Sadie laughs. Domi? she says. She seems super scary, but she’s not.
As if a seal has been broken, she begins to chatter away. The first day, she said, she hadn’t seen Domi at all. She’d been given a bedroom—up on the top floor, with a huge antique map of the world hung on the wall—and left to her own devices, and she’d spent all day exploring the museum of a house, trying to figure out what kind of place she’d landed in, what kind of woman Domi was. Margaret said she could be trusted, but Sadie was not used to taking things on assurance. Late that night, she’d found her way into Domi’s office and was still behind the desk, reading the papers scattered there, when Domi came in.
And just what do you think you’re doing? Domi demanded, and Sadie had looked up, studying her with new eyes.
So all these checks, she said, ticking her finger down Domi’s ledger. To all these libraries. You know what they’re doing. You’re—helping.
A long moment, where they appraised each other anew.
Why, Sadie asked, and Domi said: It’s one small thing. To start to make things right.
Sadie shut the checkbook. I want to help, she said.
She’d expected Domi to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead Domi had sat down in the chair across the desk, as if Sadie were in charge and she was the supplicant, asking for a favor.
Maybe you can, she said.
They’d spent days talking, Sadie telling Domi everything she remembered about the authorities, her host families, the whole system of PACT. How they’d moved her, who had met her, where she’d gone. What she’d seen in the libraries, those months in which they’d hidden her. What she’d wished she’d done, and what she’d wished others had. Domi listening. Learning.
I couldn’t go out, Sadie says to Bird. In case anyone spotted me. But Domi found me stuff to do. And she’s been looking for my parents. Trying to trace where they’ve gone.
She pauses and swallows, and Bird knows better than to ask.
She said not to give up yet, Sadie says. She says—well, she says you just never know.
The day before Bird arrived, Domi’s last lead had come up empty, and she’d broken the news to Sadie gently, the way you’d break news of a death. We’ll keep looking, she’d promised, holding Sadie tight.
If you could have anything else, Domi had asked eventually, breaking the silence. What would you wish for.
Sadie considered.
A whole day where I could do whatever I wanted, she said. Without anyone watching or judging or tracing or tracking me. Just one day like that.
Hmm, Domi said. Might be tricky. But maybe there’s a way. If you can wait a bit, until the right time.
* * *
? ? ?
And now here they were, she and Bird. A day with no one watching or judging. A day to do what they wanted.
She told me, Sadie says. Some of the things she and your mom saw in the Crisis. The things they did—and the things they didn’t do. Things she would’ve done differently. You know that day you came? she adds smugly. I told her what to ask. She came upstairs and said, what would you ask Bird to find out if he really was Bird? And I told her, ask about his bike. Ask about his cereal. Ask about lunch.
Do you know? Bird asks. What my mom’s doing.
Sadie pauses.
Domi wouldn’t tell me exactly, she admits. Your mom came a few times, to plan. I tried to listen, she adds, rather proudly. But I couldn’t hear much.
Together, they pool notes. By their math, Margaret must have hidden thousands of bottle caps, all over the city. At the Duchess’s, Sadie had flipped through the newspapers and scanned news reports on television and online: no reports of people finding suspicious devices in bottle caps. No reports of trouble, at least not in the city. Whatever is being set up, it hasn’t happened yet. For weeks this has been going on, like a spring being inexorably wound.
It’s something big, Sadie says.
Of course it is, Bird says. My mother doesn’t do things by halves.
I don’t think Domi does either.
Their eyes meet.
Bird, Sadie says, I bet this will change everything. Whatever they’re planning.
For a moment they pause, trying to imagine a world after. Inside Bird fizzes with excitement, and he jumps to his feet. Needing somewhere to put it.
Let’s go down to the water, he says.
They follow the path through the clearing in the trees and there it is: sparkling in the sunlight, a little inlet stretching out to the blue expanse beyond. Bird scoops up a pebble and tosses it as far as he can. With a satisfying bloop the water swallows it in a single gulp, and rings ripple back to his feet at the shore. The Duchess is right: as far as they can see, there are no other houses, no other people, just a dense ruff of trees clustered around this spangle of a cove. From above it must look as if a giant has pressed a thumbprint into the forest, carving this perfect hollow for the cabin right at the water’s edge.
He has never been so far from other people before. All his life, there have always been others nearby, watching, listening. Even if you couldn’t see them, you knew they were there: just through the window, just on the other side of the wall, just out of sight around a corner. Out here there is no one and he feels himself expanding to gigantic size. Beside him, Sadie gives a sudden whoop, and he gives one, too, and from the nearby trees a cluster of sparrows takes flight, and then they are running, shrieking, churning the rocky shore with their footprints, darting after the velvet chipmunks that whip between the roots of trees and the squirrels that scamper out of reach. When they collapse, exhilarated and exhausted, the hum of silence that settles over them again feels louder than their shouting. For the moment neither of them thinks about their parents. They are simply children, at play.
Let’s go in, Sadie suggests. Just up to our ankles.
They pry off their sneakers and socks and roll their jeans to their knees, and as they tromp in, small muddy rings echo outward from their feet. The water is frigid, but they don’t notice or care. There are trees to climb, not the thin reedy saplings that ringed the playground, rippling the asphalt with their roots, but tall ones that stretch higher even than Sadie dares to venture.
They spend the afternoon noticing things: the fine white Vs on each clover leaf, as if painted by a thin-bladed brush. The salmon-colored mushroom caps prodding up through the soil; the delicate lichens that cling to tree trunks like jade fish scales. A slim young birch, too tall for its slender whip of a frame, bowed nearly into an arch, but growing, still growing nevertheless, sending its jagged green leaves toward the sky. October is nearly over, winter is coming, but things are growing, still alive.
As the afternoon starts to dim, Sadie gives a yelp, and Bird comes running just in time to see a little crab, the size of a quarter, scuttle across the sand. Now that he looks, he spots them everywhere, hiding in plain sight. They’ve been there all along; he just hadn’t looked. For a while they try to catch them, chasing them across the shore, trying to scoop them up in their hands, and once Sadie gets close enough and gets nipped by tiny claws, but every time the crabs escape: down into holes in the sand, among the rocks, out into the vast blue blur of the water.
You need a chicken leg, Sadie says, with authority. She drops to a squat on the sand. That’s what you need. To get big crabs, way bigger than this.
She pauses.