Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Wilhelmina dreamed that she was a tiny owl, lying on her side in someone's yard. Her talon was broken and something awful was about to happen. She needed to warn the vulnerable ones, but she couldn't move, and when she tried to cry out, the sound stayed caught inside her, and the effort hurt her talon. Something horrific was going to happen, and she couldn't cry or scream; she was trapped. She tried again, opening her mouth, trying to press sound through her throat. It hurt. It hurt!

On the Wednesday three days before she stepped into her own, Wilhelmina woke thrashing. She was in her own bed in Massachusetts. She was herself, not an owl, and her voice was working just fine; in fact, she cried out as she woke. Her neck, her shoulders. Ow.

Wilhelmina pulled out her mouthguard and grabbed for her glasses. Delia was gone. Wrapping herself in Frankie's crow blanket, she stood, then slipped into the boots she found at her bedside. She listened hard, but heard no one. So she snuck into the bathroom, then the kitchen, and crept out the back door.

In daylight, it was easier to locate the crows. A number of them were flitting around in the highest branches of the backyard's biggest tree, an oak with leaves still thick and green. Which meant James had given her accurate information.

She wished she'd thought to ask him how to supplicate to crows. Food, probably, or a replacement shiny object? She touched her throat, her own elephant, and knew suddenly that this was the one the crows should've taken, that they should've taken hers. She was the one who didn't fit. But what could she do about it? It wasn't like she was inside one of Aesop's fables. She couldn't walk up to a tree and make a deal with a crow.

"Wil?" said a voice behind her.

Wilhelmina turned around to find Julie watching her from her high bedroom window, kneeling in her window seat. A princess in a tower? No, more like a bird perched in a really great nest she'd made for herself, stocked with all her favorite books and games. A nest she would fly away from, when the time was right. Wilhelmina had never begrudged Julie for wanting to go far away for college. She'd understood it. She'd always believed that no matter where in the world Julie's plans took her, their friendship would adapt. "Julie," she said in a cracking voice. "I miss you."

"Well, hey, I'm right here, elephant," said Julie. "What are you doing?"

She looked tired, her eyes puffy from sleep, or maybe from watching the election returns. Did she also have something guarded in her face? Was Julie watching Wilhelmina as if she knew what Wilhelmina had done?

Suddenly, Wilhelmina couldn't pretend anymore. "I let the crow take your necklace," she said. "I did it on purpose."

"What?" said Julie, plainly confused. "What are you talking about?"

Wilhelmina's mouth felt thick with shame. "The crow dropped your necklace right where I could reach it," she said. "I could've grabbed it, easily. Instead, I waited. Because I knew it would take it back."

Julie's bafflement was turning to incredulity. "What?" she said. "Why would you even do that?"

"I don't know!" said Wilhelmina. "It just happened."

"No, it didn't!" said Julie. "You just told me you did it on purpose!"

"Yes, that's true," said Wilhelmina, who didn't want to lie, and badly wanted to explain, but didn't know how to. "I don't know why, Julie! I've been really lonely! You guys are doing the pandemic together, and I'm on the outside."

"You're never on the outside, Wil!" said Julie. "This is just the way it is right now!"

"But I want to be in your bubble. I want to have been in your bubble. I want, when this whole thing started, for you and Bee to have been like, no, sorry, we're not doing this without Wilhelmina!? "

"But it was for our sisters!" cried Julie. "We didn't decide it ourselves! Our parents did, and your dad has asthma!"

"I know!" said Wilhelmina. "But you don't know what it's been like. You're always together. It's always the two of you, without me. I can't touch you. I can't hug you. I can't even see your faces most of the time. And you guys—" Wilhelmina needed a breath to get this next part out. It was hurting so much to crane her face up to the window. "Are you guys, like, into each other?"

"What?" squeaked Julie, almost in horror. "No! Where are you getting that?"

"You're not?" said Wilhelmina, so surprised and so relieved that she bent over and took a few more deep breaths. Her relief was short-lived. She knew somehow what she would see when she looked back up at Julie.

She straightened. Julie had an expression on her face like Wilhelmina was some terribly sad event she was watching happen in the distance, something that was breaking her heart.

"Wil," said Julie, in a funny voice. "Why did I find out from James that you two ran into each other in Pennsylvania? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I—wasn't using my phone a lot yesterday," said Wilhelmina.

"Why didn't you tell us you were going to Pennsylvania in the first place?" said Julie. "Please be honest, okay?"

Wilhelmina started to say the thing about how everything had happened so fast, then stopped. She thought it through, for real. She said, "I truly don't know."

Julie watched her for a moment, with tears sliding down her face. Wilhelmina had to put a hand back to hold up her own head. Her neck was in agony. "You can have mine," she added, meaning her own necklace. She reached for the chain, but Julie looked aghast.

"Are you breaking up with me?" she cried.

"What?" cried Wilhelmina, shocked. "Of course not!"

"I just can't believe that you, like, offered my necklace to a crow!" said Julie. "Like, pushing me out of our circle! You have a disappearing act you do when you're upset. I get it. Or actually, I don't get it, but I get that it's real, and not something you do on purpose, to be mean. But this is the first time you've decided to make me disappear."

"I—don't want you to disappear," said Wilhelmina desperately. "I would never want you to disappear."

Julie took a moment to pat her eyes with her sleeves, then dropped her arms back to the windowsill, truly dropped them, as if she was exhausted. New tears welled up to replace the ones she'd wiped away. "Well, that's how it feels," she said. Then she tucked her chin to her chest in that old, familiar gesture of worry, shrugged her shoulders, and shut the window. The ancient rusted pulley that was still attached to her windowsill shifted once, with a squeak and a low, quick moan.

Wilhelmina felt like her entire body was on fire. She climbed the steep yard to the back door, clutching Frankie's blanket and gulping air. Inside, she found her mother doing dishes in the kitchen, humming something cheerful that sounded like the main Star Wars theme.

"Good morning, Wilhelmina," Cleo said, breaking off in the middle of a series of duh-da-da-duhs.

"Where is everyone?" said Wilhelmina.

"Delia's having school in our bedroom with Dad, and the aunts are doing Philip's school in their room, bless them. They wanted to give you the day off."

Wilhelmina grunted.

"You've looked at the news this morning?" said Cleo.

