I reach for my backpack and pull out the latest Auburn Gazette. The football team has claimed another win, and another front page. On to semi-finals. First time in nineteen years. I turn the pages to the Help Wanted section and scan the listings. The library needs help. And they need a receptionist at the law firm on the corner. The diner is almost always hiring waitresses, but that’s it. I circle the most promising ones, and then I turn to the housing page. There’s one apartment building in all of Auburn, but some people rent out the spaces over their garages, or an extra room. There are a few options with rent that isn’t too bad. I circle those, too. The next page is township news, and there’s a box at the bottom advertising the essay contest. Right now, college feels impossible. Leaving them to this feels cruel.
I set aside the pages I marked and reach for Campbell’s books. She always wants my copy of the Gazette when I’m done. But my movement disturbs Juniper, nestled in the middle of the bed, and she kicks Campbell’s stack of books off the bed. It’s muffled by the carpet, and they don’t wake up.
I pick them up and find one of Campbell’s notebooks splayed open. There are sections of newspaper cutouts pasted onto the pages, the words familiar.
It’s my column.
I turn the pages of her notebook and find more of them. All of them. Each of my crow columns, carefully saved; her quiet support makes me smile.
But then I turn one more page, and stop. It isn’t a column. It’s a police blotter from the Gazette.
Every week, local police highlights get printed in our paper.
And Campbell has been cutting them out, saving them here. There are dozens of them.
“APD responded to a check-in request on an elderly woman on Pine Street. The woman was well, and said she isn’t returning her son’s calls because she is mad at him.”
“APD responded with animal control when several callers reported a donkey walking down Main Street. Officers were able to harness the animal and locate the owner.”
“APD officers responded to a reported break-in at 58 West Elm. No evidence of a break-in was found. A kitchen window was left open and several stray cats had wandered into the home.”
I put the notebook back and turn to lie down.
Campbell’s eyes are open.
“Hey,” I say, and rest my head on the pillow. We can see each other over Juniper’s head. “I’m sorry. It fell open; I shouldn’t have read it.”
“It’s fine,” she says.
I reach over her and turn off the light.
“Campbell?” I ask the darkness. “Why do you keep them? The police reports.”
I know she’s just a few inches away from me, but it’s pitch-black in my room and she’s silent for a moment, and we aren’t touching. I reach out until the tips of my fingers graze her arm, to reassure myself that she’s right there and not a million miles away from me like it feels.
“One day we’ll be in there,” she says, and all of the little hairs on my arms stand up. “And it will either mean something really good happened, like his arrest, and we’re finally safe, or it’ll mean something really, really bad happened.”
There’s a flash of the crawl space in my mind. It feels like a premonition, and it makes me sick. I imagine the little block newspaper letters that I love so much betraying me, writing my obituary.
“It’ll be good, Campbell,” I say.
Too late.
She’s asleep.
Chapter Fifty-Three
FOR MY NEXT CROW-THEMED COLUMN, I’m covering the December town hall meeting. The crows have been brought up in other ones, I’m sure, but this month the entire meeting is dedicated to a sole purpose: deciding how to get the crows out of Auburn.
I don’t have a ride. Liam is at practice, and it’s Sofia’s mom’s birthday, so she couldn’t leave. So I ask Campbell for help, and I bike. Three miles. In December. But it’s a dry night, and it isn’t terribly cold, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask my parents for a ride. All of our recent wounds are too painful.
I arrive at the municipal building, hot under my sweater and winter coat from the exertion. I lean Campbell’s bike against a tree and strip down to my T-shirt. A flash of black right next to me catches my eye, and I turn to face a single crow perched on the edge of the curb just inches away from me. He’s the only one on the street.
A cigarette dangles from his beak.
“You should quit,” I tell him as I walk past. “Those things will kill you.”
When I get inside, the meeting has just started, so I slip into the back of the room and lean against the wall, pen and notepad poised.
“Last crow hunt was a complete failure, anyway,” says a man in a uniform. The game warden.
“How many crows did we get at the first shoot?” asks a member of the town council from the front of the room.
“Ahh, that was . . . six hundred and thirty-three.”
“And this last hunt?”
“None, sir.”
“I’m sorry, did you say none?”
“No birds.”
“How is that possible? We had, what, thirty hunters register for it, right?”
“Well, we got out into the fields and the crows flew too high. Like they knew how high we could fire. Like they remembered.”
I make a note to ask my ornithologist about it. They probably did remember.
“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” the game warden concludes. I bet he’d love to hear about Joe’s gifts.
The council member rubs the space between his eyes. I don’t recognize him, but a few of the others are notable Auburn residents. Bill DiMarco is up there, but as a citizen, not representing the police force. So is the principal of the elementary school. One of the school librarians. In a town this small, civil servants usually have to pull double duty or more to fill all the seats. These are the men who would be evaluating my scholarship essay.
“So, the hunts are useless. I don’t see any other options left than to pay for wildlife experts to come in and use more extreme measures.”
