In the sea of kids, there she was, amber hair shining in the sun. I kept my head lowered as I walked past. She smelled like strawberries. Robyn. And on that day, she spoke to me.

“Hey! Griffin, right? You live down the street from me?” I nodded.

“Do you think you could give me a ride? Ava got taken up yesterday, so I… need a ride.” This news didn’t surprise me. Ava had repeated the year for the third time and still couldn’t pass her exams. She spent too much time staring out of the window.

“Um… I, uh, I only have my bike…”

“Great! I can ride on the pegs! Let me grab my backpack.” I stood there in awe as she pranced away from me, back into the crowd. For a moment, I thought she would never come back, that I was just daydreaming in the middle of the schoolyard. And then, she reappeared with her canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She was turned slightly, waving to all of her friends who were taking turns giving me questioning looks. I didn’t have anyone to say goodbye to.

“You ready to go?” I blinked at her. It was the most I could do. We walked over to the bike rack with a modest distance between us.

It occurred to me that I had never had another person on my bike. What if I couldn’t balance? What if she fell off? She would never speak to me again. I looked up and Robyn was watching me expectantly. I unlocked my bike, put my backpack in the basket, and walked it away from the rack. I can’t remember what she said next because I was focusing too hard on the weight of her perching behind me and her hands sliding onto my shoulders. We rode home in silence. There were a few times that her hair was blowing in front of my eyes and I was worried about losing control, but hopefully I didn’t show it. When I neared her house, she squeezed my right shoulder and pointed, as if I didn’t know exactly where she lived.

I was her paperboy. She was on my route, third to last stop. I would see her sitting on her lawn, reading some sophisticated, old book of poetry and sipping pink lemonade. She would wrinkle her nose at the taste, and then raise the glass again. I always wondered if she actually liked the drink or just the pink color of it that perfectly complimented her. Robyn. When she wasn’t outside, I could see her when I closed my eyes. I could see her image floating between my eyelashes every time I blinked.

But, I quit my paper route. I couldn’t ride past her house everyday knowing that she was in it with someone else. She was always in it with someone else, someone better. I wished she would just step outside and look down the street and see me waiting for her. I had nothing else to do and she had the world. I wanted to be a part of it, even as small a part as just being her paperboy, but that plan was dead.

# # #

A few days later, I saw a crow fall out of the magnolia tree in my backyard, and land right next to the birdbath my mother had planted. From inside the house, I could see it struggling, flapping its wings as quickly as it could, but not having enough energy to lift its own plump body off of the ground. I looked around the living room to see if anyone else saw this happening. My father was reading the newspaper – delivered by my replacement – on the couch and my mother was attentively whisking something in a large bowl in the kitchen. I raised myself out of the armchair and placed the record I had been cleaning on the table next to it. I opened the sliding patio doors and shut them carefully behind me. Neither of my parents looked up.

Outside, it was unusually humid. I would have been happy about the summer because that was when Robyn wore flowers in her hair, but I hadn’t seen her since she politely thanked me for bringing her home and disappeared into her house before I could tell her, “Anytime.”

The crow was incessantly cawing and I knew it would soon be surrounded. I thought about it, wondered if I should attend the funeral, if I should pick it up. I didn’t want the others to see my face and think I was a threat. My father always told me, “When you notice them, they notice you.”

The cawing was getting fainter. I could tell that the thing had a broken wing. One was flapping pitifully from one side to the other. I crouched down to examine it closer. There were little droplets of water on its chest. I straightened back up, lifted one foot, and let it hover above the overstuffed bird for a moment. But without much more thought, I lowered my sneaker onto its body, pressing down slowly with my toe, until the movement stopped. There was no crunch, just a ceasing of heartbeat. It would have died anyway, I supposed. In one swift motion, I looked up at the cloudless sky to see the approaching murder, lifted my foot away from the bird, walked back inside, and slipped my sneakers off in the doorway. I didn’t dare look back outside to watch the ceremony and I didn’t go into my backyard for the rest of the summer.

