My mom took me one summer, she says. You tie a chicken leg to a string and throw it in the water, and when the crab grabs it, you pull the string toward you, really really slow, and the crab follows the chicken, and then you catch the crab in a net.
Bird imagines his own parents teaching him this: mud streaked, wading in the sea. Laughing together, the way he remembers. Reeling in a line heavy with prey. He wonders, suddenly, what time it is, what his mother is doing right now, if whatever she’s planning has already begun. Above them the sky stretches wide and flat and blue, but he scans it anyway, as if they might spot plumes of smoke drifting all the way from the city.
Crabs eat chicken? he asks, pushing the thought away, and Sadie nods. They eat everything, she says.
My mom told me once, she goes on, rocking back on her heels, about this thing that happened where she grew up. Sometimes, like one night a year, all the crabs get confused and run up on the shore. It’s like the tide and the phase of the moon, or something. A jubilee, it’s called. You wake up in the middle of the night and go down to the beach and the water is just full of them. They practically crawl out—you can just reach in and pull them out, bucketsful. She and her cousins and aunts and uncles used to do it. People would fill their trucks. And they’d build a big bonfire and cook the crabs and have a midnight feast, right there.
Wow, Bird says.
She said when she was a girl, she would go to bed in her bathing suit every night in summer and lie there awake in the dark, just praying for a jubilee.
Sadie is lost in thought, her eyes trained on something off in the distance.
She always said we’d go down some summer and visit that side of the family so I could meet all my cousins, but we never did.
Overhead a hawk circles, lazy, in the sky.
We’ll find her, Bird says. My mom, Domi—I’m sure they can find her.
They’ve been looking, Sadie says. I don’t know if she’s still out there.
He has never heard her sound so uncertain, and this disorients him.
If she’s out there, Bird says confidently, they’ll find her. His mother, he thinks, always keeps her promises.
This thing your mom is planning, Sadie says, this is it, Bird, it’s going to change everything.
The tiniest of pauses, before she continues.
I mean, it has to. Right?
The little hitch in her voice, like a splinter, snags Bird’s attention. Sadie’s eyes appear to be fixed on the horizon, but in the warm afternoon light they shine glass-bright, glazed with tears. His own eyes go liquid and hot. He thinks of everything his mother has told him, of all the years his father has been trying to protect him. Of the man in the pizza parlor, the man at the Common. The woman with her dog. Sadie’s parents, his mother’s parents. His father’s parents retreating from their lives, Mrs. Pollard crouched anxiously beside his computer, D. J. Pierce’s spit falling inches from his shoe. Everything that needs to be changed feels immense and immeasurable.
You know, he says. We could build a fire.
It works: her eyes come back from the realm of what if to what is. Right here? she says.
In the fireplace, Bird says. We don’t have any crabs, but we can have a fire.
* * *
? ? ?
Together, they lay out the wood. A small and concrete thing. My dad showed me how, Sadie says, he was a Boy Scout as a kid. He knew how to do lots of useful stuff, like tie knots, and find north using the stars. You stack it like a log cabin, like this. Dried grass, then sticks, then logs.
Bird flushes. His father has never taught him to do anything useful like this. Like the three little pigs, Bird says. Sadie laughs, and he feels an odd twinge of pride. It feels good, making someone else laugh.
Here goes, Sadie says, and lights a match with a quick grating flick.
The dried grass catches right away, and then the twigs, a burst of gratifying orange. Then the whole thing collapses and goes dark. Huff, puff, Sadie says. With a stick she sweeps the remnants of their fire aside. Let’s try again.
They rebuild the crosshatches of wood, and Bird looks for something to help it catch faster, and it’s then that he spots the stack of newspapers, set by the hearth. He reaches for one, begins to crumple it, then stops.
Look, he says.
The date on the paper is almost fifteen years old. The middle of the Crisis, they both realize. sixth straight day of disruptions roil dc; 400 arrested; 12 rioters, 6 officers slain.
A photo covers the entire front page: Washington, DC, ablaze, a crowd of people on the run. Attacking? Fleeing? They can’t tell, only that from the sharp angles of their bodies—arms and legs thrown wide—they are moving fast, forcefully, instinctively. They wear black, from the hats pulled low over their foreheads to the masks and scarves across their faces, all the way down to the lug-soled boots on their feet; they could be protesters or authorities, it’s impossible to say. On the pavement, almost obscured, lies a woman’s body, her face turned aside, blood matting her hair. In the background the Washington Monument juts like a single raised finger, dark against a smoldering orange sky.
With both hands Bird crushes the paper into a tight wad, hiding the photograph inside.
Let’s try again, he says.
He sets the knot of paper in the middle of the miniature cabin they’ve built, and reaches for the matches again.
This time, the flame gobbles the paper, flaring up as the newsprint dissoves to ash. Small flames lick hesitantly at the sticks and begin to fade, and this time, Bird remembers something from long ago, something his father once told him. A word, and its story. He drops to hands and knees, sets his face before the flame. As gently as he can, he purses his lips and blows, as if blowing a kiss, or soothing a bruise, and the flames rise, the tinder crumples and shrivels and glows the most intense orange he’s ever seen, and then—as he runs short of breath—fades back to gray. Sadie drops down beside him and blows, too, and the glow slowly returns, then grows. It is like watching color return to someone’s face, like watching dawn spreading across a darkened sky.
In silence they tend the fire in turns—first Bird, then Sadie, then both together, breathing life into it—until the larger sticks catch, then the logs, and the flames grow steady and calm and hot.
Spirare, Bird hears his father say. To breathe. Con: together. So conspiracy literally means breathing together.
They make it sound so sinister, Sadie says, and only then does Bird realize he’s spoken aloud. But breathing together, breathing the same air—it’s actually kind of beautiful.
They sit for a moment, quiet, and Bird thinks back to the past days huddled with his mother around the coffee table. Piecing together her whispered story, both of them breathing in the same thick air. Sadie feeds a stick into the fire, nudging it closer to the little blaze until it begins to char and glow. Outside, the sun is falling but the night is still warm, and through the window they see the air ignite. Fireflies. In their excitement they have left the door open and a firefly drifts into the cabin, then another, green sparks shimmering in the red glow of the fire.
I used to hate her, Bird says suddenly.
But you don’t anymore.
A long silence. Around them, bright flecks swirl and dip.
No, he says, and realizes it is true. Not anymore.
For dinner they eat from the paper bag of food the Duchess has left them. Bird heats water, tips in a packet of angel hair. It’s good, Sadie says. You know my foster parents wouldn’t let me use the stove? Thought I was a risk. Like I might set the whole house on fire.
They scrape the last dregs of sauce from their bowls.
What do you think she’s doing right now? Bird says.
Sadie furrows her brow. She’s getting ready, she says. Ready to set them all off.
By them she means the hundreds of bottle caps scattered all over the city.
Do you think— Bird hesitates. Do you think she’s dangerous? I mean, she couldn’t hurt anyone. Could she?
A long pause as they both turn this over in their minds.