We watch as they take turns on the wet, slippery branch.
We watch as they play.
When we finally arrive at school, second period has started. We offer the receptionist some excuse about the car. When we get to our lockers, I remember my calculus exam has probably started, and I slam my locker and sprint. I swear under my breath as I try to remember what I studied at five a.m.
As I walk into the classroom, a flyer catches my eye, and I pause at the door.
There is a crow hunt this weekend. No Limit on Birds per Shooter.
I’m not the only one running out of time.
Chapter Thirty-Six
CAMPBELL ASKS ME TO STOP TALKING BACK. Especially when he’s angry. I can always find that sharp thorn of a comment that takes him from casually pissed off to losing his shit. If only she knew how much I’m holding back. All the words that I don’t say. Instead, I swallow the words whole, and the letters are pointy on their corners and sharp on their edges and they hurt going down. They stay there inside of me and make my stomach ache. Sometimes I think that if someone cut me open, the words would really be there. Like a whale that consumed too much garbage, and now her body is nothing but a time capsule for all the things humans throw away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
AT 6:45 A.M. THE NEXT SATURDAY morning, I find myself parked next to an icy, wet field, preparing to interview men who are dressed in camouflage and carrying loaded weapons. It is 34 degrees outside, and I’m wondering precisely what life choices I’ve made that led me here.
My crow column can’t leave out the first crow hunt. I sent an email to Dr. Cornell, my bird expert, earlier this week, asking about another town that had a crow problem. They used a series of crow hunts, but it looks like they weren’t very effective. I wanted to ask what chance Auburn has of handling the crows on its own.
Dr. Cornell said that it might make people feel better to do something about it, but with the crows in such high numbers—his latest estimate was nearing fifty thousand birds—a crow shoot or two won’t have any discernible impact on the population or their migration habits.
So, a pointless crow hunt.
In my research, I found another crow town that didn’t try hunts or traps or flares or noise to drive the crows out of their town. Instead, when they realized the crows kept coming back year after year, they started a new town tradition: the festival of crows.
They turned their little town into a tourist attraction, selling visitors on the festival and the wonderment of a hundred thousand birds choosing the town as their temporary home.
“You know my dad wanted me to do this hunt with him?” Liam asks from beside me. He has football practice early today and offered to drop me off here for interviews. But right now his head is tilted to the side, watching the trucks pull in and neon-vested hunters climb out. He’s studying them the way I’ve studied the crows. Like I’m trying to decode some great mystery.
“Really? I didn’t know he hunts.”
“Not often. He’s too busy with the practice. But he used to hunt with his dad, and it’s really not my thing. Sometimes I think he expected us to have the same experience he did growing up here. Which just wasn’t gonna happen.”
“Is he pushy about it?”
“Nah, nothing like that. He’s just trying to, like, bond. And he totally understands and supports the things I am passionate about. He cares so much. But yeah, I have no interest in shooting crows out of the sky. I think I even like them.”
“Me too.” I say, my stomach dropping at the thought of the crows being shot. I think of Joe. Juniper was so worried about him.
“So who are you going to interview?” Liam asks.
“Whoever wants to talk crows,” I say. There are a bunch of hunters gathered outside now, walking around their trucks, guns bent in half awaiting shells.
“Leighton,” Liam says, and whistles, passing his hand in front of my face. “You in there?”
“Sorry.” I turn to him, trying to shake the feeling.
“Hey, wait. What’s going on?” Liam goes from lighthearted to serious in an instant, reading my body language, or maybe the look on my face, I don’t know.
But he knows. His hand moves to my arm, a soft gesture. A comforting one.
I force a smile.
“I’m great. I’m going to be . . .” I cannot make the word fine leave my lips. I keep thinking about Joe, and hoping he didn’t follow me here like he did to visit my grandmother.
“It’s nothing. Really. I just, uh, don’t like guns.”
“Wait.” He leans back, then pauses as my words fall into place. “Does he have—”
“You should go,” I say, pulling my arm from under the soft weight of his hand. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Liam stares at me for a moment, then shakes his head. It’s not the time to get into it. We both have places to be.
“Be careful,” he says. “Stay with the trucks.”
“Of course,” I say, and lean over to kiss his cheek.
Most of the hunters are happy to answer a few questions. None of them seem to actually care much about the crows invading Auburn, and none of them are fooled that this bird hunt will have an impact. They just enjoy it.
I lean against one of the trucks, reading my notes at first, but when the gunshots start, I’m too on edge. I end up just listening to the hunt, thinking about how much better a festival of crows would be. Auburn born, Auburn proud. But the crows weren’t born here, and they’re too good for this place. And I was born here, and I’m not proud.
Right now I wish I could fold the entire town into one of Juniper’s notes and leave it for the crows to take.
I wonder what gift they’d give me in exchange for that.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
MY BOOTS ARE SPECKLED WITH MUD and blood and ice. The air is cold enough to hurt my lungs with each breath. There are dead crows everywhere. Obviously, a crow hunt would lead to dead crows, but it is different with them laid out like this. Frozen in their final standoff with mortality.