"No."

"You haven't looked at the news?" said Cleo, turning to stare at Wilhelmina.

"No," said Wilhelmina, moving toward her room so that Cleo could stop reminding her of the existence of the news.

"So maybe you don't know that Biden's favored to win?"

"What?" Wilhelmina cried, instantly dizzy. "But he's behind by thirteen points in Pennsylvania!"

"Those numbers are changing, hon," said Cleo. "You remember all the mail-in ballots?"

"But the whole map was pink! Thirteen points!"

"He's favored!" said Cleo, waving one hand and sending a clump of soapsuds flying. "Even the betting sites are favoring him. If he keeps Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Maine," she said, dripping more suds as she counted on her fingers, "and if he gets either Pennsylvania or Michigan, he's going to win."

Wilhelmina needed to lean against the wall. "You're talking about Joe Biden," she said. "Kamala Harris and Joe Biden?"

"Yes," said Cleo, her face breaking into a tired smile. "Look for yourself. The percentage has been dropping like a rock in Michigan. They're only trailing by half a point there now."

Wilhelmina put a hand up, turned away. She staggered to her bedroom, where she slammed the door and crossed to her bed, bunching Frankie's blanket into a ball against her pillows and pressing her face into it. She breathed. Then she began to cry, muffling the sound with the blanket. As her cries turned to sobs, she felt like she was crying for all the sadness in the world.

It was her phone that finally stopped Wilhelmina's tears, not because it made a noise, but because she happened to look at it in the moment it lit up with Bee's name.

Yesterday, she would've let it go to voice mail. Today, she answered. "Hi."

He paused. "Hi," he said, in a voice that made it obvious he'd talked to Julie, though Wilhelmina had already known that, the moment the phone had lit up.

There was a long pause. "So?" said Wilhelmina. "Are you mad at me?"

He made an exhaling noise that sounded confused. "Maybe a little?" he said. "But mostly I'm just, like, so bewildered. I mean, I know it was Julie's necklace, not mine, but they all mean the same thing, right? Do you not want to be our friend anymore?"

"Yes!" she said. "More than anything!"

He made another series of confused-sounding noises. Wilhelmina kept thinking he was about to start talking again, then he would stop himself.

"I used to worry a lot," he finally said, "like, when we were little, that you would stop being my friend."

"What!" cried Wilhelmina. "Why? Did I do something to make you think that?"

"No," he said, "it was never anything you did. It was because you had two entire homes. You had two parents who were nice people, and you had the aunts, who were, like, the most comforting beings on the planet. I figured you didn't need me."

"Oh, Bee," said Wilhelmina. She was crying again, but this time it was for younger Bee. "That was never how it worked. I always needed you. Do you understand that now?"

"Yeah."

"I feel like right now, maybe you and Julie don't need me," she said.

"That's false," he said. "I…" He hesitated. "I sort of wish you'd kept me in the loop about that. Instead of performing a dramatic gesture with a crow. I mean, maybe I should've known? But I didn't."

"I know," she said. "I—I don't know why I didn't."

"I know it used to be easier for you to tell me your feelings," Bee said. "Before Frankie died. I know you're still grieving her."

Wilhelmina was crying harder. She couldn't hide the sound of it, and she couldn't respond to that.

"Are you mad at me?" said Bee. "For not realizing how you've been feeling?"

Since he'd asked, she couldn't pretend. "Yeah," she said. "A little bit."

He paused. Then he sniffled. Bee was crying. "That seems fair," he said.

"What should I do?" said Wilhelmina. "How do I fix this?"

"I don't know," said Bee. "But will you tell me whether we're still friends, even when we're upset with each other?"

Wilhelmina said that yes, of course they were, because she couldn't bear the answer to be no. But she wasn't sure what it meant anymore.

She found her foam roller and did her best to stretch away some of her pain. The crying hadn't helped. Wilhelmina's body was winding in on itself tightly like an echidna, except echidnas were adorable.

She sought out her mother, who was still in the kitchen, chopping carrots and potatoes. "Does it work for me to not drive anywhere today?" she said. "It'd help a lot if I could take more muscle relaxants."

Cleo pursed her lips, then nodded. "I can do any driving that comes up. Why don't you take the day off from jobs, hon?"

"Thanks," said Wilhelmina.

Back in her bedroom, Wilhelmina dressed herself in a daze, reaching for clothing that felt right, not really paying attention. Soft things, comforting things. Also Frankie's owl, which was a small, enraged weight on her ear. She took off her necklace. Then she put it on again. Then she took it off again.

With one deep breath to gird herself, she went to the aunts' bedroom and tapped on the door.

Esther answered, tall and grave. "What can I do for you, Wilhelmina?" she said quietly. Behind her, Wilhelmina could hear Philip's teacher talking about the letter S. "Snakes!" she said. "Snores! Stars!"

"Esther," said Wilhelmina, "would you feel comfortable texting one of James's grandparents and asking them for his phone number for me?"

"Of course," said Esther, not waggling her eyebrows, or doing any of the teasing Wilhelmina had feared. "I like your blue."

"Huh?" said Wilhelmina, then looked down at herself. She was wearing a fuzzy cornflower-blue hoodie over navy-blue leggings. She noticed that Esther wore deep blue jeans and a long twilight-blue sweater, and blue stones in her ears. "You too?" she said.

Esther made a small noise of affirmation. "The last time people voted for him," she said, "we really couldn't know for sure what kind of president he would be. This time, we know, and look how many people still love him." She shrugged. "Often when I'm hurting, I wear blue."

When the text with James's number arrived from Esther, Wilhelmina was lying on her foam roller again. It seemed to help her pain while she lay on it. But the moment she got up, the echidna effect would return.

She sat on her bed for a while, trying to figure out what to say to James. She finally settled on, Hi. It's Wilhelmina. Not exactly earth-shattering, she knew, and she was agonizing over what to say next when he replied.

Sorry I hurt your feelings yesterday

Please don't apologize,she wrote all in a rush. You were right. I'm sorry.

But I am sorry,he wrote. It was a mean analogy

It's okay,she said. I shouldn't have run away

How u feeling?

All over the place,she said. Listen, do you know what happened to that owl from the dentist?

No why?

I had a nightmare about the owl,she said.

