It’s been two weeks since Mom opened the door and let Miss Dolly into our lives.
Two weeks of me watching that Cadillac come down the drive and park in a spot we keep open for friends—except she’s no friend. She shows up with her hair all done up, shiny high heels, and outfits so nice dust wouldn’t dare touch them.
Every time that shiny black Cadillac slithers down our lane, it seems a little slicker, a little more poisonous, like the oil in the paint might ooze right off the car and snap at our boots.
I almost feel bad that our little van has to park so close to it.
Mom named our van Patches on account of how it has a different-colored door and rear hatch than the rest of the car—like a patchwork quilt. Mismatched colors or no, it runs just fine, so when a new spiderweb of cracks appeared in the rear window last year, we named them Spidey and didn’t worry about it. We thought we had all the time in the world to fix the window.
But we didn’t.
I suppose it fits us even better now. One more bit of broken to add to the pile.
Every time Dolly comes, Mom and Grandpa send me and Scotty out to do chores. And every time I come back, she’s got them listening to her twisty words all full of “Trust me. Believe me. I’m here to help” nonsense.
At first Mom and Grandpa told me to never mind when I asked why Miss Dolly was here. Then they mumbled some dumb story about “getting information.”
That makes no sense, ’cause I got Dad’s calendar. If there’s anything they want to know, I can look it up, and I told them so. It says when to plant, trim the trees, and lay out pipe. Everything we need to run the farm is on the calendar, all ready to go. But more and more Mom and Grandpa only have ears for Miss Dolly.
I talked myself blue, but it was like I never made a sound.
When she steps out of that sleek black car, I half expect to see a bloodred hourglass stamped on the back of her fancy dress seeing as how she’s weaving her sticky-sweet words around my family’s brains. And once their heads get all muddied and confused, she sinks her fangs in and gets them to do exactly what they want.
Mom always says you know a person by what they do—and after a few long talks, Dolly pretty much got Grandpa and Mom to flush our whole lives right down the toilet.
They agreed to sell our farm.
I’m sure they don’t really want to, ’cause Dolly’s visits suck the joy right out of their souls. Yet they still open the front door and let her in instead of giving her the boot like they should.
I don’t understand it.
I flick my red braid over my shoulder and peek through the window at my mother packing boxes in the horse barn.
The horses nicker, puffing soft breaths with their velvet noses, and wait for her to stop and scratch their forelocks like always, but she doesn’t. She’s not even singing. Not a hum. Not one note.
It’s unnatural.
She stretches her back and turns her head, and I duck.
Grasses brush my sides as I crouch beneath the windowsill, my shoulder braced against the rough wood. A ladybug crawls up my jeans to the hole in my knee, the tiny feet tickling my skin. My little brother, Scotty, could tell me what its scientific name is and its genus and a million other facts he’s stuffed in his nine-year-old brain, but for me, it’s just a nice little ladybug.
It spreads its spotted shell wide, little wings whirring faster than I can see, before it lifts off to the sky.
I grasp the windowsill, the weathered red paint flaking off under my fingers, and peek at Mom again as she stands beside the stalls with her hand on a harness. The horses bend their necks, straining to touch her, but she ignores them and lets the harness fall against the wall.
Our buckskin mare, Queenie, whinnies in frustration and watches Mom with trusting eyes that shine almost as dark as her mane. With a white snip on her nose and tan cheeks, she nickers and talks, expecting Mom to talk right back, let her out, and saddle her up to go somewhere other than the pasture—but Mom doesn’t.
Queenie’s lips flap and wriggle, reaching for Mom’s shirttail to yank her near enough to scratch forelock and ears and make things right again. But Queenie can’t reach, so she tosses her head and snorts.
She doesn’t understand it either.
Brainwashed. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all.
Without Mom’s chatter or singing, my ears fill with the quiet rustling of leaves from cottonwoods high overhead, gentle trees towering skyward in our own oasis in the high desert. A breeze rolls off the eastern hills, smelling of juniper and sage, and I breathe it all in. Years past, we’d ride those hills ’most every day, a grand view of the Tyhee Flats stretching out below us to the west all the way to the American Falls reservoir. With Pocatello to the south and Fort Hall to the north, we can see it all since our farm perches on the side of these hills halfway between.
Sometimes kids at school roll their eyes when I say something’s to the north or south ’cause they don’t think that way, but with all the sunrises we see, I don’t remember ever not knowing which way was east. Out here, my skyline is made up of mountains and horizons, not skyscrapers and rooftops.
T-Rex pads up beside me, and I sneak away from the window before he can whine and give me away. He leans against my leg as we walk and lifts his chin so I can scratch him better, which I do without hardly looking. But I have to check again, because something long and blue sticks out the side of his mouth.
