Saturday, October 31, 2020

On the Saturday one week before she stepped into her own, Wilhelmina woke early, to silence, cold, and a stiff neck.

She also woke to a noise, but as she came more awake, she realized the noise must've been a dream. It had been the distinctive, birdlike squeak of the pulley-and-rope system she and Julie had used when they were little, to connect their bedroom windows. The rope was gone now, and the pulleys had rusted into place long ago. Gone also was the little locked box they'd tugged back and forth from window to window, with their secret messages inside. It had been a wonderful innovation, one that had become instantly obsolete once they'd both possessed phones.

Wilhelmina slipped on her new glasses. Then she grabbed her phone, but no one had texted. Creeping out of bed, she groped around on the floor in the dark for her fluffy, deep purple bathrobe. Wilhelmina wasn't normally the type to throw a precious possession like her purple bathrobe onto the floor. The bathrobe was full-length and had thumbholes and a hood that made her look like Emperor Palpatine. It was perfect. But things had changed since she'd started sharing her room with her ten-year-old sister, Delia, who was a pig. No, not a pig: Frankie had told Wilhelmina once that pigs were, in fact, quite tidy. Delia was a junk bug. She carried the carcasses of her victims around on her back after sucking them dry, so that predators would think she was gross and avoid her.

Wilhelmina found her robe, and beside it, one fuzzy sock. She couldn't find the other sock. She snuck past Delia's bed and into the hall, tiptoeing, barely breathing, trying hard not to make a sound. Once, before the pandemic, Wilhelmina had always been the first person awake. For half an hour or so, even longer on weekends, she'd had the apartment to herself. But Esther and Aunt Margaret lived here now, and they were early risers too. Something told Wilhelmina—the scent of a beeswax candle, or the quality of the silence—that they were awake this morning, in the living room at the apartment's other end. And if anyone descended upon Wilhelmina with good morning or how did you sleep, dear, she was going to implode. Or maybe explode; neither would be good.

In the bathroom, Wilhelmina tried to move around without touching her right foot to the frigid tile floor. It required a sort of improvised ballet. She removed her nightguard from her mouth and cleaned it. Yuck. While she was sitting on the toilet with one leg awkwardly extended, Julie's furnace turned on. The Dunstable family's furnace, ancient and angry, lived downstairs, right under the Hart bathroom. It sounded like a propeller plane and made the floor shake. If you happened to be sitting on the toilet, as Wilhelmina was, you had the sense that a commanding voice should start the countdown to lift off.

Wilhelmina was remembering the rope-and-pulley system again. She and Julie had built it together, or anyway, they'd tried to. They'd both been ten when Julie's family had moved from Boston to Watertown, into the apartment above Wilhelmina's. It had been late August, right before the start of school. Almost in the same moment that the girls had understood the relative positions of their bedrooms, a little bell had chimed in both of their minds together, the first of many synchronous thoughts.

"Wait," Wilhelmina had said, leaning out of Julie's bedroom window, the one with the window seat that was the reason Julie had chosen this room for herself. Underneath the seat was a shelf that she'd already crammed with her favorite books. If Wilhelmina knelt on the seat and leaned out far enough, she could see her own bedroom window: one floor down, two rooms over. "Julie, come here, look!"

When Julie had joined her in the window, looked where she was looking, Julie had said, "Oh! We could—from there—"

And Wilhelmina had said, "Maybe with a bucket?"

And Julie had said, "My dad has pulleys, because of Math in the World!"

Wilhelmina had understood this. Julie's dad—Mr. Dunstable—had been Wilhelmina's own math teacher in third and fourth grade. Possibly nothing had ever astonished Wilhelmina more than her own math teacher appearing outside her house one day with a moving van, then moving in. With an amazing daughter! Anyway, every Friday at the end of class, Mr. Dunstable did a thing he called Math in the World, where he taught his students some mathy thing that was the basis of some part of life everyone took for granted. Like, for example, the way a massive weight could be lifted by a relatively small force, with the help of a simple shape, like the circular head of a pulley.

The division of labor had been clear. This was because (1) the notion of pawing through her math teacher's belongings looking for pulleys was inconceivable to Wilhelmina, and (2) Julie happened to have a broken arm, from a soccer accident. So Julie would collect the supplies, and Wilhelmina would drill screws into the outside windowsills to attach the pulleys. Bee hadn't been there that day. Wilhelmina couldn't remember why, but he'd had a broken arm at the time too. Both Bee and Julie had started school that year with purple casts on their arms.

Being ten, Wilhelmina had never drilled anything before. She was pretty sure she probably shouldn't have been drilling anything now, but it was different when it was Julie's family drill, and when Julie kept telling her it was totally fine. Julie kept saying that it would be super speedy, just two quick screws. How bad could something be, Wilhelmina thought, if it only lasted a total of, say, ten seconds? An interesting question for an episode of Math in the World, perhaps, but Wilhelmina's capacity for philosophical speculation soon faltered, because the drilling wasn't going well. She'd seen people drilling screws before. It was easy: you slotted the drill bit into the screw, you pointed the screw at the spot, you pressed the button, and the thing happened. But it was different kneeling in Julie's window seat, leaning out Julie's window, and holding a pulley, a screw, and a drill all sideways and weird, then pressing the drill toward the windowsill in a direction that was aimed toward yourself. Her first attempt made a lopsided nick.

"The windowsill is really hard," she said to Julie. "It's, like, bizarrely hard."

"You did a really good job, though," said Julie, who was leaning out of the window with her purple cast cradled against her chest, watching closely. Julie seemed as comfortable hanging out a window as when she was flopped on a bed. Her contentment was encouraging. "It just needs to be deeper. Want to try again?"

Wilhelmina's second attempt turned the nick into more of a conical gouge.

"Girls?" came Mr. Dunstable's voice from Julie's bedroom doorway. "That's not the drill I'm hearing, is it?"

Wilhelmina was so startled by the hearty, booming voice of Mr. Dunstable that she let out a tiny screech and dropped the drill, the pulley, and the screw. All of them landed in the yard below.

Julie, who'd watched the hasty descent of the items with her mouth forming a small O, spun around and said honestly, "We don't have the drill, Dad."

Wilhelmina spun around too, trying to look innocent for Julie's sake. But there stood Mr. Dunstable, one of her foremost authority figures, his face friendly and trusting, his close-cropped twists showing new glints of silver probably because of the headaches caused by disobedient children. However she might have been able to prevaricate to her own parents, Wilhelmina couldn't do it to her math teacher. Her eyes went wide, and she kept opening and closing her mouth like a fish. As Mr. Dunstable, with a changing expression, stepped into the room, she screamed, like a subject under torture, "It was me! It was all me!"

"What?" cried Julie, staring at Wilhelmina with utter incredulity. "Don't you do that, Wil! It was me! Dad, I'm the one who told her to do it!"

"No, it was me!" said Wilhelmina. "Julie has a broken arm!"

"But it was all my idea!"

By this point, Mr. Dunstable had crossed the room and joined them at the window, where he looked down and spotted the drill and other detritus lying in the yard. Then he found the mangled hole in the exterior windowsill.

"Juliana," he said. "Did you take my drill without asking?"

"Well, um," said Julie. "Um, yes, kind of, yes."

"Do you have any idea how dangerous a drill is?" he said, his voice escalating in pitch, while also, Wilhelmina noticed, decreasing in volume. Apparently, when Mr. Dunstable got upset, he sounded like a distant canary.

"We were only going to use it for a few seconds," said Julie, whose voice was growing wet with tears.

"A few seconds!" squeaked Mr. Dunstable. "Julie! A few seconds is all it takes for a child to fall out the window!"

