Thursday, November 5, 2020

On the Thursday two days before she stepped into her own, Wilhelmina woke remembering that when Bee's dad had died, she'd known what to do. She'd known how to be Bee's friend. Her thoughts hadn't been hidden from her in the back of a closet somewhere, muffled by blankets. Her actions hadn't been secretive, or unconsidered, or strange. Nor had she felt that if she stepped into the light of the situation, cracks would begin to form in her convictions until she fell to pieces.

As Wilhelmina lay on her back staring at the blurry ceiling, the memories coursed through her the way memories do sometimes, a whole summer in a matter of seconds. When she'd gotten the news about Bee's dad, she'd gone home to Massachusetts and taken her place at Bee's other side, the side opposite Julie. She'd learned pretty quickly that it was like nothing else to lose a hurtful parent. Like nothing else to do so when you were thirteen, to a drug overdose, while the parent was an ER doctor who should've known better, while the other parent was in strident denial about who the deceased parent had been and how he'd died. Every section of Bee's experience made it unlike any other experience, and Bee was obliged to absorb the whole of it all at once.

They'd spent a lot of time that summer talking about a lot of things. Often lying on their backs on the floors or beds in their bedrooms, usually Julie's or Wilhelmina's, because Bee hadn't wanted to be in his giant house. Sometimes they crowded together in Julie's window seat. It was the window where a ten-year-old Wilhelmina had gouged holes into the outer sill with Mr. Dunstable's drill; it faced the backyard, and had a long view over the land that dropped steeply, speckled by dozens of other houses shored up by retaining walls, thick with trees. The sunsets from Julie's window were different every night, and sometimes quite beautiful. It'd been strange for Wilhelmina to be home, but not in school. The summer days had stretched out long and weirdly empty, and she'd missed the aunts, who were pretty terrible at texting. Days would go by before they responded to her texts, and the responses betrayed labor. She would call them and talk, but the calls would leave her missing them more.

That was the summer Philip had been born. The sink was always full of the bottles and rubber nipples and other claptrap that went with breast-pumping, Wilhelmina learned to change diapers and position a car seat, and her parents were always exhausted. Philip's cries became part of the soundtrack of her life, and she was surprised by how little she minded. She loved supporting his wobbly little head, and soothing him. She liked feeling needed by him.

It was also the summer her hand pain had started. By September she'd gone to her doctor, who'd sent her to a neurologist, who'd diagnosed her with something called thoracic outlet syndrome. It was a mechanical problem whereby the nerves and blood vessels that ran down her arms into her hands were constricted by pressure in her neck and shoulder area. The neurologist sent her to a physical therapist, who set her up with stretches and exercises that reduced the pain significantly, as long as she limited her typing. She'd discovered dictation, which Julie had also taken to, despite not needing it. Their texting had gotten much more grammatical and sophisticated. With everything that had been strange and hard about that summer and early fall, Wilhelmina remembered that she'd also had a hidden core of excitement, because of the likelihood that November would bring the election of the nation's first woman president.

She remembered the couple of rough days she'd had, late that September. Julie and some of the soccer girls had been planning a weekend outing in downtown Boston, which wasn't unusual—Julie did things sometimes with her teammates—but then it kept growing in participants. Someone wanted to see a movie, and other people wanted to go. Someone else wanted to go to the aquarium. Someone else wanted to mob the merry-go-round on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which, instead of horses, was crowded with animals native to Massachusetts, like peregrine falcons, lobsters, grasshoppers, and barn owls.

As the number of people grew, Wilhelmina had begun to feel a little confused. It wasn't that she wanted to be part of it, exactly; group activities were fine, but Wilhelmina didn't generally have the Oh, fun! response that she'd noticed so many other people seemed to have. Her preference was for smaller groups. Much smaller groups, really. Julie knew this, which was almost certainly why, as the exclusive soccer outing turned into more of a spread-out throng, she continued not to ask Wilhelmina if she wanted to come.

But Wilhelmina's mind had snagged on the barn owl at the Greenway Carousel. She was fourteen, so her wish to ride a barn owl on a carousel was maybe a little bit embarrassing, but that didn't mean she didn't want to be invited. She definitely wanted to sit on a barn owl. She was confused enough about it that when the morning of the outing came and she heard Julie head out of the house to catch the bus—Julie even texted her a heart and a Cu l8r Wil—she still hadn't said anything to Julie about it.

Bee wasn't going. Wilhelmina didn't know if Julie had invited him or not, but either way, he had to babysit his sister, Kimmy, that morning while his mom worked. Bee texted with Wilhelmina a little. Come over l8r? he asked her.

Sure,she said, but then she opened a fashion video Bee had sent her. Julie and Wilhelmina shared videos like this all the time, but Bee got into it occasionally too.

