Page 66 of What Rough Beast

I’m scared too.

It’s immediately marked as read, an ellipsis popping up.

Not of me, I hope?

I should be, for sure. Yesterday he knocked his best friend unconscious with one punch and confessed to a felony. But all I can think about is the spot on my wrist where he touched me, and the sunlight bouncing off his stubble. Is Micah Harding hot? Yes, definitely. But I was already falling for averageamericanmale in ways that were exciting yet still purely platonic. The fact that he’s the whole package is just a bonus, which makes me think about his package, which I definitely shouldn’t be doing yet. But Lord, the way those jeans fit—

I’m not scared of you.

How’s life as a suspended person?

Not seeing him at school today was a relief. If we’re going to be friends—or more—we’ll have to sort out the public interaction side of things. But not right now. Right now, I need to pick up half-rotten apples and make conversation with a tame deer as part of my employment.

“God, my job’s weird,” I say, and then laugh, choosing to ignore the deeper feeling at the base of it, a crawling unease. My job isn’t weird because of the duties it entails; it’s weird because there’s a wish-granting egg in our office, sitting in between a cat being sewn together by an unknown substance and the clone of a dead dog that showed up in puppy form.

But are these bad things?

They’re unnatural, for sure. But we call it serendipity when accidental mold contamination in a lab leads to the discovery of penicillin, coincidence when you dream about someone you haven’t seen in a while and then they text, a synchronicity when you think about a song and it pops up on your playlist, and déjà vu when we feel like we’re living out a memory in real time.

We don’t use the word magic, probably for the same reason the Zedekers quietly put cages over the family graves back in the eighties. Because normal is good, different is bad, and stepping off the socially predetermined path means that your living body is disrespected and those of your dead desecrated.

If I’m being honest, the only bad thing that has come about as a result of the oddities that surround Restoration Acres is the fact that Murphy Ricks has two broken wrists, which isn’t because of any malevolence that resides here.

It’s inside me.

Burt nuzzles me out of my reverie, shaking his head when my phone buzzes against his nose.

The real punishment in being suspended is boredom.

I’m dying.

I smile, tap out a response.

Please don’t take that to completion.

There are a lot of conversations between us to be had.

A skunk spots me and calls from the pen, aware that I’ve got apples. I wander over with a few in hand, holding a particularly soft one up to the fence and pushing it through. Little paws clamber over my fingers, rough tongues lick the tips.

“Hey, guys,” I say, scratching a nose, then moving to another one that bumps the first one out of the way. I glance over at the compost pile, thinking maybe I should aerate it while I’m here. There’s a pitchfork resting next to the skunk pen, along with straw bales for their bedding.

I snatch up the pitchfork and head over to the compost pile, Burt still trailing me in the hopes that I might suddenly transform into Widow, or maybe a huge apple. The compost pile gives off warmth as I approach it, and my first stab releases a dark, earthy scent. I flip the pitchfork over, spotting lawn clippings, daffodil trimmings, eggshells, and coffee grounds all in various states of decay. I stab again, lift . . . and this time the scent is much, much different.

But not unfamiliar.

I pull my T-shirt up over my nose as I turn the fork, aware that something must have crawled into the pile and died. Or—

“Shit,” I say, and drop the pitchfork.

Or been buried there.

It’s Panda, or what’s left of him. His eyes are a milky white, stark against the black circles of his fur, which is pulling away from the skull. His tongue hangs out, heavy with maggots. The exposed ribs confirm what I had assumed; most are broken, the spine twisted and split, leg bones shattered, hips askew. Something brushes my shoulder, and I lift my hand to shove Burt away. But it’s not the soft fur of his muzzle, or the bone of his antlers that my hands find. It’s a cowbird, fluttering, landing.

I turn my head slowly, a feather brushing my cheek. It’s only inches from my face as it gives a long, liquid call. Then it pecks me, right below my clavicle.

“Ouch! Shit!” I yell, swiping at it. It hurts way more than I thought it would, like a pinch but sharper. I pull the neck of my hoodie away and see a spot of blood seeping through my T-shirt but don’t have time to inspect further, as another cowbird lands on my opposite shoulder.

“Get off!” I say, taking a swipe at it as well, but I don’t connect, because my hand is intercepted by a third that’s fluttering in front of my chest, a fourth coming in from behind and stabbing into my back, right above the shoulder blade. I spin and then find Burt, antlers laden with cowbirds, their brown, velvety heads bobbing and weaving in unison, black eyes locked on me.