Chapter Sixty-Five

WE GET READY AT MY HOUSE, for once. Sofia has been here before, but rarely. We stand in my room, each tugging on an extra layer of tights because it’s freezing outside. The black dress is as fantastic as it was the first time I tried it on. Sleek and shiny. The black satin makes the reddishness of my hair stand out. More like Mom’s.

“How’s it look?” I ask Sofia, putting my hands in the pockets and spinning around. The skirt flares in response.

“You know you look amazing. Like a melding of Audrey Hepburn and Strawberry Shortcake.”

“Wait, is that a compliment?” I ask, facing the mirror. Sofia comes to stand next to me. She’s three inches shorter, but she almost makes up the height difference with her teased hair. Add the cobalt-blue heels she picked out, and she’ll be taller.

“Of course it’s a compliment,” she says. “Strawberry Shortcake is a babe.”

There’s a knock at my door.

I open it to Campbell, and her eyes go wide.

“What d’ya think?” I ask, pursing my hot-pink lips at her.

“Very eighties,” she says. “And gorgeous.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Okay, we’ve gotta go.”

“Don’t want to keep Liam waiting,” Campbell says, but she smiles and helps me zip up the side of my dress.

The day after Christmas, I found two newspaper clippings on my desk. The first was my essay, framed. The second was another police blotter.

“APD responded to a domestic dispute. 36-year-old male arrested, pending charges of terroristic threat, false imprisonment, and assault.”

And a note stuck on top of the newspaper clipping that said, “You were right. It was good. —C.”

“Oh God,” Mom says when we step into the kitchen.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. Just my entire childhood hitting me in one flash,” she says. “Have fun, girls. Drive safe.”

In Sofia’s car, the heat runs full blast. It’s a bitterly cold New Year’s Eve. A dry cold. No snowstorms coming in to cover up the crows.

There’s no hiding them anymore. Every tree on the highway is filled. Every parking lot and field. They now outnumber humans more than ten to one. It seems that every few minutes another group of them is startled and rises into the sky over us. Instead of trees, we have crows. Instead of fields, we have crows. Instead of clouds . . .

They run this town now.

Auburn’s plans for driving them out of town begin tomorrow.

I know that it is only the year ending, but in this moment it feels like it is the world. The sun is low and heavy on the mountain. The sky isn’t pink like summer or orange like autumn, but dark red fading fast into black. With the billowing dark clouds circling around, it almost looks as though a nuclear bomb has gone off.

“It’s like the apocalypse out there,” Sofia says, reading my mind. We pull up to the school. She chose a bright blue taffeta dress that really does look like something she traveled through time for and pulled off a rack in the 1980s. “Here,” she says, “you didn’t tease your hair enough.”

She pulls me closer and tugs a comb through my hair, pushing the curls out, out, until they are practically a separate entity from me. “Really, Sofia?” I ask, my voice muffled by the mountain of hair between us.

“You look hot,” she says, and tugs again.

“If I hadn’t grown up with two sisters, this would hurt like hell,” I tell her.

“Fortunately, your scalp has been numb for years,” she says.

Liam whistles low as we walk up to the gymnasium doors.

“Wow,” he says as Sofia and I stop and strike poses on the sidewalk. “I’m way out of my league.”

“Eat your heart out, McNamara,” Sofia says, laughing, as she pulls open the door and marches her three-inch heels inside. I look down at my flats. Glamorous.

“Perfect,” Liam says. He steps close, lifts my hand, and spins me around. He’s wearing what should be a ridiculous all-white tux, but he looks amazing as usual. He has aviator sunglasses tucked in the front pocket of his jacket, and I reach for them. “Nah-ah,” he says, capturing my hand over the pocket. “Wrong ones.”

“What do you mean?”

Liam reaches into another pocket and pulls out his glasses case. He puts on his real glasses instead.

“Okay, now I’m ready.”

“What? You aren’t embarrassed?” I ask.

“Nah, fuck ’em,” Liam says. I laugh.

“What changed your mind?”

“Uh, this cute girl I know. She says I look good in them.”

“Oh, well, she’s right. You should listen to her more often,” I whisper, just before his lips reach mine, and I feel the smile on them when we kiss. He pulls back abruptly.

“Check this out.”

He unbuttons the top few buttons of his button-down shirt and opens it. Under his pristine tux, he’s wearing a Superman T-shirt. I laugh.

“That’s perfect.”

“Thanks. Not too geeky?”

“Oh, very geeky. But that’s a good thing.”

“Hey, so, I got my first acceptance,” Liam says. I like how he says first, like he knows there will be more.

He’s right. There will be. No question.

“Congratulations! Where?”

“An art program, actually. The art director got in touch and said he really loved my portfolio, and graphic novels aren’t usually their thing, but my ‘exceptional talent’ convinced them I belonged there. So if I go, I can actually pursue the comic book thing, for real. They have all these design classes, and storytelling, and the faculty is diverse and incredible.”

“That’s really cool, Liam.”

“You know what else is cool? Calling out an entire town in their own damn paper.”

Liam wraps his arms around me, pulls me in close. It’s freezing, but I don’t care. I hear the sound of rustling paper and turn slightly, not letting go of him. Liam is holding up the Gazette, folded in half on page five.

He reads:

“‘The charm of this town is lost on its victims, and perfect is just a fairy tale. We have to stop pretending we’d be great again if only the crows were gone, and work on the parts of this town that were broken long before the birds arrived.’ That’s my favorite part.”

“Yeah?”

“And the part about the walls. And complicity. And bird migration habits as a metaphor for intergenerational violence.”

“That bit was tricky.”

“It worked,” Liam says. “It’s good, Leighton.”

“Thanks.”

“Leighton!” I am practically side-tackled in a hug.

“Hi, Fiona.” I twist so I can wrap my arm around her. “Hey, I never got to thank you for helping at the game with my sisters. That was really nice.”

“Psh,” Fiona says. “It was nothing. They’re adorable. Well, Juniper is adorable. Campbell is intense.”

“No kidding,” I say. “You look so pretty.”

“Thanks, Leighton. We’re having so much fun. Glad to see you changed your no-date rule, though. Go be dummies together.”

Liam leads me into the gym, and we skip the punch bowls and photo line. He tugs me right onto the dance floor. It’s a slow song, and the music isn’t so loud. Liam’s hand finds my hip and pulls me in until I’m tucked right under his chin. I imagine this kind of thing happens every single day, but sometimes things are ordinary and incredible all at once.

One day last year, the girls and I got off our bus and it was pouring rain. We were soaked straight through our clothes in seconds, and still had to walk all the way down our road. But about a minute into our wet walk, the rain stopped, just like that. In one instant, it went from torrential downpour to nothing. The cloud had passed over us. We could see it raining in the field across the road, but not on us. And it must happen a million times a day—the weather shifts, changes direction. The rain cloud moves or the wind dies. We usually miss that split-second transition, though, so seeing it happen that afternoon, we felt like we were the only witnesses to something special. It’s how I feel right now in Liam’s arms. Like, sure, this happens a million times a day all over the world.

But I get to be here tonight for this one perfect moment.