids shrieked with laughter. “Emo bitch,” someone called out.

  After school, Patricia sat on her bed and talked to CH@NG3M3, Laurence’s supercomputer, like she did every day lately. “My parents say they’ll never let me go into the woods as long as I live, which means I’m no use to anybody at all. And everybody at school keeps accusing me of being a cutter and a crazy person. Sometimes I wish I was crazy, it would make everything easier.”

  “If you were crazy,” CH@NG3M3 responded, “how would you know you were crazy?”

  “That’s a good question,” Patricia admitted. “You would need to have one person who you completely trusted. Like, if you trusted one other person, you could check to see if you were seeing the same things they were.” She chewed her thumb, sitting cross-legged on her brass-kettle quilt, legs tucked under her skirt.

  “What if you didn’t see the same things?” CH@NG3M3 said. “Would you be crazy?” Sometimes when the computer got out of its depth, it would rephrase Patricia’s answers back to her and change them slightly—which almost looked like it was thinking, but not quite.

  “You’re lucky you don’t have eyes, or a body,” Patricia told it. “You don’t have to worry about any of this stuff.”

  “What do I have to worry about?” CH@NG3M3 asked, in another blue speech balloon.

  “Getting unplugged, I guess. Laurence changing his mind and turning you off.”

  “Where would you get another pair of eyes?” CH@NG3M3 abruptly dragged the conversation back to the earlier topic, something that happened when it judged they’d reached a dead end. “What kind of eyes would you want to have?”

  Something about this conversation gave Patricia an idea: If her parents wouldn’t let her go back to the woods, maybe she could get them to agree to something else? Like maybe she could get a cat. At dinner, Patricia forked steamed kale around her plate while her mom asked what everybody had done to Improve themselves today. Roberta, the perfect straight-A student, always had the best Improvements, like every day she’d aced some crazy-tough assignment. But Patricia was stuck at a school where all you ever did was memorize stuff and fill out multiple-choice ovals, so she had to lie, or else learn something in her spare time. For three or four days in a row, Patricia kept coming up with Improvements that sounded kind of impressive, storing up credit, and then she started mentioning that she wanted to get a cat.

  Patricia’s parents disliked animals and felt certain that they would be allergic. But at last, they relented—so long as Patricia promised to do all cat-related labor, and if the cat got sick they wouldn’t have to rush to a vet or anything. “We have to agree in advance that all veterinary care will be scheduled far ahead, in a time window that’s convenient for Roderick and myself,” said Patricia’s mother. “There will be no such thing as a cat-related emergency. Are we in agreement?”

  Patricia nodded and crossed her heart.

  Berkley was a fluffy black kitten with a huge white stripe on his stomach and a white smudge across his scowly face. (Patricia named him after a cartoonist.) They got Berkley already fixed, out of a litter of kittens from their neighbor, Mrs. Torkelford, and right away Patricia noticed something familiar about him. He kept giving Patricia the stink-eye and running away from her, and after a few days she realized: He must be the grandson, or grandnephew, of Tommington, the cat she’d stranded up a tree when she was little. Berkley never spoke to her, of course, but she couldn’t shake the impression that he had heard about her.

  Also, even though Roberta had expressed no interest in getting a cat beforehand, she wanted to share Berkley. She would hoist Berkley by his little shoulders and carry him up to her bedroom, then close the door. Patricia would hear a pitiful groaning, even over Roberta’s loud music. But the door was locked. And the one time Patricia told her parents she thought Roberta was mistreating the cat, they referred back to the “no cat-related emergencies” clause. All Roberta would say was, “I’m teaching him to play the bongos.”

  Patricia wanted to protect Berkley from her sister, but he hissed if Patricia even came close. “Come on,” Patricia kept pleading in her human voice. “You have to let me help you. I don’t want anything from you. I just want to keep you safe.” But the cat fled whenever Patricia approached. He’d taken to hiding in a million nooks and crawl spaces in the spice house, emerging when his bowl was full or he needed the litter box. Roberta had an uncanny ability to know when Berkley was out, and astounding reflexes for scooping him up.

  * * *

  ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER Improvement. After lights-out, Patricia heard yowls that started high and got lower and more tragic, coming from Roberta’s room.

  The next day, after school, Laurence came over to Patricia’s house, where he’d gotten used to the musty aromas of old seasonings. The two of them sat in the front parlor, where you could still see the outlines on the wall where spice bins had once hung, and worked on a solution to the problem of Berkley.

  “If we could capture the cat, we could rig some kind of protective exoskeleton,” Laurence said.

  “He’s suffered enough,” Patricia said. “I don’t want to torture him any more by prodding him and attaching some kind of gear to his body.”

  “If I knew how to build nanomachines, I would make a swarm of them follow him around and form a shield when he was in distress. But my best attempts at nanomotors were sort of, um, lazy. You wouldn’t like lazy nanobots.”