A murmur rustles through the crowd. The hundred or so residents who bothered to show up look like mourners, all dressed in their black winter coats.
“We have the option to contract out—these people have dealt with large bird concentrations before. They’ll use flares, flashes, and noise. The idea is to try to overwhelm them so much that they leave. It will be expensive. It will be loud. And on that note, I open the floor to comments.”
A woman near the front stands first.
“The crows are in the trash every day. On every street. The whole neighborhood smells. They’ve memorized the trash days.”
Mr. DiMarco leans forward to his microphone. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but what do you mean, they’ve memorized the days?”
“I mean that our street has trash collection Monday, so the crows come Monday and wait for the garbage men to open the cans, and then they attack the bags in the truck and pull anything left in the garbage cans out. On Tuesday, the crows are waiting on Maple Street. On Wednesday—”
“I understand, thank you,” Bill DiMarco says, shaking his head. I think he doesn’t believe her. His facial expression is mirthful, like he’d laugh at her if it were appropriate to do so, or like he might laugh at her anyway.
His condescension makes me dislike him more.
A man just across from me stands next.
“The crows killed my cat,” he says. “Cornered the poor thing near my garage. Pecked it to death.”
Another murmur in the crowd.
“Did you see this?” a councilman asks.
“No. But I’m sure it was the birds.”
“Let’s try to stick to things we’ve seen, arguments in favor of or against releasing these funds.”
A small woman stands, and I recognize our neighbor, Mrs. Stieg. I guess I could have asked her for a ride.
“Those birds have wreaked havoc on my roses,” she says.
Oh no, not the precious roses.
“Did you see this?” a council member asks.
“I did. The first time was in September, when they’d just started arriving. I woke up at dawn and saw them tearing one of my prize-winning rosebushes into pieces, snapping the branches and plucking the petals off the blooms. I’d just almost lost another bush, and then this one was completely destroyed.”
I remember the ruined bush that I saw when we walked to school, how I thought it must have been Campbell, angry and resentful about Mrs. Stieg’s unkind words to us that weekend. I was so sure it was her, but I was wrong. It was the crows. But why would the crows ruin a rosebush?
“And then a few weeks later, one more bush! Gone! Do you have any idea how many years it takes to cultivate a rose garden like mine? The dedication to each plant? And those horrible birds have spent all autumn tearing down my plants.”
“I’m very sorry to hear about . . . your flowers.”
“Well, I say we bring in any experts we can find. Get rid of the damn nuisances once and for all,” Mrs. Stieg says, and then she sits down. A few people clap for her.
“Okay, I think we’ve heard enough. On the table is Town Ordinance 4420, proposed on this date, the ninth of December, to approve a budget to contract out for crow eradication. All those against the ordinance say nay.”
There is silence in the room.
“Nay!” I call out, and everyone turns to look. Then they turn back. One nay.
“All those in support say aye.”
People yell their ayes. They stand and shout it. Some of them shuffle on the floor or raise their arms. One person climbs on his seat.
The ayes have it.
I bolt from the room, my sneakers squeaking on the shiny tiles as I run. I burst through the door and suck in the cold night air. The street in front of me is filled with crows. A few hundred, at least. They are facing the door to the municipal building. Cawing, cawing. They are so loud, cawing over each other, yelling like the people inside, and suddenly I don’t hear caws. I hear nays. “Nay!” scream the crows in their dark feathers outside. “Aye!” scream the people in their dark coats inside. Mirror images of each other.
If the crows could vote, the nays would’ve won.
Chapter Fifty-Four
I CLOSE THE DOOR AND LEAN against it for a minute, unwilling at first to move farther into the house. Everything is quiet except for the buzz of the television.
When I finally reach the living room, Campbell and Juniper are curled up on the chair, and my parents are on the couch. Mom is leaning into his side, and his arms are wrapped around her. The embrace is so normal, so gentle, but the sight makes my chest constrict.
“Leighton, how was your meeting?” she asks, patting the open space on the other side of her. I move into the room and sit down.
“Movie night?” I ask.
“We had to cancel the cable, so we’re picking from our favorites that we own,” Dad says, and the sentence is laced with guilt. He’s always sorry for the wrong thing.
“Good choice,” I say. “Anyone want some popcorn?”
Campbell and Juniper nod eagerly, and I head for the kitchen. I know they asked for an effort, and I want to try. It’s just hard.
Dad follows me into the kitchen.
“Here,” he says. “The popcorn machine is out of your reach.”
He gets it for me out of the cabinet over the refrigerator, carefully moving his wallet and keys and gun to the counter as he does so.
“One more game,” he says out of nowhere. It takes me a minute to raise my eyes from the counter. From the gun.
“Hmm?” I ask.
“Liam must be excited. One more win and the Wolves go to states.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess he’s happy.”
“Ah, yeah. I could barely sleep leading up to those last few games. The whole town was, well, you know. You see it now.”
I know the right response here: “I hope we win,” or maybe “It’s really exciting.” Even a simple “go Wolves” would suffice. But I look at him in the soft kitchen light, and I want to try harder.
