Black Bird of the Gallows(8)

The headlines went on and on. Each one more outrageous than the next. I know what some people think: I was abused, a drug mule, a child prostitute. They don’t care that none of it was true. Stories are so much more interesting than the truth, and interesting sticks.

I lean against the locked stall door in the bathroom and ignore Lacey’s calls for me. Later, we’ll spend some therapeutic time bitching about Kiera, but right now…that just hurt. Most of the time, I can take what Kiera dishes, or ignore it, or stay unnoticed. Most of the time, I can count the months until graduation and let it roll. But now, the thought of facing Reece again makes my stomach turn. I’m sure Kiera is filling him in on the sordid details of my past, and some of it won’t be lies. My mother was an addict. I did fight the police when they took me away from her. She did die from a drug overdose.

I wipe my eyes and count the reasons why this. Doesn’t. Matter.

Screw Kiera. I have a show three days from tonight, and maybe Reece will be there. Maybe he’ll find Sparo more interesting than little Angie Dovage. Maybe more interesting than Kiera Shaw.

Maybe I’ll find out Friday night.





3-the dark way home


Deno drives me home from school in his 1999 Chevy Venture minivan. It’s rusty, smelly, and makes an ominous front-end rattle that Deno willfully ignores. What had once been someone’s kid-shuttle is now gutted and sticker-covered, used primarily for hauling musical equipment. He drives Lacey to school since she doesn’t have a car. She bought a hundred-year-old violin, instead.

I sit in the one remaining back seat, thankful that they’re not making me talk. Lacey has the sense to not deconstruct the cafeteria scene. But Deno has difficulty with silent spaces. He likes to fill them with sound—any sound. Even now, his fingers tap the steering wheel to a beat in his head, because the radio stopped working six months ago. I curl up and press against the threadbare seat. Tomorrow will be better. It always is. How long until graduation? Four months and eleven days.

“That was decent of your neighbor,” Deno says. “He didn’t have to say anything to Kiera.”

I close my eyes, wishing the radio worked. “No, he didn’t.”

“Risky, too. Being his first day and all.”

“What’s your point, Deen?” Lacey asks.

“No point.” Deno shrugs. “Just saying he might not be an asshole, that’s all.”

A harsh breath hisses from Lacey’s teeth. “You might have spoken too soon,” she murmurs, pointing to an old black sedan turning down the street toward my neighborhood. “Isn’t that Kiera’s car?”

My eyes fly open and snap to the window. Kiera does drive an old black sedan, along with about a half dozen other kids, but she doesn’t live in my neighborhood. The only reason she’d be here is to give Reece a ride home.

“Nah.” Deno turns into my development right behind the sedan. “See the hockey mask sticker on his bumper? That’s Trevor Bent’s car.”

Lacey squints. “Oh. You’re right.”

“Angie.” Deno swivels, shoots me a curious look. “Am I driving you home today because the new kid saw Kiera’s ugly in the cafeteria?”

Lacey smacks his arm. “I told you, she’s upset.”

“Over the new kid?”

“Over the whole awful thing,” Lacey says. “You are so dense sometimes.”

I relax into the seat with pointless relief. So Reece is getting a ride home from Trevor. That doesn’t mean he isn’t into Kiera. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Geez, Angie.” Deno leans forward to look up through the windshield. “What’s with all the crows in your neighborhood? Someone not bagging up their garbage?”

“What?” I sit up and look out, pulled out of my sulk. Sure enough, there are about a dozen crows flying around the van and the black car in front of us. “There’ve been a lot, lately.” I say it casually, but I don’t like this. I’m very happy to be inside a layer of metal and glass right now.

“They’re quite large for crows,” Lacey adds. “I think they’re ravens.”

“What’s the difference?” Deno asks, braking at a stop sign.

“They’re different species.”

I am about to agree with Lacey, when one of the crows—or ravens—flies up right alongside the minivan. It hooks its claws on the window frame and squawks at me.

“Whoa!” I jerk back, even though I know it can’t get in. The crow cocks its glossy black head at me, as if peering inside. It blinks a round eye and, even through the tinted glass, I can see the bird’s eye is not black, but garnet red. It glitters like a cut gem in the cold afternoon light.

It’s got something—a speck of gold glints in its closed beak. I lean forward to take a better look.

“What the hell is that?” Deno hits the gas and the crow loses its tenuous hold on the window frame. The bird takes to the air and soars into the trees with a rough kraa.

I keep a death grip on the seat, gaze locked on the birds, flying circles around the cars. The sedan pulls into Reece’s driveway. Rock music burns through the seams of Trevor Bent’s car.

Something’s up with those birds. Something not entirely natural. The bunch of them diving at Reece this morning could be explained—the birds might be tame. But the red eyes on that one were too strange to ignore. I’d still like to know what it had in its beak. I didn’t imagine it. I’m beginning to think I didn’t imagine the man with the changing face from this morning, either, and I don’t know what to make of that.