by Sarina Dorie
“Whoa! Cool,” I said.
I threw my arms around my sister’s neck and hugged her. “Thank you! I love it!”
She lifted me off my feet with one of her big sister hugs. “I’m glad you like it.” She kissed the top of my head.
“I won’t ever take it off,” I promised. “I want to get a matching one for you.”
Our parents walked behind us as Missy showed me where the booth was. She picked out a bracelet with her school colors: red and white. My school colors come September. Just thinking about high school filled me with dread.
Dad went up to the artist to pay with me since he was the one holding my allowance.
“Free samples,” a creaky voice said behind me.
A hunched-over old woman held a basket of gingerbread men and women. She was dressed in a mixture of mismatched patterns. Her long nose and pointed chin reminded me of the illustrations of Baba Yaga from Mom’s fairytale book. She held a cookie out to Missy.
Mom swatted at Missy’s hand as if she was still six. I would have died if she’d done that to me.
“We don’t know what’s in those cookies,” Mom whispered, none too quietly. “They might have drugs in them.”
“Mom!” Missy said. “You’re being rude. It’s just a cookie.”
“If you’re hungry, we’ll get you girls real food.” Mom turned away from the woman. “Dessert after.”
Dad shook with silent laughter. At least someone was enjoying this.
The old woman grinned a toothless smile. “That’s right, dearie. Never accept food from strangers.” The hint of an accent flavored her creaky voice, though I couldn’t place it. “But we aren’t strangers, are we, Abigail?”
She knew my mom’s name? Mom tugged Missy around a flock of teens, joining Dad and me.
“Who was that?” Dad asked.
Mom’s spine was stiff, her tone brisk. “No one.”
“Abby, how’d she know your name?”
Mom made a motion with her hand that reminded me of sign language, only she did it behind her back like she didn’t want anyone to see. The air smelled green, like her herb garden. “Who’s hungry for lunch?”
Dad’s eyes became unfocused, and he stopped asking questions. “I’m hungry,” he said.
The question that had been on my own lips melted away. I couldn’t remember what I’d been thinking about a moment before. Mom looked tired. Missy pouted until I brought her the friendship bracelet and tied it on her wrist.
Missy leaned in conspiratorially. “The ’rental units are driving me crazy.”
I giggled. “Yeah, I know. Me too.”
We stopped at a food booth for lunch and ate Thai food. Mom bought us coconut ice cream topped with fruit for dessert. I sat next to Missy, and she shared a piece of mango in her ice cream with me. My sister was the best. This was the best day ever, and I got to share it with my best friend. I was so happy, I couldn’t imagine any moment in my life being better than this.
Missy and I held hands during the acrobatics show at the Daredevil Palace Vaudeville Stage, our bracelets next to each other on our arms.
“I don’t feel like I’m ready to go to high school.” I said.
“How can you not be ready?” Missy tore her gaze from the juggler riding the unicycle on the stage. “It’ll be great. We’ll be at the same school. We can eat lunch together.”
“What if I don’t fit in?”
She bumped my shoulder playfully with hers. “You can hang out with me, but you’re going to have to try to fit in. Watch some television shows high schoolers like. And don’t say you already do. No one watches Doctor Who or the X-Files or Buffy. Those shows are too old. And they’re kind of, well, people think they’re nerdy.”
I made a face at her. Dad and I liked to watch those shows together. Someone a few rows ahead of us lit up a stinky cigarette. I tried not to choke. Missy waved the smoke away. It finally clicked.
I nudged Missy. “Is this what marijuana smells like? I always thought that was skunk.”
“That’s because you believe everything Mom tells you.” She tore her gaze away from the juggling. “That smell on Beavercreek Road is skunk. In the city, it isn’t. I heard Dad tell Mom, out here in Eugene you can’t walk a block without getting a whiff of someone smoking pot.”
I’d had no idea. We lived in a nice neighborhood with half an acre of yard between us and our neighbors. People where we lived in Oregon City didn’t do this kind of thing. At least I didn’t think they did.
