Andy ignores the tourists.
He doesn’t think during these flights, not at all. Not of his tormentors at school, not of his fall from Candice’s grace, not of his parents, his homework, his inadequate twig body. He has given himself permission not to think of these things. During this special half-hour, he merely flies, inhaling the fragrance of wet rock and decaying leaves, sucking into his lungs the scent of swordferns, hemlocks, and the long tresses of beard moss.
In the spring and summer he runs to Twin Falls, which is relatively free of tourists because it requires a ten-minute hike downstrean from the suspension bridge — too much like work for most tourists. There, he climbs onto the wooden bridge (a stout, short, normal bridge plastered with gum and engraved with initials), leans over its slimy wooden railings, and gazes at the crashing green water below.
In the fall and winter he doesn’t need to escape the tourists (there are few), so he heads to the suspension bridge. Here he either watches the swirling water far below or he looks up and gazes at the sky. Either way, he witnesses magic: the magic of the creek or the magic of crows.
Crows, yes. For in the fall, against the smoky lavender of dusk, myriads of black forms wing their way southeast. Their silence is intense, their numbers staggering. Andy tried to count them once and gave up, overwhelmed after reaching a hundred for the seventh time. Only occasionally this creek of feathered black is broken by an empty stretch of sky, marked by a star or a lone, straggling crow.
Andy has discovered that it isn’t just here that this phenomenon can be seen. While visiting Nanny and Grampa Woodruff, the exodus of crows can be witnessed from their backyard. While strapped in his parents’ Tercel, stuck in traffic on the Second Narrows Bridge, he has also seen this flood of crows.
They appear out of the distant sky, black dots from West Vancouver, North Vancouver, and Deep Cove. The dots resolve into glossy wings and powerful beaks. The crows always appear in the fall, never in the spring or summer, and they always fly southeast, never north or west.
No one seems to notice this bizarre twilight ritual except Andy. He never sees anyone else look up. Crow after crow wings its way southeast, and no one notices save Andy. He wonders what strange, dark purpose the crows have, and how the thousands of people in the city can be unaware of this fantastical sunset journey. It fills Andy with awe and fear: he is surrounded by people oblivious to a great gathering of nature.
Once, he mentioned this phenomenon to his father, even managed to get him outside into the gravel parking lot adjacent to their house to look upward.
“Probably heading to a rookery somewhere, or migrating,” was all his father said, and Andy gaped at him, stunned. So many crows heading to the same rookery? So many thousands gathering unerringly each autumn night at the same place? That was too incredible to picture! And migrating, how could that be? Vancouver is no less short of crows in the winter than in the summer, so the crows aren’t leaving.
Unless, of course, phantom crows fill their places, shape-shifting spirits that choose to disguise themselves as crows ... It is this thought that currently shivers over Andy as he stands on the suspension bridge, neck craned back, glasses blurred with rainwater, fat cold droplets splattering his pale face and trickling down his neck. He is not thinking about his mother’s frightening request that he refrain from mentioning her vomit to his father, nor is he thinking of the fallen tea kettle and the four teacups. Instead, he is merely watching the crows.
And thus he doesn’t see something large, antlered, and white moving ponderously along the creek bank, just a few hundred yards upstream from the canyon falls below. Thus Andy misses the only opportunity in his entire life to see a live white hart.
Karen’s head aches and her eyes refuse to focus; the last thing she needs is a confrontation. In all honesty, she has forgotten Candice’s brief message on the answering machine; all events immediately following her painful fall to the floor have mangled together in a haze. But now that dinner is over, now that Morris and Andy have retreated to the living room with their slices of carob cream cake, Karen wearily remembers the phone message and realizes that a confrontation is inevitable: Candice disobeyed orders by visiting Gloria, and Karen will now have to inform Morris and discipline of some sort will be required.
To her surprise, Candice brings up the subject first.
“Look, I know I’m not supposed to see Gloria except on weekends, okay? But I have this biology project due, and I haven’t made any friends yet at Sutherland.” Candice scrubs viciously at a pan, soap suds flying like spittle from her scouring pad. “I mean, how can I make friends at that stupid school? They’re all retroactive abortion candidates. And so Gloria helped me out, just this once. I mean, Dad doesn’t have to know, okay?”
“I can’t conceal it from your —”
“Reality check, Mom. I’m not asking you to conceal it. All I’m saying is, because you banished me from the only real friend I have in the world, I wasn’t able to finish my homework. I needed Gloria’s help. Her school is way ahead of mine. I mean, we’re still learning about circulation and they’re already doing reproduction —”
“Why couldn’t you ask a teacher for help?”
“There was a staff meeting right after school, the report is due tomorrow, and it’s worth twenty percent of our marks in biology. If I didn’t have it ready in time, I’d have flunked. You don’t want me to flunk again, do you?”
Candice avoids Karen’s eyes and concentrates on removing crusts of baked cheese from the pan. Karen studies her daughter, dishtowel hanging limp and forgotten in her own hands. Something looks wrong in this scenario, sounds wrong: Candice’s flushed cheeks, her atypical dishwashing energy, her lack of defiant glaring .
“You aren’t making this up, are you?” Karen asks.
Candice’s head snaps up. Her flush deepens. She clenches the scouring pad with white fingers. “That’s great, Mom, just great! I didn’t have to phone you, you know. Mr. and Mrs. Vermicelli weren’t even home. But, no, I decided I’d do the right thing and tell you about it, and what do I get in return? You call me a liar. That’s just great!”
“But you seem so agitated.”
“Of course I’m agitated! Why shouldn’t I be agitated? You blame my marks at school on my friendship with Gloria, you separate us, and then when I try to improve my marks at my new school, you call me a liar ’cause I’m honest enough to tell you I met with my only real friend to get help with some stupid homework!”
Karen knows there are a half-dozen flaws in her daughter’s logic, but she also knows that the tears of frustration welling in Candice’s eyes, the taut quaver in her voice, and the frustration emanating from every pore in her body are more important than the flaws. Not for the first time, Karen feels a pang of guilt at complying with the decision Morris and Angelo Vermicelli made to separate Candice and Gloria.
“Tell me what we should have done then,” she says, pressing her fingers against her throbbing temples and trying to concentrate. “We tried everything for you, Candice — tutors, curfews, rewards, mentor programs ... nothing worked. Both you and Gloria failed Grade 11 and it looked like you were going to do the same again this —”
“What has that got to do with anything?” Candice cries. “That’s just so typical of you to change the —”
“I’m not changing —”
“Yes, you are!” Her voice cracks, and a tear drags mascara down one
