7. Like a Disney Movie

I don’t need to ask if Uncle Robert is going to spend the night. He’s passed out on the couch where he was watching television all day and I was watching him drink beer. He’s as lifeless as that mannequin still in the laundry room with nowhere to go. I leave one light on as well as the fire fully stoked to make it through the night. If it somehow spills over to the rest of the cabin, well, I might get out, but Robert is a goner.

In the bathroom I examine my face, which doesn’t look bruised or touched in any way. I wonder if Iris was using the magical mystery water from Marsh Falls. This makes me think of a dozen other questions, all of which give me a headache and force me to avoid answering any of them.

My room is extra cold tonight. Normally Mom would make sure I had an extra blanket on nights like this. Even after she’d been drinking so much. Now I’m forced to look for another blanket, and then I just give up and go to bed.

I wonder what sort of dreams my uncle has. Or maybe he doesn’t dream anymore. Maybe the booze completely coats over the dreams and drowns them out.

Maybe he used to dream of Heidi Marsh.

I want to ask him more about her. I know they were living here for a while. What were their plans? Why didn’t they just run away together?

Then I think of Jocelyn and know that life isn’t always so simple.

The wind blows outside. It’s January.

I wish I could close my eyes and wake up in July. To know I’ve made it past The Big Whatever that is going to happen. To know that I’ve graduated Harrington and I’ll finally be able to leave this place. Hopefully with Mom. And maybe even Uncle Robert.

I think of school. Then of Kelsey.

Sweet, adorable, likable Kelsey.

The girl that I definitely should not be with.

What will these next few months look like?

My eyes close then open then close again.

I awake hearing something.

Birds. Lots of them.

And something else.

I must have slept in, since the sun is already coming up. I glance out my window and just see the drab emptiness of the surrounding woods. Sometimes it seems smothering, this wilderness that never seems to want to go away.

The sounds keep coming from downstairs, not from in our cabin, but outside.

The deck.

It sounds like people shuffling. Or like animals. I get up and sprint down the steps.

The couch is empty.

I check Mom’s bedroom, but the bed is untouched.

“Uncle Robert?”

No response.

I hear tapping on the window. More birds.

I go to the window and look out.

No way.

The bird that was pecking at the window flies off, but on the railing of the deck are maybe fifty or a hundred others. All different kinds. Just sitting there, some moving and making noises, some just sitting there.

Like that Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds.

But that’s not all.

I see more animals shuffling on the deck itself. There’s a groundhog—no, there are several—and a dog. Several cats. Other animals that I have to study to see what they are. A woodchuck maybe? I see a possum. A skunk.

These animals are having a party on our deck.

“Uncle Robert?” I shout out.

Nothing.

I look out the bedroom window down on the driveway to see if his car is there. Then I remember I never saw one yesterday.

Like a ghost, he’s disappeared.

I go back and look out to the deck again. That’s when I see it. Right dead in the center of the action, as if guiding them all in this craziness.

Iris’s bluebird.

It’s like she told them where to come.

But why? What’s with the animals?

I bang on the window, and the bluebird flies off the railing and heads toward me, then swoops up and away.

Suddenly all the birds follow.

They’re gone.

I hear the stampede of animals shuffling away down the steps and around the deck to the other side of the house like they might in a Disney movie.

I wait for a second, then open the door. There’s not an animal in sight.

The wind is freezing and makes me quickly go back inside. I check my cell phone to see if there are any messages, then look around the back of the house for my uncle. Maybe he had more to drink last night and fell off the deck, like I always used to worry about Mom doing. But he’s nowhere to be found.

Uncle Robert is gone.