“How’s it look?” I ask Sofia, putting my hands in the pockets and spinning around. The skirt flares in response.
“You know you look amazing. Like a melding of Audrey Hepburn and Strawberry Shortcake.”
“Wait, is that a compliment?” I ask, facing the mirror. Sofia comes to stand next to me. She’s three inches shorter, but she almost makes up the height difference with her teased hair. Add the cobalt-blue heels she picked out, and she’ll be taller.
“Of course it’s a compliment,” she says. “Strawberry Shortcake is a babe.”
There’s a knock at my door.
I open it to Campbell, and her eyes go wide.
“What d’ya think?” I ask, pursing my hot-pink lips at her.
“Very eighties,” she says. “And gorgeous.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Okay, we’ve gotta go.”
“Don’t want to keep Liam waiting,” Campbell says, but she smiles and helps me zip up the side of my dress.
The day after Christmas, I found two newspaper clippings on my desk. The first was my essay, framed. The second was another police blotter.
“APD responded to a domestic dispute. 36-year-old male arrested, pending charges of terroristic threat, false imprisonment, and assault.”
And a note stuck on top of the newspaper clipping that said, “You were right. It was good. —C.”
“Oh God,” Mom says when we step into the kitchen.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. Just my entire childhood hitting me in one flash,” she says. “Have fun, girls. Drive safe.”
In Sofia’s car, the heat runs full blast. It’s a bitterly cold New Year’s Eve. A dry cold. No snowstorms coming in to cover up the crows.
There’s no hiding them anymore. Every tree on the highway is filled. Every parking lot and field. They now outnumber humans more than ten to one. It seems that every few minutes another group of them is startled and rises into the sky over us. Instead of trees, we have crows. Instead of fields, we have crows. Instead of clouds . . .
They run this town now.
Auburn’s plans for driving them out of town begin tomorrow.
I know that it is only the year ending, but in this moment it feels like it is the world. The sun is low and heavy on the mountain. The sky isn’t pink like summer or orange like autumn, but dark red fading fast into black. With the billowing dark clouds circling around, it almost looks as though a nuclear bomb has gone off.
“It’s like the apocalypse out there,” Sofia says, reading my mind. We pull up to the school. She chose a bright blue taffeta dress that really does look like something she traveled through time for and pulled off a rack in the 1980s. “Here,” she says, “you didn’t tease your hair enough.”
She pulls me closer and tugs a comb through my hair, pushing the curls out, out, until they are practically a separate entity from me. “Really, Sofia?” I ask, my voice muffled by the mountain of hair between us.
“You look hot,” she says, and tugs again.
“If I hadn’t grown up with two sisters, this would hurt like hell,” I tell her.
“Fortunately, your scalp has been numb for years,” she says.
Liam whistles low as we walk up to the gymnasium doors.
“Wow,” he says as Sofia and I stop and strike poses on the sidewalk. “I’m way out of my league.”
“Eat your heart out, McNamara,” Sofia says, laughing, as she pulls open the door and marches her three-inch heels inside. I look down at my flats. Glamorous.
“Perfect,” Liam says. He steps close, lifts my hand, and spins me around. He’s wearing what should be a ridiculous all-white tux, but he looks amazing as usual. He has aviator sunglasses tucked in the front pocket of his jacket, and I reach for them. “Nah-ah,” he says, capturing my hand over the pocket. “Wrong ones.”
“What do you mean?”
Liam reaches into another pocket and pulls out his glasses case. He puts on his real glasses instead.
“Okay, now I’m ready.”
“What? You aren’t embarrassed?” I ask.
“Nah, fuck ’em,” Liam says. I laugh.
“What changed your mind?”
“Uh, this cute girl I know. She says I look good in them.”
“Oh, well, she’s right. You should listen to her more often,” I whisper, just before his lips reach mine, and I feel the smile on them when we kiss. He pulls back abruptly.
“Check this out.”
He unbuttons the top few buttons of his button-down shirt and opens it. Under his pristine tux, he’s wearing a Superman T-shirt. I laugh.
“That’s perfect.”
“Thanks. Not too geeky?”
“Oh, very geeky. But that’s a good thing.”
“Hey, so, I got my first acceptance,” Liam says. I like how he says first, like he knows there will be more.
He’s right. There will be. No question.
“Congratulations! Where?”
“An art program, actually. The art director got in touch and said he really loved my portfolio, and graphic novels aren’t usually their thing, but my ‘exceptional talent’ convinced them I belonged there. So if I go, I can actually pursue the comic book thing, for real. They have all these design classes, and storytelling, and the faculty is diverse and incredible.”
“That’s really cool, Liam.”
“You know what else is cool? Calling out an entire town in their own damn paper.”
Liam wraps his arms around me, pulls me in close. It’s freezing, but I don’t care. I hear the sound of rustling paper and turn slightly, not letting go of him. Liam is holding up the Gazette, folded in half on page five.
He reads:
“‘The charm of this town is lost on its victims, and perfect is just a fairy tale. We have to stop pretending we’d be great again if only the crows were gone, and work on the parts of this town that were broken long before the birds arrived.’ That’s my favorite part.”
