Black Bird of the Gallows(9)

Deno puts the van in park in front of my three-car garage. Lacey gets out to open the sliding side door for me because the handle on the inside is broken.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say to Deno.

“Sure thing,” he says, shaking his head. “You should try driving your own car to school. This hill you live on kills my gas mileage.”

I give Deno a mock salute, and he grins as I climb out of the minivan.

Lacey pauses before getting back inside. She glances at the border of trees between my house and Reece’s. The branches are thick with crows. “There’s something wrong with those birds,” she says in a quiet voice. Her eyes are troubled. Unlike myself, Lacey is a believer in things like omens and signs and superstitions. She likes to think she’s tuned in to the vibes of the world, or something like that.

“They’re birds,” I say.

Her dark eyes narrow. “Well, yeah. I’m just not sure that’s all they are.”

I nod, wishing I could argue with her. “What else do you think they could be?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying it.” She tilts her head toward mine. “So. Are you okay with what happened at lunch today?”

“Yeah.” I hunch my shoulders against the chill and thoughts of Kiera Shaw. “Nothing some time in the basement with my guitar can’t fix.”

She hugs me, a little too tight, then pulls back and turns a leery eye to the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

Not today, it isn’t. “I’ll take anything but more snow.”

Her brow knits. “No, this is different.”

Overhead, the sky is blue. One dark cloud tumbles in amongst the white puffy ones. I stifle a shiver and tug my coat tighter. I have no clairvoyance. I’m not tuned in to the vibes of anything, but I can’t deny the uneasy feeling uncurling through the air like a dark ribbon.

Also, there are facts. Since the Ortley family murders, the neighborhood has been quiet. Nothing strange has happened until the Fernandez family moved in. Along with vibes and omens, I also don’t believe in coincidences.

Upstairs in my room, I toss my backpack on my bed and go to the window. I have a partial view of Reece’s house and notice a few lights illuminate windows as a quiet curl of smoke winds from the chimney. Trevor Bent’s car has left.

My gaze catches on something small, gleaming in the dirt of the flower box outside my window. Gold. I unlock the window and shove it and the sliding screen up enough to reach for the object. Cold air pushes through the narrow space and bites my hand. The begonia stems, which had bloomed there in the summer, look like brown veins trailing over the soil. I reach out and pluck the thing from the dirt. It’s a small gold earring, missing its back. The tarnished setting once held a stone but is now empty. I close the window, locking the cold back outside, and peer at the earring in confusion. It’s not mine. I’m sure of it.

A low krahhh sounds from the deck below. I glance down to see a crow sitting on the railing, looking up at me. It tips its head up and cocks it to the side. It looks pleased with itself, if that’s possible. Logical answers are usually the correct ones, but here, the logical answer is that someone dropped it there. But…who? The only other person who comes to my room with pierced ears is Lacey, and as far as I recall, she has never even looked out my window, let alone leaned out of it.

I swallow hard and glance at the crow. It’s starting to make a racket down there. Um, didn’t that bird have something shiny in its beak when it came to the van window? The crow flaps its wings a few times but doesn’t fly off. One of its wing feathers is pure white. Red eyes and a white feather. That’s…different. I stare down at the bird, working to make sense of this. I suppose it’s possible—remotely—that it put the earring in my flower box for me to find.

With a scowl to the crow, I yank my curtains closed and turn away from the window. I move to throw out the earring, but I hear that gentle krahhh again and drop the gold stud into a glass dish on my dresser. A shiver wiggles down my spine. It may not be wise to throw away gifts from this bird. It’s clearly trying to communicate something.

I collapse on the bed and fling an arm over my eyes. What if that really is an earring of mine I forgot about? I don’t remember owning any gold studs. All my jewelry is silver. Also, I only got my ears pierced four years ago, but hell—I don’t even know anymore. Maybe this is all in my head. I groan into my pillow, because if I’m imagining these things, it’s very bad news for me. What if the mental demons that plagued my mother have finally come for me? She didn’t survive them. Would I?





4-the music


The music thumps fast and deep and loud. It’s an amped-up Zero 7 remix that most people here haven’t heard but I’m particularly fond of. Mel, owner of The Strip Mall, gives me a lot of leeway to play what I want. Over the past six months, I’ve proven that the place won’t empty out if the people can’t mouth along to the songs. Quite the opposite, actually. Friday night attendance has increased, from what I hear. They keep me on the schedule, so I must be doing something right. A bunch of my classmates come, and the club has become popular with the Somerset College kids who think anything played on the radio is garbage. They think I’m “enlightened,” which I think is hilarious. All I do is play music I like.

I hold one half of my headphones to my ear and queue up my next track. The songs transition seamlessly, thanks to a swirly filler beat I put in between songs that shifts and builds to the next. Transitions are when everything could go wrong, and the only part of my set that’s all me. I move to the pulse of music, filling up those empty, hungry parts of the night, of me.