A few minutes passed. Sorry slow, he wrote. At the shop. U text wicked fast

I'm dictating,she explained.

I had nightmare too. About a wolf

Wilhelmina lay back on her pillow, resting her phone on her stomach for a moment and remembering her dream. She wondered if the owl in her dream had been injured by a wolf.

Was it a mean wolf?she asked.

Not sure,he said. It was hungry tho

Wilhelmina took a breath, preparing herself. Want to talk about it? she said. All of it?

All of it, ALL of it?he said.

Yes.

Yes,he said. Today?

Today is good.

Noon?

Sure.

Library?

The library was a few blocks from the Lupa Building, a twenty-minute walk downhill from Wilhelmina's home.

Sure,she said.

Then she laid her phone on her stomach again, rested her stinging hands, wondering if she could convince her aching body to nap a bit. Just in case she succeeded, she set an alarm.

Before she closed her eyes, she turned notifications back on for Julie and Bee, trying not to think too much about why it mattered. She reached for her necklace, then remembered she wasn't wearing it today. Then, just once, she checked the news. The top headline was, "Biden Takes the Lead in Michigan."

She woke around eleven thirty, to the sound of Julie's cat Esther thundering across the ceiling above. Below, in the basement, someone was slamming the doors of the washing machine and the dryer.

"Daddy?" came Delia's muted voice. "After school, can I make a unicorn cake?"

"What?" came Theo's voice. "A what?"

"A unicorn cake!"

"Is that something you've done by yourself before, sweetie?" asked Theo, who sounded extremely harried, and also muffled, as if his head were in the dryer.

"Yes!" said Delia. "Basically. Almost. I need to make one for Eleanor."

"I'm working this afternoon, Delia," said Theo. "I don't mind if you make a dozen unicorn cakes, but your mother will become the arbiter of your fate shortly."

"Mom!" screamed Delia.

"Honey," said Theo, "you need to go into the room she's in, wait until she can give you her attention, then ask her in a respectful tone of voice. Oh my god. How can four different socks be missing? This is so stressful!"

In the living room, Wilhelmina found her mother lying flat on the floor with her eyes closed, taking noisy, deep breaths and speaking words as she breathed out. "Alaska," she said. "Arizona. Georgia."

"Mom?" said Wilhelmina, going to the coat closet. "What are you doing?"

"A relaxing meditation," said Cleo. "Maine. Michigan. Nevada."

"Are those the states that haven't been called yet?"

"Yes. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. Wisconsin."

"Is that really relaxing?" said Wilhelmina. "Wouldn't it be better to, like, name all the planets? Think about how far away Saturn is. The election doesn't matter on Saturn."

"Mm," said Cleo. "Very wise. Mercury. Venus. I might just skip over Earth."

"You do that," said Wilhelmina, who was trying to decide if she could bear a bright red coat today. "What's the weather supposed to be like?"

"High of fifty-five," said Cleo.

"Mom!" shouted Delia, bursting into the room. "Can I make a unicorn cake?"

Wilhelmina found a blue mask in one of her coat pockets. Then she settled on a faded blue jean jacket, with a blue hat and mittens and her purple and blue scarf, in case she was too cold. She set off down the hill, keeping her ears cocked and her eyes peeled for crows.

On the lawn in front of the library, a giant maple tree wore a colorful knitted covering on its trunk. It was like a tube dress, tree-sized, with striped sections, checkered sections, sections with tassels and flags. A knitted banner on the front read, Black Lives Matter.

Wilhelmina circled the tree, touching a stuffed heart that hung from a branch. Then she sat on the low wall behind the tree, trying to find a position that hurt her neck less. Across the street was a sandwich shop she'd once loved for its meatball sub, with meatballs and sauce that came the closest to Frankie's she'd ever been able to find. Theo had loved their Tunisian tuna sandwiches. The sign still hung above the windows, but if you pressed your face to the glass, you could see that the tables, the cash register, the fridges and the stoves were all gone, lost to the pandemic. The guy who'd owned it had always had a friendly smile for her, and sometimes his kids were in the shop. Wilhelmina wished she had a way to know if they were okay.

Down the street, James appeared, wearing his sky-blue coat and holding a small pink box. His mask was on his chin, so she could see his face.

"Hey," he said, stopping a good eight feet away. As he studied her, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. "How are you?"

"That bad?" said Wilhelmina.

He smiled. "You look unhappy."

There was a kindness to James Fang, one with which he seemed very free. It seemed the easiest thing in the world to him to care about how she was. It brought stinging tears to her eyes. "I'm in some pain," she admitted, "but I'll be okay. My meds will start helping soon."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "I brought you some really ugly doughnuts." He sat on the wall right where he stood, opened the box, then stretched out and placed it on the stone between them. "My mom let me take the unsellables."

Wilhelmina leaned over and peeked into the box, which contained three doughnuts. One was misshapen, and the other two were delightful, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a collar that resembled a frantic squid, and a unicorn with a perfect sculpted horn of sugar glass, but a horrified expression on its face.

"What did you do to that poor unicorn?" said Wilhelmina.

"Nothing, I swear."

Wilhelmina extricated the unicorn from the others. "Thank you," she said. "How are you feeling? You got home yesterday with no problems?"

"Yeah," he said, taking the RBG. "We're all okay. A little hurty on the inside, maybe."

"You mean because I upset you?" said Wilhelmina in alarm.

"Nah," he said. "The election."

"Oh," said Wilhelmina. "Right."

"It's like, you keep thinking people'll realize what he is," said James. "And care. But I think maybe they know what he is."

"Yeah," said Wilhelmina. "That's what I think."

"This guy came into the shop this morning and told me we weren't going to get away with it. Like, while I was handing him his box. He was like, ‘You people aren't going to get away with it,' and I was like, ‘I'm sorry, sir?' and he was like, ‘Stealing the election.'?"

"Oh my god, James," said Wilhelmina. "I fucking hate that guy!"

"I was like, ‘Oooookay, well, have a nice day,' and he made this humphing noise, and shook his head like he had me all figured out. He almost knocked over this little old lady while he was storming off."

"I hate him," Wilhelmina said again. "He's human garbage. I'm sorry you have to put up with that shit, James."