“Yeah?”
“And the part about the walls. And complicity. And bird migration habits as a metaphor for intergenerational violence.”
“That bit was tricky.”
“It worked,” Liam says. “It’s good, Leighton.”
“Thanks.”
“Leighton!” I am practically side-tackled in a hug.
“Hi, Fiona.” I twist so I can wrap my arm around her. “Hey, I never got to thank you for helping at the game with my sisters. That was really nice.”
“Psh,” Fiona says. “It was nothing. They’re adorable. Well, Juniper is adorable. Campbell is intense.”
“No kidding,” I say. “You look so pretty.”
“Thanks, Leighton. We’re having so much fun. Glad to see you changed your no-date rule, though. Go be dummies together.”
Liam leads me into the gym, and we skip the punch bowls and photo line. He tugs me right onto the dance floor. It’s a slow song, and the music isn’t so loud. Liam’s hand finds my hip and pulls me in until I’m tucked right under his chin. I imagine this kind of thing happens every single day, but sometimes things are ordinary and incredible all at once.
One day last year, the girls and I got off our bus and it was pouring rain. We were soaked straight through our clothes in seconds, and still had to walk all the way down our road. But about a minute into our wet walk, the rain stopped, just like that. In one instant, it went from torrential downpour to nothing. The cloud had passed over us. We could see it raining in the field across the road, but not on us. And it must happen a million times a day—the weather shifts, changes direction. The rain cloud moves or the wind dies. We usually miss that split-second transition, though, so seeing it happen that afternoon, we felt like we were the only witnesses to something special. It’s how I feel right now in Liam’s arms. Like, sure, this happens a million times a day all over the world.
But I get to be here tonight for this one perfect moment.
Chapter Sixty-Six
“I HEARD YOUR DAD TRIED
TO kill your mom.”
And there goes that perfect moment.
Liam and I turn to face Brody, who is grinning at me.
The police blotter.
Liam takes a step toward him, and I grab his arm. “Let’s go,” I say.
“Leighton.” Liam’s arm is tight and tense under my fingers.
“Let’s just leave.”
“But they haven’t even announced the Winter Formal Ice King and Queen,” Brody says. “I hear you two are the favorites.”
“Jesus, Brody, how much of a jackass can you be?” Liam asks.
“Ignore him,” I say. “C’mon.”
“Brody, you have to leave,” says a voice behind me. It’s Amelia. Perfect hair, perfect dress . . . perfectly cold glare in her eyes as she faces Brody. “As student council president, I’m telling you to leave the dance.”
“Whatever,” he says. “Lame-ass dance anyway.”
“Go,” she says again. Just like at the football game, I’m surprised by how forceful her voice is for someone so small.
Brody flips her off before turning away, but he does leave the gym.
“Thank you, Amelia.” My hand falls onto her arm. I’m so grateful, I don’t even know how to say it.
“Don’t let him ruin your night,” Amelia says. “Oh, damn, someone’s putting the basketball nets down. They’re going to wreck my balloon arch. I’ve gotta go.”
She waves goodbye.
Sofia is on the other side of the gym, already yelling at the kid who is lowering the basketball nets and gesturing wildly at the balloons. I laugh, but when I turn back to Liam, he’s still angry.
“Wanna get out of here?” I ask.
“Really? Where do you want to go?”
“New York City,” I say. “California. The moon.”
Finally, he laughs.
“First, the newsroom. I need to check my email.”
“Lead the way,” he says.
The newsroom is pitch-black, and we stumble our way through it, unwilling to turn on lights and attract a teacher’s attention.
“It’s gonna take a little while to warm up,” I whisper, turning on my dinosaur computer.
“Mmmhmm. Did you bring me here under false pretenses, Barnes?” Liam asks, his hands finding me in the dark.
“Maybe,” I giggle. The computer starts up, and I click on the email icon.
“You know, this takes a while to open, too,” I tell him.
He turns me in his arms and lifts me up onto my desk. He kisses me slowly, his hands tangling in the teased curls of my eighties-styled hair. I laugh when he fails for the fourth time to move my hair. “What exactly are you trying to do?” I ask, my eyes on the ceiling.
“Kiss your neck. It’s like a lion’s mane.”
“I am woman,” I say. “Hear me roar.”
He laughs, and then he is kissing me again. I can feel his smile against my lips, and there’s no place in the world I’d rather be than in the school newsroom, making out with Liam McNamara.
The rustle of my dress sends a chill across my skin. I’m glad we are alone. This feels like how really well-written words make me feel. Not like an article for the paper or an essay for lit class. More like a sonnet. My legs are parentheses around his waist. When I sigh against his neck, it’s an apostrophe—in the possessive. And every word of it is familiar already—I’ve been memorizing them for months. Liam’s arms come around me and pull me in tighter, he kisses me deeper, and I wonder where this is going—
My email dings.
He pulls back, tilts his head. “Probably not the place.”
“Definitely not the place.”
I hop off the desk and turn to check my email. I scroll through the dozens of junk emails and college emails that have cluttered my inbox in the last week. And then one catches my eyes: Early Admission Application Update.
“It’s from NYU,” I say.