# # #

The next day was 100 degrees, and Jonah from next door threw a pool party. He was the only kid on our block with his own swimming pool and he nearly invited the whole class. Except for me, of course. I only knew about it because I could hear the laughter and splashing all the way in my own yard. I’m not sure he even knew we were neighbors. I was sitting outside reading under an umbrella because my mother was “sick” of hearing the television. She was always sick of something, it seemed. She would hover around and make sure everything appeared normal and casual about our house. Even the plants in the window and the immaculately clean shutters were for the benefit of passersby. Image is everything, she would say, looking up into the sky.

Two other kids from the neighborhood walked along the sidewalk in front of me, both carrying towels and flip-flops in their arms. They glanced at me and snickered like they knew I wouldn’t be attending the gathering happening just over the fence. I heard the screen door open behind me and I sensed that my mother was standing in the doorway. Hovering, always hovering.

“Hi boys! You heading over to Jonah’s today?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Oh! How about you join them, Griffin? Cool off a bit?” I turned around to look at her sharply.

“I wasn’t invited, mom.”

“I’m sure you don’t need an invitation to your neighbor’s pool party, dear. Come on! Get your swim stuff! Will you boys wait for him? How about you come in for some lemonade?” They gave each other a look. They didn’t want to come inside or walk with me to Jonah’s. But they did anyway and it was humiliating. My mother beamed.

Jonah’s gate door was wide open, and before we even entered, I could see the impressive number of kids all crammed into his backyard. Everyone was wearing his or her best suit, all polka dots and zigzags and bright colors. My trunks were one size too small and fading with age. I wanted to leave, just spin around on my heel and tell my mom there weren’t enough hot dogs or something. But the three of us were spotted instantly, and I was ushered inside the gate. I didn’t have a single friend there.

Jonah’s older sister, Phoebe, was stretched out by the pool with a couple of her friends, seniors already. They all had giant sunhats that I had never seen before except in the glossy pages at the supermarket. And their toenails matched their bathing suits.

“Hey! Stop staring at my sister, you freak.” It was Jonah and he was standing about five inches from my face.

“I – I wasn’t. I swear!”

“Who invited you anyway?” I hastily looked to my left at nobody. I wanted to disappear.

“No one did. But… I was just next door and I heard… my mom told me to come.”

“Your mom told you to come? So what? I didn’t invite you! Do you even know how to swim, Griffin?”

“Yes…”

“Good! We’ll race then!” I was so confused and severely lacked the social experience necessary to know whether Jonah was being friendly or still teasing me. Truthfully, I loved to swim, but I never got the chance. I nodded and followed him into the crowd. I wasn’t imagining the way everyone turned to watch me go by. It was a walk of shame. A death sentence to the watery guillotine.

I dropped my things onto the poolside tiles and stuck one toe into the water.

“Don’t be a chicken, Chicken!” My body arched backward and lurched forward as I tried to catch my balance on the edge of the pool, but Jonah’s hand was on my back. I could only hope that I made a big enough splash to completely soak him. When I surfaced, Jonah was dry and he was sneering down at me. Several people were, actually. I stared at him until the creaking of his gate door distracted us. From my low angle, I could only see pink flip-flops and a clear beach bag. Jonah ran over to her and grabbed her bag, offering her a glass of water at the same time. He was smooth. The two of them walked back to the pool area together, laughing.

Robyn. It was Robyn, there at that pool party, and I was the only one in the water and probably looked ridiculous.

“Jonah! Are we still going to race or did you chicken out?” Robyn raised her eyebrows in surprise and Jonah lowered his. I swam over to the side of the pool and waited for him to get in.

“Alright. Let’s do this. Winner takes all.” I didn’t quite know what “all” encompassed. I expected to lose and this scared me a little bit. I was going to interject when Jonah screamed, “Go!”

