The original chicking video has twelve million loops before Autumn gets Kam to do it with her.
“No,” says Kam, congenitally incapable of fun. “Birds don’t have anal sphincters.”
“Why would you stick anything in its anal sphincter,” says Autumn. The yellow puffballs in her hands cheep at each other.
“They just poop!” says Kam. “At random! And you want me to hold it in my mouth!”
Autumn gets what she wants, as always. Head craned back, tiny feet against her teeth, tongue on trembling down, Kam decides this feels weird because she’s usually on the other side of the metaphor.
Mindy haunts him with her teeth, biting his fingers to make him yelp and drop glasses, chewing aluminum while he tries to sleep. Ethan’s developed a tic from her habit of sticking her ectoplasmic tongue in his ear.
It has to be Mindy. He never traded hickeys or promises with anyone else who’s gone. People stick around for unfinished business, his culture tells him, but is it his or hers?
His thumb hovers over the button to dial the exorcist until Ethan puts his phone away. Cold ghost breath on his cheek, uneven, and the kiss or whisper that never comes.
They’ve seen Scienceland, Dragonland, Cableland, Imaginationland, Mountainland, Doctorland, Americaland, Carland, Native Americaland, Ennuiland, Mysteryland, Surpriseland, Terrorland, Potteryland, Noiseland, Grassland, Furnitureland, and Narrativeland, and still the park exit eludes them. There are no crowds, no attendants. Seatbelted to a bookcase, they ride a conveyor through yet another dim attraction.
“Why do you think he always writes about two people, in these condemned-wanderer stories?” says Nimisha. “Just for dialogue?”
“More like a clumsy personal philosophy,” says Clayton.
“But does he think having company is kind,” says Nimisha, “or cruel?”
Mute animatronics grin at them, safe behind glass, and mime Man Versus Self.
Dawn comes early in summer, and the wishes are restless. Nobody in the house can sleep while they’re out there chiming and trilling. Jake scritches his fuzzy eyes and pads out bareback to open their coop.
They flurry-flap and scatter out into the pen, then regather to nudge his arms and legs as he measures out a bowl of crushed Adderall. Once they’re eagerly pecking, he checks their nests. Nothing’s hatched, of course. Jake doesn’t know why the house keeps them anymore; their food is expensive, and you can’t let them go hungry. Given the chance, they’ll eat you alive.
The fad among seventeen-year-olds this year is crop tops with some kind of silk band worn just underneath the bottom hem and it makes Nouri feel like an ancient ruin. It’s hard to keep their attention on a whiteboard when they’re busy flashing color-coded bellies across the aisles.
Yesterday in the cafeteria, snapping a phone picture, one of them used the term “belfie.” Nouri almost bit through her spoon. She’s barely thirty. Whither the sexting of her youth? Shamefacedly, she tries on red and cerulean at Forevs that weekend, but she’s worried they carry messages she never learned.