There are so many of them.
They’ve arranged the birds into the number they killed. The number 32 is shaped from the bodies of thirty-two bird carcasses. Feathers resting at odd angles, eyes now void of that shimmer of intelligence that I feel on me everywhere I go in town. Sometimes it feels like the crows aren’t thousands of individual birds but a single being somehow living in a thousand bodies.
I read the numbers as I pass them.
57.
82.
154.
I imagine the aerial view. From above, the field of dead birds would be laid out like a page of a child’s math homework. Exactly the view the live crows have now. I feel dumb as I imagine it. The crows don’t care. But then I think of Joe and his gifts, and I remember that Dr. Cornell said crows mourn, and I wonder if maybe they do care.
I wonder if they’ll remember this transgression.
I didn’t think the hunt would bother me this much, but it’s their little bodies, shaped into numbers, that gets me. It’s almost perverse. A parody of death. And even though they’re only birds on the field in front of me, it’s girls in a crawl space that I see in my mind.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
IN LIT CLASS, WE BEGIN TO study women in literature. We read excerpts from Jane Austen and Alice Walker, poetry by Angelou and Plath. On Tuesday, we spend half of class discussing A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Wollstonecraft, and then we move on to her daughter and Frankenstein.
Maybe it’s true that men like Thomas Hardy write women well, as victims or survivors, wives or daughters, mistresses, or even soldiers.
But women write women as people.
And Mary Shelley wrote men as monsters, and I love her for it.
“Beware; for I am fearless,” Mary Shelley wrote, “and therefore powerful.”
I wonder if that’s true.
When class ends, Mrs. Riley asks me to stay behind for a moment.
As
soon as the room empties, Mrs. Riley slides a familiar pink sheet across her desk.
“Why haven’t you applied for this?”
I sigh and drop into the chair beside her desk. “I tried. A few times. I just can’t write to the prompt.”
“So try again. Think about what’s holding those words back. Push through it. If you become a journalist, you are going to get a lot of assignments you don’t like. You’ve got to find your own angle. And the cash prize doesn’t hurt.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I’m working on my next crow column now, and it’s about crows in ancient folklore. There’s a fable about a crow that is dying of thirst, but the water in the pitcher in front of him is too low for his beak to reach. So he collects pebbles and drops them in one at a time. The pebbles make the water rise, bit by bit, until he can take a drink. The moral of the fable is that necessity is the mother of invention.
This essay for Auburn Township won’t be enough for me to get into NYU, let alone actually go there. But it could be a pebble. Right now it feels so far out of reach, but maybe, if I try, it’ll get closer, pebble by pebble, until I can take a sip.
“I did have one idea. But I already know it isn’t something the Auburn Township Council will want to read.”
Mrs. Riley laughs. “Then it’s probably something they should read.”
I give her a half smile. “Maybe it is.”
“If it’s controversial, it might not win, Leighton. But you should trust your writing, and your voice. At the very least, you’ll force six middle-aged, privileged white men to read something that matters to a seventeen-year-old girl. Maybe it’ll plant a seed. And if you do win, you’ll get your first byline.”
“What?”
“The winning essay gets printed in the Auburn Gazette. You’ll have your first real publishing credential.”
The prospect is terrifying.
And tempting.
But I know what kind of men are on the council. Men who look the other way. Police officers, teachers, and old family friends.
Last year in trigonometry class, my teacher kept mocking a woman who’d been on TV all week testifying about a senator’s history of harassment. He said, “If everyone is a victim, then it’s like no one is,” and I felt shame like scalding water on my spine, and stopped raising my hand in class.
And in the diner, when I sometimes catch the end of Mom’s shift, I hear the way the men flirt with her, how she tolerates their rudeness. If she didn’t, she’d lose tips. Or a job.
Auburn born, Auburn proud. But there’s only one acceptable way to live here, and when you deviate from that narrow path, then you are the threat. Like your voice will crumble their entire world.
Maybe it’s true.
Maybe it would break this town to know that the best athlete to ever come out of Auburn, who carried his team to a state championship and would’ve gone pro, has fallen, and he’s taking his family with him.
But some things should fall apart. They should burn themselves out, like a candle that’s run its wick to the bottom. It’s dangerous to wish for such a thing, though, because some flames are too selfish to extinguish themselves.
There are flames that would set the whole world on fire if it were the only way to keep burning.
Chapter Forty
AT THE END OF THE DAY, I fill my backpack while dread settles into my stomach. My mom is taking the girls to dentist appointments, so if I get on the bus and go right home, I’ll just be there alone with him. Normally, I would hide in the newspaper office for a few hours, but Mrs. Riley is already gone and the office is locked for the night.
Liam joins me at our lockers and kisses my cheek.
“I have something for you,” Liam says. “But it’s kind of a private gift and I don’t want to explain it here.”
