Xerxes rustles his gray wings and edges sideways along Brie’s shoulder, long red tail feathers twitching. “Squawk! Damn it, Char. Damn it, Char. Screw you, Bill. Screw you. Screw you. Squaaaawk!”
She winces. “He was.” Reaching into the front pocket of her vintage overalls, she pulls out a sunflower seed. Xerxes nibbles it gently. “I liberated him last month. I told you, remember?”
“I—” I swallow hard. Did she tell me? I can’t remember. Before the accident, my memory was airtight. I could rattle off case law like LexisNexis and recite my grocery list by heart. Now, if I don’t write something down—tasks, appointments, reminders, names—it poofs out of my head like a cloud of steam wafting from a hot shower. I blame Devin. Maybe if he wasn’t taking up space where he doesn’t belong, my brain could function normally again.
I shove my short-term memory issues out of my mind before my stomach twists itself into knots.
“You know what?” Brie smacks her forehead, her voice overly bright. “I didn’t tell you. I was going to, then some work stuff came up and it slipped my mind. I’m so sorry, that’s my bad.” She shifts her weight from one sneakered foot to the other.
I sigh. “You definitely told me, didn’t you?”
She opens her mouth then freezes, her eyes flicking left and right. Brie’s never been a good liar.
“Pi,” I invoke.
When we were twelve, we made a pinky promise to always tell each other the truth. “But how do I know if you really want to know the truth?” Brie had asked. “Like sometimes my mom asks my dad how she looks, and even if she looks ‘meh’ she wants him to tell her she looks good.”
“What about a code word?” I had suggested.
“Yes! How about ‘pi’？”
“Like, apple or blueberry? Oooh I love blueberry pie. Or is it short for ‘pinky promise?’？”
“I was thinking more like the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. Pi is always 3.14. It’s constant. You can’t change it—just like you can’t change the truth.” Brie’s always been brilliant, with a head for math. No wonder she grew up to be a literal rocket scientist.
“That’s perfect,” I’d said. “So if one of us says ‘pi,’ the other one has to tell the truth, no matter what?”
No matter what.
Brie’s shoulders slump and Xerxes flaps his wings in indignation at being jostled. “I told you about Xerxes.”
“More than once?”
Grimacing, she nods.
“Most recently?”
“Last week.”
I blow out a long breath. “Damn it.”
“If you’re not okay with Xerxes being here, I can take him back. I know you two have had your… differences.”
I snort. “Pi.”
“Okay. He hates your guts and would love to peck out your liver while you sleep.”
“Damn, Brie. I didn’t know he hated me that much!”
“Oh, it’s bad.”
We both laugh, but the mirth quickly fades from her face. “Seriously though, he doesn’t have to stay. I can give him back to Charlotte. He’s technically hers, after all.”
Anchoring the box on my hip, I squeeze her forearm, careful to stay a healthy distance away from Xerxes’s beady glare and razor-sharp beak. “He stays.” Brie’s always loved that bird with her whole heart. I would never send him packing, let alone back to Brie’s toxic parents. I make a mental note to stock up on Band-Aids the next time I’m at the drugstore. Which means I’ll probably forget. I suppress a groan.
Too bad I can’t text Devin and ask him to remind me. Nope, nope, not going there, no way. I shove any thoughts of Devin down deep until they’re out of sight. Behind us, the movers’ heavy footsteps thud up the stairs as they carry my full-sized mattress to my bedroom.
“Cassidy!” my mom calls from the living room.
“Yeah, Mom?” I shout back.
“Can you come here and look at this?”
“See? This is what I’m talking about. Rampage,” says Brie.
Brie and I weave through the front dining room. My arms are beginning to ache, so I set the box on the edge of the table. Inside the living room, light filters through the bay widows, illuminating a cascade of dust motes. Mom is standing in front of the hand-carved fireplace, arms crossed over an open wool blazer while my twin six-year-old half brothers chase each other around the overstuffed couch.