He backed up. “You’re crazy, old lady, you know that?”
Raven’s mother cocked the gun. “I am. And you never know what a crazy old lady will do.” She walked toward him. “You’re on my land, and my signs clearly say trespassing isn’t allowed.”
He left, muttering curses. Raven closed the gate, and Chris pulled away with a screech of tires.
Mama lowered the gun. “What a child he is.”
“I know,” Raven said. “I just found that out.”
Mama held the gun on one arm, wrapped her other around Raven’s back as they walked to the house. “What drew you to such a boy?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe only that he liked me. My raven spirit always kept its distance when I was with him. It seemed afraid of him for some reason.”
“He wanted to possess you, put you in a cage,” Mama said.
He did, Raven realized. Her raven side had been trying to tell her that from the start.
“The prom dresses arrived while you were gone.”
“Let’s go find two big pairs of scissors,” Raven said.
6
Raven turned off her alarm, buried herself beneath the duvet, and went back to sleep.
Mama woke her hours later, her hand on Raven’s forehead to check for fever. “Are you unwell?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Since second grade, you’ve missed only two days of school. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mama’s pale eyes glittered with resentment. “I know what happened. That boy—Chris Williams—has caused trouble for you, hasn’t he?”
Raven looked away from her eyes.
“I should have shot his balls off,” she muttered.
“Mama!”
“What has he done?”
“He’s telling people only his side of the story. And he told them about you coming at him with the gun.”
Mama grinned.
“It’s not funny. They’re all treating me different.”
“Well, you are different. You’re a miracle. Keep that in mind and hold your head high.”
Miracle or not, she hated going to school now. Reece was the only one who wasn’t aloof with her. Chris was bitter, didn’t even sit at their lunch table. And Jackie and Huck were like different people. But that had nothing to do with her. Their father’s death had changed them. They were serious all the time, and when they laughed at a joke, Raven saw they were pretending.
School had become seven hours of bleakness. She remembered Mama’s warnings about school when she was younger: You will be the raven’s child caught in a cage. You’ll feel like a bird beating against glass in your desperation to get out.
“I don’t want to go back,” Raven said.
“In this state, you have to go until your eighteenth birthday. You may quit then if you like.”
“I’d nearly be done with high school by then,” Raven said.
Mama shrugged.
Raven sat up in the bed. “Am I going to college?”
“Why would you? You can learn anything a college teaches from books.” She stood. “Let’s eat and spend the day outdoors. The spirits will do you good.”
Raven doubted that. Their ninety acres sometimes felt as much a prison as school did.
“Let’s ask the spirits for a baby together,” Mama said. “We haven’t tried that yet. Having a baby in the house is what we both need.” She caressed Raven’s cheek. “I know you can’t imagine the joy of it yet. You’ll understand when it happens.”
Mama’s talk of having a baby always unsettled her. Raven didn’t crave it, and that felt like betrayal when Mama wanted it so badly. To ask for a baby with Mama would be as difficult as school. Her heart and soul were in neither.
For the remainder of the school year, she mostly kept to herself. She found quiet places to eat away from everyone. Reece sometimes hunted her down and made her go back to the lunch table. She went without a fight, mostly because she liked to see Jackie. He was gradually recovering. And as he did, he was attentive to Raven when they were together. He didn’t seem to care anymore that it made Sadie angry. Raven wondered if her Asking had bonded him too much to her. It made her feel a little guilty.
In June, Huck and Reece graduated. Huck would study environmental engineering at the University of Washington in autumn. Reece was working to earn money for college and helping his mother. As always, Raven’s life with the boys was changing too fast. She couldn’t imagine school without Reece the next year. But she was glad her freshman year was over. For the first time, she wanted to go to Montana for the summer.
Summers in the tiny cabin had been the same for seven years. The eighth year, their life there changed in a bad way, like everything else recently. Mama had trouble climbing the mountain trails she’d been trekking since she was a girl. She breathed hard and had to slow down. But when Raven asked, she insisted she was fine.
By the end of summer, Mama admitted she felt different. But she refused to see a doctor or talk to Aunt Sondra about it. She said the earth spirits would heal her. Raven performed many Askings, begging the spirits to heal whatever was wrong with Mama’s heart. She knew it was the heart because Mama sometimes put her hand on her chest. In her Askings, Raven used anything she could find that was shaped like a human heart—a stone, a leaf, a bit of mollusk shell. And she asked with all her heart and soul.
But Mama was still sick when they returned to Washington. She was getting caught in the spirit world more often, the bad spells where Raven had to feed her and dress her like she was a baby. As Mama withdrew more and more into the spirit world, Raven felt as if her spirit were retreating with her.
She wished she didn’t have to go to school. She