We were only swimming from one end of the pool to the other. It was not that far. Yet, Jonah kept trying to push me with his legs so that I couldn’t go straight. I remembered my last swim lesson from second grade: the frog, the butterfly. My instructor had praised me for my underwater abilities. I held my breath and dove to the bottom. In just a minute or two, I would reach the end of the pool. I couldn’t see if Jonah was ahead or behind me, so I pushed on. The faint sound of cheering permeated the rushing water in my ears. As soon as my fingertips grazed the wall, I pulled myself up to the surface again. Jonah was not next to me in the water or in front of me standing outside of the pool. I thought I had won. But–

“Let go of him! Let go of him! Someone help him!” The girls were shrieking and the boys were yelling and I was frozen. Jonah was limp in the talons crushing his torso, floating midair over the center of the swimming pool. A steady stream of blood drifted out from underneath him, blotting the clear waters below. I was frozen. The bird craned its head toward me, looking down at me out of the side of its unblinking eye. I was sucked into the black holes and my body went cold. It turned its attention back to Jonah, who was just barely conscious for his own taking. It tightened its claws. I had never seen it happen this close up before. The massive creature compared to the boy hardly seemed fair. It was a Goliath. Its beating wings created tidal waves around me and the threads of color in its feathers reflected harsh sunlight into my eyes. I could hardly see it, though if I reached out, I could touch it. The bird scanned the crowd one more time, its head twitching between every person, before taking off again, satisfied with its retrieval.

The ringing in my ears didn’t stop until I could just barely see Jonah flying past a cloud. I had never considered him to be someone for the birds. Sure, he was mean, but he was smart. Talented. Strong. He had goals. Maybe all that didn’t matter anymore. I thought about what I had done to that crow just a few days earlier. My heart skipped a beat as it had also then, when I had felt dozens of beady eyes burning holes into the side of my stony face.

“Jonah! Jonah! Oh, Jonah! Griffin, why didn’t you help him! Why didn’t you grab him? His foot, or… oh, Jonah!” I didn’t know who was screaming at me. I hoisted myself out of the pool and walked backwards into the grassy area, still stunned. My eyes were fixed on the spot Jonah had been just minutes before. I kept moving until I bumped into someone who looked only half alive. It was Jonah’s mother who had just come out of the backdoor of the house only to see her son being taken away forever.

“Why didn’t you help him?” she repeated.

“I… I don’t know… we’re not supposed to… not allowed to – interfere.”

“No! This is your fault! I saw you – fall into the pool. You, you made it look like my baby pushed you! You made him look like a bad person!” She was yelling now. Behind us, one of Phoebe’s friends was sobbing loudly. I had recognized her as the lifeguard from the community pool two summers before. She had never had to save anyone before.

“No, I didn’t… I just–” I brought my hands up to my face in frustration and in the process, noticed the tiniest amount of blood on my right ankle. Jonah’s blood. I tried to inconspicuously wipe it on the grass before his mother noticed.

When I was four years old, I saw my great aunt in her coffin. She was pale and wrinkly and still. Even in my young age, I knew she was dead. You don’t just lie that still and come back from it. Jonah looked the same, just as wrinkly and just as pale, as he disappeared into the blue.

I grabbed my things from the poolside and ran out of there, hoping my longstanding record of invisibility was still intact. As I rounded the fence into my own front yard, I heard a small voice calling my name. I didn’t look back, though. I rushed into the house and up the stairs to my room, locking the door behind me. My mother called out my name. I sat on my bed in my wet towel and shorts, thinking about the injured crow again. I wondered what it felt like to have the life pushed out of you. Whether by shoe or by talon, did it feel the same? Had I done the right thing?

“Griffin! Are you all right? I just heard about Jonah… about the party. His mother must be just…. maybe we should go back over there together. Are you all right?” I sat up. She was right outside my door; I could hear her pacing.

“Yes, mom. I’m fine. But… I don’t want to talk about it. Can you just give her my condolences? I think I’m going to read in here for a while, okay?”

“Oh… okay, sweetheart.” I waited until I heard her retreat back down the steps, and then I let out a sigh. I think I had been holding my breath for quite some time. And then I realized that I wasn’t really sorry. Jonah had given me the hardest time out of everyone in our class. Maybe he got exactly what he deserved.

