“Those sound kind of boring, honestly. I was hoping we could fly. Or make money.”
Maggie hunches over and raises her tail in annoyance. “Oh, well, I’m so sorry the magic doesn’t impress you! Your generation, I swear.”
If I had a tail, I’d raise it, too; I’m just as annoyed as she is. “I don’t understand. If the magic is mostly gone, why’d you show me a spell at all? You could’ve just convinced me I was hallucinating. Or just stayed quiet. You don’t have to constantly talk in my head. We could go back to communicating by singing duets.” It feels like she showed me something wonderful, shining on the horizon, and then let the curtain fall, shutting off my beautiful view, and I begin to see why perhaps my mama didn’t like her so much.
Maggie stops pacing and stares in at me, her beady red eyes as sharp as lasers. “I guess I shouldn’t have shown you anything. Maybe I just wanted to see if you could do it. Maybe I was hoping you would stop questioning everything. But what’s done is done. None of this is going the way it was supposed to. I guess it’s not going how you expected, either. We’ll just have to find a way to live with each other.”
She sounds exhausted, deflated. And I’m feeling a little bit emotional myself. It has been one hell of a day, and I’m at the end of my rope.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “But if I don’t shower soon, we’re going to have a bigger problem, and the problem is me sitting on the floor and screaming.”
“That’s totally fair, honey, but I’ve got needs, too. First of all, food. Birds are built to eat all day, you know?”
I’m about to cry from the stress of it all—I don’t like conflict—but it’s so absurd that, as always, I go for bad puns. “So you’re feelingpeckish,huh?”
She shakes her feathery crest. “Just throw some crackers at me and get in the shower or I’ll start screaming, too.”
“Absolutely not. Crackers are junk food. But I’ll get you some nice pellets.”
I head out to the car to fetch the feeder and waterer that once belonged to a cockatoo named Doris. It feels strange, watching Maggie consider the little pellets with a critical eye, like I’m trying to poison her, and then figure out how to eat with a beak. I miss the old Doris, the brainless one that I snuggled like a football while reading books in my dad’s old recliner. Still, I get to have a relationship with the grandmother I’ve never met, even if she’s annoying, and…
“Why did my mama hate you so much?” I ask.
She looks up from her bowl. “That’s a very long story, and you’re a mess, and I’m starving, so maybe it can wait?”
I point at her. “Okay, but you have to tell me. I deserve to know. I promised her I would never come back here, and you made me break that promise.”
“Your mom broke promises, too,” she grumbles between bites. “And I didn’t make you come here. Like I said, I didn’t even know you existed before today. But yes, fine, I’ll tell you. Later.”
“I’ll be in the shower. Don’t die.”
She looks up, pellet chunks clinging to her beak. “Once is enough, sugar.”
I grab a pair of comfy pajamas and fuzzy socks from my overnight bag and head into the bathroom. The water takes a while to get hot, and the pipes sing and thump, but soon my hair is full of Maggie’s expensive shampoo and I no longer smell like pondscum. It’s been possibly the longest and strangest day of my life, and I can’t wait to tell my sisters all about it.
Once I’m dressed with my hair twisted up in a towel, I find my grandmother in the main room, chasing a ladybug up the window glass.
“You ever been compelled by something you don’t really care to do?” she asks, beak scraping the glass in vain.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the story of my life.”
She gives me a sharp look and goes back to the ladybug without comment. I pick out the comfiest-looking place in the room, the squishy couch, and sink down into the cushions with my book and my phone. I tell myself that after this call, I’m going to find the greasiest takeout food in this town and stuff myself, because half a grilled cheese is not enough to keep me going.
“Do we have Wi-Fi here?” I ask.
“What’s that?” is all the answer I need.
My phone has signal, at least, so I FaceTime my sisters, hoping they’ll both be available.
“Where have you been?” Jemma all but screams, right as Cait shouts, “You haven’t answered a single text since you sent the Cumming picture!”
Jemma gasps. “Uh, phrasing?”
“Things got away from me,” I say weakly.
Which is very, very true.
“So what is Arcadia Falls like?” Cait asks.