"Oh well, it doesn't happen a lot," said James. "But it's hard that I have to stay polite, you know? Because he's a customer. If he did that out on the street, I'd ask him a few questions. What does he mean, you people, exactly? People who make Kamala Harris and RBG doughnuts? People who look Asian? Did he order doughnuts from us just so he could insult us?" He glanced at her sideways. "Your voice really does get deep when you're mad," he said.

"Tell me if you see him," said Wilhelmina. "I'll accidentally kick him in the balls."

"I'm glad we have a plan," said James. He took a bite of his doughnut, then chewed thoughtfully for a minute. "So, listen, Wilhelmina. I feel like I should tell you some of the stuff that's been happening to me, like, when you're not around."

"Stuff?" said Wilhelmina, her heart sinking a little. "Have you been getting messages in lights?"

"No, nothing like that. I mean, I got that one in the cemetery that told me to trust you, but you were there for that. Why? Have you gotten more messages in lights?"

"Why don't you go first?" she said.

"Okay, well," he said, considering her doubtfully. "If you've been getting more messages, like actually written down, then my stuff isn't going to seem like much. But, I've just been getting these…" He shrugged. "Just these feelings, like I should do things. Like I should go somewhere. Like, that's why I went to the cemetery in that snowstorm, and it's why I went back the next day, and it's why I told my grandparents I'd drive them to Pennsylvania. It's like an itch, but, like—to go somewhere."

"Are you…hearing voices?"

He hesitated. "No. There are no voices. But honestly, it feels as scary as if there were voices. Like, it doesn't feel normal to be at home watching TV or birds or something, then suddenly you have this compulsion to go to the cemetery. Then once you get there, you have this compulsion to go walk in a specific place."

"That does sound kind of disconcerting," Wilhelmina admitted.

"And then, every time, you show up," he said. "Wilhelmina Hart from school, who's basically, like, who I would want to show up, if I were making the story of my life up in my head. So of course I can't help but worry that that's what I'm doing."

"Right," said Wilhelmina. "I get that, like, completely. I've been scared of the same thing." I'm who you'd want to show up? she didn't say, masking her feelings about that vague compliment by focusing on her unicorn doughnut. She popped the sugary horn onto her tongue and let it melt in her mouth. "I don't think that's what you're doing."

James nodded. "My grandmothers don't think so either," he said seriously. Then he shot her a sideways glance that was—something. Maybe a little embarrassed? "I've got grandmothers who maybe aren't like other people's grandmothers," he said. "They, um, practice the sacred arts. My great-grandma on my mom's side was basically Strega Nona—remember that story?"

"A little," said Wilhelmina, who was feeling kind of strange. Like she already knew where this was going.

"My dad's mom would call herself a practitioner of craft," he said. "Like, from a Taoist tradition. My mom's mom—that's the grandma you met, remember? She thinks my dead great-grandma—her mom—is sending me messages." He sighed once, shortly. "I know how it sounds. I get if it's too weird."

Wilhelmina took one a slow breath, so that her own sigh wouldn't be so audible. "No," she said. "It's really not."

"The thing is that it always feels a little bit like my great-grandma," he said. "Like, when I get those feelings. I always, I don't know, find myself remembering her. She used to tell me I had a gift. She called it the ‘gift of istinto.' I mean, it sounds fancy, but it's just the Italian word for ‘instinct.' But she said that she had it, that sometimes it just came over her that there was someplace she should go. That it would"—he glanced at Wilhelmina again, with that same flash of embarrassment—"?‘put her in the path of the worthy challenge.' She always thought it was her father sending her messages. From the afterlife. He, like, died in World War II. And she always said I had that gift, and I was always like, sure, okay, Nonna, because she never told my sister Viv that Viv had any gifts, and my sister always told me it was because Nonna was sexist, like, obsessed with her father and her male grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Viv thinks all old Italian ladies are sexist. And so then I would point out that she never told any of the other boy cousins that they had a gift, and she would say, well, that's cuz you're her favorite. And I always kind of liked that, honestly, even though I don't think it was true, because she was my favorite. This was a really long time ago. She died when I was like eight."

"I'm sorry," said Wilhelmina.

"Thanks," he said. "Anyway, I honestly think if I just had these urges to go places, it'd be fine. I mean, a little weird maybe, but I could chalk it up to, like, life stress or something. I could be like, Hi, Nonna, thanks for visiting. But the thing is that every time, you're there, and something weird happens. And I swear, you're always glowing like the sun."

"Am I glowing now?"

"No," he said. "You're just really pretty right now. You look like a blue-gray tanager."

"I don't know what that is," said Wilhelmina, who felt herself warming up.

"Sorry," he said. "I talk about birds too much. I like to check on this live bird cam in Panama. There's this bird that's all these different shades of blue. It makes me think of the sky."

"Your coat makes me think of the sky," said Wilhelmina.

James flapped his hand. It seemed like a gesture of defeat. "It's my dad's coat," he said. "It's too big for him now. Anyway, will you tell me about your messages? Are they, like, street signs or something?"

Wilhelmina wanted to keep talking about birds. Or his great-grandmother, or coats, or anything, really. "I don't know why it freaks me out so much to have to talk about it," she admitted. "I start to feel panicky."

"I mean, don't you think this would freak most people out? I think that's normal."

"You don't seem to have a problem talking about it."

"I talk when I'm upset!" he said. "Maybe you get quiet."

Wilhelmina thought this might be an understatement. "Anyway," she said. "There was that time you were there, with the sign that told you to trust me, except my name was wrong."

"Right," he said. "You object to dashes."

"And I already told you that I got that, um—prophecy that my doughnut would be stale."

"Which it was," said James, nodding.

"Right. Although that one was a voice, not a sign in lights. There was a sign, but it only said my name."

"With dashes?"

"Yes."

"Don't you feel like that's the weirdest part?" said James. "Like, if there's some supernatural force at work here, why is it being weird with your name?"

Wilhelmina swallowed. "I think that's one of the weirder parts," she said. "But after my dentist appointment on Monday, I took the elevator down to the lobby and it opened into the doughnut shop."

"Wait, what?" said James, staring at her. "You mean, like, one of the elevators in the Lupa Building? It opened into the doughnut shop?"

"Yeah. And the people were, like, transparent, and no one was wearing masks, and you were there, but you couldn't see me even when I waved my hands in front of your face, and I was really there, James, because when I opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, I was really outside your shop. And the people were solid again and everything was normal. You came running after me with a doughnut, remember?"

