Crow Flight

by Susan Cunningham

  It was a beautiful day. The air was warm, the city fresh and green. As she walked, she thought about all that had happened in the weeks since Felix had come to her house. How she hadn’t even tried to look at the data. How instead, she had gone back inside and told her parents she thought of something that might help the police, then they called Agent Finney. How, when he had come over, she told him she remembered Felix had left a few crow-anklets at her house—examples of what the birds wore when they were training—and that the drives might have important information. Or they might have nothing. She didn’t know.

  It had been a small lie, but she wasn’t testifying in court, and if they needed to know the truth, she’d tell them. Anyway, she hadn’t known whether the data would reveal anything. But Felix asked her to do it. And she still trusted him.

  It turned out she had good reason to trust him: there was actual data on the drives, which had been illegally downloaded from InTech servers during times the four crows were there. Virtual proof that Mr. Gartner had used the crows as spies. And the next day when the police had gone to the Gartners’ house for more, Felix had shown them a whole case full.

  As the days passed, it had become the story of the year. The CEO of Odin stealing trade secrets from InTech by spying with crows. Newspapers slammed the story on their front pages, and the online newsfeeds buzzed with the development. How the crows had been trained for years. How Mr. Gartner had someone bribe a janitor to leave a blue bell outside the right windows at first so the crows would know where to go.

  Soon there was a settlement out of court. In a matter of weeks, Grant Gartner was in prison. More of a confined estate for billionaires. But still, he was there. For a long time.

  Hannah, always ready to help, had found an old friend who went to Felix’s old private school and got all the details that weren’t in the papers. Felix’s mom was officially at home, no trips in the near future. They’d probably lose the big estate, but Mrs. Gartner had her own money tucked away somewhere, so they’d be okay. And they got to keep the crows. Felix could still work with them. He just had to meet with government scientists and show them what the crows could do. The government might even start its own corvid training program.

  The charges against Gin for getting the Love Fractal data hadn’t been dropped, but they were lessened—with her good track record, she got by with a stint of community service. She had to help in elementary school computer labs for six months. Lucas’s involvement, luckily, had never come up. Gin was barred from sharing Love Fractal with anyone else, at least with the downloaded high school data. But that didn’t matter, because interest in Love Fractal had grown so quickly that students all over the country were sending her their information to use. By the end of the summer, she might have a functional site that worked for high schoolers across the entire US. Even Lucas was talking about finally trying it out.

  Gin had kept her summer internship at Georgetown, but even with another glowing recommendation from Ms. Sandlin, the officials at Harvard had rescinded her acceptance into the university. The official letter of un-acceptance had said, Harvard has the highest of expectations for all its students, and unfortunately, with the recent developments, we are not able to continue to extend our offer of acceptance. But there were other options—the University of Virginia had shown some interest, and even MIT was reviewing her circumstances. While Gin was disappointed, she had decided there was more to life than which college she went to.

  Anyway, her internship was starting right after graduation. Her mom was home. And even Chloe planned to come back for a few weeks that summer.

  Everything, really, was fine.

  Except for the matter of Felix.

  She hadn’t heard from him, not since the night he dropped off the trackers. And she missed him. A small part of her hoped that if he had risked everything to help her, maybe he missed her too.

  But there was nothing she could do. She didn’t even have a way to get in touch with him. His phone was always off, his voicemail still full. And the URL they had set up for messaging each other had been taken down. The legal proceedings were all over—there was nothing keeping them apart now. But he hadn’t even tried to reach out.

  She paused—the mile-long walk had gone by faster than she expected—and then started up the white steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She skirted around the edge of the statue and stood in a corner off to the side, out of the way of photo-snapping tourists. There were just a few groups of people there; after they had taken the necessary shots and walked around the sitting Lincoln once or twice, they left, likely headed on to the next site.

  For a moment, Gin was alone.

  She looked up at Lincoln, his face frozen in his somber expression, and sat down on the top step, staring vaguely out into the city. There was a boy walking along the lawn below—loose jeans and a yellow t-shirt and shaggy hair. She leaned forward, holding her breath, hoping it was Felix.

  But when the boy turned, she could clearly see it wasn’t him.

  She sat on the marble steps for ten minutes, until another group of tourists arrived—a family, the young kids giggling as they bounded up the stairs. And she started down, knowing that the best thing to do—really, the only thing to do—was to keeping moving forward. And maybe then, she’d eventually be able to move on.

  // Forty-Nine

  The sun was bright outside, but Gin was sitting in class, watching the clock. Seventh period was nearly over, which meant she was almost done. Her last few minutes in the public school system.

  Mr. Ryan’s closing quote—the last bit of wisdom etched out in yellow chalk that Gin might ever receive—was stuck in her mind: There is no time; only moment. Like air, spirit, freedom. Moment is reality.

  It wasn’t attributed to anyone, and she wondered if Mr. Ryan had made it up. Before they’d left class, he had erased it, the words swept into nothing more than a light yellow smudge. Then he had told them that they now carried the knowledge from that year’s studies within them.

