Have a great day, and may all your wishes come true, said the last bit. Love, Dad.
Emily’s mother held out her hand. “May I?”
Emily shut the card. “He said happy birthday, that’s all.” She turned to Nate. “And to tell you hi.”
“He’ll call this evening, I suppose,” Emily’s mom said. “Remember to tell him about your school fees for this semester. He needs to pay half. It’s his responsibility.”
“He sent the check in January,” said Emily.
Her mom huffed. “Oh, did he? That man.” She tapped her lips, then rolled her eyes elaborately. “That’s right. He sent it in one of those legal-sized envelopes, all business, not even a note asking how we’re doing. One little note—is that too much to ask?”
Emily and Nate exchanged a quick glance. They talked on the phone with their father once a month. He did ask how they were doing.
“All right, back to the day,” her mother said, all sudden efficiency. “I know we’d planned to visit your grandmother at the care center this afternoon, but one of the aides called and told me she’s having one of her tired spells. Just wants to sleep and watch her soap operas.” Her mom’s eyes slid away. She’d received no such call, and Emily knew it. “We’ll go see her next weekend. It’s not as if she’ll know the difference.”
Emily escaped to her bedroom with her card and unicorn pillow. She loved her odd grandmom Elnora, who would most certainly realize they failed to visit her on Emily’s thirteenth birthday. Thirteenth birthdays were a big deal in Willow Hill, such a big deal that Emily knew that’s why her mom had canceled the visit. Her mom didn’t want Grandmom Elnora talking to Emily about her favorite topic: magic.
Not for the first time, or the hundredth, Emily vowed that if she ever had a child, she would be a different sort of mother from her own. She would try and see her child with clear eyes. To be the right sort of mother for the child she was given, whatever kind of child she or he was.
Emily had a vision so powerful it knocked the breath out of her: she was in a pool of water, staring up through murky water. First, she experienced the vision as if it were actually happening, as if she were in her body, watching the water close over her as she was swallowed by the depths. Then she saw her body from above, as if she were looking down at herself. She saw her dark eyes widen and her pale face sink deeper and deeper.
She came out of it with a jolt, dizzy and nauseated. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She sucked in sweet clean air.
What had just happened?
She’d had moments of déjà vu before, half memories that slipped out of her grasp like silverfish. But this . . .
She’d remembered herself drowning, although there’d been no thrashing or gasping for air. She hadn’t fought the submersion. She’d just sunk.
At once, she felt horribly itchy. Twitchy, like spiders were crawling down her back. Like someone had walked over her grave.
“Get it together,” she muttered under her breath. This was her birthday. She refused to spend it moping around, so she grabbed her art pad and her new pencils and headed to City Park Lake.
Outside, a breeze blew strands of hair into her face. She pulled an elastic off her wrist, gathered her hair into a bunch and pulled it through the elastic. She twisted the elastic and did the same thing again, repeating the pattern until she was left with a tight ponytail. The process satisfied her, familiar and routine.
Halfway to the park, she saw two girls roller-skating along the sidewalk, arms wobbling as they fought to keep their balance. They were probably nine or ten, and she thought one of them looked like Elena Kosrov, Klara Kosrov’s little sister. Klara and Emily shared a birthday, which meant that Klara’d turned thirteen today, too. All through elementary school, Emily and Klara had brought treats for the other kids on the same day. Klara’s had always been better, because they were homemade.
Emily paused to watch Elena and her friend. Emily used to love roller-skating, though she’d roller-skated solo. She was swept into a there-and-then-gone recollection of the exhilaration of zooming down a steep hill, sometimes going so fast she had to dive into the bushes bordering a driveway to bring herself to a stop.
Elena and her friend laughed wildly, and their happiness lifted Emily’s spirits.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ava
“I always felt awkward as a girl,” the Bird Lady finally said. “Always out of place.”
Wind stirred the wisteria vines dangling from the oak tree. The outside world was still there, Ava reminded herself. Her sisters, her aunts, Mama and Papa—they were doing whatever they were doing beyond the loamy expanse of the forest.
The curtain of purple wisteria blooms seemed to separate the tree hollow from reality, yes.
But it doesn’t really, Ava reassured herself.
The Bird Lady leaned close. “I just . . . I never was able to understand how other people functioned in the world. I would laugh when others didn’t, for example. And things other people found funny, I didn’t understand. I always thought there must be a rule book I was missing.”
“You were the odd girl out,” Ava said.
The Bird Lady pointed at her. “Exactly, and an odd duck as well.” She tutted. “But I didn’t want to be an odd duck. Heavens, no. Girls in my grade, girls I’d gone to school with for years, they didn’t even know my name!”
“What is your name?” asked Ava.
“And so, as my Wishing Day approached—this was eons ago—I concluded that if I could simply see the world as others saw it, I could unlock the secret. Learn the rules. Be . . . well . . . normal. Popular.”
The Bird Lady blinked. “And then my poor mother . . . Well, she died soon after my thirteenth birthday.” She checked to see if Ava was paying attention. “She died after my birthday, but before my Wishing Day. Before