  They caught a glimpse of Berkley in the unilluminable darkness of the spice house’s upper attic, behind a great support beam. A glimmer of fur, a bright pair of eyes. Another time Berkley ran down the stairs, just as they threw themselves in his path. The two children wound up in a bruised heap at the bottom of the stairwell.

  “Listen,” Patricia said from the bottom of the stairs. “Tommington was a good cat. I didn’t have anything against him. He was just doing his cat thing. I never meant him any harm, I swear.” There was no response.

  “Maybe you should do a spell,” said Laurence. “Do some magic or something. I dunno.”

  Patricia felt sure Laurence was laughing at her, but he didn’t have that kind of guile. She would have seen it on his face.

  “I’m serious,” Laurence said. “This seems like a magic kind of problem, if there ever was one.”

  “But I don’t know
how to do anything,” Patricia said. “I mean, the only time I did anything magicky in years was when I ate too much spicy food. I’ve tried every kind of spice a hundred times since then.”

  “But maybe you didn’t need to be able to do anything those other times,” Laurence said. “And now, you do.”

  Berkley watched them from atop a bookcase full of Patricia’s mother’s Productivity Assessment books. He was ready to flee, fast as a bullet train, if they came too close.

  “I wish we could just go into the woods and find that magic Tree,” Patricia said. “But my parents would kill me if they found out. And I know Roberta would tell them.”

  “I don’t think we need to go into the woods,” said Laurence, still eager to avoid the outdoors. “From what you told me before, the power is inside you. You just need to get at it.”

  Patricia looked at Laurence, who was not in any way screwing with her, and she couldn’t imagine ever having a better friend in the world.

  She went back up to the attic, where it was always way hotter than the rest of the spice house, and listened to her own breathing. She looked like a bird to herself, her body so tiny and hollow-boned. Laurence and Berkley were both watching to see what she was going to do. Berkley even crept a little closer along a ceiling beam.

  Okay. Now or never.

  She imagined that this hot attic was a jungle, and the dry beams were fruitful trees and the boxes of old clothes were lush undergrowth. She couldn’t go to the forest, she couldn’t count on astral-projecting a second time—fine. She would bring the forest to her. She breathed the scents of long-ago chests of saffron and turmeric, and she imagined a million branches splaying over their heads, endless limbs as far as they could see in any direction. She tried to remember the sound of Tommington’s speech, long ago, and tried to speak to Berkley the same way, as close as she could manage.

  She had no clue what she was doing, and if she stopped a second to think about what a nut she looked like, she would die.

  She was talking under her breath, but she got a little louder. Berkley crept closer, his tongue between two pointy teeth. Patricia swayed a little and reached deep in her throat for a grumbling, raucous sound. Berkley’s ears pricked up.

  Berkley was definitely coming over, and Patricia grew louder. He was almost within grabbing distance if she wanted to grab him, which she didn’t.

  “You … speak cat?” Berkley said, his eyes ginormous.

  “Sometimes.” Patricia couldn’t help laughing with relief. “Sometimes I speak cat.”

  “You’re that mean girl,” Berkley said. “You tricked Uncle Tommington.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Patricia said. “I was trying to help a bird.”

  “Birds taste good,” Berkley observed, bouncing on his front paws a little. “They flap around and try to fly out of your paws. They are like toys with meat inside.”

  “This bird was a friend of mine,” Patricia said.

  “A friend?” Berkley struggled with the concept that you could be friends with a bird. What was next, holding conversations with your cat dish?

  “Yes. I protect my friends. No matter what. I would like to be your friend.”

  Berkley bristled a little bit. “I don’t need any protection. I am a strong fierce cat.”

  “Sure, of course. Maybe you can protect me, then.”

  “Maybe I can.” Berkley came over and curled up in Patricia’s lap.

  “I did it!” She turned to look at Laurence, grinning with her whole face, and realized he was looking kind of … shell-shocked.

  Laurence just stared, then shuddered a little.

  “Sorry,” Patricia said, “was that weird?” Berkley was purring in her lap. Like a band saw.

  “Kind of. Yeah,” Laurence said. His shoulders were a scaffolding around his ears.

  “Uh. Good weird, or bad weird?”

  “Just … weird. Weirdness is value neutral.… I should go. See you at school.”

  Laurence fled, almost as fast as Berkley might have, before Patricia could say anything else. She couldn’t go after him, she finally had a purring cat in her lap. Her familiar. Damn. She’d hoped this wasn’t going to be freaky. What kind of dumbass was she, doing magic like that in front of an outsider? It had been his idea, true, but still.

  She started petting Berkley. “We’re just going to protect each other, okay?” He showed no sign that he could still understand her, but whatever. She had finally done a proper spell, on purpose, this time.