"We were only doing Math in the World," wailed Julie, bursting into tears.

"It was my idea, Mr. Dunstable," wailed Wilhelmina, who was also crying, because Julie was crying, and Wilhelmina couldn't bear Julie being so sad.

"Oh," Mr. Dunstable moaned, clasping his forehead with one hand. "Oh, oh, oh." Then he sat on Julie's bed and pulled his sobbing daughter into his lap. "Wilhelmina," he said, patting the spot beside him and Julie, "sit down."

Wilhelmina sat down. At a tragic glance from Julie, she took Julie's hand. Julie grasped her hand tightly and wailed, "Just go ahead and yell at me!"

"Honey, I'm not going to yell at you," said Mr. Dunstable. "It's probably time I taught you how to use the drill. But we're going to have a conversation about not taking my power tools without permission, or leaning out a second-story window, or making holes in the property we are renting."

"I made the holes," said Wilhelmina. "I know the landlord. I'll tell him I made the holes."

"No, stop it, Wil!" cried Julie. "Daddy, we did it together."

"Yes," said Mr. Dunstable. "I've surmised that you did it together. You girls need to make better safety decisions, but it's good to see you trying to protect each other." Then he pulled Julie closer, tucking her head under his chin. "Moving has been hard," he said. "Your arm's been hurting. I'm not angry, Julie. But we're going to talk about this until I'm convinced I'm never going to find you or Wilhelmina teaching yourselves how to use power tools ever again. Got it?"

That weekend, Mr. Dunstable built them a rope-and-pulley system. Every time he so much as picked up the drill, he wore goggles and a dead serious expression.

"I'm surprised he's not wearing a helmet," Julie muttered, rolling her eyes at Wilhelmina.

"I'm surprised he's not wearing armor," said Wilhelmina.

"I'm surprised he didn't set up caution tape and make us wear hard hats."

"And put a trampoline under the window, in case he falls out."

"I can hear you, girls," said Mr. Dunstable. "The more suggestions you make, the more I think I might take you up on your bright ideas, especially the one where you both wear hard hats until you're eighteen. Now come here, and I'll show you how to get a good angle on this thing."

Wilhelmina's father, who was a librarian, came home that day with a small, red, metal lockbox that had a handle and two keys.

"This is from the library," he said. "It's been in my desk as long as I can remember. No idea where it came from."

"Oh my gosh," said Julie.

"It's where they kept the library fines!" said Wilhelmina.

"A hundred years ago!" said Julie.

It had become the box in which, on a rope between two squeaky pulleys, they'd passed each other what they called Introductions. It was a concept they came up with together.

"We've been apart for, like, years," Wilhelmina had said, thinking of her friendship with Bee, whom she'd met in preschool.

"Oh my gosh, I know," said Julie. "Like, you probably don't know what it's like to live in Roxbury with, like, five restaurants around the corner."

"You had restaurants right on your corner?" said Wilhelmina, to whom this sounded extremely sophisticated. "I have to walk like ten minutes to a restaurant!"

"We can catch each other up on everything we've missed!"

I spend my summers with my 3 aunts in PA and you need to come visit. SHRED THIS NOTE!wrote Wilhelmina.

We drive to NC every summer to visit my grandparents and it's so hot there I carry around a teeny fan. SHRED THIS NOTE!wrote Julie.

I don't like the Red Sox,wrote Wilhelmina, I like the Phillies. SHRED THIS NOTE!

I'm really good at chess,wrote Julie, but I kind of hate it. The tournaments stress me out. SHRED THIS NOTE!

Tournaments?wrote Wilhelmina. Are there audiences? Would it help if I came?

Oh my gosh, it would bore you to death.

I bet it wouldn't!

I think it might be weird if you came. But could we always hang out when I get home?

Yes!

Bee's dad scares me,wrote Wilhelmina, one afternoon after both girls had swung by Bee's house to pick him up on the way to the park, and Bee's father had unexpectedly answered the door. Sometimes, when I know he's nearby, I get an instant stomachache. I feel awful about it, because I don't want to be anywhere near him, but Bee has to be with him all the time. I wish he didn't. I wish I could do something. Don't tell anyone, okay?

I don't like him either,wrote Julie, obviously. Want to try to always both be there if he's around?

Yes!

I know it's not like I'm the only Black kid at school,wrote Julie one day in October, but it was so different at my old school. Like, half the school was Black kids. I wish I didn't stick out so much. Please don't tell anyone, okay?

When Wilhelmina got that note, she asked her librarian dad to help her look up some statistics, because she was curious. She didn't tell him why, of course; Julie had asked her not to. It was the fall of 2012. In the Watertown schools, about 4 percent of students were Black, 9 percent were Asian, 11 percent were Hispanic, 4 percent were mixed race or other, and 72 percent were white. It matched what Wilhelmina already knew, but seeing the numbers next to each other was a helpful kind of Math in the World.

I'm so sorry, Julie,she wrote. 4% is small. (I looked it up.)

You did? Can you show me where?

Of course! You can see all the school districts in Massachusetts. Will you show me your old school in Roxbury?

Of course!

There was a way in which writing things down, folding them up, and locking them in a box for which only one other person had the key made it easier to share complicated things. The next time you saw your friend, the conversation had already begun, and you already knew a little bit about where your friend was coming from. Wilhelmina thought about this when Julie told her that her mother was pregnant, and Julie was trying to act happy about it. Really, I'm just so mad at them, wrote Julie. Why does everything have to keep changing? She thought about it when she told Julie that Frankie was having another surgery for ovarian cancer, and everyone kept asking her if she wanted to talk about it, and of course she didn't want to talk about it, but was it okay if sometimes she sent Julie notes about it, notes that Julie would promise to shred? And actually, could Julie maybe never bring it up in conversation later?

Here, today, Wilhelmina was still in the bathroom, still sitting on the toilet. The floor under her was still shaking.

Wilhelmina sighed. She'd thought that she and Julie had done a good job of catching up to each other, across the years. Hadn't they?

Her phone buzzed.

It was Bee. Miss your face, elephant. Happy Halloween. He'd sent a photo from the Halloween when they were really little, seven or eight, the time Wilhelmina had dressed as a zebra wearing polka-dot pajamas and Bee as a giraffe in striped pajamas.

Wilhelmina smiled. No one recognized our genius that year, she dictated back.

Showed it to Julie yesterday,he said. She laughed so hard she fell off the bed

Wilhelmina didn't want to hear about Bee and Julie together on a bed. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and went to make some coffee.

Wilhelmina liked the routine of making coffee. She liked the whickering sound of the water filtering through the grounds, she liked the smell, and she liked choosing a mug. Her favorite was the ceramic one with brown-and-gray glaze, shaped like a cauldron and big as a soup bowl. Technically, it belonged to the aunts; they'd let her bring it back to Massachusetts one summer.

While she was adding a solid foundation of sugar to its bottom, Aunt Margaret wandered in from the living room. She wore her long, pale green winter coat, a fuchsia knit cap, and a patch over one eye, and she smelled of the cold.

"Good morning, Wilhelmina dear," she said crisply.

"Good morning," said Wilhelmina. "Were you outside?"

"I was just checking the mail."

"At six in the morning?"

"You know we're waiting for our ballots, right?"

Right. Esther and Aunt Margaret had applied for their Pennsylvania mail-in ballots ages ago, but the ballots hadn't arrived yet. With the election in three days, they were running out of time. Wilhelmina had voted by mail too. She'd done it at the very earliest opportunity, and now she didn't want to think about it anymore. Thinking about it made her feel panicky.

"How's your eye?" said Wilhelmina.

"It aches a bit," said Aunt Margaret, "but my doctor says that's normal."

