Mermaid in Chelsea Creek (27 page)

What it felt like to be so small! That struck Sophie first. She realized she perceived her own emotions as running the length of her body, and to feel such a fullness of feelings compacted inside the tiny body of a bird was new. Like a tightly wrapped bouquet as opposed to a sprawling garden of flowers. And Livia's feelings were sweet, it was sweet to be Livia, her heart was so pure, so oriented toward rightness that she could relax and follow it, and she did, and there was little conflict inside her bird heart. There were many pulses of love, and Sophie could feel how the bird loved the sky, how she loved Arthur, delighted in his cranky rants, found them noble and adorable at once. Sophie felt a pulse of love for the wind, which Livia interacted with as a living thing with a will of its own, one that Livia had learned to understand and love. And there, a pulse of love for Sophie. Sophie felt joy at this, and shame. She didn't know that she deserved it. Swarming the love was a sadness, a worry, a concern. A disappointment? Sophie didn't want to feel
that
. She couldn't feel sweet, pure-hearted Livia's disappointment in her. She pulled herself out of the pigeon.

“I didn't mean it!” she shouted up at the birds on their wire, and they shuffled and cooed, spoke in bird language, like they weren't magical at all, or like Sophie was no longer special enough to hear their crystalline voices.

“Don't talk about me in your bird languages when I'm standing right here!” Sophie hollered. “It's rude! I can tell you're talking about me!” She zoomed deeper into Livia and felt the bird's concern rise above her disappointment. “If you're so worried about me don't talk about me behind my back when I'm right in front of you!” Sophie was crying now. She didn't like the birds' silence, she didn't like the world when time was stopped. It felt wrong, the air heavy and still, nothing moving. Walking felt like pushing through soup. When would Hennie put everything back to normal?

“I don't want to know who my father is!” Sophie screamed at the flock. “I like not having a father; it's too weird to have one all of a sudden! I don't want to know anything else about my family!”

Sophie remembered the secret she felt bobbing inside Angel, something about Andrea, her mother. She thought about the twin baby pictures in Hennie's copper locket. Maybe for a moment she'd wanted to know more, but Sophie had changed her mind. She wanted Andrea to remain Andrea—cranky, overworked. As Andrea had tended to ignore her daughter, so had Sophie learned to tune out her mom. She didn't want to tune in now, with so much sad, spooky information spinning around her. “I don't want to know
everything
, okay?” she shouted. A dog howled at the sound of her voice, another animal able to move in the time-stop. Her grandfather.

Giddy lifted herself from the wire and flew down to Sophie's hot shoulder. She fluttered and cooed, still smelling sweet from her bath.

“If I had a mouth I would give you a kiss,” she said. She brushed Sophie's face with her wing. “Maybe you should apologize to Hennie.”

“I've been here forever. I have to go home.”

“Time's stopped,” Arthur butted in. “No one's even conscious right now but us and Hennie. And Kishka.” He shuddered, his feathers puffed up as if a wind had hit them.

“And my grandfather, the German Shepherd,” Sophie said. “I'm going home.” She turned on her heel and headed down Heard Street.

She passed the gang of boys who commonly terrorized her, frozen on a front porch. Their bicycles were heaped on the sidewalk, and it occurred to Sophie that she could just take one. It occurred to her that she could go right up to the biggest one, the bullyingest one, and give him a smack, a punch, a kick. He stood with one hand low on his hip, the other gesturing outward; he had been in the midst of a story when the zagavory hit. If she knocked him over would he retain his pose, like a department store mannequin?

Sophie walked up onto the porch. She slid between the boys—one half-bent in laughter, one leaning back against the wall, scratchy with peeling paint. Another had a cigarette stuck in the v of his fingers, burned down to the filter, a long ash arcing precariously. Sophie bumped his arm, shocked at the feel of his skin. The ash crumbled.

“What are you doing, Sophie?” Livia said. The bird sounded scared. “Leave the people alone.”

But it was mesmerizing to be here, in a lion's den of sorts, and to be unafraid, safe for the moment, so close to the boys who bothered her.
Not that Sophie could be sure that
these
were the boys who hounded her, trailed her on their bicycles, hollered names at her, suggested they would like to grab her and bring her to the train tracks, if only she wasn't so
ugly
, such a
dog
, and how they barked as they menaced her, howling and bow-wowing, ruff-ruffing. Sophie kept her head down and so never really saw the boys as anything more than a pack, a cloud, a blur of striped athletic shirts, the silver spinning of bicycle wheels. This largest boy might
not
be the bully. Sophie tried to get a read on him, pushing into his space, but it was like static on a television set, no picture, no nothing. She placed her hand flat on the muscle of his arm. It was warm the way living people are warm. She brushed his hair out of his eyes. His hair was damp with humidity and sweat.

“Sophie,” Livia continued nervously. “Hennie could break the spell any minute. Then you're here with all these boys, with a bunch of pigeons. Sophie, it would be terrible. Please, let's go.”

Sophie imagined what would happen if the boys all came to with her standing there, twirling their hair. Partly it was hilarious, but also, horrifying. She stomped off the porch, extra hard, wondering if the stomp of her feet would jar them like sleeping people but of course it didn't. “This is totally weird,” Sophie breathed. Her crying had stopped, her sadness distracted by the strange world she suddenly occupied.

* * *

THE STOPPING OF
time didn't really make Sophie's house feel very different. Andrea slept in her darkened room, the shade drawn against the heat of the day, making the place a cave. Sophie thought she should get her mother more water, in case the time-stop stopped and she awoke extra thirsty in her fever. She moved toward her mother's night table, reaching for the empty glass. Andrea started, rolling over in her bed, cracking her puffy eyes in alarm. Sophie screamed.

