Paper Wings and Missing Things

Part 1

Anna never thought she would miss the "Sold" sign standing in front of the house next door until it was gone.

It was strange, how its absence had left a sudden vacuum, as if a little of the green had been sucked from the grass where its square pole had left a dent, and a little blue from the sky framed behind it. Once long ago, there had been nothing except the lawn, choked with weeds and spotted with dead patches. Then there was a smirking agent with folded arms, a telephone number, and a stripe of gaudy red with For Sale emblazoned on the front like a war cry.

Now, For Sale and Sold alike had been swallowed up by the indifferent autumn. Everywhere else, the ripe blue sky preened itself and the lawn seemed to flourish out of spite, but the signpost, standing like a lonely sentry, had sapped the life from that one spot.

Staring out the window, Anna indulged herself for a moment to wonder how Jacob would have reacted, if the sentry had been in front of her house, not his. Maybe he would have fought a glorious duel, blasting dramatic music from movie soundtracks in the background. Or maybe he would just persuade it to leave with shining intellect and cunning trickery. Jacob would have done something. He would have had a plan—a backup plan—three backup plans—

Jacob wouldn't have turned away so he didn't have to watch the car rounding the corner at the end of the street.

But Jacob had been defeated—no, compromised—and Anna had failed. Now, because of her, the sentry was gone, slinking away like a coward, and a general had arrived. Now, she leaned against her windowsill and traced the shape of the signpost against the glass.

Anna closed her eyes and imagined opening a magic portal in her bedroom. She reached through a fiery ring, shifting onto her tiptoes, stretching her arm as far it could go, and pictured holding something. The thin fabric of a sleeve twitched against her fingertips; a calloused hand brushed past. But instead of grabbing Jacob's hand, her fist squeezed air, and instead of pulling him back, she stumbled forward and smashed her face into the window.

The portal evaporated behind her.

Anna moved away, past the army of origami shapes strewn around her room, guarding it for her, and down the stairs. She unlatched the loose bolt on the backdoor with shaking hands and stumbled outside, waiting until she was on the dew-streaked lawn before allowing her knees to buckle.

The morning air was somehow soft and prickly at the same time, as if she were rubbing a wool blanket the wrong way. Her breath tasted sharp in her throat, and her glasses began to mist, so she took them off and wiped them on her sleeve. Somehow, her vision remained blurred.

A disjointed tune pricked the morning haze, lifting her head and her hopes for one moment. Still whistling, Jacob swung over the fence and waved a plastic sword menacingly in her face, then vaporized into the air. Jarringly bright, the tune wafted on.

Anna pulled herself into the mulberry tree overspreading the yard. She crawled along the largest branch to the flattened space where she had sat hundreds of times before, but rarely alone. Looking up, she noticed a black glove stuck onto a longer twig an armslength above her. For a moment, the idea of reaching for it—wearing it—at least tracing the silver Sharpie lines patterning its exterior—preyed on her mind, but Anna revolted. It felt too much like theft.

Ignoring it, Anna focused on the battleground laid out in front of her, the next-door yard. Through the branches tangled up in the sky, she could see someone kneeling on the terrace in front of the wooden posts supporting a patio cover, whistling blithely.

He was partly under the arbor, and the shadow it cast dulled everything about him, turning his frosted brown hair black and his maroon flannel and jeans gray. Flickering in and out of the checkered sunlight, his long, mottled hands scrubbed a rag up and down.

As he stopped to dunk the rag in the bucket beside him, Anna glimpsed the faded outline of a red handprint on the post, already darkened with water. Beneath it, a cluster of vines hid the smaller blue one, but Anna knew it was there. She could still almost feel the rubbery indigo paint wedged under her fingernails and rimmed around her cracked knuckles. The man wrung the rag out and began methodically scouring the post again.

"Hello!"

She almost giggled when he jumped, dropping the rag back into the bucket. Ducking her head back behind a cluster of leaves, she watched him unwind his crooked frame and search first his yard, then the sky. After a pause, he spoke. "Hello?"

To her disappointment, his voice was not the evil, croaky rasp she had already created for him. It was low and gravelly, wavering slightly at the end of the word.

She stayed hidden for a moment more before crawling forward on the branches, pushing the branches aside and swinging her legs over the side. "Hi," she said, tugging on the temples of her glasses and brushing a loose curl of hair behind them. "I'm Anna."

He took a quick step back, almost kicking over the bucket. His eyes narrowed into slits, wrinkling under his heavy eyebrows as he squinted into the sun toward her. His hands moved restlessly up and down, crackling his knuckles, rubbing together as if he were washing them in an invisible sink, and rolling his sleeves up and down. For a moment, he scowled up at her, and then he realized himself and started back again. "Oh!" he said, too loudly. "I'm...well, I'm...your new neighbor."

She bit back You're a trespasser and instead managed: "It's a nice morning...for yardwork, I see?"

He dropped his gaze, rubbing the back of his neck. His face burned, suddenly flushing pink in the hot sunlight. "I'm...just cleaning up the mess left by the last people. You know?" His gaze darted up and down.

"You're trying to get rid of them, aren't you? Why do you want to erase them?" Anna leaned forward, almost overbalancing and wishing her sudden flail to grab the cluster of thin branches near her was more graceful.

He stuttered a laugh and began rolling his sleeves farther up his sun-browned arms. The sun glinted on a latticework of thin white scars, and she glimpsed the wingtip of a tattoo until he pulled the sleeves back down again. "I don't understand what...what you mean."

"This is their home."

His face relaxed into an expression infinitely worse—the hint of a smile coaxing the corner of his mouth, his eyes softening with understanding. She glared back, breaking off a twig with a loud crack that, she was pleased to see, made him jump yet again. She considered keeping score.

"I'm...the new owner," he explained. "They moved out a while ago—to Montana, I think?"

"Missouri. They'll come back, you know."

"They don't own this house anymore, I'm afraid," he said kindly.

Anna cleaned her glasses on her sleeve and seethed, wishing he would refocus, wishing that her vision were not clouding over again. Before the silence could swallow them up, she hissed back, "Because you stole it."

He dropped his eyes immediately, crossing his arms and leaning back. When he glanced up at her again, his eyes flickering up and down like faulty Christmas lights, she read something unexpected in the twist of his mouth, the upward slant of his eyebrows—fear.

"Anna?" The glass sliding door from her house opened, and her mother's voice dispersed the knotted look overspreading his face and unfroze him from his wooden stance. He wheeled away, feigning a casual lilt to his walk as he retreated into the house.

Anna watched him leave, wishing she could feel gratified in her victory. There was something unpleasant curled against her ribcage, a hollow space, a sense of something left unfulfilled. Her legs glued to the branch, she peeled off a section of bark and hurled it into the next door yard. She imagined it as a spy bug, hovering over the wall and buzzing into his house before the door slammed shut.

"Anna!"

She turned away. "Coming, Mom."