“Get your own boyfriend to make you one.”
“First off, Rémy Lamar is not my boyfriend, despite what you or anyone else thinks they saw in the woods. Second, didn’t you read your text from Daniel?”
“Yeah. It said, A little birdie will tell you what you need to know. He made a paper bird for me to tell me how he feels, just in case I feel sad.”
“Oh my god, you’re such a Birdie brain sometimes. Let me see the damn thing.”
Birdie huffs and hands over the origami chicken. I flip it over, peel apart sections of pinched paper, and there, underneath its body, is a blue line from a ballpoint pen. I start to unfold it and Birdie jumps up.
“What are you doing? Stop.”
“He left you the instructions on how to fold it up on purpose. I think there’s a note inside.”
I manage to get it unfolded without ripping her paper bird. And I’m right. There is a note, written in our cipher. I decrypt it in my head—Dirtierdevilbread 928836. It doesn’t make any sense and presents two problems.
“You taught Daniel our cipher?”
“Oh boy,” Blue says.
“I was starting to teach him.” Birdie takes the creased square of paper from me and studies the encrypted message.
“Why would you do that, Birdie? We might need that someday to communicate with each other. Just us.”
“Drop the dagger eyes. This isn’t an End Of Days communication method. Daniel isn’t going to come back and start giving the Burrow Boys lessons on how to use our cipher. He’s dyslexic and was struggling to get the hang of it himself.”
“Okay. Then what does it mean? Maybe it is an EOD message.”
“Give me a second. I think he was trying to say Dirtier Devil Bread or Dirty Devil Bread. We used to work on it and laugh over how he’d screw up words. Being able to laugh about it made him feel better about his disability. We ate devil’s food cake in the barn once and he dropped his, frosting side down, and ate it anyway. He probably just wanted to remind me of something funny.”
“What about the numbers?” Blue asks.
“I don’t know what the numbers mean. Maybe he was trying to do more letters and got confused.” Birdie starts searching through her EDC like there might be a live animal inside that needs rescuing.
“There’s nothing in there that’s not normal stuff,” I tell her. “But Ansel said he doesn’t think this is over, so don’t take your normal gear with you today. How’d you do it, by the way?”
Birdie looks at me doe-eyed. “What?”
“The flash-bang grenades. What did you use?”
“A soda can, sugar, potassium nitrate. Basic stuff we have around the compound.”
“You remember that, but not what happened?”
“I told you, I don’t. You can ask me as many times as you want. I’m not lying.”
It’s still hard to believe, but I don’t press her on it this time since there was some confusion around my shooting the snake and bringing it to Dieter, and my theory about our soil might hold the answer.
“Fine,” I tell Birdie. “But you should fold that up and hide it inside your pillowcase until Daniel gets back, just in case. We have to start our chores.”
“Yes, ma’am. Is there anything else I should or shouldn’t do, or is it okay for me to go pee?”
“Honestly, Birdie. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d strangle you.”
Don’t tell Birdie what to do. That’s something Blue and I have known our whole lives. If one of us says something like Birdie, you should grow your hair out, her response would be to take scissors and cut it shorter the next day. It’s always been like this. I pull on the pajama pants I was too tired to slide into last night, throw my hair into a bun, and head to the bathroom right behind Birdie for a peek at my arm.
“Do you mind?” Birdie says, paused in the middle of squatting to sit on the toilet.
“You’re just peeing. What’s the big deal? Here, I’ll run the water.”
She huffs her annoyance. Now, that’s typical.
I wriggle my arm out of my shirtsleeve and pull it above my shoulder. The stitches look the same as yesterday, no redness or signs of infection. It’s bruised from the impact, but the stitches aren’t puckering in the least. The scar should be mostly nonexistent. My knee, on the other, hand feels itchy and tight where I cut it on the sheet metal. I put my foot on the basin and pull my pajama leg up.