It was a video about hats. Wilhelmina didn't own any stylish hats, but it was fun to think about them, and she liked how this woman combined color, an olive-green cloche and an olive belt blending beautifully with the deep plum jumpsuit she wore. The jumpsuit was adorable on this woman, who was shaped like Wilhelmina, and had short hair like her too. In fact, Wilhelmina was starting to consider jumpsuits and hats quite seriously when the woman said, "Now, listen, nothing mean in the comments, okay? You know I'm still working on my postbaby fat. Send encouragement, not shame! Next month, no more giant jumpsuits!"

Wilhelmina slapped her laptop shut, the way you might raise a hand to your face to protect a place that's already been hit. Then she blundered her way through one terrible, upside-down day and night before finally approaching Bee and Julie.

"Oh no!" Julie cried, immediately and obviously dismayed. "I'm so sorry! I thought you would hate the big group! Of course you could've come!"

"I mean, you were right," said Wilhelmina, sniffling. "It was a reasonable assumption. I'm not really upset, Julie. I don't know what I am."

Bee's eyes, in the meantime, were growing wider and wider. "I watched that video with the sound off!" he squealed. "Kimmy was making me listen to a horrible kazoo concert! Oh my god, Wil, I'm sorry. I always screen the skinny people for shit like that. I should've known to screen the fat ones too."

Wilhelmina had begun to cry. "I'm so relieved."

"Oh, Wil," Julie had said, hugging Wilhelmina. "I'm really sorry."

"It's okay. You were right."

Bee joined in the hug. "Was it awful? I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay! It was an accident."

"But you've been carrying this around!"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you both sooner," Wilhelmina had said. "I was just so confused."

On her back in her bed, a tear ran down Wilhelmina's face. She reached for her glasses and her phone. Neither Julie nor Bee had texted.

I'm afraid to push myself on you,she wrote to Julie. I'm not sure of the helpful thing to say. But I wanted you to know I'm sorry. I would be so hurt if you gave my necklace to a crow. I was scared I was losing you. I don't know why my actions were the opposite of my feelings. Maybe I was a little angry that you didn't realize how lonely I was. But how could you have known? I didn't tell you.

She hit send, then added, I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I was just so confused.

When Theo gave Wilhelmina the choice of supervising Delia's school or Philip's, Wilhelmina chose Philip. When, next, he gave her the choice of his bedroom or her own, she chose her own.

Supervising Philip's school meant setting him up at the desk, staying out of sight of the camera but close by, paying half attention, and feigning enthusiasm and good cheer. The enthusiasm and good cheer were exhausting, but less exhausting than being stuck in a room with a ten-year-old who hated you and wanted help writing an essay about Alexander Hamilton, for example.

Wilhelmina spent Philip's storytime lying on her foam roller, letting her arms drop like weights, willing the muscles in her neck and chest to release. When the teacher began a very chipper discussion about the letter T, she moved to her bed and checked the driving directions to the Bunker Hill Monument, which was in Charlestown, where driving was never fun. It'd better be worth it, thought Wilhelmina. We'd better get some nice, clear answers. Then she took a long, slow breath and, finally, checked the news.

The electoral vote tally stood at 253–213, Biden–Monster. The races in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Alaska, and North Carolina were still too close to call. Alaska and North Carolina were lost causes, and Georgia probably was too. The states Wilhelmina cared about were Arizona and Nevada, where Biden was leading, and Pennsylvania, where he was not. And Biden's lead was narrowing in Arizona.

This morning, in reaction to armed protesters in Phoenix shouting, "COUNT THE VOTES," the Secretary of State of Arizona had said, "I don't understand the objective of these protesters. Of course we're going to count all the votes. We are legally obligated to do that." It seemed like such a sensible thing to say. But what was the use of saying sensible things? Other sensible people would nod their heads knowingly, but how did that help? The problem was the hordes of people to whom sense didn't matter.

The monster's lead was narrowing in Pennsylvania. Her heart rising into her throat, Wilhelmina nudged herself to do something she hadn't had the wherewithal for yet: focus on the hard numbers there. Today, on Thursday morning, the monster held 50.7 percent of the counted votes in Pennsylvania; Biden, 48.1 percent. There were about 140,000 uncounted ballots remaining.

Wilhelmina dug up the equivalent figures—the vote spread and the number of uncounted votes—from Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, and Wednesday afternoon. Then she did some math in her head. She figured out the rate of change of the vote spread across time. She factored in the votes still left to count.

Then she needed to go lie on her foam roller again, because if her math was correct and if the pattern held, Biden was going to win Pennsylvania.

"What words can you think of that have a T? ?" asked Philip's teacher. "Anyone? Philip?"

"I puked!" Philip announced.

"I'm so sorry to hear that, Philip," said his teacher. "Can you think of a word with a T sound?"

"Not really," said Philip.