James's eyes were very big. He seemed to need a minute; he took a couple bites of his doughnut. James was cute while eating a doughnut. He had a distracting crumb on his lower lip. "Okay," he said. "Wow. That's a lot."

"What did you see?" said Wilhelmina. "Did you see me walking by, like, as if I'd come from the lobby?"

"No," he said. "When I saw you, you were already walking away, like down the street. But I was busy; I wasn't really looking. You may have walked by."

"A lot of weird shit has happened," she said. "But I think that was the weirdest."

"It definitely beats anything that's happened to me. Was there a message in lights?"

Wilhelmina sighed. "Yes. ‘Help the doughnuts.'?"

James froze. "Oh," he said. "That one might actually make sense."

"Wait, really?"

"The shop is in trouble," he said, glancing at her again, then shrugging.

"It is?" said Wilhelmina, who was surprised. Everything at the shop seemed normal. The lines seemed long, though it occurred to her now that any line might seem long, if people had to spread out for social distancing. And she could remember longer lines, in the beforetimes, if she pushed her mind back. Plus, her doughnut had been stale.

"Yeah," said James. "It's in a lot of trouble, ever since the pandemic started and my dad got sick. Business is down a lot, we've dropped our breakfast menu, and the lunch crowd is gone. And the medical bills are rough. We've had to let practically everyone go. We got a grant, then we got a loan, and there's been an eviction moratorium, which helped. But now it's expired for small businesses. We have so much back rent due. The management company has started pressuring us to pay up."

"But that's terrible!" said Wilhelmina.

"Yeah," said James. "My dad got diagnosed with colon cancer a few months back."

Wilhelmina needed just a moment to go still and breathe. "I'm so sorry, James. That's terrible."

James nodded, carefully eating the last piece of his doughnut. "Thanks," he said. "It's been a hard year. We've had to change a lot of plans. But I guess everyone has, right?"

"Some people more than others," said Wilhelmina, who was feeling a little ashamed of herself for minding a house crowded with aunts, and a life crowded with other people's errands.

"What are you doing about college?" he asked.

"Deferring for a year," she said. "From UMass Amherst."

"Oh, that's cool," he said. "I was going to go to Amherst. We would've been neighbors." He glanced at her. "I like thinking about that."

Amherst College was really hard to get into, and really expensive. Wilhelmina wondered if James was telling her he'd had to give up his place there entirely.

Then he smiled, a real smile, though he also looked tired. "The doctors say my dad's responding well to treatment."

"That's great," said Wilhelmina with fervor. She paused. "Are any of them named Ray?"

"What?" he said, confused. "The doctors?"

"Yeah. Or do you know anyone named Ray? The other message I got said ‘Trust Ray.' It was written on a tarot card."

"Oh!" he said. Then he smiled again, true delight shining through the weariness in his face. "That's me," he said. "I'm Ray."

"What!"

"My middle name is Raimondo," he said. "It was my grandma's brother's name. My grandparents call me Ray, and so did my nonna."

"Hang on," said Wilhelmina, who was dizzy. She peeked into the box at the remaining doughnut, which was a funny stretched-out shape, then examined James closely. "I'm having some weird déjà vu," she said.

"No problem," he said. "My nonna was always reading my tarot. I mean, it's not an explanation. None of this makes sense. But maybe that's why you saw it on a tarot card."

"Maybe."

"What do you think we should do?"

"Do?"

"Don't you feel like—I don't know, like someone wants us to do something? Hey," James said, leaning toward Wilhelmina suddenly. "Hey, are you okay?"

Wilhelmina felt a hot tear sliding down her face, though she didn't know why. What did one tear mean, when so many things were wrong? "Frankie used to read my tarot too," she said. "My aunt who died."

"Hey," he said. "I'm really sorry."

"It's okay," she said, wiping at the tear. "I keep having these dreams where she almost appears, but we keep missing each other."

"That sounds really upsetting," he said. "Like, you don't actually need nightly reminders from your unconscious that she's gone."

"Right," said Wilhelmina, who was ready to change the subject now. "Anyway. So you dreamed about a wolf?"

"Yeah," he said, watching her uncertainly. "Not for the first time. Do you think it's because the shop is in the Lupa Building? Doesn't ‘lupa' mean wolf, like, in Italian?"

"There are wolves above all the doors," said Wilhelmina. "If the management company is pressuring you for money, no wonder you're having wolf dreams."

"Wolves at the door," said James dryly.

"What happened in your dream?"

"I think I was a bird," he said. "An injured bird on the ground, and a wolf could smell me. She was looking for me, and I was really sad, because I knew it was the way of nature that strong animals eat weak animals, but I wanted to live."

Wilhelmina thought about her own dream, about the hurting owl whose voice was trapped. "I dreamed I was a tiny owl with an injured talon," she said, "just like the one at the dentist. That lady, Ellie Saroyan—she said it was a northern saw-whet owl. I needed to warn someone of something, but my voice didn't work. Were you an owl in your dream?"

"I don't think so," he said. "I might've been a wren. Wrens are the best, you know? They have little fat bodies and pointy beaks. They look like narwhals. It's funny how your mind works in dreams. I was lying in a yard near a dark green house, maybe I was a wren, and all the colors looked the way they would to my human eyes. And in the dream, I thought that was strange, because birds can see colors humans can't see. Like, most of them can even see UV light."

A dark green house.As James spoke, Wilhelmina could picture that house. Its balconies, its black roof with missing shingles, its white window frames: it was like the house sprouted, and grew in her mind. She knew, suddenly, that the owl in her own dream had been lying in the yard of that house.

"The house," she said. "What do you remember about it?"

"Um," he said, "it was forest green, and huge. It had gingerbread, and white balconies—"

"Did it have windows up high with stained-glass edges?"

"Yes!"

"My owl was lying in the same yard," Wilhelmina said, sitting up straighter. They stared at each other, perfectly still, for just a moment.

"Huh," said James. "Well, it looked like one of those fancy houses on Oliver, or Pearl, or Marion. You know those giant houses?"

Bee had used to live in one of those giant houses; Wilhelmina knew those streets well. "The ones near that little patch of forest, south of the stadium," she said.

