“No.” He brings the mug to his lips to hide a grin. “Not a chance.”
That evening, Dr. Cliffton takes the news to the Sisters’ Council. He is gone so late that I don’t even hear him come home.
“The Council is thrilled,” he informs us in the morning. “They voted to approve immediately. I already have a list of orders from the voting members, and they’re asking me to seed the Variant into the Market as soon as possible.”
The news of the Dream Variant has broken by the time we leave for school. It’s too sensitive to appear in the Sterling Post, but it spreads like wildfire anyway. Cars drive by the Clifftons’ house for the next several days, leaving parcels of potatoes and fresh brown eggs and even precious bags of sugar at the gate. The phone rings until Mrs. Cliffton tires of answering it and simply takes it off the hook.
“Miles,” she says. “A classmate of yours called today. Wants to have you over after school next week.”
He beams, even at me. It seems as though the discovery of the Variant, and the part that we played together, will be enough to thaw the last remaining tension that has lingered between us ever since I accused him of taking Mother’s necklace.
“You did it,” I whisper to him over dessert.
“Kinda you, too,” he says back, and that’s when I know we are okay again.
Dr. Cliffton begins a waiting list for orders and sends out a request to the town that he’ll pay an entire dollar per tooth. “Legitimately lost teeth only, please,” he reminds a group of Corrander boys who show up at the door with a few suspiciously bloody baby teeth and younger siblings lagging close behind.
It is just the thing to distract everyone as preparations launch into full force for Disappearance Day. With one week remaining, groundskeepers set to work on the orchard and school lawn, trimming grass, stringing lanterns, and clearing brush from the paths. Beas has extra rehearsals every day for an orchestra performance at the Harvest Fair. Will spends time with Tuck the carpenter constructing a stage, a podium, and additional seating.
My gaps in Cass’s letters are growing larger. I mention nothing of this when I write to her on Saturday. Nothing about Miles’s discovery, the Variants, the Marketplace, the Tempest race, or Disappearance Day. How I’ve finally stopped searching for my reflection when I walk past windows and mirrors. “I have practice now for this new game called Stars,” I write. “It’s similar to darts.” I force my pen across the page. “I miss you and Father, and Mother most of all. Some days I’m so anxious to be back home with you again.”
But there are some days, like the next afternoon—?when I’m sitting outside with Will and Miles under crimson leaves pattering with rain, feeling warm under a cloak of Embers and Veils, and watching raindrops slide over my opened palm—?that I find I’m not quite as anxious as I used to be.
Mrs. Cliffton opens her daytime scheduler at the breakfast table before school. “Let’s talk about what still needs to be done before the twenty-ninth.”
“The twenty-ninth?” I ask, my head jerking up.
“Yes,” she says, “the Harvest Fair is on the twenty-ninth.”
“Every year?”
She nods, then continues on with her list. “We’ll pick up some honey and figs. And Malcolm will need to bring his telescope.”
But I’m not listening. My mind is traveling back to three years ago, when Miles was five. The first year he insisted we do something special for birthdays other than his own. He helped Father and me make a lemon sponge cake topped with glazed strawberries. Talked Father into getting us all tickets to the cinema to see The Wizard of Oz, even though the flying monkeys gave him nightmares for weeks after. At the end, Miles had the whole theater sing to Mother. The way she smiled let me know she was doing it for us, not because she enjoyed it. In fact, she’d never really liked her birthday, and I’d never understood why.
But I do now.
My mother’s birthday was October 29, 1907.
She was born on the first Disappearance Day.
Chapter Twenty-One
Date: 7/28/1941
Bird: The Fulmar
Means “foul gull” in Norse.
Nauseating smell acts as a defense against predators.
But it’s a poor defense, as many birds can hardlysmell anyway.
I can tell that Phineas is starting to sense that something is off. There’s the cut on my cheek I can’t see. I nicked myself shaving and didn’t realize. “You slice yourself?” he asks, gesturing to his own whiskered mouth one morning. I probe the crusting of dried blood with my tongue until it starts to bleed again.
“Don’t know how I missed it,” I say lightly. Phineas fetches me a bandage. Carefully covers the cut himself.
The gesture startles me. It’s the first time in years someone has touched my face.