The toilet flushes behind me. Birdie bumps me with her hip to get in front of the sink to wash her hands. “Thank you for getting my EDC. But if you think the conversation about Rémy Lamar is over, you’re wrong. You can’t lie to us or yourself forever.”
“You should worry about the words Daniel left for you instead of thinking about what I’m doing or not doing with Rémy. And brush your teeth. Your breath stinks.”
Birdie huffs her dragon breath in my face.
“Sometimes the truth has to hit a person like a hammer,” Blue says, squeezing past us to use the toilet.
Nothing like having two nagging little sisters who think they can see right through you. To tell the truth, I like the picture Rémy took of me, and the way he talks to me like I’m not weird. He’s cute. I like the way he smiles and his cheek dimples. I don’t know. Now that I shooed him out of the woods, I’m not sure keeping his questions at arm’s length will be as easy.
I find Mother examining mold-filled petri dishes in the bay window when I get downstairs. The news is chattering in the background, keeping her company. More doom and gloom and foolishness from our Commander in Chief. Mother has gone the traditional route of growing mold on homemade bread, but there’s also a jar of lemons with mold developing on their yellow rinds. The kitchen smells like hot toast and the one thing that will keep me alive today. Coffee. I lift the percolator and find it mercifully full.
“I opened a new jar of jam,” she says. “Blackberry.”
I watch Mother poke at her new specimens before I whip up the nerve to ask about the potential of the mold infecting our soil. “Do you compost moldy bread or food?”
“Never. And certainly not this blue-green mold. Why do you ask? Is Mr. Whitlock teaching you about mold in chemistry?”
It’s early in the year. Too early for progress reports, so I’m not sure how Mother knew my chemistry teacher’s name, unless she overheard me talking to my sisters about the new teacher at school. “That’s more of a middle school experiment. I just read a story about a man who breathed in a bunch of mold spores from his garden compost and died.”
“I read that story, too,” Mother says. “People new to sustainability think composting is simple, but you have to educate yourself about what is and isn’t viable.”
“I think he bought his commercially.”
“The government’s lack of inspections can be blamed for that, I guess.”
Most people don’t give much thought to compost. They buy it in bags based on cubic feet they don’t understand and buy their food at Safeway by the pound, tossing their scraps in the trash. They have no idea how much of what they’re discarding can be regrown from the scraps they send to the landfill. Stuff like green onions and lettuce and celery love to regenerate.
Blue bounds downstairs. “Yes. Coffee. Please. And thank you. Is one of those mugs for me?”
I nod and hand her a mug. “Where’s Birdie?”
I imagine her staring at the unfolded origami chicken and its message, hugging it to her chest as she pines for her temporarily dispatched lover boy.
“Back in the bathroom,” Blue says. “She’s dealing with the female curse.”
“Better her than me.” I grab a serrated knife from the magnetic stripe next to the stove and carve two thick slices of homemade bread, holding one up for Blue with raised brows.
“Yes, please.”
I pop them into the toaster and breathe a sigh of relief out of my youngest sister’s view. I worry about Birdie getting pregnant when she flies out at night to meet Daniel. We had the talk. God knows Mother never did.
But Birdie does what Birdie wants in the heat of most moments. Case in point with this whole flash-bang grenade debacle. But maybe she actually listened to me when I told her not to get pregnant. She didn’t deny having sex, which was rough for me to accept. But if she’s going to do it, at least do it safely.
I take another sip of piping hot coffee, letting the steam open my nostrils. Birdie comes into the kitchen with a bunch of white toothpaste blobs dotting her face.
“Sheesh,” Blue says. “You sure you don’t want to just cover your whole face with that stuff?”
“That’s funny, coming from someone who was born with a sac over her head.”
My eyes dart to Mother. It’s a joke about Blue’s birth she doesn’t like. Our youngest sister was born with a caul, a piece of amniotic sac covering her face. I remember Mother telling me the story about her being born blue, trying to not tell me too much about the cesarean section, but wanting me to know how Blue howled when they cut the sac away and she took her first breath, the color rushing back to her tiny face. There’s a bunch of myths surrounding people born with a caul having psychic powers. Maybe she was born with a caul, maybe it’s make-believe. Blue is weird. We just accept it.
