After science, his classmates jostle off to the cafeteria for lunch, eager to buy their corn dogs and chocolate milk, to jockey for seats at the best tables. Bird has never liked eating there, all those whispers. For years he took the table in the corner, half hidden in the nook behind the vending machine. Then, near the end of fifth grade, Sadie had arrived, unabashed and unrepentant, elbowing out a space for the two of them. For one glorious year he’d not been alone. The first day they met, she’d grabbed his hand and pulled him outside to the small patch of lawn. Out there, the air was cool and calm and the quiet poured into his ears, magnifying every sound, and as he settled beside her on the grass, he could hear everything, the rustle of the plastic bags they unfurled from their sandwiches, the scrape of Sadie’s sneaker against the concrete as she curled her leg beneath her, the murmur of the newly uncurled leaves overhead as the breeze rattled their branches.
The whispers had changed then. There were songs: Noah and Sadie, sitting in a tree.
Kids still sing that? his father had said, when Bird told him about it. That idiotic chant will outlast the apocalypse. When they’ve burned all the books, that’s all we’ll have left.
He cut himself off.
Just ignore it. They’ll stop.
Then he paused. But don’t spend too much time around that Sadie, he said. You don’t want people to think you’re like her.
Bird had nodded, but after that he and Sadie ate together every day, no matter the weather, huddling together under the overhang when it rained, shivering side by side in the winter slush. After Sadie disappeared, he hadn’t returned to the cafeteria but went back to their spot each day. He’d learned, by then: sometimes being alone was the less bad option.
Today, instead of going outside, he lingers in the science classroom, pretending to rummage in his bookbag, until everyone else has gone. At her desk, Mrs. Pollard stacks her papers in an orderly sheaf, gives him an appraising look.
Did you need something, Noah? she asks. From a drawer she removes a brown paper sack, neatly crimped: her own lunch. On the wall behind her, a row of colorful posters beam. in this together, one reads, a chain of red, white, and blue paper dolls stretched across a map of the United States. Every good citizen is a good influence, says another. Every bad citizen is a bad influence. And then, of course, there is the flag that hangs in every classroom, dangling just over her left shoulder like a raised axe.
Could I use a computer? Bird says. I wanted to look something up.
He waves toward the table by the far wall, where a half dozen laptops have been placed for student use. Most of his classmates look things up on their phones instead, but Bird’s father won’t let him have one. Absolutely not, he says, and as a result Bird is one of the few kids he knows who ever use the school computers. Behind them, empty bookshelves. Bird has never seen books on them, but there they stand, fossils of a long-gone era.
Did you know, their teacher explained the year before, that paper books are out of date the instant they’re printed?
The beginning-of-year welcome talk. All of them sitting crisscross applesauce on the carpet at her feet.
That’s how fast the world changes. And our understanding of it, too.
She snapped her fingers.
We want to make sure you have the most current information. This way we can be sure nothing you use is outdated or inaccurate. You’ll find everything you need right here online.
But where did they all go, Sadie insisted. Sadie, still new to the school then, and fearless. The books, she said. There must have been some before, or there wouldn’t be shelves. Where did you take them?
The teacher’s smile widened, and tightened.
Everyone has storage limitations, she said. So we’ve culled the books that we felt were unnecessary or unsuitable or out of date. But—
So you banned all those books, Sadie said, and the teacher had blinked twice at her over her glasses.
Oh no, sweetie, she said. People think that sometimes, but no. No one bans anything. Haven’t you ever heard of the Bill of Rights?
The class giggled, and Sadie flushed.
Every school makes its own independent judgments, the teacher said. About which books are useful to their students and which books might expose them to dangerous ideas. Let me ask you something: Whose parents want them to spend time with bad people?
She looked around the circle. No one raised a hand.
Of course not. Your parents want you to be safe. That’s part of being a good parent. You all know that I’m a mom, too, right?
A general murmur of assent.
Imagine a book that told you lies, the teacher went on. Or one that told you to do bad things, like hurt people, or hurt yourself. Your parents would never put a book like that on your bookshelf at home, would they?
All around the circle, children shook their heads, wide-eyed. Only Sadie’s stayed still, her arms folded, her mouth a thin straight line.
Well, it’s like that, the teacher said. We all want our children to be safe. We don’t want them exposed to bad ideas—ideas that might hurt them, or encourage them to do bad things. To themselves, or to their families, or to our country. So we remove those books and block sites that might be harmful.