A junior next to us looks over but doesn’t say anything. I raise my eyebrows as a gentle reminder that she can mind her own business, and she hurries away.
“Okay. Well. My bus is leaving soon,” I say.
“Yeah, but your sisters have dentist appointments. You can’t go home.”
I’m surprised that Liam even remembered that from when we talked on the phone last night. It was just casually mentioned. I’m more surprised that he has taken it a step further and understands the implications of no one else being home after school.
“Office is closed for the paper, and I don’t have a ride,” I explain.
“We have weights and game tape viewing until five. Is that too late?”
“No, that’s fine; are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Yeah. I’ll be in the weight room, but the gym will be open. You can hang out and read or whatever.”
We start walking toward the gym as we talk, and I know I’ve already made up my mind.
“Thanks,” I say.
Liam pauses outside the gym.
“You can’t be late—Coach will kill you. Or make you run sprints, which in my book is the same thing.”
Liam laughs. He looks nervous. Oh, right, the thing. He has something for me.
“What is it?”
He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a phone.
“It’s an older model. It’s actually my old one. But it works perfectly fine.”
Everything clicks into place at once. He got me a phone.
A lifeline.
To use in an emergency.
I sniffle and try to ignore the gigantic frog in my throat.
“That’s really thoughtful, Liam. I can’t even tell you . . . thank you.”
“If you keep it charged, it can at least call 911, until next week, and then it will work for normal phone calls and texting, too.”
“How?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. But this is a smartphone, which means it needs an actual plan. And data. And the truth is, I could swallow my pride enough to ask for help like this, if I knew it was safe.
But it isn’t.
I look at the phone in my hand.
And then I give it back.
“I can’t,” I say. Tears now threaten everything. I suck in a deep breath and steel myself.
“What?”
“I can’t take this, Liam.” A tear spills over, and then another. Dammit.
“Leighton, it could—” I hear the ghost of the sentence even though he doesn’t finish.
Save your life.
And he’s right, it could.
Or it could get us killed.
“He’s weird about phones. And police. If he found this, Liam . . .”
“So hide it really well.”
“There’s nowhere that’s safe, Liam. I—I appreciate the offer.”
“You really aren’t gonna take it?”
I don’t answer, but I make myself meet his gaze. And I know that, tears and all, he sees my resolve.
He shoves the cell phone into his backpack.
“I’m late for practice,” he says, and walks around me.
“Liam—”
“I get it. I do. I’m not upset with you, it’s just—”
It’s a lot. It’s a lot to ask him to know and not do anything.
“I’ll see ya after.” He’s gone through the doors to the gymnasium and turning right into the guys’ locker room.
That went well.
In the gym I sit at the end of the bleachers. I pull out our lit textbook and work through review questions.
For most of Liam’s practice, I study. There is some constant white noise coming from the closed weight room—the clanging of weights and the easy, low talk of the players. I finish my homework too soon, and pass the last half hour trying—and still failing—to write the Auburn scholarship essay. It’s frustrating. I’ve never really struggled to find the words before, but this one essay is defeating me.
I pack up my backpack and climb off the bleachers. I trade my bag for a basketball sitting in a bin on the side of the court and start to shoot at the net. I miss nine of ten shots, but it
feels good to move my body when my mind gets stuck, so I think about Auburn and I throw the basketball, again and again. Then the doors to the weight room burst open, and a group of guys emerges. I walk all the way across the court before I realize it isn’t the football team, but wrestling.
I make eye contact with Brody as he comes out. I turn away, but not soon enough.
“Hey, did you guys hear that the ice queen is finally dating someone? I guess she isn’t as frigid as we thought after all.”
A few chuckles. Mostly not. I guess even Brody’s own teammates think he’s a jerk.
“Or maybe she just doesn’t like white guys,” Brody says.
“Shut the hell up, Brody.” I turn back as I say it, and realize he’s followed me across the court.
“Maybe when you’re done with Liam, you can give me another shot? Now that you’re a little thawed out by McNamara.” Brody reaches out, probably just to make some stupid comment about my skin not being ice cold, but I step backward.
I throw the basketball as I move, and it hits Brody in the center of his face.
Really hard.
A waterfall of blood starts to pour out of his nose.
And that’s when the football team comes out of the locker rooms.
“What the fuck, Leighton?” Brody yells.
The football coach joins us, shouting for someone to get some paper towels for the blood.
“What the hell is going on here?” Coach Tenley asks.
“That bitch broke my nose!”
“Hey, hey!” Coach holds up his hand. “Language.”
The sight of Brody being scolded for cursing in front of a teacher while bleeding profusely might actually be worth the trouble I’m in.
Liam is at my side. “Leighton?”
“He was . . . he was being a jerk. He was going to touch me.”
“Did he touch you?” Coach asks.
I shake my head no.
“Did you think he was going to hurt you?” he asks.
Again, no.
I just reacted.
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