“That sac made me who I am,” Blue says.
Birdie’s version of a comeback is to take Blue’s piece of toast as it pops up warm and crusty, and put it in her mouth. “I licked it so it’s mine.”
I spread my piece with butter and jam and give it to Blue.
“That’s yours.”
“I’ll just eat a slice without toasting it. We have work to do.”
Mother stops tending to her mold and tinctures to give us some direction, knowing we’ll screw around until she kicks us out. “The goats have been milked and Blue collected the eggs last night, so you girls can rotate jars and cans and weed the garden in between your homework. I’m going to keep working on this antibiotic. One of the biggest threats to us is infection, especially staph infections, which can be antibiotic resistant.”
I remind myself to take a sample of dirt from the garden. Maybe Mr. Whitlock can test it for mold. That will give me an opening to ask why he sent Rémy into the woods with a map that led him right to our compound.
BOHICA
BEND OVER, HERE IT COMES AGAIN
MR. WHITLOCK HAS me paired with Rémy for today’s lab experiment. Chemical bonding. I glance at my last lab partner and see Shawna paired with Brian Sharazi this time. It’s hard not to wonder if my prepper-slash-map-giving chemistry teacher is messing with me or if that’s just today’s lesson. He does jump around the textbook rather than following the chapters in order. I’m either thinking about it too hard, or the paranoia surrounding everyone on the compound is becoming a contagion.
The prelab was part of our homework, defining terms and answering a few questions on ionic and covalent compounds. My weekend was packed with making up chores, so I had to finish the assignment in the parking lot this morning before school. It’s what we have to do sometimes. Usually when Dieter Ackerman shows up in the morning to “talk” to Mother, and we want to get out of the house before it gets uncomfortable. This morning Birdie had that stubborn look, ripe to ask him about Daniel. I rushed her out the door to avoid any potential meltdowns that might have come from his answers. Apparently, preventing Birdie from incriminating herself is now my biggest responsibility.
Brian beans Rémy in the head with a crumbled piece of paper. I’m astounded by how dumb that is, considering we’re dealing with open flames.
“Is he trying to start a fire?” I ask.
Rémy opens the paper, but it’s blank. “It might take the chill out of the room.”
I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
The six beakers on our table contain small amounts of different chemical compounds: sugar, salt, oxalic acid, cobalt (II) sulfate, nickel (II) sulfate, and starch. I use a Sharpie to mark the pie tin we’re using with the numbers one through six, clockwise, to keep track of the chemicals left to right. I scan the lab sheet and read the procedure for Part I: Melting Point. Easy. We just have to place a small amount of each compound on the pie tin. I pick up the metal scoop and get to work.
Rémy leans closer to examine the lab sheet and bumps my injured shoulder. “Looks pretty straightforward.”
“Yep. Pretty simple.”
“Doesn’t seem like there’s any undisclosed information.”
“Shouldn’t be. We just have to follow the steps.”
He’s crowding my personal space, pressing against my arm with his shoulder. It takes all of my willpower to not react. I casually lean away and place the small sectioned aluminum pie tin on an iron ring positioned above our Bunsen burner.
“Do you want to light it?”
“Sure.”
Rémy claps me on the deltoid and squeezes, the way you would with a buddy. Only this time, I wince. My breath catches in my throat and he looks me dead in the eye and tips his head, but I give nothing away.
I don’t know why everyone is acting like there’s some prize being awarded to whoever can outweird the weirds this week. I put it out of my mind and watch Rémy twist the ring at the bottom of the Bunsen stand. I twist the gas valve on the table, releasing a stinky, rotten-egg puff of sulfur with the first leak of methane gas, and hand him a safety match that he strikes away from us before lighting the burner. A big yellow flame shoots up. Too big. We don’t want to fry the compounds. He turns the ring again until the yellow part is out of the flame, but still tall enough to brush the bottom of the pie tin once we put it in place.
