I walk her to the quad, force a chuckle when she murmurs “Maybe tomorrow?” hot in my ear, and head back to the dorms, all kinds of irritated.
*
Julian is at his desk, muttering at his laptop. He’s got books and notebooks all around him, on the bed and on the floor. He grunts a “Hey.” without looking up.
“Hey.” I keep my tone easy, testing the mood, but his silence seems due to the book he’s absorbed in, rather than our earlier argument.
I change out of my dishwater-soaked shirt, and sit cross-legged on my bed, grabbing the military surplus bag that the pawnshop guy threw in to sweeten the deal when I bought my camera. The yellow envelope from Sonja’s house gets stuck in the strap, and slides out into my lap.
The package has some weight to it, and jingles a little when I shake it. I stare at the writing on the front.
“This is weird,” Julian mutters.
“What is?” I watch the back of his head as I speak, flip the envelope over, coax the self adhesive flap open.
“This book Dr. A. gave us. I’ve seen it before, or at least parts of it.”
“Well, you do read a lot, dude.”
A tangle of silver spills into my hand. It’s one of those bracelets women wear with the miniature things hanging off; Mary has several of them. This one has stars and a little wire nest with pearl eggs, and a half inch cage with a bird swinging inside. The chain is solid, sturdy links of antiqued metal, and in between the charms lay five black birds, with a tiny metal disk attached to each tail. The flat pendants are old, precious metal glowing under tarnish. I’ve seen them before somewhere, or ones like them; they’re etched with jagged letters I can’t read.
The one in the center gleams at me, its symbol an arrow pointing up. I rub my thumb over the surface, and the patina wears away, leaving mirror-shine silver. With no pressure at all, the rune slips from its link, and the arrow winks at me from my palm.
“This is can’t be right,” Julian says.
“What isn’t?” I slide the bracelet back in the envelope, seal it back, and drop it in my bag. The bit of metal goes in my shirt pocket.
My roommate crouches on the floor, and starts dragging milk crates out from under the bed. “S through V, no, G through L, no, her
e we are. A.” He fumbles through notebooks and loose leaf binders, and digs out three.
“Dude, you really have six crates of books under your bed?” I ask him.
“Eight.” He flips one open and thumbs through the pages.
“You need a girlfriend, man. Seriously.”
Julian looks up, startled, then shrugs, and grins. “Nah, they’d cut into reading time.”
He really needs a girlfriend. I turn my camera over in my hands, looking for damage to the body, but nothing is broken. I remove the lens and then dust it and the zoom with the little brush attached to the rubber squeezy bulb that blows air. I sight through both lenses, a wide pan view of the room, books stacked on every flat surface, and then zoom in on Julian’s ear.
No mysterious sofas.
I change the batteries in the camera, take out the memory card, check the camera settings then put the card back in. The shots are all there. No extras.
I pull out my portfolio. I flip through the prints, checking against what, I don’t know, but needing the reassurance that nothing weird had popped up there, either. I lift my camera again, trying to think back, to figure out how I could have seen what was going on a block and a half away. Faye and Memory were already there, at that point. Cherry had grabbed my hand, pulled me after her, excited but fearless—
My vision shifts. A quick shutter view of blond hair, yellow stubble on a sunburned neck, pale stripe where a lanyard sits. But Jeremy is nowhere near our dorm room. He’s in the gazebo, making out with—
“So how long have you noticed them?” Julian’s voice cuts through the chaos in my head.
“Noticed what?”
Memory’s legs? Her skirt wrenched high, light tanned skin draped all over my bed like she belonged there, when I walked into the room? No, even before that, walking along the sidewalk, not on it, on the way to the cafeteria—
“The crows,” her brother says.
Oh. Right.