She smiled around at all of them.
It’s our job as teachers, she said, her voice soft but firm. To take care of all of you, just like I’d take care of my own children. To decide what’s worth keeping and what isn’t. We just have to decide on these things.
Her gaze came to rest, at last, on Sadie.
We always have, she said. Nothing’s changed.
Now, Bird holds his breath as Mrs. Pollard hesitates. It’s only a month into seventh grade but he already likes Mrs. Pollard; her daughter, Jenna, is a year behind Bird, and Josh, her boy, is in first. She has gray-blond hair and wears sweaters with pockets and big, round earrings that look like candy. Unlike his social studies teacher, she never stares at him when PACT comes up, and if she hears one of the kids giving him a hard time, she’ll say, Seventh graders, let’s focus on the task at hand, please, with a rap of her knuckles on the desktop.
Is this for class? she asks.
Something in Mrs. Pollard’s voice puts Bird on his guard—or maybe it’s the way she peers at him, eyes narrowed, as if she knows what he’s doing. He wishes he had that confidence in himself. To believe that what he’s after is anything more than a wild-goose chase. On her lapel, a tiny flag pin glints in the fluorescent light.
Not exactly, he says. It’s just something I’m interested in. About cats, he adds, improvising. My dad and I—we’re thinking of getting a cat. I wanted to look up different breeds.
One of Mrs. Pollard’s eyebrows lifts ever so slightly.
Well, she says, brightly. A new pet. That’s lovely. Let me know if you need help.
She tips her head toward the row of computers, shining and silver, and begins to unwrap her lunch.
Bird seats himself at the computer farthest from her desk. On each, a small brass plaque reads: A gift from the Lieu family. Two years ago Ronny Lieu’s family had purchased them for every classroom, upgraded the whole school to high-speed internet. Just part of giving back to society, Mr. Lieu had said at the unveiling ceremony. He was a businessman—some kind of real estate—and the principal had thanked him for this generous gift, said how grateful they were to private citizens for stepping in where the city budget still fell short. He’d praised the Lieus for being such loyal members of the community. It was the same year Arthur Tran’s parents had donated money to renovate the cafeteria and Janey Youn’s father had given the school a new flagpole and flag.
He jiggles the mouse and the screen snaps to life, a photo of Mount Rushmore under cloudless blue. A tap of the browser and a window opens, cursor blinking slow and lazy at its top.
What to type? Where is my mother. Is it too much to hope the internet can tell him this?
He pauses. At her desk, Mrs. Pollard scrolls on her phone as she nibbles her sandwich. Peanut butter, by the smell. Outside, a brown leaf drifts from treetop to pavement.
Story about boy with many cats, he types, and words flood the screen.
The Black Cat (short story). List of Fictional Cats in Literature. He clicks one link after another, waiting for something familiar, that jolt of recognition. The Cat in the Hat. The Tale of Tom Kitten. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Nothing he recognizes. Gradually he wanders farther and farther afield. Amazing and True Cat Stories. Five Heroic Cats in History. Care and Feeding of Your New Cat. All these stories about cats, and none of them his mother’s. He must have imagined it. But still he digs.
Finally, when he is too tired to resist, he pecks out one more search, one he has never dared to try before.
Margaret Miu.
There’s a pause, then an error message pops up. No results, it says. Somehow he feels her absence more, as if he’s called out for her and she hasn’t come. He peeks over his shoulder. Mrs. Pollard has finished her lunch and is grading worksheets, ticking check marks down the margins, and he clicks the back button.
Our missing hearts, he types, and the page stills for a moment. No results. This time, no matter how many times he clicks, it won’t reset.
Mrs. Pollard, he says, approaching the desk. I think my computer froze.
Don’t worry, dear, she says, we’ll fix it. She rises and follows him back to the terminal, but when she sees his screen, the search at the top, something in her face shifts. A tenseness in her that Bird can feel even over his shoulder.
Noah, she says after a moment. You’re twelve?
Bird nods.
Mrs. Pollard squats down beside his chair so they are eye to eye.
Noah, she says. This country is founded on the belief that every person gets to decide how to live his own life. You know that, right?
To Bird, this seems like one of the things adults say that do not require answers, and he says nothing.
Noah, Mrs. Pollard says again, and the way she keeps saying his name—which is not his name, of course—makes him clench his teeth so tightly they squeak. Noah, honey, listen to me, please. In this country we believe that every generation can make better choices than the one that came before. Right? Everyone gets the same chance to prove themselves, to show us who they are. We don’t hold the mistakes of parents against their children.