"You have a follow-up soon, right? On Monday?"

"No, it's today."

"Saturday?" said Wilhelmina, surprised.

"They're doing weekend appointments to make up for having fewer people in the office at once."

"Ah. What time?"

"Two."

"Okay." The coffee machine beeped. "Would you like to choose a mug?" said Wilhelmina, pouring her own cup. "I'd give you this one, but I've already added the sugar." As she did every morning, on purpose, so that one little thing in the free-for-all of the Hart kitchen could feel like hers.

"I'll get my coffee, dear," said Aunt Margaret. "You enjoy yours. Are you missing a sock? Here, could this be a match?"

Aunt Margaret produced a sock from her coat pocket, which was a weird thing to do. "Thank you," said Wilhelmina, taking the sock, but not asking why it was in her aunt's coat pocket, because she didn't want to talk anymore. The sock was cold to the touch. Maybe Aunt Margaret had found it in the mailbox. Why not? Once she'd pulled it on, it warmed up quickly against the skin of her foot, and it was, in fact, a match. Wilhelmina badly wanted to carry her beautiful, warm coffee into some room where she could be alone, but the only option was the bathroom, where Julie's furnace was roaring like a dozen jackhammers and where it was only a matter of time before someone knocked.

Esther glided into the kitchen from the living room, tall, and with silver hair peeking out from under a silver scarf. She wore a robe that was purple, but with more of a rose tone than Wilhelmina's. In one hand she balanced an extinguished candle, golden and fat, that smelled like beeswax and warmth. She smiled softly at Wilhelmina. "Good morning, bubeleh."

"Good morning."

"How did you sleep?"

"Fine."

"I had a dream my mother was in the circus," said Esther. "The flying trapeze. Papi was with me in the audience. She wore a leotard made of purple asters, the ones that grow along our fence. She had butterflies!" Esther said, standing still with glowing eyes, as if she were seeing the dream inside herself. "All around her!"

"How lovely!" said Aunt Margaret. "Did you know that the flying trapeze was invented by a Frenchman named Jules Léotard?"

"I confess, I did not."

"He used a swimming pool as his net."

"Very resourceful."

"But tell us about your dream, dear," said Aunt Margaret. "Did you get to talk with either of your parents?"

"They had no messages for me," said Esther. "But oh! She was exquisite."

Wilhelmina decided to carry her coffee back to her bedroom and sit with it in the dark while hoping Delia wouldn't wake up. She remembered now that she'd also had a dream. It was a recurring dream of hers, one that had visited her often in the two years or so since Frankie's death, and one that she hated. Really, it was more of a sense than a dream. It was a kind of dream flavor. She'd be dreaming about something—school, or her family, or anything—and she would know that if she could just keep dreaming, Frankie was about to appear. She would try to hold on to the dream, waiting for Frankie. But Frankie never arrived in time. Just at the moment when her arrival was imminent, Wilhelmina would wake up.

"Doughnut Saturday, Wilhelmina?" said Aunt Margaret to her retreating back.

Doughnut Saturday was a long-standing Hart tradition, one to which the aunts had taken with enthusiasm. Wilhelmina had a new plan never to eat another doughnut ever. But she could see no way to avoid procuring doughnuts for the rest of the family.

She stretched her aching neck, dropping her head down and raising her mug so she could inhale the scent of coffee at the same time. "Yes," she said. "I'll go soon." At least if she was running an errand, she could escape her family for a bit. She just hoped James Fang wasn't working today.

Not only was James working, but he was working the register.

This was unusual. In all Wilhelmina's years of doughnut pickup, while she could remember seeing glimpses of James in the kitchen doing things like sliding doughnuts in and out of the fryer and covering doughnuts with clouds of powdered sugar, she couldn't remember him ever working the register before.

Maybe this was because he was bad at it. Standing on her marker six feet removed from the next in line, Wilhelmina heard the customer at the counter say, "Wait. You gave me way too much change."

She couldn't hear James's response because of his mask and the plexiglass barrier. But she could see his high eyebrows and his confused expression. She could also see that he had a bat on his head. It was quite realistic, its segmented wings spread wide and its beady eyes glinting down at the customers. Of course, it was attached with a piece of red yarn tied in a bow under his chin, which somewhat ruined the terrifying effect, and also made him adorable, which was annoying.

Wilhelmina focused on the doughnut shop instead, Alfie Fang's. The Alfie part of the name was for James's mom, Alfie, and the Fang part was James's dad, whose first name Wilhelmina didn't know. She supposed she didn't know Alfie's last name either, now that she was thinking about it. The shop, which served a range of treats from classic glazed doughnuts to Chinese doughnuts to doughnuts with impressive portraiture in icing, occupied a glass-walled corner at the base of a tallish office block called the Lupa Building. The original structure was an old Art Deco beauty from the 1930s, made of white reinforced concrete, with sharp, stylized wolves carved above every entrance. The Museum of Armenia was in this building, as was Wilhelmina's dentist.

The doughnut shop was small and filled with light. The customer area was a triangular wedge, a counter in black and pink marble making up one side, glass walls making up the other two. Big black and white squares tiled the floor. Behind the counter was a mural, constructed in miniature tiles, showing a forestscape with bears and wolves, foxes and owls, and the Boston skyline beyond the trees. Skyscrapers peeked out, and bridges, and far to the left, the obelisk that was the Bunker Hill Monument.

It was Wilhelmina's turn. She stepped up to the plexiglass.

"Wilhelmina Hart!" said James. "Good morning."

"Good morning," she said, feeling awkward. What did one say to a person with a bat on his head with whom (the person, not the bat) one had recently experienced a joint hallucination? "I placed an online order," she said.

"Right," he said, reading something on his screen. "One RBG, one Kamala Harris. Two honey crullers. One youtiao. Two plain cake doughnuts covered with every pumpkin, bat, witch, black cat, broomstick, and orange sprinkle we have in the shop."

"Those two are for my little brother and sister," Wilhelmina said apologetically. The doughnuts her siblings chose always made her feel like her family didn't adequately respect doughnut artistry. She was trying to think of a way to ask for reassurance that the doughnuts weren't stale today, without insulting him further. "Which of the doughnuts are freshest, do you think?"

"Freshest?" he said, peering at her doubtfully.

"Yes."

"Well, the honey crullers just came out of the fryer," he said. "Have you been having freshness issues with our doughnuts?"

"No!" she said. "Never! I just really…" She jabbed the air for emphasis, which immediately made her feel like an idiot. "…wanted an extra-fresh doughnut."

"Hm," he said. "Okay. How will you be paying?"

"Credit card."

"Good. I can hide from you how hopeless I am at making change. Any strange messages drop down on you from the sky since yesterday?"

"No."

"Me neither," he said. "Do you think maybe we should talk about that?"

"Um," said Wilhelmina, pretending to be occupied with the card reader. While it beeped and buzzed, James's mother, Alfie, came forward from the kitchen, her hair honey brown, gathered in a knot on top of her head. She glanced at her son, then turned with interest to see to whom he was speaking.

"Wilhelmina, right?" said Alfie, who was tall and hazel-eyed, graceful, and always, for some reason, made Wilhelmina think of Frankie when she spoke. Sort of as if they had a similar accent, except that neither Frankie nor Alfie had an accent she'd ever detected.

"Yes, ma'am," said Wilhelmina.

"You look beautiful every time I see you, Wilhelmina," she said, "and I like those glasses. Enjoy your doughnuts."