T is for tarot, thought Wilhelmina. She glanced across the room at her mirror, which was still covered by her shirt. The angel in the Temperance card was having a nice long sleep, maybe, like when you threw a cloth over a birdcage. T is for Temperance. Levering herself off the foam roller again, she went to her bedside table and attached Frankie's owl to her ear. Then she extricated Frankie's cards from the drawer. She held the little bumblebee-covered bundle in both hands, wondering if she should pull a card for herself. Find out whatever she needed to know about whatever part of her journey this was. Was she the Fool, making a new beginning? Was she the Magician, learning how to use her tools? Was it time to meet the Devil? Was it time for her Tower to come tumbling down? Was she stumbling around under the light of the Moon? Frankie had always made it seem okay, whichever card she pulled. Frankie had always seen endings as new beginnings. But what was the point of pulling a card for herself? Unless she pulled one of the very few cards with which she was familiar, it wasn't like Wilhelmina would know what it meant. Frankie had been the one with the meanings.

Again, she checked her phone. Morning! said James. CU in a bit

Morning,she wrote back. See you soon.

No one else had texted. Lightly, she touched her elephant necklace, which sat on her bedside table, standing pertly inside a curved enclosure created by the chain. Its trunk sprouting lilies made her think of spring.

Not sure if it was right, she put the necklace on.

Wilhelmina and Delia were late for their appointment at the Bunker Hill Monument, on account of a cake delivery Delia had scheduled into the proceedings without informing Wilhelmina.

She resisted a strong urge to speed as they drove down the hill to Eleanor's house. "Seriously," she said, "all you needed to do was tell me we were bringing the cake to Eleanor. You're old enough to know—"

"Everybody always starts insults with ‘You're old enough to know,'?" Delia interrupted loudly from the back seat. "I figured you were smart enough to know that if the cake was for Eleanor, then we needed to bring it to her."

"I thought she was coming to the monument!"

"While her grandpa's in the hospital with Covid?"

"Oh," said Wilhelmina. "I didn't know about that."

"It's why I made her a unicorn cake!"

Wilhelmina was feeling a little chastened. "I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "Is he okay?"

In the rearview mirror, Wilhelmina watched Delia wrap her arms tightly around herself, which was alarming, because the unicorn cake was balanced precariously on her lap, its horn swinging wildly with every pothole Wilhelmina drove across. The unicorn had giant eyes made of peanut butter cups, with maraschino cherry irises positioned at the edge of each brown eyeball. Whenever Wilhelmina was near it, she had the sense that she was being surreptitiously watched.

"He's on a ventilator," said Delia, glaring out the window with her face turned away.

"How old is he?" Wilhelmina ventured.

"I don't know, okay?" said Delia. "He's like the aunts."

They drove silently to Eleanor's house, which was nowhere in the direction of any route that would take them to Bunker Hill, but Wilhelmina kept her mouth shut about that. At the intersection where the man usually stood with his flag, they spotted him holding a new cardboard sign that said Stop the Steal.

"The world is full of jerks and ignoramuses," Delia said. She was holding the cake now, lifting it up protectively whenever they rounded a curve or approached a bump. Her voice shook a little.

"It was really nice of you to make Eleanor a cake," said Wilhelmina.

When they reached Eleanor's house, which was the left side of a dark blue duplex, Delia scrambled out with the cake and carried it up the steps, where she placed it on the front porch. Then she seemed to change her mind about the positioning, carefully moving it six inches to the left, rotating it so that its gaze faced the door. Her head was bent and her expression very serious. She rang the doorbell and ran back to the car.

When Eleanor stepped out onto the porch, the two girls waved at each other wildly and shouted hellos and I miss yous. "You're a unicorn genius!" Eleanor shouted. "Thank you!"

"Okay," said Delia, getting back into the car and slamming the door. "We can go."

She was crying. Wilhelmina fumbled through her pockets for a tissue.

"I thought we were late and everything," said Delia roughly. When Wilhelmina passed back a tissue that was wrinkly, but clean, she added, "Gee, a snotty tissue? Thanks."

"I'm really sorry, Delia," said Wilhelmina. "You're a good friend, you know that?"

Delia took the tissue. "Whatever," she said.

Climbing the two hundred ninety-four steps of the Bunker Hill Monument with James, Delia, Delia's friend Madison, and Madison's mother, Sue, was a strange endeavor.

They wore masks as they climbed, each family group distanced twenty-five steps from the next. The Harts went first, then James, then the Petrosians. Every twenty-five steps, a stone marker proclaimed how many steps they'd climbed. Whenever Wilhelmina and Delia reached one, Wilhelmina called it out, so that the others below would know to position themselves one marker back from whomever was in front of them.

