Page 2 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
“Haven’t seen you in a minute,” comes a voice at my elbow. So lost in my thoughts, I nearly jump out of my skin. Occupational hazard, I guess.
“Been busy with school,” I tell Amir, shovingThe Joy of Cookingto the far side of the table so he can set my mug and saucer down. They don’t match—a hefty, plain cream-colored mug with a dainty, Persian-patterned saucer. I like it, though.
This place feels homier than the coffee shops sprouting up as the city gets back on its feet. They’re all white walls and chrome, minimal black lettering, a lot of information about where the coffee comes from and what notes you’re supposed to be able to taste, but absolutely no soul. All catering to the influx of graduate students into OrthCon, no doubt, after the program’s reopening a few years ago.
That’s the weirdest thing about the Reformation. It’s been almost thirty years—basically my whole lifetime. Will the history books assigned for some undergrad class a hundred years from now reflect just how long itreallytook for things to settle down? To reach some sort of normalcy? Because shit was pretty fucked for a while there.
“Good to see you,” Amir replies. He turns to leave without any further conversation, the kind I’ve seen him launch into with other folks.
For a strained, weak moment, loneliness grasps at me with pleading hands. I ignore it, shoving the feeling deep down, as I always do. With a sigh, I pull the pager from the waistband of my jeans. When my parents left for their world travels, they splurged on the fancy kind of beepers that allow short text messages.
Made it to Barcelona. Going to eat tapas by the sea now! Love, mom & dad.
I don’t know what tapas are, but I’m glad they’re safe. I still think they’re insane for taking all their savings and usingthem to see the world, particularly after a lifestyle so focused on practicality. I sure as shit didn’t see it coming, but I guess the world’s safer than it’s ever really been in their lifetime, so it sort of makes sense.
Still seems extravagant to me. Whatever. I tuck a lock of long, dirty blonde hair that refuses to stay in my braid behind my ear and settle my elbows onto the slightly sticky tabletop. The internet finally connects, so I click to log into my email, sending a quick message to my parents before I forget.
I haven’t told them about being expelled. There’s not really a point. They won’t be disappointed, but they also won’t be surprised, not exactly. They’re firm believers that people like us don’t mingle with people like the Wallingfords. My dad might even be a little proud I punched someone.
I take a sip of my coffee—I have no idea why I can never brew it as good as Amir and Ali—and begin to draft my email to the bursar’s office. The first version is probably too mean, so I add more begging. Habib jumps up onto the table, aggressively rubbing his head on my arm.
“Hey, bud,” I murmur, scratching his head the way he likes.
Habib’s the runt of some street cat’s litter that Amir fell in love with a few years ago. Little guy’s been here ever since, barely more than seven pounds fully grown. I scoop him up and lift him onto my shoulder. Purring, he wraps himself around my neck like a scarf. It’s his favorite place, for some reason. He makes bread into my sweater—luckily thick enough that I’m safe from his sharp-ass claws—and then settles his head down atop his paws.
Before I know it, Habib is snoring softly in my ear and my coffee is gone. Refills are cheap, but I really shouldn’t spend anything extra. Outside, dusk has fallen, casting the city into hues of gray and blue. The street’s quiet, with only a few occasional pedestrians. Another way not too much has changed.We’re free to be outside our homes whenever we’d like, and it’s much safer to do so, but folks are stuck in their habits. It’s too drilled into us to keep well away from the dark.
I finally reach some version of the email I consider passable and click send. It’s only for one class; everything else was included in my program. I planned to cover the costs of the folklore course with part of my stipend, but naturally the university is making me jump through a hundred hoops to get a refund for a class I’m not even taking. Because expelling me wasn’t enough, apparently.
I lean back in my chair, causing Habib to give a squeak of annoyance. “Sorry, bud,” I murmur, reaching up to scratch his chin. Careful not to disturb him, I rub my eyes and start closing out of my tabs. I should go home. Sleep. Figure out what’s next.
My gaze falls onThe Joy of Cooking. My fingers itch and my heart lurches. I chew on my lower lip, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jacket.
I can’t. Especially since I’ve been expelled. It’d be putting a target on my back. Making my shit situation even shittier.
“Doesn’t really seem like it can getthatmuch worse, though,” I mutter. The next second, I’m grabbing for the book like it’s the last loaf of bread in the supermarket back during the bad years. With shaking fingers, I open to the right page, the spine so familiar with the exact spot that it falls open easily. Then I’m frantically typingbooksandblueberrypies.cominto the browser, pulling up the blog I haven’t looked at in nearly a year.
It’s still up, which I’m sort of surprised by—until I realize it’s probably a good way to root out other people like me. My hands tremble as I click around to navigate to the post with the creme brûlée recipe, scrolling to the third image. I click the word “joyful” in the caption’s photo. When that takes me to an apple pie recipe, I check over my shoulder before scrolling tothe second image in the blog post, clicking on “delightful” in the caption.
I follow that trail—the trail I designed, the one I have memorized by heart—until I reach the log-in page.
My fingers fly, the long, complicated passkeys still burned into my mind. When the back-end page loads, I pretend to stretch—to Habib’s outrage—while taking a look around the café. Should be in the clear. Historically, Sector isn’t great at blending in.
Electricity arcs through me when I see I have a message from love_cookies210 that’s gone unread for six months. We’ve never exchanged real names, but we’ve traded plenty of other things—extremely sensitive information about our theories, our research, our movements. I don’t trust a lot of folks—a side effect of growing up during the Reformation—but Ialmosttrust Cookie. That’s saying a lot.
I click on their message, my entire body hunched around the hulking desktop, my heart in my throat. It takes a few minutes to decode usingThe Joy of Cooking—the cipher for my online conspiracy board.
Ever heard of Blackbird Hollow?Cookie’s message reads.Not too far from you. Some really, really weird activity. Leaf peepers disappear every autumn as far back as the records go. Someone else just went missing a few days ago. And guess what? You bet your ass it’s on a major ley line.
My heart is hammering in my chest, and I’m suddenly way too warm in my dad’s old duck-lined Carhartt jacket.
And there’s more, Blue. Lots of good intel about the Wild Hunt moving through there. You should go.
I bite down on my tongue as I reread the message over and over again, my eyes beginning to burn from the screen’s glow. A quick search shows that another couple just disappeared a few days ago. My blood absolutelythrums.
Because maybe I have my first real chance at proving that I’m right about the world. That everyone who laughed in my face was wrong. That my ex, who broke up with me when he found my stringboard of theories, is the real asshole, and also intellectually incurious as all hell.
“Blackbird Hollow,” I say out loud, and something about it feelsright. Like I’m finally going to show everyone the supposed existence of aliens is nothing more than a cover-up for something way,wayworse. That there’s a conspiracy so massive, even the government is hoodwinked.
