“What is it?” Zadie asked.
Finn cast her eyes on the ground. It was not her story to tell.
“I’m going deaf,” Ursula said bluntly, then looked up at the stars as if they gave her the courage to continue. “I found out six months ago. Turns out, even my headphones aren’t strong enough to block the damage the sun is doing to my ears. I can hear okay most of the time, but there are moments when everything just goes silent. That’s why I’m rushing to get all this music written down, because soon I won’t be able to hear it anymore.”
Finn finally raised her eyes to Ursula. “I’m sorry.” She was both sorry that Ursula was losing her hearing and sorry that she had found out the way she did.
Ursula waved her off. “Don’t be. I don’t regret a thing. It’s the price I paid for being able to hear the most beautiful sound in the universe… Do you guys want to see the sign for star?” She pointed both her index fingers toward the sky and swiped them against each other like she was trying to start a fire. “That’s Nic’s favorite. She says it looks like I’m trying to start a new dance craze and failing miserably.”
Finn laughed as she blinked away a tear. “It does kinda look like that.”
“Enough of the sad talk,” Ursula said, shuffling the sheet music on her desk into a pile. “It’s Friday.”
“What happens on Friday?”
The bonfire roared. Huge tongues of flame thrashed against the night sky, spitting embers into the stars. Ursula wandered off to talk to a gathering of her neighbors while Zadie and Finn settled themselves onto one of the serape-style blankets that encircled the fire. They were quiet for a while, observing the other residents as they danced and laughed and tossed bottles into the fire to see if they would melt. They seemed happy, the kind of happy that comes with feeling truly at home in a place. Zadie envied them. She had yet to find somewhere like that for herself.
“This place is so weird,” Finn said wistfully. Zadie looked over at her sister, a blue aura of moonlight outlining the coils of her hair. From anyone else, this would have been an insult, but not her. She had an affinity for all things strange. After all, it was an exclusive club of which she considered herself a member. People like Finn didn’t live in the suburbs. They lived in places like this, on the fringes of society surrounded by Technicolor cacti.
Finn began absentmindedly picking at the tassels on the end of the blanket. “I feel like I failed her.”
“You didn’t fail anyone. You got us this far.” Zadie should have been relieved. The trail had ostensibly gone cold, and maybe now she could salvage what was left of their trip by driving to the closest beach, or if there was none nearby, the closest swimming pool. But if she was being honest with herself, there was a small part of her that had hoped her mother’s signature had been in one of those ledgers. Maybe it would have absolved her of some of the guilt she’d been feeling for the last five years.
It was a premonition that had guided Zadie to the window just in time to see her mom leave, a premonition that could have prevented every gut-wrenching second that followed. But the words themselves were vague and forgettable, so forgettable that, to this day, Zadie couldn’t recall what they were. It hardly mattered. She had given up that life. What was the point of knowing a future she had no power to change?
But the more she tried to rationalize—there was nothing I could have done—the guiltier she felt. It was that guilt that sat with her now in the firelight, that jammed its limbs into her ribs like her baby would do in a matter of weeks. Her anger was guilt in a Halloween mask. It made her feel in control.
But she wasn’t in control. Her premonitions made sure to remind her of that.
Then, as if taunting her:The sky is full of birds.The phrase lunged at Zadie. Instinctively, she put up a wall, but the premonition beat itself against it like a bird flying into a window.
The sky is full of birds.She held her breath, trying to starve it of oxygen, then looked up at the stars and started counting:One, two, three—
The sky is full of birds.
Four, five, six…
As she counted to seven, the stars didn’t look like stars anymore. They were a flock of birds flitting through space on wings made of luminescent dust, a murmuration of starlight.
“It’s taking a long time, don’t you think?”
Finn.
Zadie blinked the rest of the starbirds from her eyes. “What’s taking a long time?” she said, disoriented. Her sister often did this. Start a conversation that had already begun in her head. Or perhaps she had been speaking this whole time and Zadie had been too preoccupied to notice.
“Our rocks. You don’t think it would take Estrella that long to paint.”
Zadie had forgotten about the rocks. She rubbed her brow. The premonition may have subsided, but a headache had taken itsplace. “She probably forgot. I wouldn’t get hung up over it. It’s just a rock.”
“No, it’s not.” It was as if a switch inside Finn had just been flipped. “It could be a clue,” she said and jumped to her feet.
Zadie followed her. Someone would have to apologize for the elder harassment that was about to take place. “Whoa, slow down. What clue?”
“If the paintings are supposed to show our futures, maybe they can tell us where to go next.”
“So, you want to seeourfutures so you can see intoMom’spast?”
“Exactly.”