The steps were circular, dark, and cramped. Going first and with her mask smothering her face, Wilhelmina had the sense that she was the vanguard of an exploratory mission and it was her responsibility to confirm that the air was breathable and the structure sound, then warn the others below. Maybe this was an obelisk on an alien planet. A tropical planet? It was hot today, seventy-one degrees outside. In November! Hadn't it just snowed last week? Wilhelmina was dressed wrong, her leggings and long-sleeved hoodie making her feel like a cannoli someone was frying, probably the alien creators of this obelisk, which would turn out to be a clever construction wherein you tired yourself out by climbing, then, when you reached the top in a state of exhaustion, they ate you. Push. Push! Her legs were tired, but Wilhelmina kept flinging her Hart feet up onto the next step and pushing.

"Wilhelmina?" said James, his voice rising from below, echoey and deep. "You are seriously booking it."

"I am?" said Wilhelmina, stopping in surprise.

"I'm dying here," said Delia, leaning on the wall and gasping. Delia had a pair of binoculars hanging around her neck, which Wilhelmina hadn't realized the family owned.

"We're way behind!" came the tiny, faraway voice of Madison. "You can slow down, James!"

"Oh!" said Wilhelmina. "Maybe that's why I'm so hot! I'm sorry. I think my feet were trying to keep pace with my thoughts."

"Think about a sloth," said Delia.

"Or a penguin," said James, who could apparently hear them well, even though he was some distance below. "The walking kind, I mean, not the swimming kind."

"Or a giant tortoise," said Delia as they started up again.

"Or a manatee," said James.

Beside her, Delia was swelling with happiness. Delia hated Wilhelmina, but loved Wilhelmina's friends; it had long been thus. And James was new. When Wilhelmina and Delia had run up the hill, scurrying to join Sue, Madison, and Wilhelmina's "friend of choice" at the base of the monument, apologizing for their lateness, James had been a surprise to Delia, who'd expected Julie or Bee. Her eyes had widened. Then she'd tried for an air of nonchalance, but she'd turned almost pink with her yearning to interact with this new, older person.

"Or a starfish!" Delia almost yelled.

"Good one," said James.

Delia looked about to pop with glee. "How did you meet Wilhelmina?" she shouted down to James.

"School, I guess," said James.

"Why haven't I ever seen you before?"

"Fate has recently thrown us together," said James.

"James's family has the doughnut shop," said Wilhelmina hastily, to stop Delia from asking nosy questions about fate.

"You mean Alfie Fang's?" said Delia in amazement.

"That's right," said Wilhelmina.

"That means you're, like, famous!"

"Thank you," said James politely. "But mostly it means I spend a lot of time covered in sugar."

An image intruded upon Wilhelmina's mind, or maybe it was more of a feeling. James, covered in sugar. His mouth sweet, like a collapsingly soft doughnut—

"Oh, for Chrissake!" she cried.

"What?" said Delia.

"Nothing," said a flustered Wilhelmina, as the final step came into view. "Geez, finally! Two hundred ninety-four." She climbed into a round room that was smaller than she remembered, with dirty plexiglass windows that made everything feel too near. A narrow wire screen striped the top of each window, but not much air was moving.

"Yikes," said James, coming up behind them. "I remembered it as open air."

"Me too," said Wilhelmina, trying to move away from him. She was too warm, and he felt very close. "I guess we should spread out. And make this quick?"

"Yeah. Have you seen anything…interesting yet?"

Wilhelmina snorted. "Nothing. You?"

"Nope."

"So!" said Sue Petrosian, stepping into the room behind them with Madison. "Welcome to the observation deck! We can take turns at each window and move in a clockwise direction. How does that sound?"

"Great," said Wilhelmina. "Thanks again, Sue."

"Of course," said Sue. "It's too sad for the monument to stand here unused. We bring tiny groups up whenever we can, if people express an educational interest. Now, girls, you know you have to stay six feet apart!"

Sue moved toward Madison to pull her away from Delia, and Wilhelmina studied James, because she couldn't help herself. He was dressed appropriately for the weather, in a RailRiders T-shirt. The RailRiders were the minor-league baseball team in Pennsylvania whose games she'd used to go to with Frankie. They were also a Yankees affiliate, which made James a bit brave here in Red Sox Nation, assuming anyone besides her recognized the team logo. She wondered now, had they ever been at the same game? Also, did he know how he looked in that T-shirt? Wilhelmina's dream world had not done James justice. The arms and shoulders he'd been hiding inside his puffy sky-blue coat for these last few days turned out to be several tiers of attractiveness above and beyond what she'd dreamed. She had a feeling that the main difference was that this James was real.

"How do you feel about cannolis?" she asked him.

"What?" he said, instantly grinning. "Who doesn't like cannoli?"

"Don't you two even care about the view?" said Delia. "Come on, you're ruining the plan."

"Right," said Wilhelmina, moving toward Delia's window. A low, bulbous sun cast peach-and-gold reflections on Boston's skyscrapers. "It's very pretty."

"The city looks like a toy," said Delia, peering through her binoculars. "Look, the bridge looks like a ship!"

At a different window, James cleared his throat. When Wilhelmina glanced at him, he nudged his head at his own view.