“What? What?” Andrea scrambled up in her bed, kicking sweaty sheets down her legs. “Oh my god, what? What are you doing? Why are you screaming?”

Sophie felt a bit of her mind flex, and the water glass was in her hand, broken. A crack had loosened a shard, and the shard lay in Sophie's palm.

“The—the glass broke,” she said quickly, flooded with gratitude for her instinctive magic. Hennie was right, she could just
do
it. Sophie knew there was simple magic-mind tricks—and bigger magic that required stuff from her magic pouch and the howl of her zawolanie. How would she know the difference? She just would. It was part of her overall
knowing
.

“Oh my god, you scared me,” Andrea said. “Are you okay? Is there glass on the floor? Did you go to Goldstein's?”

Sophie nodded, patting her purse.

“I have everything, juice, soup, all of it. The glass—it's—I'm fine, it's okay.” Why was Andrea awake? Because she was Kishka's daughter. Because she was Sophie's mother. Because somewhere inside her lay a dormant gene for magic, and it made her immune to the stoppage of time.

“Bring me some water,” Andrea said. “And throw that glass away. And make yourself some soup or something. I'm not going to be able to cook for you tonight.” Andrea collapsed back onto her pillows before Sophie could say something smart about tonight being just like any other night. Why did she have to be so mean to her mom? Was it a piece of Kishka's cruel magic inside her? She bent low and gave her mom a kiss on her sweaty forehead. Andrea batted her away.

“Are you crazy?” she asked groggily. “Do you want to get yourself sick?”

* * *

WITH HER MOM
conked out on cold medicine, Sophie rummaged half-heartedly through the fridge. There wasn't much to eat, but she wasn't really hungry. She was distracted, bunched up inside. What was she supposed to do now? Where were the pigeons? Sophie moved to the kitchen window and spotted them huddling and cooing by their bowls of water. And what else she saw sent goosebumps rising up her
arms like a mountain range: Laurie LeClair, standing in her backyard. Like a skull-faced ghost with her pale skin, black-rimmed eyes, and flat white hair. She looked into the window, staring into Sophie's face with her blank and hollow gaze. “Laurie?” Sophie stuttered.

“What?” Andrea mumbled from her bedroom.

“Nothing, Ma!” Sophie yelled back, not taking her eyes off Laurie's, empty and haunted at once. She wore black jeans, tight on her skinny legs, and black sneakers, and a black t-shirt revealing long white arms spotted with bruises. Her child was with her, a toddler with amber curls, in wrinkly shorts and a t-shirt. One hand clutched Laurie's, the other held a plastic shovel. When Laurie let go and moved toward Sophie the child's hand stayed raised, her fingers curled in an empty grip. The child had been stunned by the time-stop, but not Laurie. Laurie glanced at the baby, made sure she was stable, and walked stiffly across the yard. The pigeons parted to accommodate her, and Sophie ran from her kitchen, dashing out the back door to intercept her.

“Laurie, Laurie, Laurie,” Sophie gasped, putting her arms in front of her, touching the girl's shoulders. “How are you awake? Time is stopped. Are you magic, too?”

Sophie stared deep into Laurie's dead eyes. The only magic she could possibly have was the unnatural reanimation of a zombie. Sophie glanced over at the child, posed like a doll at the back of the yard. She looked like one of the lawn ornaments cluttering the yard of the woman up the street. She should be holding a lantern, not a toy
shovel, or wearing a pointed red hat like a gnome.

Laurie's chapped mouth cracked open to speak. When Laurie spoke Sophie didn't only
hear
the words, she felt them, and the feeling was bad. “I am the Dola,” Laurie spoke. There
was
a life in her eyes, a strange flicker. “I am not Laurie right now.”

Sophie wished the thing would never talk again. Every word seared into her, leaving in its wake a regret that seeped into her bones.
Oh no
, Sophie thought, and the phrase began a loop she was powerless to stop.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no
.

“Come here, let's talk back here.” Sophie pulled Laurie back to the rear of the yard, where the pigeons had assembled themselves around the baby. “Will you guys make some noise?” she requested, and a choir of cooing started up. “Thank you.” Sophie looked at the little girl, her steady breathing, her rigid pose. The sun blasted down on her. “She's going to get a sunburn,” Sophie said, worried.

“You can move her,” said the Dola.

Sophie lifted the girl under his arms. She was light and smelled like a baby, sort of sour. She was grimy, her hair full of dust, her clothing limp from being worn and re-worn. It was strange, placing her down in the shade like a statue. She wobbled, but stayed upright. “How old is she?” Sophie asked.

The Dola considered, reaching backward into Laurie's consciousness. “Almost two.” Sophie nodded. She leaned her back against the chainlink fence, which sagged gently like a hammock beneath her weight. The Dola stood stiff before her, watching her with Laurie's face.

“Why are you Laurie LeClair?” Sophie asked.

“She was easy to get into,” the Dola said. “She takes drugs, it makes it very simple to slip in. She doesn't really know herself, so she doesn't know if an entity takes over. She just thinks it's the drugs.”

This made Sophie feel bad, and it wasn't just the Dola's voice spurring doom and gloom inside her body. The Dola was a creep. “That seems… unethical,” Sophie said in a smart voice.

“There is no such thing as ethics,” the Dola said. “There is only destiny, and much of it is bad. Nonetheless, it is such, it is destiny. It is the rule, and it must be obeyed.” The Dola turned her face to the sun. “The destiny of every person is inside me,” she said, her scary eyes closed. “I feel it. When it goes off track I feel that, too. You have gone off track.”