She looks at him through bright, anxious eyes.
Everyone has a choice, Noah, about whether they’re going to make the same mistakes as the people who came before them, or whether they’re going to take a different path. A better path. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Bird nods, though he’s fairly sure he doesn’t.
I’m saying this for your own good, Noah, I really am, Mrs. Pollard says. Her voice softens. You’re a good kid and I don’t want anything to happen to you and this is what I’d tell Jenna and Josh, truly. Don’t make trouble. Just—do your best and follow the rules. Don’t stir things up. For your dad’s sake, if not your own.
She rises to her feet, and Bird understands that they’re finished here.
Thank you, he manages to say.
Mrs. Pollard nods, satisfied.
If you decide on a cat, be sure to find a good breeder, she says as he heads into the hall. Adopting a stray—who knows what you’ll get.
A waste of time, he thinks. All afternoon, through English and math, he berates himself. On top of it all, his lunch is still in his bag, uneaten, and his stomach rumbles. In social studies, his mind wanders and the teacher calls him sharply to attention.
Mr. Gardner, he says. I would think you, of all people, would want to pay attention to this.
With a blunt nub of chalk he taps the board, leaving white flecks beneath the letters: WHAT IS SEDITION?
Across the aisle Carolyn Moss and Kat Angelini glance at him sideways, and when the teacher turns back to the chalkboard, Andy Moore throws a ball of wadded-up paper at Bird’s head. What does it matter, Bird thinks. Whatever this cat story is, it has nothing to do with him, nothing useful or purposeful. Just a story, like everything his mother had told him. A pointless fairy tale. If he even remembers right, if there was even a story like that at all.
He’s on his way home when he sees it. First the crowd, then a cluster of navy uniforms in the center of the Common—then a second later, all he can see are the trees. Red, red, red, from roots to branches, as if they’ve been dangled and dipped. The color of cardinals, of traffic signs, of cherry lollipops. Three maples standing close, arms outstretched. And strung between their branches, woven between the dying leaves: a huge red web, hanging in the air like a haze of blood.
He’s supposed to walk straight home, to stay on the route his father has prescribed: cutting across the wide courtyard between the university’s lab buildings, then through the college yard with its red brick dorms. Staying off the streets as much as possible, staying on university land as much as he can. It’s safer, his father insists. When he was younger, he’d walked Bird to and from school every day. Don’t try to take shortcuts, Noah, his father always says, just listen to me. Promise me, he’d said, when Bird began walking to school alone, and Bird had promised.
Now Bird breaks his word. He darts across the street to the Common, where a small group of onlookers has gathered.
From here he can see it more clearly. What he’d thought was red paint is yarn, a giant red doily fitted round each tree, all the way up the branches in a tight red glove. The web, too, is yarn, chains of red stretching twig to twig, crisscrossing, thickening in some places to clots, thinning in others to a single thread. Knotted in the strands, like snared insects: knit dolls the size of his finger, brown and tan and beige, fringes of dark yarn framing their faces. Around him passersby whisper and point, and Bird edges closer, into the crowd.
It frightens him, this thing. A monster’s knitting. A scarlet tangle. It makes him feel small and vulnerable and exposed. But it fascinates him too, pulling him closer. The way a snake holds you with its eyes even as it draws back to strike.
A group of police officers clusters around the trees in intense conversation, prodding the yarn with their fingers. Discussing the best way to take it all down. It’s too late: already passersby are slipping phones from pockets and bags, quietly snapping photos without breaking stride. They will be texted and posted everywhere soon. Beneath the trees, the officers circle the trunks, pistols dangling at their hips. One of them pushes his visor back up over his head; another sets his plexiglass shield down on the grass. They are equipped for violence, but not for this.
Clear out, folks, one of the policemen booms, stepping between the crowd and the trees as if he can hide this strange spectacle with his body. He draws his nightstick, thwaps it against one palm. Active crime scene, here. Move along, all of you. This is an unlawful gathering.
Overhead, the breeze flutters and the dolls bob and sway. Bird gazes up at them, the dark shapes they make against the innocent blue sky. Around him, the onlookers drift obediently away, the crowd thinning, and it is then that he spots it, stenciled on the pavement in white: how many more missing hearts will they take? Beside it a red blotch—no, a heart.
