Mikey closed the door behind him, some of the birds nearest him were startled by the sound and took flight. Others followed. More. Mikey exhaled a white cloud, and his empty lungs tickled with cold. He coughed and watched the birds as they lifted off the trees in a magnificent ripple. It wasn’t long at all until the entire flock had departed in a huge spinning black cone, leaving only a blank and depleted void in their wake. An after sound. A holy, yearning silence, like a prayer that was too sad and too deeply felt to be spoken aloud.
Mikey still held his phone at his ear, his lips now paralyzed by the cold, and Jimmy said, “Mikey? You there?”
Mikey finally said, “I don’t know.” As these words slid out of his mouth, they felt long and cool, like snakes.
Chapter 3
When Mikey started kindergarten, he was a shy boy who sat by himself on the bus while other children hollered and clapped and traded jokes and insults and items from their lunch boxes. Mikey watched out the window in the morning as other children were picked up from his street, and in the afternoon as they were dropped off. The Italian kid with eyes the color of a swimming pool who hung out with the chubby, blond, pink-faced kid whose r’s came out like w’s, the two of them always talking football, drawing out plays with smelly black markers, X’s and swooping lines in a notebook. The tall, black-eyed girl with broad, high cheeks who ordered everyone else around, working in as many curse words and creative insults as possible. Butt-slug! Ass-face-mouth-breather! The freckled girl with the curly red hair who skipped recess to practice the piano in the music room. The slim, silver-haired girl who lived several doors up from Mikey. Usually, like him, she waited for the bus alone, but on rare occasion, her slim, silver-haired mother waited by her side. She typically sat by herself on the bus, too. Often, she sat in the seat directly behind Mikey, and sometimes he could hear her singing quietly to herself.
One morning, this girl sat down directly next to him.
As she sank into the seat, she said with low eyes, as though issuing an apology, “There are no more empty ones.”
She smelled very clean. She wore a green headband. Up close, Mikey could see that her hair was not actually silver, but the whitest blond he had ever seen, so white that it took on the hue of other colors and lights around them. Her face was as pretty and delicate as lace. She arranged her backpack beneath her little legs.
Mikey said, “It’s okay.”
The girl sighed and touched the ends of her hair.
He said, “What’s your name?”
“Sally.”
“I’m Mikey.”
“You’re a kindergartner?”
He nodded. “What grade are you in?”
“First.”
“Do you know how to read?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I don’t yet.”
“That’s okay,” Sally said. “Is that your daddy who was soaping up the car?”
“What?”
“I saw a guy soaping up a car in your driveway the other day. A big old white car.”
“Oh, yes,” Mikey said. “That’s him, and that’s his car.”
“Where’s your mommy?”
Mikey said, “I don’t have one.”
“Is she dead?”
Mikey thought. “Maybe.”
Sally was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “My mommy says my daddy’s a deadbeat and some other things.”
“Is that the same as dead?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mikey said, “Do you want a Jolly Rancher?”
“Yes.”
Mikey offered her watermelon or grape or green apple. She took the green apple. She sucked on it silently, and her warm breath became sweet and strange.
The next day, Sally sat next to Mikey once again, even though there were empty seats available, and the day after that, too.
Usually, they didn’t talk very much. The silence between them was easy, companionable. Sometimes, Sally placed her backpack on Mikey’s lap, rested her head there, and slept. Mikey watched her sleeping face morph softly into and out of many expressions, and he tried to imagine what sort of dream produced each different one.
Alice Clancy formed the group, really made it official, the summer between her first- and second-grade year. School had been out for only a week, and already Alice was bored of TV and fights with her older brothers over who got the first or last or largest portion of things.
One afternoon, she wandered into the backyard of the green house just a few doors down the block from her own, after she heard voices and laughter lifting up from behind the house. She caught sight of a ball in the air.
She walked right to the center of things, between two boys wearing baseball gloves, and she stood there with her fists dug into her hips. She was six inches taller than either of them.
“You boys ride my bus,” she said.
She looked back and forth between them. The chubby blond kid punched his fist into his glove. He had round shoulders and a thick neck, and was the tiniest bit dim in the eyes. His nostrils and the thin, pale skin around his eye sockets was chafed pink, as though he cried a lot, or had lots of allergies. He didn’t wear a shirt. His belly was fat but firm, accentuated by a disturbing little outtie.
Alice said, “What’s your names?”
The black-haired, blue-eyed kid said, “Jimmy.” His eyes were remarkable—as bright and interesting as tiny planets.
The blond kid said, “Sam. Why are you at my house?”
“I’m Alice and I live in the only brick house on the street, and we have that big black mutt named Jake.” She paused and jerked her chin over her shoulder in the direction of her house. “Anyways, I have a club and I’m president,” she said. “Looking for members. You guys in or out?”
Sam said, “Who’s in it?”
Alice released an exasperated little noise and scowled at him. “None of your beeswax,” she said, “if you’re not members.”
Sam shoved his thumb toward Alice’s face. “Look at my blood blister,” he said.
Alice said, “Gross.”
Jimmy said, “What do you do in your club?”
“Lots of secret stuff.”
Sam tossed the baseball up and down to himself and said, “Me and Jimmy need to talk it over. We’ll let you know tomorrow.”
Alice returned the following