“That must have been a lot of pressure.”
He looks up from the popcorn machine. “Yeah, it really was. And people around here don’t forget.”
“No, I guess not,” I say, handing him the container of kernels. “Do you want to go?”
“To the game?”
I nod.
“Yeah, why not? We can cheer on your boyfriend, show some town spirit.”
Auburn proud.
“Okay. It’s Friday.”
“Sounds good, Leighton.”
“How was work?” It might be the wrong thing to say, again, but if he wants us to try, then he has to try, too. He has to let us ask normal questions and not tiptoe around his temper.
“A mess,” he says, his laugh a humorless bark. “Lost out on a job outside of Philly. Got underbid. Again.”
He doesn’t sound angry, though; just sad, disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Thanks,” he says, and his hand falls to my shoulder for a moment. Sometimes I really wish he were just mean through and through. Evil is easy to hate, but broken . . . broken can love and be loved.
The kitchen is noisy with the popcorn now, and I feel like the air has been sucked out of the room.
“I’m gonna go work on my column for a bit; I’ll be back down.”
“Okay. Study hard.”
As soon as I step into my room, something cracks against the window. It’s Joe on my windowsill.
This time I don’t open the window slowly, waiting for him to leave. I throw it open to the cold December air. He still doesn’t fly away, just shuffles his feet in irritation. I reach for my backpack and pull out the few packets of crackers I stashed for him. I squeeze the packet until the crackers break and the bag bursts. A little cloud of salt dust is released, and I can taste it in the air.
Joe waits patiently for my offering, and when I sprinkle the crackers onto the outer sill, he bows his head and drops something. It lands softly on my carpet, and glimmers in the moonlight.
A rusted little key. I drop it onto my nightstand, next to the screw and matchbook he left me at Liam’s house. I keep forgetting to give them to Juniper, but then again, her own collection has grown so much. Nearly a dozen marbles, twice as many feathers. Buttons and coins.
When I return to the window, Joe is gone, and I close it against the cold.
My window faces our front yard: the street, the truck, the tree. But it’s dark outside and bright in here, so all I see is my own reflection. Window Leighton looks kind of tired, dark circles under her eyes. I can’t see them right now, but I can feel the crows on the other side of the glass.
They are not polite guests who clear their dishes from the sink or remake their beds every morning. They aren’t visitors.
They are Vikings.
They’ve conquered this town. They now flood the sky in droves, darken Auburn like there’s a storm rolling in. They caw day and night, until the noise is part of us. Until we can’t remember what it’s like to not hear them.
And yet.
I like them.
I like the crows because they can’t be shut behind a door, or hidden behind blinds. People can’t turn away and shake their heads and say, “It isn’t our problem.”
I like the crows because they refuse to be ignored.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I’VE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE.
I promised Liam I would be at his game, but now that we are here, I regret it. We are out of town, and I feel the loss of the crows’ presence more than I thought I would.
The noise is layers deep. The low, constant murmur of people talking in their seats. The shrill whistles from the referees, and the heavy, meaty sound of so many bodies colliding on the field. The cheerleaders are right below us, in perfect unison. But something is off tonight. The clanging cowbells feel like a warning.
It is strange to have my whole family here, sitting on the bleachers in
a row. Around us, it looks like the entire town showed up: the familiar faces of my teachers, and the game warden from the township meeting. Bill DiMarco is sitting two rows behind us, and he chats with my dad for a while before we take our seats at the start of the game. I spy the Auburn fire chief, who has worked with my dad to evaluate fire-damaged structures before the construction team moves in. The few times I met him, he always struck me as the most serious person I’d ever seen, even in third grade when he taught us to stop, drop, and roll and how to call 911 in an emergency.
The first quarter ends, and the bleachers feel like they could collapse under all the people jumping up and down. The Wolves are winning.
But the fire chief doesn’t look worried tonight, about the structure of the bleachers or anything else. He’s even smiling and waving a maroon-and-silver pom-pom around while he stomps his feet with the rest of the crowd.
“Huge night for Auburn’s Wolves. They haven’t gone this far in almost twenty years. Maybe this time they’ll go all the way!” This comes over the loudspeaker.
Mom nudges me. “Leighton, let’s go get some hot cider with the girls.” Her voice holds tension that is such a contrast with the mood of everyone around us. She noticed it, too. I saw it when we were all getting ready, when for a moment he thought he’d misplaced his keys, but they’d just slid to the back of the fridge, and Mom found them quickly. And on the drive here, how angry he got when someone didn’t let him merge in time, and we missed the exit.
The collective, silent relief that rippled through us when we arrived and safely parked.
“You okay?” I ask her, and she shakes her head. She isn’t saying no. She’s saying not here. I glance over her shoulder to my father. Something shifted in the last few minutes.
“C’mon, let’s go get cider,” I say. I don’t know what I missed.
“Erin, we’re leaving. This was a mistake,” Dad says suddenly. Whatever was building is at its tipping point, and I don’t even know what set him off this time.
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