Little Blackbird (4 page)

When she stood, she saw Matthias grab a pink bag and walk to the opposite corner where rainbow-colored candies sparkled, but Geoffrey was gone. She stopped breathing.

“Hello, Miss Kate,” Geoffrey said.

Kate gasped and spun around. Geoffrey stood behind her, leaning on his crutches. She crushed her candy bag against her chest.

“Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

So much for getting out of here unnoticed.
“You shouldn’t sneak up behind people.”

“I wouldn’t if they weren’t trying to avoid me.” His lips lifted in one corner.

“I hope you aren’t referring to
me
. I’m not trying to avoid you.” Her voice trembled like struck glass.

His dark eyebrows rose on his forehead.

She heaved a sigh. “Trying to leave unnoticed is not the same.”

Geoffrey laughed, and Kate looked up at him. His bruises had faded into faint yellow shadows. His pale eyes watched her, and Kate felt Sally’s eyes on them too.

“I noticed you,” Geoffrey said.

“It’s a small shop.”

“No, I mean. I noticed you before. Anywhere really. You stand out.”

Kate exhaled, and the jars around them vibrated on the shelves. She smoothed her hands down her lilac-colored, ruffled skirt. “Because I’m different and because of my brother.”

“No, because you’re…well, you’re beautiful.”

A laugh burst unexpectedly from Kate’s mouth. No one, other than her parents—and they definitely didn’t count—had ever even
hinted
that she was beautiful. The most creative words anyone had ever used to describe her were
exotic but strange
.

She pushed past Geoffrey because she couldn’t stand still any longer. Her heart slapped against her ribcage, and she inhaled shallow breaths. He grabbed her wrist with a grasp that was not meant to hurt her, only to make her pause. She looked down at his thin fingers wrapped around her tiny wrist.

“I’m serious,” he said so only she could hear. “Can I come see you again?”

Kate’s brow wrinkled. “Why?”

Geoffrey chuckled and released her wrist. He adjusted the crutches. “Because I want to talk to you. Get to know you. Like normal people do.”

“Are you assuming you’re normal?” she asked.
Because I’m definitely not, but he probably already knows that. I’m like the freak exhibit in the circus. Pay five cents and see the odd, sad half-Indian girl living in the forest. Ten cents and we’ll let you see her blackout while having a worthless premonition.

Geoffrey smiled at her, and she knew the stories about the Hamilton men were true. She pressed the candy bag against her chest again, holding her heart inside her.

“So?” he asked.

She imagined the burning fuse racing toward the dynamite again, and she wondered who held the lit match. Her or him? “When?”

“Tonight?”

She glanced out the windows, looking for her daddy. He stood by their car talking to someone. “After eleven. They’ll be asleep by then.”

When she looked back at Geoffrey, his green eyes were full of mischief, and she almost changed her mind.

“This is a rotten idea,” she said.

“The worst,” he agreed.

She raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“I’ll see you tonight.”

Kate walked away. As she rounded the last aisle to pay for her candy, Matthias stepped toward her. Kate inhaled the scent of peppermint.

“Good afternoon, Kate,” he said.

Like all the Hamilton boys, Matthias was striking with dark hair and pale eyes. He reminded Kate of a film star. Matthias was just as tall as Geoffrey, but he lacked the lanky, loose limbs. Matthias was broader, less angular, and his eyes were as blue as a robin’s egg.

Kate only saw Matthias occasionally during the summertime or around the holidays. He’d been away at college for at least three years. And she was quite sure in all the years she’d seen him in town, he’d never once spoken to her before. She had always been Evan’s little sister, nothing more, and certainly not worth speaking to.

“Good afternoon, Matthias,” she said after a long pause.

He stepped closer to her, and she loosened her grip on the candy bag.

“I wanted to thank you for helping Geoffrey,” he said. Then his voice lowered and vibrated the air around them as he added, “The other day at the wreck.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “He–he told you?”

Matthias straightened and shrugged. “Not exactly. He said an angel helped him. Knowing that you lived up the road and that you likely knew how to apply salves and splint his ankle, I put two and two together. My mom, well, she probably believed his angel story, but I’m not so easily fooled. You really helped him, you know. He would have been in worse shape without your assistance.”

Kate glanced away from the compliment. Hearing it caused a tingle to sweep up her neck and across her face, and she reached up her cool fingertips to touch her cheek. “I would have done the same for anyone.”

“I know,” Matthias said.

When she looked up at him, he was smiling, and she wondered if the Hamilton men knew the power of the gesture. Her shoulders relaxed.

“And why couldn’t it have been an angel who rescued him?” she asked, sliding the toe of her sandal against the floor.

Matthias chuckled. “My brother? Being visited by an angel? Highly unlikely. But knowing it really
was
you, they could be one and the same.”

The compliment pulled a hesitant smile from Kate. She could tell Matthias wasn’t trying to flatter her. His compliments were kind and sincere. She nodded goodbye. At the checkout counter, Kate saw curiosity in Sally’s eyes, but she didn’t ask Kate about her conversation with Geoffrey or with Matthias. After all, if she couldn’t ask Kate if she could borrow a pencil at school, then Sally certainly couldn’t ask Kate about the Hamilton boys.

K
ATE STOOD IN front of her mirror and rolled long pieces of her hair around a hairbrush handle. Then she tried to bobby pin the roll of hair to the top of her head. When she pulled out the hairbrush, her fine hair sagged against her head like a deflated balloon. Someone knocked on her bedroom door, and she snatched the bobby pin from her hair and raked her fingers through the strands.