  The final bell rang, and Gin stepped outside into the sticky air, the heat heavy over the black pavement of the parking lot. It all felt like a dream.

  So when she saw it—the beat up 4Runner parked right in front of school—she thought her mind was making it up. She looked away, then back. No, it was real. Felix was there.

  Her breath caught in her throat, and her whole body filled with a desire she hadn’t let herself feel for weeks.

  She reasoned with herself—maybe he was there to get a transcript or clean out his locker. She stared straight ahead, letting her feet move her forward. When she was a few yards away, she couldn’t help giving him one quick glance.

  As soon as their eyes met, he raised a hand. A tentative greeting. He half-winced, as if to say that he knew it’d be perfectly acceptable if she gave him the finger and kept going. But of course, she couldn’t do that. Because in that moment, everything melted. The line of yellow buses. The cars zooming out of the parking lot. The students walking and laughing. The glaring sun. It all pooled into a puddle and disappeared. And all there was, was Felix.

  Her hand was lifting up, waving back, doing it all without the conscious agreement of her brain. There was no option but to walk over to his car. Except that suddenly, she couldn’t make her legs move. She felt frozen. As though her feet were cemented to the sidewalk. As though she’d stay there, in front of her now-former high school, for the rest of her life.

  But then he was opening his car door. And coming towards her. He wore old jeans, a green t-shirt that made his bright eyes brighter, and his leather flip-flops—the ones that seemed sewn to his feet. The ones that, when he finally did kick them off, would be stained with sweat and imprinted with his foot. As though he had walked for hundreds of miles in them, which he probably had.

  She had tried to sweep him from her heart, to move those memories out—how he looked and felt and smelled. But now, with him right there, she realized she had merely stuffed them all ba
ck in some dusty folds of her brain.

  She knew he’d hop up on the curb; a second later, he did. She knew he’d give her one of his smiles. Though she braced herself for it, as soon as his lips turned up, she felt her heart beat impossibly fast.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She wanted to reach out, pull his body towards her own, lean into him, and kiss him. But for all she knew, he was here to make sure everything between them was officially and finally broken off. From the corner of her eye, she saw the first bus in the line rev up and push forward in a lurch. A heavy load. How her heart felt.

  “Hey,” she finally answered, the word coming out as a whispery greeting.

  “So.” He stepped closer.

  His presence flooded through her. Like every bit of her skin was opening. There was a scientific explanation for it—dilation, vasoconstriction, something—but in that moment, she had no idea what it was.

  “So,” she answered. Their words hung there in the air, poor excuses for all they needed to say.

  He ran a hand through his hair and bit his lip, and she saw a pinkness glowing from under his tan skin. “This is harder than I thought,” he said, almost to himself.

  She looked down at the sidewalk. Her stomach churned, and a sense of worry took root. Maybe the best thing to do, maybe the only thing to do, was to leave.

  Gin took a breath, preparing to hear him tell her goodbye, when he spoke. “Want to go for a ride?” He sounded hopeful.

  Gin could say that going for a ride wouldn’t do either of them any good. That it wasn’t what she needed. That it could set her back weeks, months, which was not okay—especially with her internship and, hopefully, college just around the corner.

  But instead, she said, “Okay.” And then she was following him, staring at the back of his neck, his tan skin, his dark beaded necklace.

  They drove out of the parking lot, fast. The air rushed through the open windows; the 4Runner’s old shocks bounced and heaved. Nothing about the car was like Felix’s wealthy life, but it all felt like him.

  She let her arm hang out the window, warmed in the sun, and leaned back, feeling her body relax. She closed her eyes and decided that no matter what, she could have this one moment.

  “River sound good?” he asked, pulling onto the main street and flying through a series of green lights.

  “Sure.”

  And that was all either of them said for the entire drive. There were no polite conversations, no formalities, no observations. As though neither one of them wanted to broach what needed to be said.

  Soon, they were parking in the lot along the river’s bank. The Potomac rushed before them, wide and swollen and murky and deep. No one else was around. As if Felix had reserved the whole place in advance.

  They walked to the edge and sat down on the grassy bank, next to each other but not close enough to touch. And Gin remembered the time they had met there. When everything around was dying, getting ready for winter. And now, it had all shifted, turned back to a lush green, offset by the blue sky and bright sun and sparkling water.

  He leaned back on his hands and turned towards her, squinting in the light.

  “Gin.” He was suddenly serious. “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for months. I just didn’t know how. And my dad, of course, had said I was never allowed to see you again. And it seemed right at the time. Only, I didn’t know how I’d feel—I mean, really feel.” He sighed, deep, and shook his head. “This is way harder than I thought.”

  Gin felt it sink through her. He was going to officially break up with her. Maybe he felt guilty for pulling her through all of it, and this was his opportunity to lessen his guilt. Make sure they left on good terms.

  The realization rolled through her, building until it filled up her chest, and she was suddenly angry. She didn’t know why she had agreed to ride out with him. To waste a perfectly good afternoon. She didn’t need this—to hear all the reasons why whatever they had no longer existed.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was clear and matter-of-fact. “You don’t need to do this.” She stood up, fast.