“You don’t think?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, and we both turn to look at the screen.
“Oh, look. This one’s from my ornithologist.”
I click on that email first.
“Wimp,” Liam whispers, his hands trying in vain to gather up my wild hair so he can look over my shoulder. I read the first email out loud.
“‘As promised, I’ve enclosed the second thermal-imaging map of the crow roosting habits in Auburn, Pennsylvania . . .’” I trail off and open the attachment. Like the first thermal map he sent me a few weeks ago, another brilliantly colored map fills the screen. Yellow and orange on the outskirts of town, where there are fewer crows. Red and maroon where their concentration is higher. But this map looks different from the first. There’s a lot more dark red, and now there is one patch of black—the highest concentration—and the entire thing is shaped like a storm, with an epicenter where the most crows have gathered.
I look at the street outlines on the map, and my breath catches. The black spot falls almost perfectly over my home.
“Liam . . .” I click to enlarge the map. “What the hell do you think that means?”
“Leighton.”
“It’s strange, right?”
“Leighton,” he says again. “You opened the other one.”
He’s right. I clicked the wrong button. Instead of enlarging the map, I closed it.
And opened the email from NYU.
“Lay-TON!” Liam shouts. He lifts me up in my shiny black dress and spins me around.
I got in.
Auburn, Pennsylvania
December 31
CROW POPULATION:
93,270
Chapter Sixty-Seven
I ASK LIAM TO TAKE ME home early, even before the fireworks. Holidays have always been hard for us, so Campbell and Juniper and I made up our own traditions. Every New Year’s Eve, we sit on the roof outside my window and watch the fireworks over Auburn together. I’m not going to miss this one.
We park at the end of my road, near the mailboxes.
Liam gets out of the car and opens my door.
“Beautiful,” he says.
So I kiss him. My face and neck are cold, but Liam’s lips are warm.
Like all of the trees in Auburn, the ones around us are home to crows, and I hear them moving on their branches. They’re very unsettled tonight, shifting and cawing and fluttering off the branches and back again. Above them, the sky feels like a magnifying glass, focusing on us standing here. The night is so clear, and the stars are a river.
For a moment, it’s like nothing exists at all beyond us. It’s just me and Liam and the trees and the night sky.
The world revolves around us.
And the words rise in me of their own accord, fast, effortless, like air, racing unseen past that thing in my chest before it can catch them, and tumbling out into the cold air before I can think: “I love you.”
It feels good. And right. Liam’s arm tightens around me. He doesn’t miss a beat.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he says, and he steals one, two, three more kisses, as warm as sunshine.
“No promises, though,” I add.
“Whatever you say, Barnes,” Liam says, pulling me in close.
The stars alone bear witness to the huge smile on my face.
Well, the stars and the crows.
“No promises,” I repeat.
Auburn, Pennsylvania
December 31
CROW POPULATION:
97,361 AND COUNTING
Chapter Sixty-Eight
I STAND ON THE EDGE OF the sidewalk that ends too soon and watch as Liam drives away. The red taillights blur and then fade into the night, and I still don’t go inside. Instead, for once, I let myself imagine the future. I imagine a future in which we don’t say “No promises,” but promise each other everything. I imagine coming home to Liam, and the thought makes me smile.
Boom! I startle, and look up. An arch of red light streaks across the sky. The fireworks are starting. I head toward the house, suddenly awar
e of how dark it is. Why aren’t any lights on? It isn’t even that late.
And it’s New Year’s.
It isn’t until I get to the front step that I realize all of the windows are open. It isn’t until I’m standing there, inches away from him, that I realize I’m not alone. He doesn’t turn on the light in the foyer, but I can see his outline in the dark. I get the distinct feeling he’s been waiting for me, and the thought turns my stomach sour. What have I come home to? When did they release him?
I step to the door and try to recall that good feeling that I had just a second ago, but his presence has scared the happy thought. It is hiding somewhere in the shadows of my memory. Because he’s broken the protection order. He’s here. And I could try to run away, but the girls are probably terrified. Or hurt.
The house is too dark.
I open the door, and he is a six-foot shadow in the dark.
And then I remember the thought I just held a moment ago, the one time I let myself imagine a bright future.
I wonder what it would feel like to come home and not be afraid of what’s waiting inside.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
THE LIGHTS AREN’T JUST OFF IN the house: the power is out. No lights. No heat. He’s shut it all off as punishment.
I’m in my room with the girls, in the dark. It’s quiet downstairs, and tonight I almost wish for the music. Something to break the tension. The thing in my chest is panicking, flapping its wings and railing against the bars of its cage. My heart is cracking my chest, a hammer against my ribs.
We stay upstairs. We stay quiet. We stay hidden.
I need to call the cops. Where is the cell phone?
And then another thought.
Where is the gun?
Crack!
A red light streaks across the sky. More fireworks.
“Can we use the lantern?” Juniper asks. “I’m scared.”
“In a bit,” I say. I’m holding her, but I’m distracted by my own fear.
I hear voices rise from downstairs. An argument. It is brief and muted. I wish that were all of it, but the feeling that this will get worse before it gets better won’t go away.
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