“Whatcha got, Rex?” I snatch the slobbered end away from him and hold up the prettiest feather I’ve ever seen. It’s longer than the chickens’ feathers, for sure, and filled with far more colors than a goose could ever hope to have. Just to be sure I’m not dreaming, I touch the gold-and-black eye mark surrounded by electric blue-and-green wisps.
“Paige?” Scotty whispers from the doorway of the chicken barn, his hand beckoning in quick curls. “C’mere!”
I cradle the feather in my hand, careful not to crush it, and slip across the yard with T-Rex on my heels.
Scotty is three years younger than me, but if he has something to show, it’s usually worth a look. After a few blinks in the gloomy dimness of the barn, my eyes start to adjust. Feed sacks line the wall by the coop door, where rustling feathers and soft clucks coo from inside—which is wrong, since the hens should have been let out to pasture by now, but that’s Scotty’s job. A few more steps in, I peer into shadows and search out the corners of the room, but Scotty is nowhere. Not on the equipment, not by the carts, and not by the tool rack.
“Mew.” Our orange cat, Scuzbag, peeks out from his perch atop the wall of straw bales stacked along one side of the barn as far back as the coop—except he’s not alone. A second set of yellow eyes glares from the shadows, the body so black I can barely tell where its fur ends and the shadows begin. Its eyes close, and it disappears, like magic.
T-Rex huffs and sits on his haunches, gazing up at Scuzbag, or maybe looking for the other feline that vanished from one blink to the next. I know all the cats on the farm by name, and that’s not one of ours.
My steps falter and shivers race across my shoulders. “Scotty? Are you in here?”
“Up here!” His blond head pokes over the side of the straw stack by the door, and he’s grinning as wide as a horse. “Wait till you see what I found!”
“Did you find Dad’s shovel?” Never in a million years would I have thought to look on top of the straw stack. Around it, sure, but on top? I try to think of some reason he’d need it up there, but can’t.
Scotty laughs. “No. This is better. Way better.”
“Says you.” I set my feather on the ground and clamber up the side of the barn using the sideways slats as ladder footholds until I flop over onto the prickly mass of straw, bits of it already slipping inside my torn jeans and jabbing my socks.
“So what’s the big deal—” I suck in a breath at the blue lump lying in front of Scotty’s knees.
The lush blue-and-green tail feathers shimmer in the pale light filtering through the barn wall, and I gasp when a tiny, feather-topped head swivels on its slender neck to stare right back at me.
I always thought owls were the prettiest birds out here, but a peacock? It’s like digging for spuds and finding gold.
“Can we keep it?” Scotty gently strokes the wing.
The bird struggles to rise, but falls still again.
“It’s hurt. The leg, I think. Or maybe a wing. I can’t tell yet. It’s male though, definitely.”
“It’s beautiful,” I murmur. Ducks are like that too, with the boys all gussied up and the girls plain brown and boring. “Where’d it come from?”
“It was here. Right here.” He pats the straw. “He came to us for help.”
“It might be lost.” Could it have flown all this way from the Pocatello zoo? No, I don’t think so. That’s miles away. Clear south of town.
It ruffles its tail and catches a sunbeam, the feathers shining brighter than stained-glass windows.
I almost forget to breathe. Dad always said nature was chuck-full of miracles, and now we’ve got a straight-up miracle sitting right in front of us.
“Mom will know what to do. I’ll go get—”
“Wait.” Scotty grabs my sleeve and holds fast. “I heard them talking today. They’re going to sell the animals. All of them.”
“All the pigs and cows?” That happens every year when we take livestock to the sale.
He shakes his head, his gray eyes serious behind the smattering of freckles across his nose. “Them too, but they meant the chickens and geese. Even the horses.”
“Queenie?” My stomach sinks like it’s being dragged under by the plow. “They wouldn’t. Mom would never—” But I know he’s telling the truth because I know they’re selling the farm, and where would we put the animals even if we did keep them? In one of those tiny postage-stamp-sized yards in town? Maybe on the back porch of some microscopic apartment somewhere? Dad used to say people in towns lived like ants, packed in tight with a million places to go but nowhere to stop and breathe.
My throat chokes right off at the thought of him. If Dad were here, he’d never let this happen. Miss Dolly could say her magic words all day long and he’d just laugh at her. Sell the farm? Not on your life. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out. But he’s not here.
And he won’t be ever again.
Mom and Grandpa aren’t thinking straight, and they haven’t been ever since Dolly came. My lips pinch as I try to think what they might do to our peacock. Sell it? Take it to the zoo? Would Dolly demand roast peafowl for dinner? A fancy meal to go with her fancy outfit. Just thinking it makes me shudder. I shake my head, blink hard, and look Scotty straight in the eye.
“You hold the peacock down, and I’ll check for breaks. We’re gonna do this on our own.”