Our missing hearts, he types, and the page stills for a moment. No results. This time, no matter how many times he clicks, it won’t reset.
Mrs. Pollard, he says, approaching the desk. I think my computer froze.
Don’t worry, dear, she says, we’ll fix it. She rises and follows him back to the terminal, but when she sees his screen, the search at the top, something in her face shifts. A tenseness in her that Bird can feel even over his shoulder.
Noah, she says after a moment. You’re twelve?
Bird nods.
Mrs. Pollard squats down beside his chair so they are eye to eye.
Noah, she says. This country is founded on the belief that every person gets to decide how to live his own life. You know that, right?
To Bird, this seems like one of the things adults say that do not require answers, and he says nothing.
Noah, Mrs. Pollard says again, and the way she keeps saying his name—which is not his name, of course—makes him clench his teeth so tightly they squeak. Noah, honey, listen to me, please. In this country we believe that every generation can make better choices than the one that came before. Right? Everyone gets the same chance to prove themselves, to show us who they are. We don’t hold the mistakes of parents against their children.
She looks at him through bright, anxious eyes.
Everyone has a choice, Noah, about whether they’re going to make the same mistakes as the people who came before them, or whether they’re going to take a different path. A better path. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Bird nods, though he’s fairly sure he doesn’t.
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.