Crows of a Feather

10. An old lady offers me a finger

Cassandra, who was apparently going through a rebellious phase, was about Amelia's size and loaned her some clothes, a hair brush and a purple cardboard box with tampons and pads in it. That way, Amelia didn't need to go get anything from home.

While Amelia and Dennis started packing other essentials, I snuck to my own home. I didn't really know what to take with me, so I stuffed my backpack with some extra clothes, my walkman and CDs and one hundred dollars worth of bills that Killian kept in his office.

I then crossed the street once more to go to Elvira and Fiona's. I didn't even glance at the kitchen. I went straight upstairs to the bedroom. I wasn't sure if it would still be there — it felt like something Elvira should've taken with her, but maybe she hadn't deemed it important enough.

But against all odds, it sat in the same place I had found it well over a year ago. The wooden box with Gaelic carved on the lid.

I opened it very briefly, just to check everything was still there. The key was still missing, as was the picture of Fiona and Elvira together on a beach, but everything else remained; the strange vial, the silver coin, the rest of the photos and the leather pouch. I tucked the box under my arm, hoping there would be some use for the things inside.

—

"When me and Dennis drove from Virginia, it took us about five days," Amelia said behind the wheel. We had just reached Oakland, and the sun was starting to rise. I felt guilty not even saying goodbye to Marina, but we all knew she wouldn't have let us go.

Charon did the maths in his head. "So if everything goes right, we should be there by Thursday next week."

"We won't miss much more than a week of school if we're lucky," Amelia said.

It was a bit daunting, in my mind, that it was the first time in my life leaving the state. As the metropolis fell behind and buildings grew scarcer and smaller, a cold feeling settled in my chest. I was really leaving home, and I wasn't sure if I was ever coming back alive.

My body still ached from the magical outburst earlier. My mind was hazy — from the exhaustion, the shock, or likely both. I barely heard the Green Day album playing in the background, or felt the cool breeze that flowed in and out through open windows because the car had no working air conditioning.

I couldn't help but wonder whether my uncle was still alive. A part of me wanted to believe that if he did die, I'd somehow know. Maybe there would be a chill down my spine, or I'd come face to face with the crow again. Since there was none of that, I was hopeful.

Charon, who always sat in the back because there would be no peace if Amelia and him sat together in the front, was going through everything we had brought with us. "We should've packed food," he'd mutter every now and then, or: "What if it rains? We don't have extra shoes."

Amelia was chewing the insides of her cheeks, a bad habit she had adopted from me. She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel along with the music and every now and then softly sung the lyrics. Out of all of us I think she was the calmest, but only just.

It struck me that we were just three kids on the road with barely enough money to afford food, gas and maybe a night or two in a motel, a stolen car and basically no plan whatsoever except to get to Washington. We had no idea what we were doing.

—

"Shit," Amelia muttered that afternoon. We were still in California; according to Amelia we had passed Los Angeles a few hours ago. We had almost reached Colorado river, which made the border between California and Arizona.