He knows it is improbable—impossible—but he looks anyway. Over his shoulder, all around him, as if she might be lurking behind a tree or a bush. Hoping for her face in the shadows. But of course, there’s no one there.
Let’s go, son, the policeman says to him, and Bird realizes the crowd has dispersed, that he’s the only one left. He ducks his head—sorry—and retreats, and the policeman turns back to his fellow officers. Cruisers, lights flashing, block the street at either end, directing traffic away. Cordoning off the park.
Bird crosses the street but loiters, watching surreptitiously from behind a parked car. Had his mother knitted? He doesn’t think so. Anyway, surely one person could not have done this alone: the yarn, the web, the dolls wobbling like overripe fruit, all knitted into place, as if they’ve sprung fungus-like from the tree itself. How did they put this in place, he wonders, even as he is unsure who they might be. Through the windows of the car he can see the policemen debating how to handle this unusual situation. One of them worms his fingers into the web and yanks, and a thin branch snaps with a crack like a gunshot. A single long loop of yarn billows down, unraveling inch by inch. Something inside Bird cracks and unravels too, at the sight of something so delicate and intricate, destroyed. The dolls tremble, trapped in their red net. His skin feels too small for his thoughts.
Then one of the policemen produces a box cutter, begins to saw his way through the knitting from top to bottom, and yarn falls away in a waterfall of snippets. Another arrives with a ladder, climbs into the branches, pulls down the first doll and tosses it to the ground. Not dolls, Bird thinks suddenly: children. The big heads and snub limbs and dark hair. They had eyes but no mouths, just two buttons on a blank face, and as the small body tumbles down into the mud below, Bird turns away, stomach roiling. He can’t bear to watch.
He’d thought Sadie had been an exception. PACT-related re-placements remain extremely rare.
Well, they aren’t, Sadie said.
But how many, he’d asked once. Ten? Twenty? Hundreds?
Sadie eyed him, hands on hips. Bird, she said, with infuriating pity, you don’t understand anything, do you?
People didn’t like to talk about it, liked to hear about it even less: that the patriotism of PACT was laced with a threat. But some had tried to say what was happening, to explain it to others, and to themselves. Sadie’s mother had been one of them. There is footage of her, on a tidy tree-lined street in Baltimore. It could be any street in America except that it is deserted: no cars, no people walking their dogs or out for a stroll, just Sadie’s mother in a yellow blazer, the black foam bulb of her Channel 5 mic held to her mouth.
Yesterday morning, she says, on this quiet street, Family Services officers arrived at the home of Sonia Lee Chun and took custody of her four-year-old son, David. The reason? A recent post by Sonia on social media, arguing that PACT was being used to target members of the Asian American community.
Behind her a pair of police cars pull up—lights off, ominously silent—and park, blocking the street. You can see them at a distance, the four officers emerging from the barricade of cars and approaching slowly, a push broom relentlessly sweeping the pavement clean. The camera is steady, and so is her voice. We seem to have attracted some police presence. Officer, we are with Channel 5, here is my press badge, we— Muffled cross-talk and then, to the camera, she says, imperturbably calm: They are arresting me. As if she is reporting on things happening to someone else.
The police seize her microphone. Her lips keep moving, but now there is no sound. As one officer pulls her arms back to cuff her, another approaches the camera, hand on holster, his mouth barking silent commands. The unseen cameraman sets his camera on the ground and the horizon tips sideways, a plumb line from sky to earth. As they are led away, the camera—still rolling—catches only their feet, retreating upward, off, then gone.
Bird has seen this video because Sadie kept a copy of it on her phone. Technically it is incriminating evidence—it shows her mother espousing, promoting, or endorsing unpatriotic activity in private or in public—but Sadie had managed to get a copy somehow and doggedly transferred it, over the years, from phone to phone. On the dumbed-down smartphone her foster parents have granted her—my leash, she says, sarcastically: so that they can always reach her, so that they can track her by GPS if need be—she hides it in a folder labeled Games. Sometimes Bird would find her crouched in the corner of the playground, or under the structure in the cubby where the younger kids played house. Over and over on the screen, her mother. Calm in the chaos around her. Slowly walking off into the sky.
It was the first time she’d been arrested, Sadie said, but it had only made her braver. After that she’d gone looking for other families whose children had been taken under PACT, trying to convince them to speak with her on-camera. Trying to trace where the children had been taken. Trying to film a PACT re-placement in action, pulling on her contacts in Family Services, in the mayor’s office, anyone with a lead on who might be next.