While Wilhelmina was still stammering a startled thanks, Alfie spun back to the kitchen. It wasn't every day that people out in the world gave unsolicited compliments to short, fat, masked individuals like Wilhelmina, even when their hair was cutely tousled and their glasses were new and red and, okay, maybe they'd chosen a close-fitting black knit dress and swirly leggings to wear under their close-fitting red coat, just in case James Fang was at the doughnut shop.

James slid Wilhelmina's doughnuts through the opening in the plexiglass, saying nothing, just looking at her very hard. She couldn't tell what kind of look it was. She wished she could see his face.

She transferred the doughnut box into the handled bag she'd brought for the purpose. Handles always meant less pain. Then she gave him, and his bat, an exasperated glance before turning away.

Outside, Wilhelmina squelched through mucky patches of snow and slush. It was warmer today, barely, but still wintry, white in places. A small group of children in costumes passed by. She saw a princess, a honeybee, a ladybug, but no superheroes. Poor kids. Trick-or-treating was so weird this year, with face masks, and no knocking on doors. Candy left on stoops. Hand sanitizer beside the treats.

Wilhelmina's neighborhood was situated on a long, steep hill that she was used to climbing. A block from home, she changed her route, so that she could walk by Mrs. Mardrosian's giant house and look for signs that Mrs. Mardrosian had made it home safely. That meant walking by Bee's place too, because the Sloanes—Bee, Kimmy, and their mom—lived in an apartment in a converted Victorian a few doors down from Mrs. Mardrosian.

She found Bee on his stoop, looking sleepy, wearing ripped jeans and a pale pink hoodie that matched his hair. He was maskless, and Wilhelmina's heart filled to see his face. He'd grown so gigantically tall, and he had a shadow of stubble on his jaw, but he still had the same big, greenish-brown eyes, and he still smiled the same sweet smile when he saw her.

"Hey, Wil," he said. "Love your face. Those glasses suit you."

"Thanks."

"Did you get me a doughnut?"

"No, but you can have mine."

"Nah," he said, "I wouldn't do that to you. Hey, what happened yesterday? That was some weird shit, with the fortune teller."

"Oh," said Wilhelmina. "Yeah. I think I'm just tired, you know?"

Bee gave her the same pursed-lip, skeptical look he'd been giving her since he was three and they were in day care together. "Sure, okay," he said. "But what actually happened?"

"Nothing," she said. "I'm sure it was nothing. Do you know James Fang?"

"Varsity track," he said. "Moved from Waltham like two years back. He's good. One of those steal-the-competition situations. Don't his parents have the doughnut shop?"

"Yeah."

"Why are you asking about him?" said Bee, then shivered. "Brr!" As he pulled his hood up, she caught sight of his elephant-unicorn necklace, glinting in the sunlight. Then it disappeared inside his clothes. "And come on, Wil," he said in a sharper tone, "what happened yesterday? I'm worried about you."

"Why are you sitting out in the cold?"

"I'm contemplating a walk. Maybe I'll go ask James what's going on, since you won't tell me."

"You wouldn't dare," said Wilhelmina, grinning.

"Oh!" Bee said, his smile growing bigger, and sweeter. "Is that how it is now? Something is going on with James?"

"There's nothing going on with James," said Wilhelmina, "and don't you embarrass me."

"When Julie gets here," he said, "maybe we'll walk to the doughnut shop."

Wilhelmina turned away. "Great," she said. "Enjoy your walk."

"I'm worried about you, Wil," he called after her. "Don't you disappear on me." But she held up a hand in salute and didn't look back.

A moment later, she came abreast of Mrs. Mardrosian's house. It was one of those giant Victorians with a tower room, gingerbread decoration, four chimneys, and gorgeous tall maples dropping leaves poetically across the lawn. Mrs. Mardrosian's old Mercedes was parked in the driveway, which meant she'd gotten home. Great. Wilhelmina walked on, stomped around the corner, and immediately saw Julie walking toward her.

Wilhelmina almost began to cry. It was a sudden and unexpected reaction. Bewildered by her own body, she stomped harder, then took a few big, gusty breaths, trying to get her feelings in order.

"Wil!" said Julie, rushing toward her with a mix of happiness and concern on her face. "Are you okay?" She stopped some distance away. "I've been worried about you."

"I'm fine," Wilhelmina said weakly.

"Hey, don't brush me off," said Julie. "Are you really okay? You look upset."

It was breaking her heart to see Julie's face, her mouth, the soft dimples that hid in her cheeks. Her big hair was braided across the front, and she'd wrapped a long, pale pink scarf around her neck about a hundred times. The scarf was breaking Wilhelmina's heart too, because it matched Bee's hoodie, and it matched his hair. They were matching on purpose.

"That was really weird yesterday," said Julie. "You seemed scared. Want to come walk with me and Bee?"

Wilhelmina didn't want to walk with Julie and Bee. She wanted to walk with Julie. Or with Bee. Or with both of them, fine, but not like this, as an afterthought! How had she become an afterthought, when she used to be integral? Would Julie have built a messaging system with any old person? Could Bee have attached himself to any old kid in preschool? Was it just about who was there? Because it wasn't just about that for Wilhelmina.

"Thanks, but I have to deliver the doughnuts," she said, indicating her bag.

"Okay," said Julie. "You're being kind of mysterious, though, you know?"

That wasn't what she wanted either. "Do you know James Fang?" she said.

"Doughnut hottie," said Julie.

"Yeah. Well," said Wilhelmina. "I went to the cemetery yesterday after I saw you guys. For a walk."

"Okay," said Julie. "Did something happen?"

"Aren't you going to be late?" said Wilhelmina. "Bee's waiting."

"He'll survive," said Julie. "What's going on here, Wil? You keep deflecting. Do you want me to drag it out of you or do you want me to leave you alone? Give me a clue about what you need here, okay?"

Wilhelmina wished she knew what that was. "James Fang was in the cemetery," she said. "And, well. A shiny thing fell from the sky."

"A shiny thing?" said Julie. "What do you mean?"

"Just, this thing," said Wilhelmina. "But when we ran to catch it, it sort of…disappeared."

Julie raised her eyebrows. Then she tucked her chin to her chest and looked worried, a posture so characteristically Julie that Wilhelmina's heart ached. "Disappeared," she said carefully, "like you couldn't find where it landed?"

Wilhelmina swallowed, then sighed, overcome by a kind of surrender. "No," she said. "We found it. It was, like, a sparkly rectangle. It said ‘Trust Wilhelmina' on it, like, in little lights, but with weird dashes in my name. I mean, it wasn't my name. Then while we were examining it, it vanished. Like, it was just gone."

Julie's mouth twisted. She reached into her back pocket and grabbed her phone.

"What are you doing?" Wilhelmina cried.

"I'm finding someone who can send me James's number," Julie said, scrolling fast. "So I can give him shit for playing pranks on you."

"No," said Wilhelmina. "Don't do that, Julie. I don't think he's playing pranks. I think he's as confused as I am."

"Then how do you explain it?" cried Julie, not looking up from her phone. Then her fingers stilled. She exhaled. She raised her face to Wilhelmina. "How do you explain this, Wil?"

"I've been carefully avoiding trying to explain it," said Wilhelmina.

"Okay," said Julie. "Then let me explain it: As of yesterday, you're seeing things. Things that aren't there."

"Okay," said Wilhelmina, "yes. But James is also seeing things."

"Joint hallucinations are a known phenomenon. It happens, like in cults. Or like in the Salem witch trials. You know the theory about the rye?"

"What? Rye?"

"There's this theory their rye flour got moldy that winter and they all ate a hallucinatory fungus," said Julie. "So when they started acting crazy, everyone decided they must be witches, because that's how people thought in the seventeenth century. Did you and James eat anything?"

"No!"