"What?" said Delia. "What is it?"

"I guess we'll see when we get there," said Wilhelmina.

"You guys are being weird," said Delia. "Let me see!"

Wilhelmina moved to James's window with Delia and saw a long view to the west, which was the direction they'd come from today. Everything was very small, but Wilhelmina could recognize some of the tall towers of Harvard, especially Memorial Hall, a soaring red-stone building that looked like someone's wedding cake gone wrong. She could also see an enormous, castle-like office building she knew was on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown. She was looking at Cambridge and Somerville, with Watertown, Belmont, and Arlington behind them. Home.

Somewhere near the Cambridge-Watertown border, a small patch of land glowed. Not pink and orange in the setting sun; it glowed in that white-golden way that Wilhelmina, biting back on her weary impatience, recognized. And really, this was too much. It wasn't exactly quick or easy to get to the Bunker Hill Monument. It required a lot of fast driving, on roads that winged you away in the wrong direction if you weren't careful, while other drivers honked and cut you off. Plus, it was a headache to find parking around the monument, and her arms still hurt, and then all those steps. All so she and James could receive a message to head back toward home?

"If I'm being honest," said James, who'd moved to another window, "my sense of direction is crap. It's part of my math thing."

"Oh!" said Wilhelmina. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize. Did you have trouble getting here?"

"I left myself like an hour and a half," said James. "No worries. But where do you think that is? I mean, where exactly?"

"You mean…that?" said Wilhelmina, trying to sound blasé while indicating the glowing patch of land.

"Yeah."

"What?" said Delia. "It's, like, Harvard. Who cares?" Delia was glaring from one of them to the other the way she often did with Theo and Cleo, like their behavior was not just mysterious, but suspicious, and probably nefarious.

"May I borrow your binoculars, Delia?" asked Wilhelmina.

"No," said Delia, but she handed Wilhelmina the binoculars.

Through the round lenses, the view leapt into sight. "Well, it's on the border of Cambridge and Watertown," said Wilhelmina, trying to isolate the precise location of the glowing land. It sat beyond most of Cambridge's recognizable landmarks. "I see Memorial Hall, which nails down Harvard Square, and I think I see the business school across the river. I think I see Mount Auburn Hospital. Then, near that, I think I see…" Yes. Wilhelmina, who had an excellent sense of direction, was pretty sure she'd identified it. "It's Mount Auburn Cemetery."

James's eyebrows shot up. "Do you ever feel like you're going around in circles?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Delia. "I don't see the cemetery. What's going on?"

"We're just curious how far we can see," said Wilhelmina, handing the binoculars back to her. "What's the farthest thing you can identify, Delia?"

Delia's face flushed. "I'm not stupid," she said. "I know that's not what you meant. Hey, Madison, want to go outside?" Then she threw one mortified glance at James and ran for the stairs. They could hear the slaps of her footsteps, echoing like blows.

"Okay," said Sue. "Don't you worry, Wilhelmina, I'll keep an eye on her. If you'll just start making your way down in the next ten minutes or so?"

"Yes, of course," said Wilhelmina. "Thank you."

While the steady footsteps of Sue and Madison receded, Wilhelmina and James stood across from each other, studying each other.

"Hey," said James gently. "My bad."

"No," said Wilhelmina, "I'm the one who lied to her."

James shrugged. "I set you up."

"It's okay," said Wilhelmina. "It's an impossible thing to talk about without being weird."

As they watched each other for another moment, Wilhelmina had a sense suddenly of the form of things. She and James were alone, in a small, circular room, at the top of a high tower, with Sue Petrosian as good as a guard at the door below. And they had ten minutes.

Conscious suddenly that she was supposed to be enjoying the view, she spun around and looked out the window.

"Nice," she said, then heard her own inane comment, and had to stop herself from snorting.

Across the small room, he'd turned to his nearest window too. "Mm-hm," he said agreeably. Then he moved clockwise to the next window, so she did as well. The view was lovely, really, soft and colorful as the sun sank lower, yet Wilhelmina and James kept turning to look over their masks at each other, like two people at the far edges of a clock face. Whenever he moved around the circle's edge, it tugged her along too, so that the room was always between them. If she moved first, her movement nudged him along. It seemed they were destined to keep circling from window to window, never catching up to each other.

Then he stopped moving. His shoulders rose and fell in a quiet sigh. He turned to face her, leaning back against a windowsill with his arms crossed.

"Yes?" she said, stopping too.

"Nothing," he said. "I'm just done pretending I care about the view. I'm interested in you."

"Yeah," she said, putting her back to the wall behind her and allowing herself to focus on him. It was a relief. The light was painting his skin gold, and burnishing the tips of his hair. "How much time do you think we have?"

"I don't know," he said. "Five minutes?"

"I wish I could see your face."

"Yeah," he said. "I wish I could see your beautiful face too."