  8

  LAURENCE’S CHEAPJACK LUNCH tray wobbled, sagging under the weight of so much undercooked starch, as he tried to figure out where to sit, as far away from Patricia Delfine as possible. She sat there, in their usual spot, near the compost and trash bins, trying to catch his eye, one brow raised under her messy bangs. The longer he stood, the less stable his tray felt and the more she seemed to squirm in the corner of his eye.

  Finally, Laurence took a sharp left and went to sit on the back steps, near where the skaters skateboarded after school, perching the plastic tray on his knees. It was technically against the rules to eat out here, but who cared.

  He kept thinking he should try to talk to Patricia, but then he would remember the weirdness. The image of her shimmying around and doing that thing with her hands, and then having a dialogue with her pet in cat noises for an uncomfortable length of time, was enough to make Laurence dry-heave. He pictured the two of them hanging out and Patricia offering to talk to the local wildlife on his behalf, maybe doing her heebie-jeebie dance again.

  The whispers Laurence had been hearing about Patricia around the school felt much more relevant, now that he’d seen her in action. Lately he’d been finding any excuse to sit near the graceful, long-limbed Dorothy Glass, and he heard Dorothy and her friends sharing a whole mythos about that girl who kept frogs in her locker. People still thought Laurence was dating Patricia, no matter how he denied it. He couldn’t help remembering Patricia’s warning about “witch cooties.”

  “Hey.” Patricia came out the back door and stood right behind him, casting a shadow in his face as he tried to eat his buttery potato wedges. Laurence kept chewing. “Hey,” Patricia said again, angrier this time.

  “Hey.” Laurence didn’t turn around.

  “What’s going on? Why are you ignoring me? Seriously, please talk to me. This is driving me nuts.” The shadow over Laurence flickered and changed shape, because Patricia was gesturing. “It was your idea. You suggested it. And then I did it, and you freaked out and bailed. Who treats their friends that way?”

  “We shouldn’t talk about this at school,” Laurence said very quietly, using his fork as the opposite of a microphone.

  “Okay,” Patricia said. “So when do you want to talk about this?”

  “I just want to keep my head down,” Laurence said. “Until I can get out of this place. That’s all I want.” An ant stumbled hoisting Laurence’s bread crumb. Maybe Patricia could give it a pep talk in ant language.

  “I thought you hated your parents because they just want to keep their heads down.”

  Laurence felt a weird combination of shame and rage, as though he’d grown another new body part just in time to get punched in it. He seized his tray and pushed his way past Patricia, not caring if he got potato dregs on himself or on her, and hurried back inside. And of course, someone saw him rushing in the hallway with a half-laden tray and stuck out a leg to trip him up. He ended up face-down in his own muck. It never failed.

  Later that day, Brad Chomner tried to cram Laurence’s entire body into a single-file urinal, and then both Brad and Laurence got hauled into Mr. Dibbs’s office for fighting, as if they were equal instigators. Mr. Dibbs called Laurence’s parents to come get him.

  “That school is crushing the life out of me,” Laurence told his parents at dinner. “I need to get out of there. I’ve already filled out the application form to transfer to the math-and-science school, and I just need you guys to sign it.” He slid it onto the chip
ped formica table, where it sat amidst the faded place mats.

  “We’re just not sure you’re mature enough to go to school in the city by yourself.” Laurence’s dad carved into his casserole with the edge of his fork, making little snuffling noises with his nose and mouth. “Mr. Dibbs is concerned that you’re a disruptive influence. Just because you get good grades”—snarf, snorf—“doesn’t mean you can be a bad element.”

  “You haven’t proved you can handle the responsibility you already have,” said Laurence’s mother. “You can’t make trouble all the time.”

  “Your mother and I don’t make trouble,” said Laurence’s father. “We make other things. Because we’re adults.”

  “What?” Laurence shoved his casserole away and took a heavy swig of cola instead. “What do you make, exactly? Either of you guys.”

  “Don’t talk back,” said Laurence’s father.

  “This isn’t about us,” said Laurence’s mother.

  “No, I want to know. It occurs to me, I have no clue what either of you produces.” Laurence looked at his dad. “You’re a lower middle manager who denies people’s insurance claims for a living.” He looked at his mom. “You update instruction manuals for obsolete machinery. What do either of you make?”

  “We put a roof over your head,” his father said.

  “And delicious liver-and-peas casserole on your plate,” his mother said.

  “Oh Jesus.” Laurence had never talked to his parents like this before, and he didn’t know what had come over him. “You have no idea how hard I pray not to turn out like you two. My every nightmare, every one, is about turning into a complacent failure like you both. You don’t even remember the dreams you threw away to sink into this hole.” And with that, he pushed his chair hard enough to scar the cheap linoleum and got upstairs before his parents could send him to his room or try to muster some fake outrage. He locked the door.

  Laurence wished Isobel and her rocketeer friends would come and take him away. She was helping to run a start-up aerospace company that was actually making deliveries to the Space Station, and he kept reading articles where she was quoted about the brave new future of space travel.