  The shine from the water was suddenly too harsh, the sun too bright, and she wished it was overcast—muggy and gray and miserable. Or rainy. Maybe a storm would blow in fast, and the clouds would pile up and release fat drops of water, plinking on the river and staining the concrete.

  She pushed her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why don’t you just take me back to school. I’ve got work to do.” She turned and started walking away, back to the car.

  “No—Gin. Wait!”

  She felt his hand on her elbow, pulling her back around. “What, Felix? You’ve already broken up with me by the simple fact of disappearing. You don’t need to make it more than what it already is. And I can’t say I blame you. What I did, looking into that data, finding that stuff out—how could you not break up with me? If we were ever dating in the first place.”

  He wasn’t letting go of her arm. She was already planning to get a taxi to drive her back home, when confusion crossed his face, followed by a flash of understanding. He eased his grip on her arm, but still didn’t let go. Instead, he slid his hand down, until he was holding her hand, and pulled her towards him. Suddenly, it was all she could do to keep breathing.

  “Wait,” he said. “You think I’m breaking up with you? I mean, probably it seemed like I already did that by leaving and all, but that’s what you think I’m trying to tell you right now? Why I came to school to pick you up and bring you out here?”

  A breeze kicked up, and the waves splashed the damp, fishy smell of river water toward them. “I guess. I don’t know.”

  Felix sighed, deep and long.

  “Gin.” His voice was soft. “I brought you here to tell you that I’m sorry. Really, really sorry. For everything that happened.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “You’re sorry? That’s why we’re here?”

  Felix stepped closer, took her other hand in his, and stood facing her. His hands felt so good, so familiar. He leaned closer, his face near hers, and it felt like he might kiss her. But instead, he smiled.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. So I could say sorry for being such a jerk. And so, hopefully, you’d accept my apology?” His eyebrows furrowed up, and the sun glinted in his eyes, and his lips—those lips—seemed to dance.

  She breathed him in, let the feeling of him rush through her. “Okay,” she said quietly, squeezing his hands.

  “Okay?” He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head forward, making sure.

  It settled in her, steadied her. Of course she would forgive him. “Yes. Definitely. I forgive you.”

  Felix breathed out and closed his eyes. Then he pulled her closer, so her body was almost against his. Their t-shirts just touched. The space between them was so small, inches, centimeters, it felt like the air itself would spark into a thousand electrical pulses. He took her hands and wrapped them around his waist, pulling them to either side of his hips, and onto the small of his back. Then he wove his hands around her, pressing firmly so her body was touching his.

  Touching. Their energy and muscle and heat, pressed together, mingling. And it was better than she had remembered.

  There was a flash of doubt, like a cloud across her mind. Love Fractal had never paired her with Felix. Decider had never said to trust him. Her tools of logic hadn’t chosen him.

  Unless, her brain reasoned—or maybe this time it was her heart talking—maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe logic would never work with Felix. Maybe whatever they had was untouchable, unexplainable by logic.

  Maybe Mr. Ryan was right. That there was more than just the material world. Something beyond what could be seen and touched.

  She breathed the idea in, let it sit there, steady. Looked up at him, his lips so close to her own.

  “How are the crows?”

  He smiled. “They’re okay. They miss you. I think
they’d like to see you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. They told me so the other day.”

  She laughed. “Felix, really.”

  “They did. Catherine gave this long croo-ack, croo-ack, then flew right to the spot where you and I sat that first night, and hopped three times. She was telling me she wanted you to come back.”

  Gin was laughing so hard her body was shaking, but he didn’t loosen his grip.

  “Oh,” she said when she finally caught her breath. “I’m sorry about everything.”

  He touched his forehead to hers. “You didn’t do anything wrong. My father did. But you didn’t. So I wanted to bring you here to say sorry. And also . . .”

  “And also what?”

  He closed his eyes for a second. A lone cloud crossed in front of the sun and cast a shadow over them, cooling the air. Two seagulls flew above, and a sailboat coasted along in the distance.

  “Here’s the thing. I know I’m not in your results.”

  “In my what?”

  “Your results. For Love Fractal. Or probably all the other logical frameworks you’ve built. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing, by the way, to have all of those models to figure out what to do. I mean, when you think about it, you’ve done pretty well so far.”

  “Felix, wait. It’s different now. I was just thinking about this. Literally. A second ago. I—”

  “No,” he said. “Just let me finish. So I’m not in your models, right? Which some would say is a bad thing. And maybe it is. I’m not going to make that decision for you. But maybe it’s not so bad. I mean, how often are models right? And so, maybe, the fact that I’m not in there means we have something even bigger. Something so big, it’s more than our brains—more than a bunch of neurons firing, the sort of thing a computer can do. Maybe it’s more like our souls are coming into the equation. Because, I don’t know about you, but I can’t change how I feel about you. It’s here. And, to be honest, it feels more real than anything else.”