How could my parents have kept me in the dark about this? What would I do if I didn’t have Missy around to explain the world to me?
Missy went back to watching the juggling. It was silly and fun, and I wanted to enjoy it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about September and the start of school.
I swallowed, afraid to voice the depths of my fears. “What if there are bullies? What if Jonathan happens again?” I glanced at our parents. Dad was engrossed in the show. Mom watched a blackbird in one of the trees.
“What about that loser?” Missy flicked her long hair over her shoulder. “He moved away.”
Jonathan talked about a show called South Park that we weren’t allowed to watch. He said redheads didn’t have souls. Kids who normally didn’t talk to me suddenly wanted to “play with me” on National Kick a Ginger Day. He’d convinced five different kids in the seventh grade to kick me as I’d been waiting for the bus. Missy had punched him after school the next day and told him it was National Punch a Moron in the Face Day.
“This holiday is going to reoccur regularly if you ever do that to my sister again, poopbrain,” she’d threatened.
Missy was petite like me, but that was where the resemblance ended. She was quick and coordinated, an asset to the high school cheer team. More importantly, she wasn’t afraid to hit boys bigger than she was. I wished I could be as brave and tough as my sister.
Missy pulled out her phone from her back pocket. It showed there was no service, and she put it away. “If someone does that to you again and I’m not around, you’re going to have to tell a teacher. Or tell Mom or Dad.”
I nodded. The idea of confessing to a grownup that the other kids thought I didn’t have a soul was too humiliating.
Missy looked away from the acrobats on the stage and circled her arm protectively around my shoulder. “And if you can’t do that, tell me. I’ll take care of anyone who picks on you.” She looped a finger under my friendship bracelet and spun it on my wrist.
Warmth spread through my chest. My vision wavered as tears filled my eyes. I was lucky to have a sister who was so good to me.
With her close by, I felt safe and protected. She kept spinning the bracelet. The air smelled like waterfalls and fresh spring water, perfumes out of place in a dry wooded area. With each turn, I felt more of her words sink in, more of their meaning embracing me. She would never let anyone or anything hurt me. That bracelet felt like a promise—or something stronger.
It felt like magic.
“You’re my sister, and we’ll always be best friends,” Missy said.
For the briefest second, I thought I could see her words sparkle out of her mouth and spiral around my arm, tingling where the bracelet met my skin. I blinked and the vision melted away.
Halfway through the show, Dad stood to go use the restroom. “Anyone need to come with me for a potty break?”
“Dad? Do you have to talk to us like we’re five?” Missy asked.
“Pretty much,” he said.
Missy and Dad left together. Mom and I remained at the show. Mom kept glancing at the crows in the boughs of the trees. They watched us, heads cocked. I knew Mom didn’t like blackbirds. She erected a scarecrow every spring and threw rocks at the ravens if she found them pecking her tomatoes. She said she’d adopted our cat specifically to keep the birds away from the garden, but we weren’t at home right now. There was no reason to dislike these birds so much. Even so, she kept gl
ancing at them nervously.
Twenty minutes later, the performance ended. Dad and Missy still hadn’t come back. Mom examined the map. The bathrooms weren’t that far away.
We walked down the dusty path and shuffled through the crowd until we found the row of Porta Potties.
Dad stood outside of one of the units, knocking on the door. “Missy?” From his concerned expression, I could tell something was wrong.
A lady in a tutu came out, scowling at him.
“Have you seen this girl?” Dad asked, holding up the camera to show the woman a photo.
Dad’s face was red, and he was sweating buckets. He knocked on the door of the portable toilet next to the first one. “Missy?” he shouted. He even used her real name. “Melissa?”
Mom rushed forward, tugging me with her. “What’s going on? Where’s Missy?”
“I saw her go in that one,” Dad pointed to the second door. “I went in the next bathroom that opened up. I was only in there for a minute. I was sure I’d be out before her.”
Mom turned around, scanning the crowd. A blackbird glided through the clear blue sky and landed on a leafy limb above us. On the ground next to the garbage can something caught the light. I stepped forward and picked it up. It was a cell phone.