Wilhelmina's beautiful face was flushing with heat. She was too shy to voice the question she was thinking: Someone or something was trying to lead them around, and was this part of the reason why? A private moment in a tower, with James?

"Any ideas about the glowing cemetery?" she asked instead.

"No," he said. He had a nice voice. Its timbre was deep, and soft. "Maybe we missed something when we were there?"

"Whoever's trying to lead us around could be a lot less vague," said Wilhelmina.

"No kidding," he said, with a breath that was almost a laugh. Wilhelmina wanted him to laugh. She thought the sound might draw her right across the room.

"I asked my grandma to read my tarot last night," he said. "I haven't liked to do that, ever since my dad got sick, but I figured I could ask a really specific question, you know? I asked, ‘What are Wilhelmina and I not seeing?'?"

Wilhelmina tilted her head. "Did you get an answer?"

"It was a two-card reading," he said. "I got the Empress and the Magician."

Wilhelmina breathed out. "Frankie was my empress," she said.

James watched her with soft, dark eyes. "My nonna was my magician," he said. "But I thought maybe the cards represented us. You're the Empress and I'm the Magician. Or I'm the Empress and you're the Magician?"

"What?" said Wilhelmina, thinking of the Empress. Her beauty and power; her dress of pomegranates and her crown of stars. "I can't be the Empress!"

"When my nonna died," he said, "I wanted to burn paper for her, the way my nai nai does, my Chinese grandma. Do you know that tradition? You burn paper versions of the things you want the person to have in the afterlife. It's, like, how you deliver the things to them in the afterlife. Mostly fake money, but I wanted to send her other things."

"That's beautiful," said Wilhelmina, instantly picturing paper birds, paper flowers. Paper teapots and paper tarot decks, to send to Frankie.

"I wanted Nonna to have a tarot deck," he said. "I cut little cards out of tissue paper and drew pictures on them, like the Magician and the Chariot, the angel on the Temperance card. The Tower," he said, flinging a hand up to indicate the room around them. "Every one I knew. I wanted to burn them for her, but my parents wouldn't let me, because we were at my grandparents' house in Pennsylvania, I mean my Italian grandparents, and everyone was upset and had a hundred more important things to do. So I brought them to the church for the funeral. I kept trying to throw them into the air, like, during the Mass, which made my parents crazy, but anyway. I guess I was mixing my traditions, you know? In the Catholic Church, she'd risen to heaven. So I was trying to throw them to her."

Wilhelmina stared at James, seeing something else. She was in a church, watching floating pieces of tissue paper turn purple, blue, and gold. Beside her, Frankie had tears streaming down her face.

Wilhelmina's head was reeling. She fell to her knees.

"Wilhelmina!" cried James, running straight to her across the circle, dropping down beside her. She was gasping; she couldn't get any air.

"Wilhelmina?" he said, his voice sounding far away. "I'm going to touch you, okay?"

She felt herself nodding. His arm was around her, supporting her. His hand was holding her other hand, his skin was touching her skin, and he was coaching her to breathe, one slow breath in through her nose, one faster breath out through her mouth. Then another, and another. She felt her mask hot against her face, and pulled it off. Wilhelmina was breathing again.

"What happened?" said James, his voice close to her ear. "Are you in pain?"

She shook her head, though she was in pain, her grief very near. She leaned against him, feeling hot tears on her face. She pulled her glasses off and felt his chest against her cheek, her tears soaking his T-shirt. She found her arms, and put them around him.

"I was at your nonna's funeral," she said. "When I was little. I saw you."

"What?" cried James.

"Was her name Mancusi?"

"Yes!"

"I was at her funeral, with Frankie," she said. "She was Frankie's teacher in high school."

"That's amazing," said James. "Wilhelmina, that's amazing."

"Your nonna saved Frankie's life," said Wilhelmina.

It was difficult to emerge from the monument into the light, acting as if everything was normal. The world was too loud and the sun was too bright. As they walked down the broad outdoor steps toward the others, Wilhelmina's eyes kept tearing up, and James wore a dazzled expression that shifted to concern every time he glanced Wilhelmina's way, which he did often.

It helped that they wore masks that covered half their faces. Sue didn't seem to notice anything strange, nor did Madison. But Delia kept peering at them sharply, and her conversation grew louder. She and Madison sat on the steps sharing their worries about Eleanor's grandpa, but there was a different message in Delia's increasing volume: What is going on with you, Wilhelmina?

James and Wilhelmina spaced themselves a small distance from the others. Wilhelmina wanted to leave, but Delia and Madison didn't seem like they had any intention of wrapping their conversation up soon. So she sat on the steps.

"I—I know you probably want to talk about this," she said quietly. "You have questions."

"I do," he said, sitting nearby, "but you just fell over. I think that's an indicator we should go slow."

"I just—I have a lot going on right now," she said, "and I need a minute."