"Yeah," said James. "Feel like taking a walk?"

As they walked, James ate the last doughnut. "You're sure you don't want it?" he said.

"You go ahead," said Wilhelmina. "It's hilly. You should carb load."

"I feel like you get me."

"None of these houses look right to me," said Wilhelmina. "You?"

"Nope."

They were climbing up Oliver Street, which was shaped like a horseshoe, with its round end abutting the little forest. A dirt walking path started there, leading through the trees to streets on the other side that were also crowded with fancy houses.

"Want to take the path through?" said Wilhelmina.

"Sure."

It was a short, downhill path, traversing the forest's edge, but even still, you got the sense, almost immediately, of stepping into a different kind of world. A door, thought Wilhelmina. To what? Trees surrounded them, slender gray beeches and tall, craggy oaks, with masses of fluttering green leaves just starting to turn gold.

On a sharp intake of breath, James went still. He stretched a hand out to Wilhelmina, almost seeming like he was going to grab her arm, then he remembered the pandemic. He pointed at something with his chin, and whispered something she couldn't hear through his mask.

"What?!" she whispered back. "What's happening?!"

He pulled his mask down. "Pil-e-a-ted wood-peck-er!" he whispered, his eyes bright and his nose poking the air repeatedly in the direction he wanted her to look. Not unlike a woodpecker, Wilhelmina found herself thinking, with a rush of fondness for this person who got so excited about birds.

Then she saw it, clinging vertically to a nearby tree. It was big, with a slender, black body and a long, thin neck. It had a white-striped face and a giant beak, shaped and positioned like every picture she'd ever seen of a pterodactyl. It had a bright red crest of feathers atop its head, like the ridge on the back of a stegosaurus. Wilhelmina had a sense of the age of the world.

It turned its head to them, then gazed at them with such intensity that she grew a little nervous. Then it burst suddenly from its tree and flew away. Not two seconds later, Wilhelmina heard the hammering of its beak on some tree farther away.

"I've never seen a pileated woodpecker in these trees!" said James.

"It was beautiful," said Wilhelmina. When they started walking again, she asked him, "Will you go to vet school, or something? How does a person work with birds?"

"Well," he said. "I'm not sure."

He said it in a funny tone, like "not sure" meant something specific, which made her wonder if it was about his family's finances. "I'm sorry," she said. "Was I just insensitive?"

"No," he said. "I have a math thing."

"A math thing?"

"I'm crap at math," he said. "Certain kinds of it, anyway. Arithmetic, algebra. And you need lots of math to get into vet school."

Wilhelmina was immediately, almost irrationally, indignant on his behalf. "What?" she said. "Why? Why should you need math to care for birds?"

"Well, you need math to medicate birds, for one thing," said James.

"Someone else can medicate the birds!"

James laughed, high-pitched and surprising, like his laugh always was. "Thank you for not trying to convince me I don't have a math thing," he said. "I can't tell you how tired I am of people who think I just haven't had math explained to me adequately yet."

"Of course you would know if you have a math thing!" said Wilhelmina. "Could it be something schools are required to accommodate?"

"You mean, do I have a diagnosed learning disability? Yes. It's a mild kind of dyscalculia."

"Then vet schools should accommodate that," said Wilhelmina.

"I don't even know if I want to go to vet school," James protested mildly.

"Sorry," she said. "I got carried away."

"When you get passionate, you start to glow," he said.

"When you're being sweet," she said, "you sparkle."

They both seemed rather surprised by these revelations. They stepped out of the forest onto Marion Road. At that border place, standing on leaves, dirt, and asphalt, they paused, watching each other for a moment. He was a nice height, thought Wilhelmina. His hair was messy and adorable, and she wondered what it felt like. She wondered about the shoulders he was hiding under that puffy sky-blue coat.

"I wish you were in my bubble," said James.

An immense shyness rose up inside Wilhelmina. "Me too."

"Look," said James, pointing over her shoulder. A few lots away was a forest-green house. The mailbox at the base of its driveway said Saroyan, like Ellie Saroyan, the owl lady from the dental office.

Wilhelmina was unsurprised, but it wasn't as if everything made sense now. Every time a piece of the puzzle clicked into place, it was like the table the puzzle sat on turned into a bird and flapped away.

"What do you think we're supposed to do?" said Wilhelmina. "Spy?"

"I think we should ring the doorbell," said James. "If someone answers, we'll say we wanted to check in on the owl."

"Okay," said Wilhelmina. "I mean, I do actually want to check in on the owl."

Ellie Saroyan herself answered the door. "Oh! Hello!" she said, hastily reaching toward a small table in her entranceway, pulling on a mask. "It's James and Wilhelmina! Right?"

"Yes, that's right," said Wilhelmina. "We're so sorry to bother you at home. You said you lived near here, and then we saw your mailbox."

"No one ever visits," she said. "I assumed it was a package!"

"Of course," said Wilhelmina.

"We were just walking by," said James. "We wanted to check in on the owl."

"Oh, that sweet little owl!" said Ellie. "I just talked to the raptor center this morning. She's doing well! They said her talon should heal, and then they have a process for releasing her back into the wild. Isn't it wonderful?"

"That is wonderful," said Wilhelmina, relieved. Her dream had felt so real.

"Would you like me to show you where I found her?" said Ellie.

Wilhelmina had the sense that even though she'd never seen Ellie's backyard, she already knew exactly where Ellie had found the owl. She could feel the cold dampness of the grass against her face, and picture the little hollow in the lawn, just beside a garden bed where lettuce was still growing. "Sure," she said.

"Before we do," said James, in a slightly strangled tone that made Wilhelmina glance at him, "may I ask about the…lovely art in your entranceway?"

"Oh!" said Ellie, with a delighted trill of a laugh. "You must mean my obelisks!"

Wilhelmina saw then that Ellie had three tall paintings hanging in her entranceway, and each painting contained an obelisk. In fact, each painting contained exactly the same obelisk, positioned in exactly the same part of the canvas. The same sunset stained the same pink sky, reflecting the same rose and gold on the obelisk's surface. At the bottoms of the canvases, where night crept in, the same fireflies hung suspended in the same positions. Ellie had three identical paintings in her entranceway, framed in three different frames. And the fireflies were sparkling.