“There you go,” he says. “No hidden surprises in sight and nobody got hurt.”
Nothing undisclosed. No hidden surprises. Nobody got hurt. I’m trained to read people and situations, and Rémy is tossing around more loaded implications than necessary.
When he picks up the pie tin for the next step, I clamp my hand over his and squeeze. “Stop.”
Rémy flips his hand over so we’re palm to palm and interlaces our fingers with a sly grin. “If you want to hold my hand, you could have just said so.”
I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t feel what can only be described as a covalent bond, the electrostatic charge of two atoms attracting. Instead of letting that reality settle into my thoughts, I big R React—negatively, I should add—picking up his hand in mine and banging it on the table. The knock is louder than I anticipated. I shift my gaze around the room at prying eyes before whispering, “What’s gotten into you? If you want to talk about the woods, maybe you should just say so.”
I release Rémy’s hand and lean away, cuffing the hand he was just holding over my injury, closing off my body language.
Rémy scooches his stool closer with a bumping scrape across the floor and leans in.
“I saw Annalise Ackerman shoot you in the arm with an arrow,” he whispers. “I was leaving like you said, but then I remembered I should have asked you about getting that coffee again when I had the chance. I turned around and you were standing there, watching the path, looking … like you always do, protective, and ready for whatever’s coming, so I picked up my camera to take your picture and that’s when I spotted Annalise slinking up behind you. She shot her arrow before I could warn you. Honestly, I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t shoot me, too, so I left, like you told me to, because I value living. In retrospect that was shitty, because you could have been really hurt.”
I’m staring at him, completely mute. When we first came to The Nest, Mother put the word survival as an acronym on the refrigerator.
Size up the situation
Use all your senses
Remember where you are
Vanquish panic and fear
Improvise
Value living
Act swiftly in your best interest
Learn basic skills
Value living. He’s right. He sized up the situation and acted in his best interest. I know I should say something, but what? I can defend Annalise’s actions, but I need
to know exactly what he saw first.
“It was an accident,” I tell him.
“No,” Rémy says. “It wasn’t. And I have photos to prove it.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“She was hunting with me and my sisters. I moved into her sight line.”
“You didn’t, Honey. I saw her shoot the same tree as you. Is there something I should know, because she’s been mad dogging me in the hallways all day. I knew you were friends with her brother. I see him sitting with you at lunch sometimes, but I never see you talking to his sister at school.”
“Annalise is more closed off than Ansel. She’s the shy twin.”
“Shy?” Rémy laughs loud enough to draw attention. “Annalise is in my government class. She is the opposite of shy.”
“Okay, well, not shy, but sort of a lone wolf.”
“And she lives on Overcast Road, too.”
The implication is that he already knows, and I’m taken aback. “She does. But how would you know that?”
“I was feeling guilty about leaving you in the woods after what I saw, so I drove over there on Sunday to check in and see if you were okay.”
Not good. Not good. Not good.
I need to think. I take over putting the pie tin above the flame before we use up all the gas in the tank talking to each other. The compounds start melting immediately and I make a quick note of which ones went first, and in which order, along with the ones that didn’t react with heat. But I have to say something, because I’m the one who told him about Overcast Road in the first place.
“I never told you which house was mine.”
“I know. But that old station wagon you drive would be hard to miss, so I thought it was worth a shot.”
I raise one eyebrow at his use of shot.
Rémy rubs one temple. “Try. It was worth a try.”
Mr. Whitlock clears his throat loudly, grabbing our attention. He triple taps the tip of a pencil on his desk. The standard get-back-to-work gesture of all teachers.
“We have to document the reactions,” I tell Rémy.
“Yeah. We do,” he says, keeping on point, “because when Annalise spotted me driving ten miles per hour up and down your street, she walked into the middle of the road to make me stop.”
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