"Of course," he said. "Are you feeling okay?"

Wilhelmina felt like her sadness was right below her skin; like she was made of it. It was leaking out of her eyes. "It's like something's opened inside me," she said, "and all this feeling is just pouring out. Does that make sense? It feels a little—out of control."

He nodded. "I wish I could hug you again."

She said, "Can I see your face?"

James shifted a bit farther away and pulled his mask down over his chin. As he turned his worried eyes to her, the falling light touched his nose, his mouth. Places Wilhelmina realized she wanted to kiss.

"What are we going to do about this?" she said.

"About what?" he said. "I mean, which part?"

"The pandemic," she said, "and the not being able to touch."

"Yeah," he said, scratching his head, beginning to smile. "I'm feeling motivated to figure that one out."

"Add it to the list," said Wilhelmina with a small sigh.

"Added," he said. "Want to go for a walk with me in the cemetery tomorrow?"

Wilhelmina drove the car home through relentlessly mean traffic, not talking to Delia, focused on a simple plan: Once home, she would go inside. She would spend the rest of the day in the proximity of others as little as possible. She wouldn't think or feel, or check the news. She would try not to hover over her phone. At night, she would sleep, then tomorrow she would walk with James in the cemetery, where nothing weird would happen.

Then, near home, as she pulled the car onto the long hill that climbed to their apartment, she got a feeling. The feeling made her stop the car in the middle of the road.

"Why did you stop?" said Delia.

On the sidewalk on the right, Julie and Bee came into view, walking down the hill together. As soon as she saw them, Wilhelmina hit the gas, surging the car forward noisily in her confusion. The roar attracted their attention, which was the last thing she'd wanted to do.

"Hey!" shouted Delia, waving. "Hi, Julie! Hi, Bee!" But her window was closed, and by the time she got it open, the car had already passed them in a whirl of dust. Julie and Bee watched them go, bewilderment plainly written on their faces.

"What are you doing?" Delia squealed. "Didn't you see them?"

"I saw them," said Wilhelmina, speeding up the last block and pulling the car to an abrupt halt outside the apartment.

"What is wrong with you?" cried Delia. "How do you even have a driver's license?"

"Delia!" cried Wilhelmina, her voice louder and sharper than she intended. "Back off!"

Delia's face crumpled. She pushed out of the car and slammed the door, running for the house.

Left alone, Wilhelmina sat for a while, hot with shame. If only she'd kept driving at a regular pace, it would've been such a normal thing to do. It was too late now. She'd driven like she was afraid of them, or at any rate, like she was trying to avoid them. Their faces had been worried and grave—until she'd started driving like it was the Indy 500. Bee's fingers had been working at something anxiously in his pocket. Wilhelmina knew, from long experience, that it had been the blue stone he kept there always. They were upset, and she'd blown past them.

A phrase was running on a loop through her head. It was something Esther had said once, long ago: "That which you water, grows. That which you don't water, dies." Why did Wilhelmina keep starving her garden?

At dinner, the conversation felt like it was lurching and crashing around her. She ate fast and tried to ignore it.

"Biden's catching up in Pennsylvania," said Cleo. "Did you see? And Georgia, did you see Georgia's getting interesting?"

"It doesn't matter!" said Theo. "Anything could happen! Stop trying to make me hopeful!"

"And judges threw out those lawsuits," said Cleo. "And his lead is growing in Nevada—"

"Nevada," said Theo scornfully.

"I did the Pennsylvania math," said Aunt Margaret. "I think Biden's going to take the lead there sometime tomorrow."

"Oh my god," said Theo. "Stop it!"

"I wonder if we'll feel it," said Esther.

"Feel it?" said Aunt Margaret.

"The moment Biden and Harris take the lead in Pennsylvania by exactly two votes."

"Ah," said Aunt Margaret. "Good question. Let's make it four votes, though, for Rose and Rudy."

"Who are Rose and Rudy?" demanded Delia.

"The grandparents of Wilhelmina's friend James," said Aunt Margaret.

"They voted in Pennsylvania?"

"Yes, at our very own fire hall. James drove them there to vote, just like Wilhelmina drove us. We met them Tuesday."

"You did?" said Delia, in a voice that squeaked at the end. "No one tells me anything!"

"Delia," said Esther. "Did you know your name means ‘heart of a lion'?"

Delia's mouth fell open. "What?"

"Cordelia," said Esther. "In French, ‘coeur de leon' means ‘heart of a lion.'?"

Delia's cheeks were tinged with pink. "I guess that's accurate, actually."

"Mm-hm," said Esther. "I think so."

"We were considering an evening walk," said Aunt Margaret, "if anyone's interested."

"I'm interested," said Delia.

"I'm interested!" shouted Philip.

"The other night, we heard an owl on our evening walk," said Esther.

"That reminds me," said Theo to Delia. "Someone told me you talk like an owl."