“This is Missy’s,” I said. Why she would have thrown it away, I couldn’t imagine.
“That could be anyone’s phone,” Mom said, dismissing me with a glance and asking Dad more questions.
I pulled up the list of recent phone numbers. It included her friends and our home phone. I waved it in front of Mom’s face, but she ignored me. This was important. Missy didn’t go anywhere without her phone. Something terrible must have happened to her.
“She was supposed to wait for me.” Dad’s voice came out choked. “Do you think she went back to the stage? Could she have gotten lost?”
My heart thundered. My sister couldn’t be missing. This was my worst fear come true. I couldn’t have felt more lost if I’d been the one alone.
Mom shook out the map. “We told her to find someone who works here to walk her to the entrance if she got lost.”
That was right. Missy was smart. I didn’t understand how she’d gotten separated from Dad, but she wouldn’t panic.
“Yes!” Dad said. “That’s where she’ll go. We need to find a volunteer. They have walkie talkies.”
Since there was no cell service out here, that was the best bet.
Mom nodded. “Take Clarissa to the entrance. Don’t let her out of your sight.” She glanced at the blackbird in the tree, eyes narrowing. “Find someone who works here and report Missy as missing. I’ll go back to the stage and see if she’s there. I’ll find a volunteer in this area.”
“No, you take Clarissa,” Dad said. “I should stick around in case she comes back. I’m easier to see in a crowd.”
A lady in a black dress and a collar made of black feathers perched on one of the wooden fences on the path to the vaudeville stage. She balanced on the fence with accurate imitations of bird’s feet. Mom’s gaze locked on her.
She looked like that lady who had photobombed our snapshot earlier.
“Go. Now,” Mom said in a tone that left no room for argument.
Dad opened his mouth like he was about to object, but Mom stomped off. He took my hand. I glanced over my shoulder. Mom headed toward the lady sitting on the fence. A group of young men, all dressed in pink and playing drums, whooped and hollered, heading toward us. Dad tugged me to the side of the path so we could get past them. I kept watching my mom.
“What have you done with my daughter?” Mom demanded.
The woman’s voice was raspy, most of her words drowned out by the crowd, the pink marching band, and the music coming from a nearby stage. I focused on her lips, imagining my ear was next to her mouth. A foreign warmth tingled through me, and her words became clear.
“We haven’t done anything to anyone,” the woman said. “We aren’t allowed to collect lost souls until after dark.”
I tugged on Dad’s hand. “Who is Mom talking to? Look.”
Dad glanced over his shoulder and promptly collided with someone in front of him. He apologized to a man dressed as a robot, still not looking at Mom. He showed the man a photo of Missy on his camera, asking if he’d seen her.
The bird woman lifted one of her feet and pointed to me. Shivers ran down my spine. The lady was a real bird. Or some kind of werebird.
Mom spoke to the bird woman. “She is not a lost soul. She’s in my care.”
Dad tugged me along the path, completely oblivious. “Hurry up, sport.”
“No, Dad, look!” I said, pointing.
“Clarissa, I don’t have time for this. I need you to hurry.”
Mom pointed accusingly at the woman, her words lost in the rising beat of drumming.
“Dad!” I ground my feet into the dirt and forced him to stop. “Look. Right now.”
He turned, but a parade of people, all dressed in pink, ran between us and Mom, singing and playing drums. They cut Mom off from view. When they passed, Mom was gone. So was the lady.
Dad hustled me toward the nearest first aid station. We found a staff member with a walkie talkie.
“My daughter is missing,” Dad explained, the panic returning to his voice. “Have you seen my daughter? Have any teenagers come here and reported themselves as missing?”
“No, I’m sorry, no one has.” The man wore a volunteer shirt. “Can you tell me what she looks like?”
“She’s sixteen and blonde. We’re wearing matching shirts.” Dad held up his camera. “I have photos of her. Do you want to take my camera? Will that help?”
