“You don’t mean...” We had never directly acknowledgedit, that this bird mightactuallybe my great-great-great-namesake’s sister. It was hinted at heavily, sure, but never confirmed nor denied.
“My second cousin could turn into a black cat,” my mother had said, as if that answered everything. She’d bent over to kiss my forehead and then slipped the mug out of my hands; I was already falling asleep, so strong was her magic.
“Anyway,” Lucille was saying now, “I don’t love that she’s late either, but I’m not quite ready to panic. We’ll all be laughing about this at the festival, just you wait.”
Held three weeks exactly from the solstice, the festival started at six in the evening and ran well into the night. In theory it was a celebration of our island’s founding, but in actuality, it was called the Fowl Fair, and I think we can agree on what we were really celebrating.
Yes, Annabella had her own festival.
“I look forward to it every year,” Lucille continued, taking a bite of her muffin. “I just hope the little darling shows up in time.”
“You should play a little hard to get. Maybe that’ll piss her off and she’ll come looking foryou,” Mary said—I hadn’t noticed her come into the dining room. She stood in the doorway, looking pissed off herself, but I doubted that it had anything to do with the birdheads’ concerns.
“Ha! You’re funny, Mary,” Lucille said, and she took her muffin and wandered off. She had a habit of doing that,wandering in and out of rooms and conversations like she’d never quite grasped the concept of sayinghelloandgood-bye.
“What’s your problem?” I asked when Mary had joined me at the table.
“It’s been three days, and I haven’t made out with Harrison Birdface yet,” she said, scowling.
“I believe his last name is Lowry. And also, he’s a birdhead. He doesn’t care about kissing girls; he cares about Annabella.”
“He could care about both.”
“There’s no precedent.”
“There’s no precedent because there’s never been an attractive birdhead before,” Mary argued. She had a point. “What about his sister? Any luck there?”
Actually, Prue had been about as absent as Annabella. I hadn’t seen so much as the back of her head since the inn’s opening night party.
I shrugged. Mary sighed loudly.
“We’re both losers,” she said.
“I don’t think not having makeout partners makes us losers,” I said.
“First of all, it does. Second of all, I have plenty of makeout partners.”
“What’s it like being so popular? Like just the most popular little flower in the whole world?”
“It’s really nice,” she said seriously.
And then, like Lucille, she wandered away.
Having exhausted all hope of further conversation, I decided to ride my bike to the town square and visit Vira at Ice Cream Parlor.
The town square of By-the-Sea was actually more like a rectangle, and it was the only place on the island where, looking east, west, north, or south, you couldn’t see any water. There was a gazebo and a small playground on the northern end and a farmers’ market at the southern end on Sundays. All around the green were the shops and eateries and businesses of the island: the post office, Used Books, Joel’s Diner, Ice Cream Parlor, the coffee shop (named Coffee Shop, because apparently we’re really boring), etc. The high school and lower-grade schools were at the northern tip of the square, and the town hall was at the southern tip. It was a five-minute bike ride to reach Ice Cream Parlor, the ice cream and candy parlor owned by Vira’s mom, Julia Montgomery.
It was Vira’s dream, once her mother retired, to take over the business and rename it Skull & Cone. Already she experimented with making her own flavors, slipping them next to the normal stock so customers had a choice between Dutch Chocolate, Vanilla, Strawberry, Pistachio, and Broken Hearts of Lovers (one of her recent creations, which was basically just raspberry and cream and an unexpected dash of cardamom).
I arrived at Ice Cream Parlor at eleven, right when they were opening. Vira wore her unreasonably cutecandy-striper outfit (plus white apron and matching hat!) and was busy setting out the ice cream labels next to their corresponding buckets of ice cream.
“Hi, Vi,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, are we still friends? Are we talking now? Do we know each other? Did we have a class together once or something?” Vira said. “First you ditch book club and then you haven’t come to see me in three whole days.”
“Vira, you know how busy the first days of the season are,” I said. “I thought of you every minute.”
She shrugged, too elbow-deep in ice cream to argue much. “What do you want while I’m in here?”