"How well do you know him anyway? I think he's friends with Eloisa Cruz. You know her? She's in Bee's year. I think Bee likes her. She's Dominican, always stars in the musicals?"

"Yeah," said Wilhelmina.

"Want me to pick her brain?"

"No!" said Wilhelmina. "Could you maybe just…"

"Yes?" said Julie.

"Stop, for now? Like, maybe just give me a minute?"

"Give you a minute," said Julie, who didn't look happy. She was doing her worried chin tuck again. "I mean, of course, Wil. I can give you like a minute and a half. But did you tell Bee?"

"Not yet."

"Can I tell Bee?"

Wilhelmina was beginning to wish she'd kept the whole weird, fucked-up thing to herself. "Sure," she said tiredly.

"Okay," said Julie, who seemed relieved by this. "Bee and I will get back to you. One last thing: Did you dress sexy to go to the doughnut shop?"

Now Wilhelmina was smiling a little. "Bye, Julie."

"You tell me when you want some recon on that boy, okay?"

"No recon, Julie."

"Okay, but tell me!"

"I'll tell you. Bye."

"Bye, elephant!"

Wilhelmina found Esther just inside the front door. She was perched on one of the steps that led up to Julie's apartment, her shoulders straight and her posture graceful, still wearing her rose-purple robe, but somehow making it look like a careful fashion choice. Wilhelmina couldn't see Julie's cat, who was also named Esther, but she knew the feline must be present. Human Esther visited cat Esther on the stairs often, sitting with her silently.

"Hi," said Wilhelmina.

"Hola, bubeleh," said Esther. "Doughnuts achieved?"

"Yes."

The cat emerged from behind the human then, arching her back against Human Esther's outstretched hand. Esther the cat was a pale gray that complemented human Esther's silver locs rather nicely, actually, now that Wilhelmina was noticing.

"You two would make a nice painting," she said.

"Would we?" said Esther, with a soft smile. "Thank you kindly."

"Would you like your doughnut?"

"Do birds fly?" said Esther. "I'll come inside soon. I'm telling Esther about my mother."

"Okay," said Wilhelmina, who didn't have the wherewithal just then to indulge Esther's oddness. The aunts in the apartment up close for months on end during a pandemic was a different phenomenon entirely from the aunts for a summer in their spacious Pennsylvania home. Especially without Frankie. Wilhelmina went inside.

In the entranceway, Wilhelmina spent some time shaking one foot, then the other, trying to get her slushy boots off.

Her father's voice rang out from the kitchen. "They won't take the precautions because they think the precautions are a hoax," Theo said. "Then, when they get sick, they expect the medical care that's based on the same science as the precautions."

"That sounds like an eminently human thing to do," said Aunt Margaret mildly.

"In the sense that humans are ignoble animals, sure."

"Ignoble and noble, Theo dear."

Finally freed from her boots, Wilhelmina stomped into the kitchen with her doughnut bag. She plunked it onto the table around which Aunt Margaret; her father, Theo; and her mother, Cleo, were sitting. Then she kept on walking, disappearing into her bedroom before anyone could try to engage her in a debate about humans.

In the bedroom, Delia lay on her back in bed, blinking at the ceiling.

"Your disgusting doughnut is here," Wilhelmina said.

Delia emitted a tiny squeal. Then she sat up, scrabbled around in one of the mountains of clothing on the floor, extracted a sweatshirt that said Unicorn! Cake!, slid it on over her pajamas, and bolted out of the room.

Alone at last, Wilhelmina went to her bed and climbed under the covers. She lay on her back, resting her neck, touching the little enamel elephant at her throat.

After a moment, she unearthed her laptop from her blankets. All computer work—and phone time too, really—came with some pain for Wilhelmina, who couldn't type in the normal way and needed to be militantly careful never to hunch over her devices. But when she was lying on her back, she could open the laptop as flat as possible and perch its bottom edge on her stomach, then look at things. Sometimes Bee and Julie lay to either side of her and watched stuff with her. In fact, Julie had some games she loved so much that after she'd played them once herself, she would play them again with Wilhelmina on her own laptop, the two girls tucked together, Julie doing all the mousing and keying, being Wilhelmina's hands while Wilhelmina made the decisions.

Bee was usually nearby, providing commentary or futzing on his phone, or distracting them with rhetorical questions. "Do you guys think numbers are real? Or, like, just a human construct?" (Wilhelmina: real. Julie: real. Bee: construct, though Wilhelmina thought he might be playing devil's advocate.) "Would you rather have an extra arm or an extra leg?" (Wilhelmina: leg, because her arms often hurt, and imagine how surefooted it would make her while climbing rocky crags in Ireland. Imagine the power of her kick while swimming. Julie: arm, in case she ever lived on a spaceship, in free fall. Also so she could eat/do her hair/carry things/hold an umbrella while reading a book. Bee: arm, because he was a soccer goalie, and also for self-defense.) "Would you rather eat a brownie the size of a couch, or a tiny turd?" (Wilhelmina and Julie: refusal to engage with this question.)

The three of them had tried to keep playing games together in recent months, Julie streaming over Twitch for Wilhelmina, all three of them video-chatting on their phones. Julie had seemed to enjoy it. Wilhelmina hated it. It made her feel like Julie, Bee, and the game were across the universe from her, or unreachable at the bottom of the sea. When Bee and Julie were in the same room while it was happening, Wilhelmina hated herself for how jealous it made her. It was better to watch things alone.

With a minimum of mousing, Wilhelmina pulled up one of her favorite makeup video playlists. She thought about the conversation she'd overheard. Were humans noble or ignoble? Her friends were noble. There was never any question about that. It was why she yearned for them. But Wilhelmina was feeling a bit ignoble herself today: disgruntled, resentful, selfish. Humans, it turned out, could be the worst. Wilhelmina hadn't always thought so; it hadn't occurred to her to have such ambivalence on the topic, until the day a giant minority of them had chosen someone for president who mocked disabled people, laughed about assaulting women, and wanted to keep Mexican people behind a wall. Then loved all of his choices. Believed all of his lies. It was very confusing. Sometimes Wilhelmina felt cut off from her entire species. Other times, she felt like humans got just what they deserved.

Wilhelmina pressed play on a cat-eyes video she'd watched before. The video helped: watching gentle humans transform other humans soothed her. Some humans, at least, were kind magicians, with hairbrushes and creams, heat and water, eyeliner and eyeshadow.

Sometime later, when she sensed that Cleo was working behind a closed door and her siblings had gone out with Esther, Wilhelmina emerged.

She found Theo and Aunt Margaret in the kitchen. Theo was tapping on his laptop at the kitchen table. The doughnut box sat behind it.

"Hi, honey," he said, his square, pink face brightening at the sight of her. Theo looked like Wilhelmina and Aunt Margaret, stout, pleasant, not particularly tall. "Did I tell you I like your new glasses?"

"Thank you for getting the doughnuts, Wilhelmina," said Aunt Margaret. She stood at the counter, packing chicken pieces into the slow cooker.

"Should you be cooking a day after eye surgery?" said Wilhelmina.

"Oh, I'm allowed to use my hands," she said. "Your father got the slow cooker out of the cabinet for me. We left you a honey cruller, dear."

"Hm," said Wilhelmina, eyeing the doughnut box suspiciously. "Who ate the other honey cruller?"

"I did," said Aunt Margaret.

"How was it?"

"Even more delicious than usual."

"Fresh?"

"Divinely fresh."

"Okay," said Wilhelmina, not moving toward the doughnuts.

Peering around his screen, Theo pushed the box toward Wilhelmina. Inside it, she could see the golden ridges of the honey cruller, shining with glaze. "Go for it, hon," he said.