The man scrolled through the photos and asked questions. He wrote down a description and reported her as missing on his walkie talkie.
A blackbird watched us from a tree, a gleam in its eyes. Soon another bird landed next to the first. It tilted its head to the side. A third one drifted down to the branch. All three followed us with their gaze as the volunteer walked us to a gate in the wooden fence along the path. I had a bad feeling about these birds and that bird woman my mom had been talking to. I kept watching them over my shoulder as Dad and I followed the volunteer to the other path.
“This area is only meant for performers and volunteers,” the man said. “You’ll be able to meet security at the main gate more quickly if you go this way.”
Fewer people traveled on this side of the fence. A moment later a man in a rickshaw rode up. He wore a hot pink fedora that matched his pink spandex pants.
He extended his hand to Dad. “Hi, I’m Bob. I’ll get you to the other side of the fair in a jiffy.”
Bob took Dad and me on a ride in a rickshaw along the path behind the wooden fence. It would have been fun racing down the path as some guy pulled us in a cart if I hadn’t been so worried.
The rickshaw driver got us to the entrance in twenty minutes. He called someone on his walkie talkie. Volunteers wearing security vests escorted us to a building shaped like a dragon’s head. We stood outside the mouth of the dragon as they asked us questions. I hugged one of the teeth that protruded from the counter. It grounded me to hold onto something.
“Has anyone seen her?” Dad asked a security guard.
“I’m sorry, sir. No one has found her yet,” said a tall lady in a cowboy hat and a badge that said Deputy. “We’ll keep looking.”
“She’s only sixteen,” Dad said.
“We have volunteers looking for her inside the fair and outside in the campgrounds. If she’s walking on foot from Main Stage, it’s going to take her an hour to get here with this crowd,” she said. “Unless she finds a staff member and asks someone to help her, she might not have a shortcut like you did.”
Missy would know to ask for help. Mom had made her recite the plan. Why wasn’t she here yet? I glanced at another blackbird and began to cry. One of the volunteers gave me a cherry popsicle, but my belly felt too q
ueasy to eat it.
Dad made me stand beside him in the shade where people gave the attendants their tickets at the gate. He spoke with people exiting the fair and walking toward the bus loading zone and parking lot, trying to stop each person to ask them if they’d seen Missy. I held the stick of my popsicle, the sugary liquid melting in the heat. It dripped down my hand.
A crow swooped down and pecked at the red puddle. I screamed and jumped back into Dad. He sat me down at a bench in the shade. I couldn’t stop shaking.
He threw my stick away and wiped my hand on the side of his tie-dye shirt. “It will be okay, honey. We’ll find Missy.”
He returned to questioning people as they exited the fair. No one recognized Missy from the photo viewer on the camera. I scanned the crowd for my sister. Any moment she was going to walk along the path and wave to us. I kept hoping and praying, but she still didn’t appear.
“Have you seen this girl?” Dad asked a mother with her baby strapped to her back.
“I’ve seen your sister,” a raspy voice said close to my ear.
I jumped to my feet. A woman with black feathers for hair roosted on the bench. She was half bird, like the woman my Mom had spoken to earlier. This woman’s hair was shorter, but her feather dress was similar. Her eyes were solid black, like a bird’s.
I looked her up and down, afraid. “Where is she?”
Something brushed my arm and another bird woman walked up beside me. This one wore an Elizabethan collar made of black feathers. She gouged the dry earth with talon-tipped bird feet that poked from under her dress.
“Do you suppose either of them know what they are?” she asked the first bird.
“Their guardian keeps them in ignorance.” She nodded to Dad, his back turned away from me. “The Morty doesn’t know what they are either.”
“What do you mean? What are we?” I asked. “Who are you? You said you know where my sister is.”
They exchanged amused smiles.
“Your mother was right to tell your sister not to eat the gingerbread cookies the witch offered her.” The first bird woman smiled, her teeth pointed and sharp. “I can take you to her. For a price.” She glided off the bench, her bird-shaped body seamlessly transitioning into a woman’s.