"My children did a Zoom painting party a few weeks ago," she said. "One of those ones where you all paint the same picture. Then, I guess without consulting each other, they each decided to frame it and send it to me as a present. You can imagine how surprised I was as the packages began to arrive. What do you think? Don't they look charming together? The fireflies sparkle like that at this time of day, when it's sunny."

"I see," said Wilhelmina. "So, you can see that they're sparkling?"

James shot her a sideways look that said, That was a weird question. "They remind me of the Bunker Hill Monument," he said hastily.

"Yes!" said Ellie. "I think that's why my kids thought of me! I used to take them to the Bunker Hill Monument all the time when they were little. We would climb to the top. Two hundred ninety-four steps! It's like a little bit of home for them, you know? Anyway, here, come around to the back. I'll show you where I found that little owl."

In the backyard, which looked much as Wilhelmina had expected, nothing glowed, nothing sparkled. Ellie showed them the flattened tuft of grass where the owl had lain, and Wilhelmina felt her dream owl again, cold and frightened.

"Well?" she said to James afterward. "Are you having a compulsion to go to the Bunker Hill Monument?"

"No," said James, shrugging. "Plus, I doubt it's open to visitors these days, right? But maybe we should look into it?"

When Wilhelmina got home, Delia was making a unicorn cake.

From the state of the kitchen, Wilhelmina surmised that a unicorn cake was similar to other cakes, except that its cake to icing ratio was about one to nine. Philip ran up to her with an eggbeater held upright in both hands. It was covered in lavender icing.

"I only licked it a little!" he yelled, bursting with his own generosity. "You can go first!"

"Wow," said Wilhelmina. "No thank you, Philip, you can have it." At the counter, Delia was spreading lavender icing onto a series of pointy ice cream cones, wielding her knife with intense concentration. "Delia?" said Wilhelmina. "Is that part of the cake?"

Delia turned away from her task just long enough to roll her eyes at Wilhelmina contemptuously. "It's the horn," she said. "And all the backup horns."

Wilhelmina decided that someone in the household was probably in charge of supervising this operation, but it wasn't her. She went to her bedroom and shut the door. Through the wall somewhere nearby, she heard her father yell, "That fleabite is demanding a recount in Wisconsin? They haven't even finished in Wisconsin!" A moment later, he yelled again. "What are they even doing in Nevada? Cleaning out their belly buttons?"

Wilhelmina reconsidered her location. The kitchen and the bedrooms were on one end of the apartment and the living room on the other, or at least that's how it felt, by virtue of the short corridor that connected the living room with everything else. The bedrooms seemed to be her parents' workplaces today. The aunts seemed to be out. Wilhelmina had a feeling that her father was working in his bedroom and her mother was working in the aunts' bedroom. When Theo yelled, he was yelling through the wall to Cleo.

A moment later, she heard Cleo open a door, shout, "Okay, I have a session!" then slam the door. This supported Wilhelmina's theory. "Okay!" yelled Theo. Her parents weren't usually so shouty. She wondered if the election was bringing out everyone's more fundamental self.

Then she decided that since everyone was preoccupied, they might not notice if she did something weird. With tired arms, she carried Frankie's crow blanket, her laptop, her foam roller, and her phone past Delia and Philip and into the living room. There, she dragged the coatrack and the drying rack side by side in front of the armchair in the window near Frankie's treasures. She hung the blanket across both racks so that it made a kind of barrier. Then she sat in the chair, divided from the rest of the room by the scene of flying crows, comforted that she was as far away as possible from any other human.

Now what?she thought, trying to decide how much it would hurt to watch a makeup or hair video. Hurt her heart, she meant, because she and Julie often shared those videos with each other. Was there anything she ever did that was unconnected to Julie and Bee? Again she reached for her necklace. Again it wasn't there.

She could research the Bunker Hill Monument. First, though, she checked the returns. Biden had won three of the four electoral votes in Maine. That meant that if he kept Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, he would need only Michigan or Pennsylvania to win.

As she was opening a tab to google the monument, a new headline popped up: "Biden Wins Wisconsin."

In late afternoon, Biden won Michigan. No news was coming out of Arizona or Nevada. On Twitter, the monster tweeted about his victories in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, three states where he was leading but had not, in fact, won yet. He also tweeted about a "large number of secretly dumped ballots" in Michigan, for which he had no evidence. And announced a lawsuit in Michigan, to demand the vote count be halted there; and announced a lawsuit in Pennsylvania; and asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the Pennsylvania vote count. Wilhelmina did a few calculations and discovered that the monster couldn't win the election unless he won Pennsylvania. It was going to be days, people were saying, until all the votes were counted there.

At dinner, the room felt crowded with everyone's feelings.

"Nice stew, Cleo," said Esther, who was one of the few calm presences at the table. "Was your phone ringing off the hook today?"

"I've got about twenty-five voice mails I haven't even listened to yet," Cleo admitted. Her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red and she felt exhausted to Wilhelmina. Theo reached a hand out and gave her an impromptu neck rub, which briefly brought a tired but blissful smile to Cleo's face.

"Did everyone see my unicorn cake?" demanded Delia. "It's for Eleanor. Don't eat any."

"It's a work of art," said Esther. "A visit from a unicorn is a blessing."

"Yes, beautiful," said Theo, who was watching Philip anxiously. "How much icing would you estimate Philip consumed?"

"He was my taster," said Delia.

"Mm," said Theo. Philip, who'd eaten very little dinner so far, was uncharacteristically subdued, which often meant he was going to vomit. Wilhelmina could see the wheels turning in Theo's head: Was it the icing? Or could it be Covid?

"Esther and I had such a nice walk today," said Aunt Margaret. "And a nice sit among the trees. It was one of those days when you don't want to be confined."

"How was your day, Wilhelmineleh?" said Esther. "How's your pain?"

"Okay," said Wilhelmina, who had no intention of reporting on most of the parts of her day. "I researched the Bunker Hill Monument. I've been wanting to go, but the tower's closed."

"I can get you into the Bunker Hill Monument," said Delia.

"What?" said Wilhelmina. "What?"

"I can get you in," said Delia, shrugging.

"What do you mean, you can get me in?" said Wilhelmina. "You're ten!"

"My friend Madison," said Delia, shrugging again. "Her mom, like, owns it or something."