Soon after, Sadie’s mother got an email from her boss, Michelle: coffee, that weekend. Just a friendly chat. Unofficial. Off the record. Michelle stopped by, two takeout cups in hand, and they sipped them at the kitchen table. Out in the hallway Sadie lurked, unnoticed. She was eleven.
I’m worried, Erika, Michelle said over a flat white, about repercussions.
A reporter over at WMAR had recently been fined for saying that PACT encouraged discrimination against those of Asian descent; his story, the state insisted, drummed up sympathy for people who might be dangerous to public stability. The station had paid it, almost a quarter of their yearly budget. In Annapolis, another station had had its license revoked. By coincidence, surely, it also had run a number of segments critical of PACT.
I’m a journalist, Sadie’s mother had said. Reporting on these things is my job.
We’re a small station, Michelle said. The bottom line is, with budget cuts we’re basically at bare-bones operation as it is. And if our funders pulled out . . .
She stopped, and Sadie’s mother twisted the sleeve of her paper cup around and around.
Are they threatening to? she asked, and Michelle replied, Two already have. But it’s not just that. It’s the repercussions for you, Erika. For your family.
They’d known each other for years, these two women: one Black, one white. Barbecues and picnics together, holiday gatherings. Michelle had no children, had never married. This station is my baby, she always said. When Sadie was born, Michelle had knitted her a yellow sweater and booties to match; over the years she’d taken Sadie on outings to the zoo and the aquarium and Fort Henry. Auntie Shellie, Sadie called her.
I’m hearing things, Michelle said. Really scary things. It’s not just PAOs and protesters who need to worry about PACT, Erika. It might be best if we assigned you a different beat for a while. Something less political.
What beat would be less political, Sadie’s mother asked.
I just don’t want anything to happen to you, if you keep pushing this, Michelle said. Or to Lev. And most of all Sadie.
Sadie’s mother took a long, slow sip. The coffee had gone cold.
What makes you think, she said finally, that any of us will be safe if I don’t?
It was just a few weeks later that they’d come for Sadie.
They came at night: that’s what Sadie said. After dinnertime. She’d just taken a shower and was swathed in a towel when the doorbell rang. Her mother was combing Sadie’s hair, which was thick and curly and prone to tangles, and downstairs they heard her father, shouting. Then the voices of strangers—a man, two men. Sadie’s mother had lifted a section of hair in one hand and gently worked the comb through it, and this is what Sadie remembered most clearly: a stray drop of water trickling down the back of her neck, her mother’s steady hand as she coaxed out the knots.
She didn’t shake, Sadie said, her voice proud. Not one tiny bit.
Maybe she didn’t know what was happening, Bird said.
Sadie shook her head.
She knew, she said.
Her mother wrapped her arms around her, pressed her lips to Sadie’s forehead. Sadie hadn’t understood, yet, what was going on, but dread seeped into her like a chill against her damp skin. She leaned against her mother, burrowed her face into the soft crook of her mother’s neck so hard she couldn’t breathe.
Don’t forget us, okay? her mother had said, and Sadie was still confused when the bathroom door opened. A man, in a police uniform. Sadie’s father was still shouting downstairs.
There were four officers, it turned out. Two stayed with her father downstairs and one stayed with her mother upstairs and one stood guard outside Sadie’s room while she got dressed. Unsure what to do, she’d put on her rainbow-striped pajamas, as if she were simply going to bed like any other day. Let her go back and change, her mother had said, when Sadie came out into the hallway, at least let me braid her hair. But the man in the hallway shook his head.
From now on, he said, she’s not your responsibility anymore.
He put his hand on Sadie’s shoulder and steered her down the stairs, and Sadie understood that something terrible was happening but was positive, at the same time, that it could not be real. She’d tried to look back at her mother for a clue—if she should scream or fight or run or obey—but all she could see was the broad blue chest of the officer behind her, blocking everything but a sliver of her mother’s arm from view. And so she remembered what her mother had always taught her: be extra careful around policemen, say please and thank you and ma’am and sir. Whatever you do, don’t make them angry. They’d shuttled her into a big black car, and the policeman had buckled her into the back seat, and she’d said: Thank you. After they’d driven away, after they’d taken her to the station, then the airport, then a foster home, after she’d realized she wasn’t going home again, she’d regretted that thank-you, she’d regretted going so quietly.