"I don't know," said Wilhelmina. "I might be off doughnuts."

"Off doughnuts?" said Theo, his forehead crinkling in concern. He was going to need another haircut soon; his arrangement of uneven, graying brown wisps was getting long around the ears. Every haircut Wilhelmina gave Theo was uneven, because it didn't matter how many YouTube videos you watched if your subject kept bending his face to his phone to read the news.

"Don't you feel well, Wilhelmina?" said Theo. "Any nausea?"

"No," said Wilhelmina, who was used to her father turning everything into Covid. "I meant I might be off doughnuts forever."

"Forever!" said Theo, changing tack. "You mean like a diet?"

"No!" said Wilhelmina. "I just don't want the doughnut! Why are you freaking out?"

"I'm not freaking out," said Theo. "It's only that I can't bear the notion that any of my beautiful children might think they need to go on a diet."

"It's not a diet, Dad!" said Wilhelmina. "Geez!"

"Okay," said Theo. "I apologize. You don't have to eat the doughnut."

"Well, now I feel like you'll be watching everything I eat," said Wilhelmina. "Examining me to make sure I'm not on a diet."

"I wouldn't do that."

"I sure hope not."

"If it's an unwanted doughnut, may I have it?"

Theo's hand reached toward the box, and it was in that moment, as matters approached the point of no return, that Wilhelmina understood that she had to eat the doughnut. Because it was only by eating the doughnut and finding it as fresh and delicious as Aunt Margaret's that Wilhelmina would be able to dismiss every strange thing that had happened since yesterday.

"I changed my mind," she said, marching toward the doughnut and snatching it out from under her bewildered father's hand. She raised it to her mouth. Then she bit into a cruller as dry and scratchy as the bristles of a broom.

"What the fuck!" she shouted, pitching the doughnut across the room.

Theo jumped up, rigid with alarm. "What is it?" he shouted. "Have you lost your sense of taste?"

"It was stale!" Wilhelmina shouted.

"Oh, that's too bad," said Aunt Margaret serenely, peering one-eyed at the doughnut, which had landed at her feet. "You should go back to that nice shop and get another."

"Stale?" said Theo. "Are you sure? Can you smell things?"

"Dad!" said Wilhelmina. "I don't have Covid!"

"Okay, okay," said Theo. "You threw your food!"

"I'm very—upset," said Wilhelmina, who was shaking, but also understood how this looked.

"Wilhelmina, honey," said Theo. "You scared me. Do you think maybe you overreacted?"

"Yes," said Wilhelmina. "Could I take the car?"

"To do what? Go get a new doughnut?"

"I just need the car, Dad," she said sharply.

"Indeed," said Aunt Margaret, "maybe Wilhelmina would benefit from some time to herself." She started to bend down toward the doughnut, then stopped. "I think bending is on the list of things I'm not supposed to do."

Wilhelmina rushed forward to collect the doughnut from around Aunt Margaret's feet. As she pressed it into Aunt Margaret's hand, her phone buzzed. A message from Julie. Hey. I can't find my necklace. I had it this morning. Let me know if you see it?

"The car?" said Wilhelmina in her involuntary cello voice. "Dad?"

"You may have the car when you ask me for it politely," said Theo, a bit flushed.

Once again, Wilhelmina was fighting back sudden, unexpected tears. "I'm not a child," she said. "I run all the errands. I do Delia and Philip's school. I get the food. I drive the aunts to their appointments. I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm supposed to have gone away. Is there something you need the car for, Dad? Why do I even need to ask for permission?"

Theo looked pink and puffed up and confused, and a little bit foolish. That was how he looked when he was sad. Wilhelmina hated when she made Theo sad.

She took the cruller back from Aunt Margaret, who was presenting it to her benevolently, like a white-haired, patch-eyed angel. She found the car key—it was in her own pocket—and left.

In the car, Wilhelmina kept replaying her words, and her father's face. Theo had asthma. It was unsafe for him to venture out into the world during the pandemic, which wasn't his fault. Cleo had no risk factors, but she was a therapist who specialized in conspiracy theories, which meant she was overbooked with clients right now. Not clients who believed conspiracy theories; conspiracy theorists, by definition, were unlikely to reach out to therapists, since they had all the answers already. Cleo's clients were the people those people had left behind, like the husband who'd lost his spouse to QAnon and couldn't figure out what to do.

Anyway. In addition to being overwhelmed professionally, Cleo was in the midst of the worst attack of seasonal allergies Wilhelmina could remember, which included the constant fun of wondering if it was Covid. The drugs Cleo was on made her too spacey to drive. Esther's driver's license had expired early on in the pandemic. Aunt Margaret was recovering from eye surgery. It was lucky for the family that Wilhelmina could drive.

Everyone was doing all they could. The aunts and Theo took turns cooking. Everyone—not just Wilhelmina—took turns supervising Delia's and Philip's school. Wilhelmina was fortunate she could jump in the car and get away. Theo was a librarian with no library to go to and no patrons, working on his laptop in whatever room was available, stir-crazy and worried, and hardly ever complaining.

Wilhelmina pulled over and reached for her phone.

Theo had texted approximately thirty-seven times. I'm sorry hon.

You're right, you shouldn't need to ask permission for the car.

If you'll just confirm that no one else needs it, you can always take it.

You are our rock, Wilhelmina.

Furthermore, you are my protector. I appreciate that more than I can say. It shouldn't be like this. I'm the parent. I should be protecting you.

I'm sorry I treated you like a child.

Sniffling, Wilhelmina texted back. It's okay Dad. I'm sorry too. I was rude

He responded immediately. I love you.

I love you too

As cars swarmed by, Wilhelmina sat for a while, staring at the steering wheel with her phone in her lap. She wasn't sure what she was waiting for. To stop feeling like everything was wrong? She expected she'd be waiting a long time.

Julie's message about the lost elephant necklace rose through the muck of Wilhelmina's mind. She dictated a text to Julie. Hey, sorry about the necklace. I'll keep an eye out.

Her palms were beginning to burn, which meant she needed to stretch her neck and shoulders soon. So she eased into traffic and continued toward her destination. She passed a skinny white man who stood in the middle of a five-way intersection where it was hard to parse what lane you were supposed to choose in order to get where you wanted to go, unless you'd driven it dozens of times, as Wilhelmina had. At peril to his life, the man waved a gigantic flag bearing the name of the president. This man was often there with that flag. Wilhelmina had turned her feelings off to him long ago. She drove past him without looking.

When she reached her destination, she got out of the car, found a spectacular, yellow-leaved maple, and stretched her neck and chest with her arm braced back against its trunk. Wilhelmina was in the cemetery again. She'd decided to feed her stale doughnut to the birds.

Wilhelmina walked. There were more people in the cemetery today, masked friends traversing the roads six feet apart from each other, yelling conversation across the chasms between them. Wilhelmina kept to the footpaths. A thin sun peeked through the clouds, unhurriedly melting the snow. When she saw a flock of turkeys in a clearing, she tromped toward them down a grassy hill that ran with streams of meltwater.

It wasn't until she entered the clearing that she realized this was the same spot as yesterday, the little basin where all the weird things had happened.

No thank you,thought Wilhelmina. She turned around and was about to hightail it away when she heard a great cracking noise above, as if a tree was falling. Next, James Fang fell from the sky. He fell from the sky! He swooped down on a parachute and crashed beside her!

"What are you doing?" Wilhelmina cried.

"Falling," said James mournfully, collapsed in a heap on the ground, his limbs entangled with—something gray and brown? The parachute? A cloak? She surged toward him, obeying her human instinct to assist another human who was down, then remembered the pandemic. Stopping herself, she watched him push to a seated position and begin rolling his shoulders, bending and testing his arms. His expression was dazed.

