“Is she your familiar?” Shelby asks, focusing on the cockatoo, who’s too busy pecking around for more pastry that will not magically appear because bird obesity is actually very dangerous.
“Just say yes,” Maggie breaks in, sounding cagey.
“Yep. My old boss back in Alabama inherited her when his mom died, but she hates him, so now she’s mine.”
Shelby reaches a hand toward the bird. “May I?”
I nod, biting back a grin, and Shelby scoops up my grandmother like she’s a chicken. Maggie squawks and flaps a bit before Shelby firmly snuggles her under her arm. This is not a way I would ever deal with a parrot, but Maggie seems too stunned to fight it.
“She’s a little sweetie, isn’t she?” Shelby pets the soft gray feathers of Maggie’s back. “What’s she saying?”
Which tells me that regular familiars can talk, a fact that my grandmother neglected to pass along. I could’ve had Doris—my Doris!—but talking? And instead, I’m stuck with—
“You can’t just go picking people up and swinging themaround, even if they are birds!” Maggie splutters. “Shelby McGowan, you put me right back down!”
“She says that’s nice and cozy,” I say.
Shelby looks down, smiling. “Wow, sounds like she’s a talker! My cat, Peekaboo, is pretty grouchy. I can barely get three words out of her, and most of them areno.But, you know”—she shrugs—“cats.”
I am now entirely full of questions about familiars, and also full of bear claw, but I don’t want to seem horribly ignorant, and I can just interrogate Maggie later anyway. When Shelby asks if I want to go to lunch, I agree, even though I’m nowhere near hungry. Honestly, it would just be nice to have a friend. My sisters and I were close, and when they moved out of my folks’ house and into the city, I got lonely. It’s hard to meet people when you’re in your twenties if you don’t go to church or work in an office with more than one person. Every time I took an art class hoping to meet quirky young women like me, I found mostly older ladies in established friend groups and couples trying to spice up their Thursday nights with glassblowing. And my one attempt at online dating resulted in a way-too-obvious catfishing attempt. Thus my best friend was pretty much Doris, and now even she is, to some degree, gone.
“Let’s just get you in the cage,” I say, reaching for Maggie, but she screeches and flaps out of Shelby’s arms and away from me, landing on the floor and running behind the couch.
“No! Just take me with you. Put me in that ugly portable thing. I’ll be quiet. But I just really, really don’t want to be locked in and left alone. It’s against the Geneva convention!”
I can understand that, I suppose—the part about being locked in, not the part about the Geneva convention, which I’m prettysure doesn’t apply to birds. “Oh, you want to come along? Let’s just get you in the backpack.” I put it on the floor with the door unzipped, and she eagerly runs over and jumps in, settling on the perch.
Shelby talks the whole time as we head down the stairs and out into the alley. “So we’ve got five choices for lunch down here—four if you don’t like food poisoning. By which I mean you never want to go with the raw oyster bar. So that leaves us with Lindy’s for sandwiches, Marla’s for Southern food, or MacGillicuddy’s for bar food. There’s also My Pie for pizza, but the lunch crew is always hungover and super slow.”
I’m too full for dumplings, and I’m not ready for the absolute chaos of Lindy’s or the absolute annoyance of hungover staff, and I definitely don’t want to barf oysters, so I say, “I haven’t been to MacGillicuddy’s before.”
“Yay! They have the best fries.”
As we walk along the sidewalk, Shelby fills me in on each storefront and the owners and workers within. It’s kind of funny—I’ve lived in my own hometown all my life, in the exact same house, and I don’t know anything about any of the businesses there. Cumberville doesn’t have a cute downtown or a Chamber of Commerce, so while I may see the same cashiers at the store and run into folks I went to school with, there’s just no real sense of community.
“Lindy comes to our weekly Craft Night,” Shelby says as we pass by the sandwich shop, which is as mobbed as it was—just yesterday? It seems like it was eons ago. “So does Nathan from the inn and Edie from the soap shop and Keelie from MacGillicuddy’s, and Riley—he’s Mr. Gooch’s assistant, not sure if you met him?”
“Nope. Just Mr. Gooch.”
“He’s such a character. That eye patch, right? And then some other folks come and go, but that’s our core group.” She eyes me hungrily. “Are you crafty?”
“Not as crafty as my sister Cait, but I know enough to make a really wonky scarf.”
“Perfect! Excellent. We meet at MacGillicuddy’s next Saturday night. There’s a room upstairs for private events, and if nobody’s using it, it’s ours as long as we all spend at least ten bucks each.”
We’re in front of the toy store now, which has one of thoseBack in 15 Minutessigns up, and I pause to look in the front window. Even as an adult, I wish I could go inside. There’s just something magical about toy stores.
“Mr. and Mrs. Cove,” Shelby says disapprovingly. “Meanest people in town. They seem to hate children. Can’t imagine why they opened a—”
She’s interrupted by a ringing bell. Her eyes go wide, and her hand clamps down on my wrist.
“Oh, crap,” she says. “We have to get off the street.”
I look up and down the charming scene, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Is there a tornado or something? The sky seems really blue.”
She knocks on the door of the toy store, frantic, like we’re in a horror movie.
“Come on, Mr. Cove,” she murmurs. “I know you’re just in back eating a sack lunch.” She looks at me. “Nora would let us in, but they fired her. Their own daughter, can you believe that? Mr. Cove!”