Her first foster parents had wanted to rename her. A new name for a new start, they’d suggested, but she’d flat-out refused.
My name is Sadie, she said.
For two weeks they’d tried to convince her, but eventually they’d given in.
So many new things for her in those early days. Some—new family, new house, new city, new life—she could not fight, so she resisted in the few places she could. On the way to school, she’d stopped on the front step and stripped off the flounced, flowered dress they’d given her, left it on the lawn, walked the rest of the way in her underwear. A phone call from the principal; a stern lecture from her foster parents. The next morning she did it again. You see, everyone said. What kind of parents—? She’s practically a savage.
Her second foster mother tried to untangle the dense cloud of her hair. We’ll have to have it relaxed, she said, despairing, and that night, after everyone was asleep, Sadie snuck downstairs for the kitchen shears. From then on she kept it clipped to a curly halo around her head. I don’t know what to do with her, this foster mother said once to a friend, when she thought Sadie couldn’t hear. It’s like she takes no pride at all in her appearance.
They were kind people who thought they meant well. They’d been government-selected as fit parents, certified as people of good moral character who could teach good patriotic values.
There’s something wrong with her, Sadie heard her latest foster mother say into the telephone: the weekly check-in with the social worker, pumping for evidence that Sadie would need to stay. She hasn’t cried once, all the time she’s been here. I even sat outside her room and listened all night. She doesn’t cry at all. Now tell me, what kind of child goes through all this and doesn’t even cry? Yes. That’s what I think, too. What kind of parents she must have had, to make her so cold and unfeeling.
She’d sighed. We’re doing what we can, she said. We’ll try to repair the damage that’s already been done.
A few weeks later, a letter, which Sadie had found in her foster mother’s desk: In light of severe emotional scarring inflicted by child’s previous domestic situation, recommend permanent removal. Permanent custody granted to foster parents.
And it was true, Sadie never cried. A few times she’d given Bird letters to her old address, scribbled on notepaper, but the last had come back stamped recipient unknown. Even then, Bird had not seen her cry.
Sometimes, though, when he saw her squatting in the corner of the playground, head leaning against the chain-link fence, he turned away, so she wouldn’t have to pretend to be brave. To let her be alone with her grief, or whatever heavier thing she’d put on top to hold it down.
She’d suggested they run away, last May.
We’ll go and we’ll find them, she said.
Sadie, he knew, had run away before, though they’d caught her every time. This time, she insisted, she would make it. She had just turned thirteen—basically an adult, she insisted.
Come with me, Bird, she’d said. I’m sure we can find them.
Them was her parents and his mother. Her certainty that they were still out there, findable and maybe even together, was unshakable. A comfortable, beautiful fairy tale.
They’ll catch you, he said.
No, they won’t, Sadie snapped. I’m going to—
But he’d cut her off. Don’t tell me, he said. I don’t want to know. In case they ask me where you’ve gone.
He’d watched her on the next swing, pumping and pumping her legs, hard, harder, until her feet cleared the top bar and the chain went slack and bucked beneath her. Then Sadie let out a whoop and catapulted herself free, leaping into the air, into nothing. When he’d been small, he’d loved leaping from the swings that way, swooping into his mother’s waiting arms. Sadie hadn’t even done anything, Bird thought, she didn’t deserve any of it, and he hated her parents for doing this to her. Why didn’t they stop, that first time, how could they have been so irresponsible? Sadie sat up and looked back at him from where she’d landed in a tumbled heap in the grass. She wasn’t hurt. She was laughing.
Jump, Bird, she cried, but he didn’t, just let the swing slow until the toes of his sneakers dragged in the gravel, leaving grubby gray scratches on the canvas.
He thinks about her now: Sadie, poised in midair, arms flung wide, slicing across the sky. After she’d disappeared, no one seemed to know where she’d gone; his classmates and even his teachers simply went on as if she’d never existed. As he stands there, he knows the photos from the Common are already beginning to appear online, the trees holding up little figures in their fingers, raising them to the light. A thousand little Sadies silhouetted against the blue.
The next morning, walking to school, he sees the real trees: stripped bare to rough bark again. As if nothing had ever been there at all. Yet there is the sharp bright gash running down each trunk like a scar; there are the broken spots where the web, roughly yanked, has dragged the branches away. There, in the mud, a single strand of red yarn left behind. Something happened here, and he is determined to find out what, and thinking of Sadie, suddenly he has an idea of where to begin.