"What?" cried Delia. "Who?"

"Oh my god, they were right," said Theo.

Standing, Wilhelmina said, "I can do the dishes." Then, because Cleo was studying her with that compassionate diagnostic expression she hated, she pushed away from the table.

"Mom and I can handle it tonight, honey," said Theo. "Why don't you rest your arms?"

There was something careful in his tone that told her what she would've preferred not to know: that Theo, and probably everyone, could tell something was wrong. She went to her room and shut the door. On a whim, she googled the Tower card, because she'd been remembering something about it, ever since James had mentioned it. It was a card about reality breaking. About the tower crashing down around you while you suddenly, almost violently, saw truths that had been hidden from you all along. It was about rising from the rubble with those new, painful truths, and moving on.

Wilhelmina, who was so surefooted, had fallen to her knees in the tower. What was going on?

She stayed in her room until the aunts and siblings departed for their walk and her parents removed themselves to their bedroom. Then, with her laptop and phone, she crept out again.

In the window inside her blanket fort, Frankie's snow goose bobbed its head at Wilhelmina gently. She touched its long neck, then touched it again, swinging it from side to side. Delicately, she touched the birds sitting on Saint Francis's shoulders and at his feet. She touched the parliament of owls. Help me, birds.

Her phone buzzed. Somehow she knew, without looking, that it was Julie.

I miss you,wrote Julie.

Wilhelmina's tears were back, pouring down her face.

I don't mind you texting,wrote Julie. I'm just really sad, maybe a little mad. Is that okay?

Wilhelmina couldn't dictate fast enough. Yes. Anything you are is okay. I'm sorry I made you sad and mad. Also, sorry I was weird with the car

It's okay about the car,said Julie. Then, before Wilhelmina could respond, she wrote again.

I think you're right,she said. I should've realized how hard this was for you

Wilhelmina was holding her breath. Really?

I think I did realize,said Julie. But I didn't want to bring it up. Because I felt so guilty

A release valve was opening inside Wilhelmina. All her generosity was pouring through. Oh, Julie, she wrote. Don't feel guilty

Julie didn't respond to this, but some explication came from above. Wilhelmina heard Tina shouting something, then Julie's mom, Maya, calling for Julie. Footsteps. Then the scurrying feet of Esther the cat, followed by a crash, then Maya yelling, "You cat!"

Wilhelmina, left at loose ends, made the questionable decision to check the news. The petulant pustule had just given a press conference.

"If you count the legal votes," he'd said, "I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us."

Wilhelmina couldn't bear it. She shoved her phone down into the crack at the side of her seat cushion. Opening her laptop, she clicked on the Panama live cam. A funny brown-gray bird with long pink legs and twitchy tail feathers was trying to negotiate a banana that kept swinging past its face in a wide arc. It was a thousand times better than anything in the news. Except that then her phone buzzed again.

"Agh!" she cried, digging for it, half-wild, but knowing it was James.

How u feeling?he wrote.

Kind of…discombobulated,she said. Sorry

Dont apologize,he said. Im here if you want to talk

I mean, I kind of do,she said. I mean, I don't

?

I mean, there's a lot, and I don't actually want to be alone right now. But I don't think I can talk! I think I'm too…confused. Maybe a little numb. There's too much going on

I know numb,he wrote.

You do?

Yeah

How do I make it go away?

That I dont know,he said. I always just ride it out

Ride it out?she said. How?

K well. Im worried ull think I try to solve everything w birds,he said. But its albatross egg laying season in New Zealand

Do they have a live cam?wrote Wilhelmina.

Yeah,said James, and its good rn. Want to watch w me?

Yeah,she wrote.

While she waited for James to send the link, she listened for more noises from upstairs. Things seemed to have settled down up there, but Julie wasn't texting. Idly, Wilhelmina considered the rolltop desk outside her blanket fort. Wedged between a low bookcase and the fireplace, it was a desk she'd always liked. She liked the way the top rolled open, and the orderly pigeonholes it revealed. Theo and Cleo kept important papers in there, like tax stuff, bills, passports. Also some old letters.

Wilhelmina wasn't sure why she stood, then squeezed past the racks that held up her blanket fort. She rolled the lid of the desk open. As dust floated, she sneezed.

"Gesundheit, honey!" came her father's muted voice, from somewhere far away. The basement? What was the point of ever trying to find a private place in this apartment? Wilhelmina shuffled through the pigeonholes, uncertain what she was looking for. Her fingers found an old card, filed alongside a bunch of other old cards, with watercolor flowers on its front: lilies, tulips, dahlias. The flowers were a messy riot of color. Opening the card, she recognized Frankie's uneven handwriting.

"April 3, 2006," it said. A few days before Wilhelmina's fourth birthday.

"Spring greetings from all of us," Frankie wrote. "Enclosed are some sunflower seeds, and some birthday cookies I made specially for our darling Wil-helm-ina."