"I'm sorry to just stand here," she said, fishing her mask out and pulling it up. "Do you need help? Are you okay?"

"I seem to be," he said, bending and straightening one leg experimentally, "though I don't think I should be."

"But where did you come from?" said Wilhelmina. "I mean, seriously. Were you skydiving?"

"No!" he said, staring up at her incredulously. "Wilhelmina Hart, are you seeing parachutes again?"

Wilhelmina realized then that the parachute, or cloak, or whatever flappy thing she'd thought she'd seen above and around James was gone. Of course it was gone. Why would she expect anything else? James sat in the clearing, the butt of his jeans soaking up a small pool of meltwater, wearing his puffy sky-blue coat. No cloak, no parachute.

Also, he was faintly glowing around the edges.

"Are you playing a prank on me?" demanded Wilhelmina.

"No!"

"Then why did you just fall out of the sky?"

"I was in the tree," he said, pointing up.

When Wilhelmina craned her neck, she saw a thick web of branches, impossibly far above. Twenty feet? Twenty-five? An icy drop of something plopped onto her forehead. Ugh!

"You were up there?" she said. "And you fell? ? How are you not hurt?"

"I don't know!" he said. "My legs should be broken. But doesn't it seem like a lot of things aren't happening the way they should?"

Suddenly, Wilhelmina remembered the doughnut she was still clutching. Almost in a passion, she began shaking it at him. "My doughnut was stale!" she cried.

"Okay," he said, startled. "I'm really sorry about that. We can get you a replacement."

"But your doughnuts are never stale!"

"Yeah, the shop's a mess at the moment," said James. "My dad's sick—not the virus," he added. "Probably it's affected our quality control."

"You don't understand," said Wilhelmina, who was now holding the cruller in both hands, extending it toward James, like an offering. "Yesterday, a fortune teller in Harvard Square prophesied my future. She told me my doughnut would be stale."

James clearly needed a minute to process that one. He cocked his head sideways and blinked a few times. Then, slowly, he stood, testing each limb before applying pressure to it. He wiped his wet hands together, then rubbed his head. His dark hair was sticking up funny on one side, which was cute. Everything about James was cute. Nearby, the turkeys wandered in circles, pausing occasionally to dart suspicious glances at the humans.

"Flimflammery?" James finally suggested.

"You said that yesterday," said Wilhelmina. Another drip plopped onto her head. "I think we need a more advanced theory."

"Well, it is Halloween."

"What does that matter? Do you think ghosts lowered you gently to the ground?"

"Both my grandmas would say it matters," said James. He took a breath, then raised his eyes to the branches far above. He gazed at the web they made for a moment, then added thoughtfully, "I guess one of my grandmas works with a different calendar, but I still think she'd take this in stride. Okay, here's the deal. I was climbing that tree. I slipped and fell out. It was terrifying. I knew I was going to break my neck. Then something that felt like a giant flapping bird surrounded me, and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, all in one piece, and you were there. I mean, of course you were. That part shouldn't surprise me. But—what happened? ?"

Wilhelmina had no answer to that. "You're really okay?" she said shakily.

"I think so."

"Why were you climbing the tree?"

"I was looking for an explanation for that thing that fell from it yesterday."

"Did you find anything?"

James's lips puckered up. He shrugged. "Seems like your basic tree." Then, belatedly, he noticed Wilhelmina's mask, and started digging into his collar for his own. "Sorry! I forgot. I don't know what's going on. It's been a deeply weird couple of days. Why are you here?"

Wilhelmina sighed, then held up her doughnut again. "I wanted to feed my stale doughnut to the turkeys."

"Ah," said James. "Technically I think that's, like, a crime against nature. And it's definitely against the cemetery rules, but I feel like we're beyond that now, don't you? It'd make the turkeys happy."

The two of them considered the turkeys quietly for a moment. Bulbous and ungraceful, with startlingly beautiful feathers shining on their throats and arrayed along their wings, they stalked and clucked among themselves, poking their beaks at the wet ground—except for a single outlier, who was climbing onto tombstones. She jumped from one to the next, flapping herself up onto a high plinth topped by a marble fruit basket. Then she seemed to pose there, considering her surroundings like a queen.

James chuckled. "Rafter?"

"Huh?" said Wilhelmina, who was pretty sure James had just asked her the question, "Rafter?"

"Is that what a group of turkeys is called?" he said. "A rafter? I think that's right. You know how groups of animals have funny names?"

"I know about a murder of crows."

"I wonder what a group of owls is called," mused James.

"You'll have to find out," said Wilhelmina, "and tell me the next time you see me."

For a moment, James peered at Wilhelmina and Wilhelmina peered at James, carefully, each studying the other, but coming to no conclusions. Or, anyway, Wilhelmina came to no conclusions. James Fang was surprising. He had an earnest energy that she couldn't help liking. She also liked the way he talked. And the way he looked, though that wasn't a new revelation. James had always been one of those noticeable people at school. She liked the way he looked at her. It was strange to think of the dozens, maybe hundreds of times she'd passed him in the halls of the high school, catching and holding his eye, knowing who he was, noticing that he was attractive, but never realizing what he was like.

He was still faintly glowing at the edges. Sigh. And Wilhelmina's cruller was turning her hand into a sticky mess.

"Is it really a crime against nature to feed doughnuts to the turkeys?" she said.

James scrunched up his eyes, considering. "Nah. It can be our Halloween offering."

Wilhelmina didn't know what that was supposed to mean. But she tore the cruller in two pieces, then gave half to James, so that he could make the turkeys happy too.

Dinner, which was chicken, dumplings, and caramelized brussels sprouts, was delicious.

"Your eye trouble has not impeded your cooking, Margeleh," said Esther.

"Thank you," said Aunt Margaret. "The doctor says everything looks just fine."

"When's your next appointment?"

"Saturday."

"Did your ballots come?" asked Theo.

"They did not," said Aunt Margaret grimly.

Wilhelmina sat at the table, quiet as usual, pressed up against her father on one side and Delia on the other, ignoring Theo's concerned, sidelong glances. Ignoring the intrusive eyes of her mother too, who sat across from her. The constant, aggressive banter of Delia and Philip, plus the patient intercessions of Theo, annoyed her, but Cleo's silence annoyed her more. Wilhelmina was sure that Theo had told Cleo about her earlier outburst, and she didn't like when the eyes of her therapist mother studied her from across the dinner table. There was always something so compassionately diagnostic in Cleo's face, even today, when Cleo's eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Her nose was chapped almost scarlet, her reddish-brown hair gathered in a messy ponytail. Cleo's hair was exactly the color of a chipmunk.

"Margie and I will be roasting hazelnuts after dinner," said Esther. "It was a favorite Halloween tradition of Frankie's."

"You mean in the fireplace?" said Delia.

"Yes, and any of you children may join us," said Aunt Margaret. "Though of course we understand if you have more exciting plans than roasting hazelnuts with your old aunties."

"I want to roast hazelnuts," said Delia, rather combatively. Delia was dressed as a banana. Theo had taken Delia and Philip on some abbreviated pandemic trick-or-treating before dinner, and it hadn't met Delia's expectations. Delia had wanted to trick-or-treat with her friends Eleanor and Madison as in years before, not to mention that it was weird and uncomfortable to take candy from people who wouldn't let you anywhere near them. She refused to remove her banana costume, she slumped from room to room shooting people martyred expressions, and she spoke only in aggrieved tones.

"Me too, me too, me too," said Philip, whose passions in life alternated between idolizing Delia and avoiding baths. He was dressed like a slice of watermelon, and he smelled. Wilhelmina's number one goal for the evening was to avoid being the person responsible for getting Philip into the bathtub. As the dinner ended, she volunteered for dish duty.

