In Austin, outside the governor’s mansion: a giant concrete cube with a crack running down the center, a crowbar by its side. Etched into the cube, four chiseled letters: P A C T. Etched into the crowbar: our missing hearts. One by one, passersby picked up the bar and hefted it, but no one dared swing, and when the police arrived they’d confiscated it as a dangerous weapon. The cube they loaded onto a flatbed and hauled away.
The authorities made no official statements, hoping to avoid publicity, but these happenings were so bizarre, so eye-catching, that they attracted attention. In the days after each happened, photos of them splashed across social media, going viral each time; eyewitness accounts and videos circulated from those who’d been there and seen it. Newspapers who might have ignored a march or a protest sent photographers and reporters to the scene. Pranks, some authorities insisted, when pressed. Just meaningless pranks. Others took a harsher tone: Subversion. A threat to civil society. Des Moines had spent a hundred thousand dollars painting the streets black again.
But they kept happening, and Margaret, on the road, watched. She noticed that people complained about marches blocking traffic, about the futility and inconvenience, but something about these strange happenings caught their attention and held it. She spotted passersby pausing on the sidewalk to zoom in on the photos on their phones or linger over articles about them before tossing their papers into the trash. She overheard people talking about these happenings on street corners, on subway platforms, over coffee on café patios. Not irritated or dismissive, but filled with curiosity and sometimes even delight at the unexpected weirdness of them. Did you see? Did you hear about? Isn’t it crazy? What do you think—?
By the time Bird was eleven, these happenings were nearly monthly. Each time she saw her words in one, she felt a peculiar and not unwelcome glow—even as she knew that with every mention of missing hearts, another line appeared in her file. One more thing she would be held responsible for, though she knew no more about them than anyone else. It was as if those words were their own independent creatures, off leading their own life—which, in truth, they were. What did you call it—surely not pride, because you could take no credit for these accomplishments, you could only marvel like a stranger at the things this being had gone on to do without you. It kept her moving, the thought that others out there were thinking about the children who had been taken, too. Each happening she heard about jump-started her again when the journey and the weight of the stories had nearly drained her dry. We haven’t forgotten, they seemed to say, have you?
Who’s doing it? she asked one of the librarians. Who’s behind them all?
Those art pranks? the librarian sniffed. Margaret had noticed this, a certain disdain for the protests from the librarians—and it was understandable, that when they were painstakingly gathering grains of information, listing and tracking and trying to keep records, these happenings felt trivial and frivolous and showy.
What makes you think it’s even the same people, the librarian said, sliding the name of another family across the counter, and Margaret thanked her, and departed.
For there were always more children, more stories. It was like picking up seashells on the beach: one more, one more, one more. Each wave depositing another on the wet and gleaming sand. Each shell a relic of a creature once there, now gone. Bird was nearly twelve, and still there were more; she could continue this forever, traveling round and round. Counting the next and the next in an endlessly increasing line.
One day, overcome, she sent a postcard: no message, just a small line drawing. A cat beside a little door. A clue, if they would accept it; an invitation to find the note she’d left for them. To find her. As she dropped it into the mailbox, she imagined it winging its way from truck to sack to the porch of their house. She waited and waited, but no reply came.
Now and then she tried again, each postcard gaining another cat, or two, or five, smaller and smaller, until the entire card was full, the cabinet shrunk to the size of a stamp, then the size of a penny, then the size of a fingernail. There was never any reply. On Bird’s twelfth birthday, she took a risk, hunted down one of the few remaining pay phones, and dialed their old number. Disconnected. By this time Bird had lived a quarter of his life without her; perhaps he didn’t even remember she existed. Perhaps it was better that way.
It was then that she decided on a date: October 23. Three years to the day since she’d gone away. She would do it then. In September she sent a note to Domi. It’s time, she said. Can you find me a place to stay. Domi, of course, had offered her house, but Margaret had refused.
Somewhere faraway, she said, somewhere no one will look. Somewhere I won’t take you down, if I’m caught.
A week later she’d arrived in New York, made her way to Brooklyn and the darkened brownstone. The next day she went out into the city, cap pulled low over her face, in search of bottle caps.
* * *
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I have someone, the librarian said.
Astoria: a small branch library. Margaret had been in New York for two weeks already, camped out in the darkened brownstone, making final preparations, filling her bottle caps. Two weeks left to go. She should stop collecting stories; already she had more than she could use. But she did not want to stop. What she wanted was to find every one of them, though she knew this was impossible, because there would always be more.
The librarian lowered her voice, even though there was no one else in the room, no one else in the building, nothing around them but half-empty shelves. Not a family, she went on. A child.
Margaret sat up straighter. In all these years she hadn’t spoken to a single re-placed child. They were well concealed: new cities, new families, new names. All that was left was the trail of grief in their absence, the snagged holes they’d left behind. The few they’d tracked down were inaccessible, fortressed in their new homes and new lives. Those who were taken young enough sometimes didn’t remember their old lives, their old families, at all.
She wandered into the main branch a couple months ago, the librarian said. A runaway. From Baltimore, originally. Bold little thing, she added, half chuckling. Marched in there like a policeman. Said: I need you to help me find my parents. Hands on her hips, like she was giving them a dressing-down. Said she ran away from a foster family in Cambridge, up near Harvard.
A tingle cinched the back of Margaret’s neck. Cambridge, she said. How old is she?
Thirteen. We’re trying to find out more. They moved her around a lot at first, and no one’s at the address she remembers anymore.
Can I talk to her? Margaret said, pulse thumping. Where is she?
The librarian studied her warily. The moment Margaret knew so well: when they decided if she could be trusted, and if so, how far. How much rope she was to be given, how far the door was to be pushed ajar.
The scale tipped.
She’s at one of the branches, the librarian said. I can get you the address. We’ve been moving her around, trying to find a long-term place for her.
And there she was: a girl, cross-legged on a makeshift pallet. Big brown eyes like two blazing stars.
Margaret, she repeated, when Margaret introduced herself, are you Margaret Miu?
And in the stunned silence that followed, Sadie smiled.
I know your poems, she said. And then: I know Bird, too.
* * *
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