“My earring! I was looking all over for that. You stole it?” She grins up at him.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t really look it.
“Klepto,” I snort. I wonder what else he has hidden away, and if I’m missing anything.
Julian pushes his glasses up his nose. “You do realize crows habitually collect and hoard shiny objects.”
“Everyone knows that,” Ethan says, with a shrug. “So?”
My brother sees an opening and won’t let go. “So, basically, you act like a giant, scavenging bird. Or just a petty thief.”
Silence presses down from the ceiling, and I’m a little concerned that my twin has pushed this volatile boy too hard, but Ethan leans his head back against the wall, stares up at the ceiling, a tiny smile at the corner of his mouth.
“When I was little, it was cool, y’know, to have a bit of treasure in my pocket. Made me feel secure. Like I was one of the rich kids.” But then his smile disappears, and he sits up straight again, tense, like he’s revealed too much.
Faye toys with her earring. “But this is bigger than that. There’s something else here, and you’re a part of it, too.”
“Don’t start with that again. It’s coincidence. And I’m not a part of anything—how would this place know I have a habit of picking up junk?” He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest, like he’s putting distance between us, the spectator watching the freaks.
But the images in my head are flipping fast, movie stills on old-fashioned film, reeling back to the first day here, and a black photo album, the first page open to a seven-pointed star with a strange shadow cast over the points.
I stand, move to the bed, sit down next to Ethan, and lean close. He goes still.
“Liar,” I whisper into his ear, loud enough for the others to hear. I snatch his portfolio album from his open bag. He moves to take it back, but then sets his fists back into his lap, and looks away. I flip the cover to the first image, and trace the silhouette that is not so abstract, now that I know to look.
“It’s the shadow of a bird,” Faye whispers.
I turn two more pages, to the ones he wouldn’t let us see. A winter tree, backlit and skeletal, is covered in fat spring buds, but no, they’re hundreds of blackbirds perching in the branches.
“You lying bastard,” Julian says. He grabs the portfolio, flips the page, and shows Faye and me a two pic spread of crows on a telephone wire. I stand, look over his shoulder as he turns the next page, a face front-on portrait of a raven, its shadow on the wall at a perfect ninety degrees, beak to tail in full profile. The next is another close up of the same bird, one beady blue eye reflecting the sky. “Crows. It’s nothing but crows.” My brother throws the portfolio down where I was just sitting.
Ethan leaps up, the portfolio hugged to his chest like a rescued baby, and looms over my brother. He’s not much taller, but he’s huge, filling the room with his sudden anger. “What’s your problem?”
Jules doesn’t back down. He points to the album, arm at odd angles, like a stuffed straw scarecrow. “You sat here, trying to tell us this is all a coincidence, acting all cool as shit, like you’re some kind of normal in us weirdoes, when you, you—” He’s so furiou
s he’s shaking. “You’re just like us.”
Ethan takes a step back. “No, man, I’m not. I have a few pictures of crows, that’s all. Anders must have placed me in with you guys for that, nothing more.”
Faye whispers an odd syllable into the tension, a bird’s croak, and both boys glance down at her. I grab Julian’s arm, and place my palm on the larger boy’s chest. I’ve never seen my brother this angry, but Ethan could break him in two.
“Why did you hide them, then?” Julian demands of him. “Why didn’t you want us to see?”
“Because I don’t share my shit with the world, okay?” Ethan grabs my wrist, and presses my hand down to my side, and my face heats with the memory of our kiss. He flashes me an electric glance, grabs the camera bag and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
My brother sits back down in his chair. Faye twists the sleeves of her sweater. My hand is still warm from the heat of Ethan’s body. I’d felt his heart beating hard, and my fingers throb with the memory.
*
I spend the evening with Jeremy in a gazebo by the lake. I don’t want to think about crows, or projects or Sonja and her creepy house. I don’t want to feel the rawness of revealing impossible secrets. I let myself get caught up in the roughness of the scratchy stubble on his chin and the way his palms curve around my shoulders. I’m halfway in his lap when he eases me back, fingers lingering on the sides of my breasts.
“Wow,” he breathes. “You are... wow.”
I lean in again but he holds me at bay. I give my best hurt eyes, and bite my bottom lip.
“You trying to get me fired, sweetheart?”
The nickname irritates me. “No, I’m trying to have some fun.”