Then Theo led Philip away with a successful bribe: a bath, in exchange for being allowed to roast hazelnuts with Delia and the aunts. Cleo disappeared to bed in an antihistamine haze, as she'd done every night for the past two weeks. Delia went off to choose the best pajamas for fireside activities, and the aunts receded down the hall to the living room to get the fire started.

For twenty-odd minutes, Wilhelmina was alone in the kitchen with leftovers, pots and spatulas, and warm, sudsy water. It was nice to put things in order by herself.

When she entered the living room afterward, Delia was wearing star pajamas and her temper seemed to have sweetened. So had Philip's aroma. When Wilhelmina sat on the rug by the crackling fire and her little brother climbed into her arms, she was able to give him hugs that were nothing but genuine.

"You smell like soap," he told her.

"That's you, silly," she said, kissing his damp, wispy hair, hugging his wriggling body, surprised to find herself choking up again. Wilhelmina had become one of Philip's default caretakers at the start of the pandemic. Philip was thrust upon her often, especially when Cleo had allergies. She took him outside to play in the wet and cold, made him lunches he complained about, cut his hair while he bounced and squirmed, wiped sticky things like peanut butter and jelly from his face and hands. She went on walks with him around the neighborhood, making him promise first that he would keep his mask on. When he tore it off, threw it, laughed in her face, Wilhelmina was shocked sometimes by her own anger. She read him stories at night willing him to fall asleep. She was always counting down the minutes until he became someone else's responsibility. Somewhere along the line, she'd forgotten that not too long ago, she'd adored him.

Aunt Margaret, sitting on a pillow before the hearth, held a funny little pan with a long handle, for roasting things in fireplaces. The part that went into the fire was coppery, round like a cookie tin. Wilhelmina recognized it; it had used to hang beside the fireplace in the aunts' Pennsylvania home.

While Aunt Margaret dealt with the roasting pan, Esther moved around the room's perimeter placing candles in the windows. Esther was a big one for candles. She lit Shabbat candles on Friday night and meditated to a candle most mornings. But tonight she was outdoing herself: She carried an unlit green candle to one window, a yellow to another. A blue to the old rolltop desk in the corner and a red to the wide boot bench that sat beside the front door. Then she placed smaller white candles onto every remaining surface at the room's edges that she could find, on top of bookcases and side tables, in more windowsills and on the mantle, so that the candles made a sort of circle containing the room's activities. Esther wore a shirt, actually, that contained blocks of bright colors just like the candles, crisp twill over dark jeans.

Next Esther swept around the circle with a lighter, lighting the candles one by one. Philip shouted her name once—"Esther!"—and she shot him a smile. But when Philip tried to climb out of Wilhelmina's lap to run to his aunt, Wilhelmina held him tight and whispered, "Wait. Let her finish." Something about Esther's passage around the room creating a trail of winking flames was mesmerizingly elegant. Wilhelmina wanted to watch the circle's completion.

When Esther lit the last candle, Wilhelmina let Philip go. He shot up and ran to Esther, who bent down to him, took his hand, and brought him to the hearth, where Aunt Margaret was teaching Delia how to hold the roasting pan. The room was beginning to smell wonderful, like woodsmoke and warm Nutella. For some time, Wilhelmina enjoyed the sensation of being enclosed in a wide circle of candlelight in a warm, good-smelling room. Then she pushed herself up and went to the windowsill beside the desk. One of the aunts had arranged a few small treasures there in a line, and Wilhelmina was curious.

It was cold by the window, the outside air creeping in. Esther's candles danced, their light licking at the odd little assortment of decorations she or Aunt Margaret had placed there. One was the owl clock Wilhelmina had carried through the snowstorm just yesterday. It was small and enamel with a flat, heart-shaped face, brown glass eyes, brown painted feathers, and a clock in its round belly. Two other items were carved wooden owls as well, with big eyes and knowing expressions. Wilhelmina thought one of them might be a great horned owl, because it had little tufts positioned like ears. She didn't know what kind of owl the other one was. Two more items were small ceramic figurines of other kinds of birds—a robin and a female cardinal—and one was a miniature plastic model of a snow goose.

Wilhelmina took to the snow goose immediately. It had a head on a long neck that was weighted at the end where it attached to the goose's body, so that the head gently swiveled and bobbed, as if the goose were observing the entire room. It had a painted pink bill, intelligent dark eyes, and white feathers with black plumage peeking out underneath. It reminded Wilhelmina of the snow goose she'd seen with Frankie in the cemetery once a long time ago, startling her at the edge of a pond.

Next to the goose was a small ceramic statue of a pink-skinned man, wearing a brown robe with a rope around his middle. Birds sat on his hands, arms, and shoulders. He had a halo around his head.

"That's Saint Francis of Assisi, dear," said Aunt Margaret, coming to stand beside her. "Frankie's namesake. He was a companion to the animals. Made friends with a wolf, and talked to the birds as if they were his sisters."

"I didn't know Frankie was named after a saint," said Wilhelmina.

"Her parents were very religious," said Aunt Margaret. "Frankie's life took a different path, but she always liked her namesake. Now, I'm afraid I must ask you not to eat these particular hazelnuts," she said, placing a tiny bowl on the windowsill beside the other items. The bowl contained three hazelnuts. "But you can come to the fire and eat the others."

"These are all Frankie's things, aren't they?" said Wilhelmina, who knew it somehow. She could feel it, just as she would've known Frankie's voice.

"Yes," said Aunt Margaret. "These are her treasures."

"Including the clock?"

"Yes. That's why we cherish that clock."

Wilhelmina had a moment of regret for the resentment she'd felt toward the clock. "Are those hazelnuts—for her too?"

"Exactly," said Aunt Margaret. "They're our offering."

Aunt Margaret went back to the hearth, where she knelt beside Esther and helped her add more hazelnuts to the roasting pan. Wilhelmina watched them together, more conscious than usual of Frankie's absence. If Aunt Margaret and Esther were doing some project together in the living room, wasn't it natural to assume that Frankie was somewhere else in the apartment? That she would come in suddenly from the kitchen, then cross the room to Wilhelmina with the sun in her smile? The aunts had used to be like the points of a triangle. As they'd moved around, the shape of their triangle had stretched and changed, but there had always been a way to feel surrounded, enclosed by their happiness and warmth. Now they'd lost one of their points. Aunt Margaret and Esther were a closed segment, passing ideas back and forth to each other. The warm space was gone; Wilhelmina couldn't find a way back in.

She whispered a text to Julie. Any sign of your necklace yet?

Nope,said Julie. Happy Halloween though, elephant

Happy Halloween, elephant

She texted Bee next. Miss you, elephant

Miss u,he texted back, adding an elephant emoji.

Then he texted again. It was a selfie of him and Julie in his bedroom, huddled together against pillows on his bed. Bee was smiling big and Julie was holding her fingers up in the shape of a heart. He was still in his pink hoodie, and she was still wearing her pink scarf.

Wilhelmina waited for another text. "Bee and I will get back to you," Julie had said. She tried inhaling the scent of hazelnuts. She tried to enjoy the snow goose with the bobbing head. Her phone didn't buzz.

Wilhelmina left the room, crossing out of the circle of candles. Theo was tapping on his laptop at the kitchen table again. She practically ran past him.

In her cold bedroom, she crawled under the covers with her laptop and found a YouTube video of a hairstylist, a man with dark hair and beautiful dark eyes who looked just a little bit like James Fang. She watched him give a woman with long, wavy red hair a thick crown of braids.