"No one owns the Bunker Hill Monument! It's part of the National Park Service!"

"Whatever. I can get you in, but you can forget it if you're just going to yell at me."

"I was present for the conversation that illuminates this mystery," said Aunt Margaret, with a gentle cough. "I believe Madison's mother, Sue, who's a park ranger, manages the Bunker Hill Monument. We met her just a few days ago when we were out walking in the rain. She did, indeed, say she'd be happy to arrange a private tour for Delia, Eleanor, and one or two others in their friend group. Masked and socially distanced, of course. I'm sure that could include you, Wilhelmina, if you've been wanting to go."

"Well, I'm not sure," said Delia loudly.

"I know the Petrosians," said Theo. "I don't mind calling Sue after dinner."

"It would be me and a friend," said Wilhelmina. "If you wouldn't mind, Dad."

"Of course, honey," said Theo.

"Oh, first you didn't believe me and now you want to bring a friend?" said Delia. "Julie or Bee?"

"A friend of my choice," said Wilhelmina.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Delia demanded, in the very moment Philip shifted position significantly and Theo and Cleo, springing into action like the seasoned team they were, swept him up together and rushed him out of the room.

"Poor Philip," said Aunt Margaret. "He was looking a little green."

"I bet his puke is lavender," said Delia.

After dinner, Wilhelmina retreated to her blanket fort again. Outside the window, stars were beginning to prick the sky. When Philip found her, she helped him climb up into her lap. He seemed perfectly fine, and sweet-smelling from the bath someone had given him.

"What you doing?" he asked her.

"Nothing," she said. "Just sitting."

"I threw up," he said.

"Yes," she said, smelling his wispy hair. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes," he said, then went quiet, leaning against Wilhelmina's chest, watching Frankie's figurines in the window and drowsing.

Wilhelmina had a heightened consciousness of her phone, and of the messages no one was sending her. With her one free hand, she unlocked it and checked the news. The monster's lead in Georgia was shrinking, so he'd filed a lawsuit to stop the counting there. That made lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia—where the uncounted votes were mostly in the cities of Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta. Three cities with high Black populations. In fact, the monster was suing to stop Black votes from being counted.

In the meantime, in Arizona, a group of people had gathered outside a Phoenix counting center, shouting, "Stop the steal." Which seemed to Wilhelmina like a good thing for them to be shouting, until she understood that it was Biden they believed to be the thief. Biden, who was patiently waiting for the votes to be counted, while the monster made shit up about voter fraud. Oh, and also, the mob was armed with guns.

Wilhelmina began to wonder, could a person—could she—lose her mind, if other people kept persisting in yelling lies? Like, could a person truly lose her ability to cope? She'd watched a video of Cleo giving a talk once, at some event for destigmatizing mental illness. Cleo had said that many of the behaviors classified as symptoms of mental illness were in fact rational, normal, and healthy responses to unhealthy environments—the body's attempt to help the suffering human survive an onslaught of wrongness. If Wilhelmina kept being shocked to the point of numbness by how people were behaving, if she kept feeling herself spinning into what felt like a crazy place, because of the magnitude of her disbelief that people could be so passionately, violently wrong, did that mean she was healthy?

Her phone buzzed. She jumped for it, almost waking Philip. But it was James.

How ru?he wrote. Bh monument closed

I think I have an in,she texted back, dictating in a low voice. Details soon

U have an in to the bhm?

Apparently my annoying and possibly sociopathic ten-year-old sister is friends with the daughter of the manager

Ur magic,he wrote.

Wilhelmina didn't feel like magic. She felt like a heartsick weirdo, currently with no friends, hiding in a dark room behind a blanket. She didn't know what to say, so she let herself sit there in confusion, holding on to Philip.

Two things, he wrote. 1) I like the owl on your ear

Wilhelmina smiled. She couldn't help it.

2) Group of snow geese is gaggle. But when flying, they r a wedge, skein or team—AND

If they fly in a big crowd all close together, they r a plump

Wilhelmina squeaked a little in her chair. A PLUMP? she wrote.

Yeah

A PLUMP of snow geese?

Yeah

She pictured a flurry of round-bellied birds with big, sturdy feet, black tips to their white wings, flying together across the sky. A plump. Laughing, she reached out and set the snow goose's head bobbing. I love that, she said.

Me too

Hey,he added immediately. Blue-gray tanagers rn. Then he sent her a link.

When Wilhelmina clicked on the link, she saw trees and green leaves, a sunny, tropical scene. At the bottom of the frame was a log crowded with bananas, and above it, a row of orange halves suspended from the branch of a tree. A hummingbird feeder hung on the right. "Panama Fruit Feeder Cam," said the description.

Three small birds sat on the oranges, spinning in circles as the oranges themselves spun, reaching their beaks down to the meat of the fruit. She recognized them as blue-gray tanagers instantly, because they were just as James had described: the streaky pale blue of a winter sky.

They were breathtaking. Wow, she texted to James. Then the picture changed, switching suddenly to a scene in black and white. What just happened? she texted him.

Night cam,he said. Till morning. Not as pretty, but opossums visit. I saw owl once. Plus bats come to the hummingbird feeder

Thank you,she said.

Yw. Lmk re bhm?

Will do

The pain of holding a device up one-handed was too great. Wilhelmina let her phone fall. Then, carefully, she lifted Philip into her arms and carried him through to the kitchen. Theo sat at the table, typing on his laptop.

"Asleep?" he whispered, standing. "I'll take him, hon. How's three tomorrow for the Bunker Hill Monument?"

"I'll check," she said.

Back in her chair, she texted James. 3PM tomorrow, Bunker Hill?

He sent a thumbs up and another Ur magic.

3PM works,she texted to Theo. Thanks Dad.

Then Wilhelmina lay on her foam roller and propped her laptop on her belly. Frankie's blanket, suspended very near to her side, make her feel like she was in a tent in the woods somewhere.

She opened the bird feeder live cam and turned on the sound. The chirping of crickets, from a rainforest thousands of miles away, filled her blanket fort. As she stretched first one arm, then the other, a fat opossum with a long tail lumbered onto the scene. The opossum chose a banana carefully, then spent a long time consuming it. Every time it glanced at the camera, its eyes glowed like little suns.