Our Missing Hearts (10)

I’m saying this for your own good, Noah, I really am, Mrs. Pollard says. Her voice softens. You’re a good kid and I don’t want anything to happen to you and this is what I’d tell Jenna and Josh, truly. Don’t make trouble. Just—do your best and follow the rules. Don’t stir things up. For your dad’s sake, if not your own.

She rises to her feet, and Bird understands that they’re finished here.

Thank you, he manages to say.

Mrs. Pollard nods, satisfied.

If you decide on a cat, be sure to find a good breeder, she says as he heads into the hall. Adopting a stray—who knows what you’ll get.



* * *



? ? ?

A waste of time, he thinks. All afternoon, through English and math, he berates himself. On top of it all, his lunch is still in his bag, uneaten, and his stomach rumbles. In social studies, his mind wanders and the teacher calls him sharply to attention.

Mr. Gardner, he says. I would think you, of all people, would want to pay attention to this.

With a blunt nub of chalk he taps the board, leaving white flecks beneath the letters: WHAT IS SEDITION?

Across the aisle Carolyn Moss and Kat Angelini glance at him sideways, and when the teacher turns back to the chalkboard, Andy Moore throws a ball of wadded-up paper at Bird’s head. What does it matter, Bird thinks. Whatever this cat story is, it has nothing to do with him, nothing useful or purposeful. Just a story, like everything his mother had told him. A pointless fairy tale. If he even remembers right, if there was even a story like that at all.



* * *



? ? ?

He’s on his way home when he sees it. First the crowd, then a cluster of navy uniforms in the center of the Common—then a second later, all he can see are the trees. Red, red, red, from roots to branches, as if they’ve been dangled and dipped. The color of cardinals, of traffic signs, of cherry lollipops. Three maples standing close, arms outstretched. And strung between their branches, woven between the dying leaves: a huge red web, hanging in the air like a haze of blood.

He’s supposed to walk straight home, to stay on the route his father has prescribed: cutting across the wide courtyard between the university’s lab buildings, then through the college yard with its red brick dorms. Staying off the streets as much as possible, staying on university land as much as he can. It’s safer, his father insists. When he was younger, he’d walked Bird to and from school every day. Don’t try to take shortcuts, Noah, his father always says, just listen to me. Promise me, he’d said, when Bird began walking to school alone, and Bird had promised.

Now Bird breaks his word. He darts across the street to the Common, where a small group of onlookers has gathered.

From here he can see it more clearly. What he’d thought was red paint is yarn, a giant red doily fitted round each tree, all the way up the branches in a tight red glove. The web, too, is yarn, chains of red stretching twig to twig, crisscrossing, thickening in some places to clots, thinning in others to a single thread. Knotted in the strands, like snared insects: knit dolls the size of his finger, brown and tan and beige, fringes of dark yarn framing their faces. Around him passersby whisper and point, and Bird edges closer, into the crowd.

It frightens him, this thing. A monster’s knitting. A scarlet tangle. It makes him feel small and vulnerable and exposed. But it fascinates him too, pulling him closer. The way a snake holds you with its eyes even as it draws back to strike.

A group of police officers clusters around the trees in intense conversation, prodding the yarn with their fingers. Discussing the best way to take it all down. It’s too late: already passersby are slipping phones from pockets and bags, quietly snapping photos without breaking stride. They will be texted and posted everywhere soon. Beneath the trees, the officers circle the trunks, pistols dangling at their hips. One of them pushes his visor back up over his head; another sets his plexiglass shield down on the grass. They are equipped for violence, but not for this.

Clear out, folks, one of the policemen booms, stepping between the crowd and the trees as if he can hide this strange spectacle with his body. He draws his nightstick, thwaps it against one palm. Active crime scene, here. Move along, all of you. This is an unlawful gathering.

Overhead, the breeze flutters and the dolls bob and sway. Bird gazes up at them, the dark shapes they make against the innocent blue sky. Around him, the onlookers drift obediently away, the crowd thinning, and it is then that he spots it, stenciled on the pavement in white: how many more missing hearts will they take? Beside it a red blotch—no, a heart.

He knows it is improbable—impossible—but he looks anyway. Over his shoulder, all around him, as if she might be lurking behind a tree or a bush. Hoping for her face in the shadows. But of course, there’s no one there.

Let’s go, son, the policeman says to him, and Bird realizes the crowd has dispersed, that he’s the only one left. He ducks his head—sorry—and retreats, and the policeman turns back to his fellow officers. Cruisers, lights flashing, block the street at either end, directing traffic away. Cordoning off the park.

Bird crosses the street but loiters, watching surreptitiously from behind a parked car. Had his mother knitted? He doesn’t think so. Anyway, surely one person could not have done this alone: the yarn, the web, the dolls wobbling like overripe fruit, all knitted into place, as if they’ve sprung fungus-like from the tree itself. How did they put this in place, he wonders, even as he is unsure who they might be. Through the windows of the car he can see the policemen debating how to handle this unusual situation. One of them worms his fingers into the web and yanks, and a thin branch snaps with a crack like a gunshot. A single long loop of yarn billows down, unraveling inch by inch. Something inside Bird cracks and unravels too, at the sight of something so delicate and intricate, destroyed. The dolls tremble, trapped in their red net. His skin feels too small for his thoughts.