“Come in,” she called with a voice pitched too high.

Her mama pushed open the door and stepped inside. “What are you doing?”

Kate fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “Nothing.”

Her mama’s dark eyes narrowed. “Every dish in the cabinets is trembling. The wind chimes are ringing outside, and there’s no breeze. And there’s enough energy in this room to light up the town. You’re doing
something
.”

Kate looked at her reflection. “I was only messing with my hair.” She glanced at her mama but didn’t meet her gaze.
And thinking about seeing Geoffrey tonight.

“What’s wrong with your hair?”

Kate pulled her fingers through her hair again. “Nothing. I was just trying a new style. Like the girls in town.”

“What girls?” her mama asked.

Kate sighed. “The pretty ones, Mama.”

“You’re a pretty one.”

Kate shook her head. “No, I’m not. Look at me. I’m–”

“You’re what?” her mama interjected. She crossed her arms over her chest.

At least half a dozen answers popped into her head—dark, Indian, skinny, weird, awkward, uncool—but Kate answered, “Different.”

“And you’d rather be, what? Exactly like someone else?”

“Maybe more like Sally Rensforth.”

Her mama laughed, but it coated everything in the room like ashes, leaving a taste on Kate’s tongue that was as bitter as maror. Kate shivered.

Her mama’s mouth pinched. “You’d like to be the same as someone who has nightmares every night? Like someone who is still afraid of the dark.”

Kate whirled around. “Mama, you don’t know that.”

“Don’t I? How about Martha Lee? You want to be like her?”

Kate shrugged. “She’s pretty. Lots of boys like her.”

“She steals her father’s liquor and hides it beneath her bed. She also steals from the drugstore on a regular basis. Patty Adams is in love with her first cousin. Sarah Connelly–”

“
Mama
–”

“Don’t
mama
me. Why would you want to be like any of them?”

“People already think we’re weird enough without you sharing their secrets.” Kate slumped onto her bed. She stared down at her colorful, patchwork skirt that fell to her ankles. Not a single girl in town wore the same kind of clothes Kate did. Those girls all looked like they shopped on Main Street, while Kate looked like a girl who’d been dressed by gypsies.

“I’m only telling
you
their secrets, and I’m trying to prove that being like everyone else isn’t always a good thing.” Her mama sat beside her on the bed and sighed. She pushed Kate’s hair behind her shoulders.

Kate laced her fingers together in her lap and stared at her hands. “It was always so easy for Evan. He fit in with everyone.”

Her mama’s spine stiffened. Kate knew her mama’s grief was still raw and wild and had the ability to steal the sun, but Kate also knew her mama could hear Evan’s name sometimes and still smile as though she might be seeing his face before her.

“That was his talent,” her mama said. “Yours is different. You’re never going to be like them, Little Blackbird. You’re going to be infinitely better.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

Her mama smiled. “Trust me. And as for boys, you shouldn’t be worrying about them right now. But if you were old enough for them, they’d be stupid not to like you just the way you are.”

Kate was so tempted to tell her mama about Geoffrey that she had to bite her tongue to stop herself. But what would she say?
Hey, Mama, now that you mention it, I’m sneaking out tonight to meet a boy. I hope that’s okay. I doubt he likes me, but he did say I was beautiful. I’ll try to be back before midnight.

Her mama stood and walked toward the door. “Now, settle down in here before you set the house on fire. Your father and I are going to bed soon. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

Kate nodded, wondering if midnight was considered to be
too late
.

W
HEN GEOFFREY KNOCKED at her window, Kate was already dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a black tank top. She’d been waiting for him in the shadows of her room, unable to sleep, drinking cup after cup of lavender tea. She lifted the sash, inhaled and exhaled three deep breaths, and crawled out into the darkness.

“Where are your shoes?” he asked as he hobbled along beside her.

“Don’t need them,” she said. “It’s not as though we’re going far.”

“What if an emergency comes up?”

Kate glanced at the glowing, full moon. “For example, if you turn into a werewolf?”

Geoffrey laughed. “Why me? What if
you’re
the werewolf?”

Kate stared at the moon’s wrinkled reflection on the river as they approached the water. “Then you’re definitely out of luck with that bum leg.”

Geoffrey laughed again, and Kate shushed him. He looked over his shoulder at her house, which was nearly concealed behind the trees. He stopped a few feet from the water and sat on one of the boulders. He propped his crutches beside him. Kate hesitated. She couldn’t sit beside him on the boulder. That would be too close and inappropriate, and she wasn’t sure she could sit still at all. Her insides squirmed like earthworms exposed after heavy rains. She unclenched her hands and chose a seat closer to the river, letting her feet dangle into the water.

They sat in silence, listening to the water rush and ripple over smooth river stones. Crickets chirped, and an owl hooted from the tall pines across the river. Kate closed her eyes and could almost pretend she was alone—if it wasn’t for the way the air felt alive and fidgety or the way the fireflies darted around their bodies, drawn to them because of the energy. The wind sounded like reed pipes as it weaved through the trees. Her insides twisted and curled around themselves.

“Why do you live way out here?” Geoffrey asked.

Kate opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you live in the city? It’s not like you couldn’t afford a nice house in town. Your dad makes—well, he makes a good living.”