The spot of his blood on my ankle was staining my skin. I wanted to wash it off but I couldn’t stand up. Instead, I rubbed at it furiously until it began to flake off, causing an uncomfortable tenderness in the area. Under the red was purplish green. There was a bruise forming on my ankle, a little ghost-shaped bruise. A mark.

“Griffin! There’s someone here to see you! Don’t worry, it isn’t Jonah’s mother!” She sounded strangely giddy, as if the president had come over to congratulate me on my technical victory in the race. I hesitated, but I forced myself down the stairs. My mother was on the bottom step, waiting for me with a huge smile.

“What is it mom? Who’s here?” There was a pause, and then I heard a small sneeze from the next room. I jumped from the third step to the floor, sidestepped my mom, and halted in the doorway.

“Hi.”

“Hi Robyn…” I looked over to my mom and tried to send her a message with my eyes to please leave the room. She raised her eyebrows.

“If you kids need me, I’ll just be in the backyard, all right? Going to finally refill the birdbath.”

“Thanks, mom.” I hesitated for a moment, and then sat down next to Robyn on the couch. She had her legs politely crossed at the ankles, angled away from me. I clasped my hands together in my lap.

“So, um, how are you?” I think that was a good start.

“I’m, uh, I’m doing okay I guess. This was a really strange day, huh?”

“Yeah. Strange.”

“Listen, Griffin. I just wanted to let you know that no one thinks it was your fault… they take who they take and we can’t know who that’s going to be. Jonah’s mom… will probably never get over it, but you have to know it wasn’t your fault. I tried to call you back when you were running away. I thought I should come over and tell you. No one’s mad.” I watched her eyes as she spoke. She looked like she had cried a little, but was impressively composed.

“Okay,” I said, lamely. “Thank you.” I could tell Robyn was thinking a lot of things that she wasn’t saying. I raised one hand to place on her leg for comfort, but before I could lower it down, she looked up.

“The kids at school are really mean to you, huh?” I blinked. “Do you want to go take a walk with me?”

“I- I could do that. Yes. I’ll take a walk with you.”

# # #

I didn’t know if I was following her or she was following me, but we ended up by the lake in the next town over. We had been mostly silent the entire walk and I respected her solemnity. We sat side by side on the rocks, dangling our legs over the water. I thought our location seemed slightly inappropriate considering what had just happened, but I didn’t mention it. It wasn’t the right time. Robyn broke the silence first.

“Griffin? Had you ever tried to be friends with Jonah? I know you’ve lived next to each other practically your entire lives.” Her question confused me.

“No. He bullied me.”

“Oh.” She turned to me so that one of her legs was bent inward and slightly overlapped mine.

“Um, why? Did you know him well?”

“I guess not. He asked me on a date last year but I turned him down. Ava thought he was too mean.” She chuckled. “Do you think he had it coming?” I nodded, and she finally looked at me. “You know, I was there when they took her too. We were at the gas station when one landed on the car. We thought if we ignored it, it would go away. But it just sat there, waiting, until we got out. And then it didn’t even take a second to look at us, it just grabbed Ava and I got back in the car and drove back to her house.”

“I… I’m sure she didn’t deserve it though.”

“But she did. She dropped her baby sister on her head and didn’t tell her parents,” she paused, “Griffin?”

“Yes?” I looked up and her face was closer than it had ever been. Her cheeks were flushed from the laughter but her eyes were watery. She had freckles spanning across her nose. I hadn’t known that Robyn had freckles.

I closed my eyes and waited, tried to soak in the moment. I heard a distant roaring that I thought was in my ears. I was so nervous, but I hoped it didn’t show. The sound got louder, closer, and separated into a steady beat. I leaned in and felt a cool breath on my face. My first kiss. I opened one eye, and saw it approaching. In the back of my mind, I had known it would happen sooner or later. The cool breath became a sharp wind, stinging my eyes. As Robyn pulled back, I pushed her to the side. The bird began its descent, angling its body backwards and opening its four-fingered claws towards me. I closed my eyes again and let it take hold of me. Struggling would only make it worse, that’s what they taught us. My heartbeat quickened as I lifted off the ground. Robyn watched, mouthing something I couldn’t hear over the deafening beating of wings.