After an eternity of seconds, heads lifted as if eager for it to be over, and the crowd dissolved. Daniel stood beside me while my classmates took turns telling me how sorry they were, promising to stay in touch after the move. I hadn’t been in school since the day of the accident, but some of them had come to visit me in the hospital. Probably just out of curiosity. No one asked me how it happened, and I was glad because I couldn’t tell them. I still didn’t know.
Squawking pierced the funeral’s hushed atmosphere as hundreds of black birds flew overhead in a rush of beating wings. They settled on a cluster of leafless trees that overlooked the parking lot. Even the trees were wearing black.
I faced my brother. “Didn’t you park under those crows?”
He nodded, and started walking to his car.
“Fabulous,” I said as I followed him. “Now we’re going to have to dodge crap from the whole flock.”
“Murder.”
I stopped. “What?”
Daniel turned around. “It’s called a murder of crows. Not a flock. And yes, we’re going to dodge avian fecal matter, unless you want to go with Mom and Dad?”
I smiled, relieved without knowing why. “Pass.”
“Thought so.”
Daniel waited for me and I was grateful for the escape. I glanced back to make sure my mother wasn’t watching. But she was busy talking to Rachel’s family, whom we’d known for years. It was too easy to forget that my parents were leaving everything behind too; my father’s law practice, my mother’s patients. And Joseph, though only twelve, accepted without much explanation that we were moving and agreed to leave his friends without complaint. When I thought about it, I knew I had won the family lottery. I made a mental note to behave more charitably toward my mother. After all, it wasn’t her fault we were leaving.
It was mine.
EIGHT WEEKS LATER
Miami, Florida
YOU’RE KILLING ME, MARA.”
“Give me a minute.” I squinted at the spider that stood between me and my breakfast banana. She and I were working out an arrangement. “Let me do it, then. We’re going to be late.” Daniel was getting his panties in a bunch at the thought. Mr. Perfect was always punctual.
“No. You’ll kill it.”
“And?”
“And then it will be dead.”
“And?”
“Just imagine it,” I spoke, my eyes never leaving my arachnid opponent. “The spider family bereft of their matriarch. Her spider children waiting in their web, watching for Mother for days on end before they realize she’s been murdered.”
“She?”
“Yes.” I tilted my head at the spider. “Her name is Roxanne.” “Of course it is. Take Roxanne outside before she meets the Op-Ed section of Joseph’s Wall Street Journal.”
I paused. “Why is our brother getting the Wall Street Journal?”
“He thinks it’s funny.”
I smiled. It was. I turned to stare at Roxanne, who had sidestepped an inch or two in response to Daniel’s threat. I held out the paper towel and reached for her, but recoiled involuntarily. For the past ten minutes, I’d been repeating this motion: reaching and withdrawing. I wanted to shepherd Roxanne to freedom, to deliver her from our kitchen and lead her to a land flowing with the blood of myriad flying insects. A land otherwise known as our backyard.
But it seemed I was not up to the task. I was still hungry, though, and wanted my banana. I reached for her again, my hand stuck in midair.
Daniel heaved a melodramatic sigh and stuck a cup in the microwave. He pressed a few buttons and the tray began revolving.
“You shouldn’t stand in front of the microwave.”
Daniel ignored me.
“You could get a brain tumor.”
“Is that a fact?” he asked.
“Do you want to find out?”
Daniel examined my hand, still suspended between my body and Roxanne’s, paralyzed. “Your level of neuroses will only find love in a made-for-TV movie.”
“Perhaps, but I’ll be tumorless. Don’t you want to be tumorless, Daniel?”
He reached into the pantry and withdrew a cereal bar. “Here,” he said, and tossed it at me, but lately I was useless before noon. It fell with a thud on the countertop beside me. Roxanne scurried away, and I lost track of her.
Daniel grabbed his keys and sauntered toward the front door. I followed him into the blinding sunlight, breakfastless.
“C’mon,” he said with false cheer. “Don’t tell me you aren’t psyched beyond belief for our first day of school.” He dodged the tiny lizards that scurried across the slate walkway of our new house. “Again.”
“I wonder if it’s snowing in Laurelton right now?”
“Probably. That, I won’t miss.”
Just when I thought it wasn’t possible to get any hotter, the interior of Daniel’s Civic proved me wrong. I choked on the heat and motioned for Daniel to open the window while I sputtered.
He looked at me strangely.
“What?”
“It’s not that hot.”
“I’m dying. You’re not dying?”
“No … it’s like seventy-two degrees.”
“Guess I’m not used to it yet,” I said. We’d moved to Florida only a few weeks ago, but I wouldn’t recognize my old life in a lineup. I hated this place.