The Chickadee Girl

The Edge of Bathwick Forest

Back in Peyman, she poured over the map, spread out on her desk. Midas rested on the floor at her feet, an alert but companionable presence. The mere fact of him was profoundly reassuring, and so Isa allowed herself to get truly lost in the curves and edges of the map, tracing them with her finger. The map wouldn't survive for ten minutes in the cool damp of the woods - it had clearly made its last journey. She'd have to commit as much as she could to memory before leaving it behind. Midas sighed and put his head down, and she stroked him absently with her socked foot.

She'd never had a dog - she was allergic, or so she'd been informed. Her mother told a story about having lost track of toddler Isa at a mall, and finally having located her at a pet store amidst a gaggle of puppies, her pale skin a riot of enraged hives. But this had always struck Isa as a lie, the sort of convenient lie that mothers told to avoid a lot of pleading for a pet. In junior high school she'd once slept over at the house of a friend who had a dog, and hadn't broken out in a single hive. When confronted with this information, her mother had claimed this was because the dog was a poodle, and therefore didn't shed. Isa had been silent for a moment, and then asked for a poodle. The subject had been changed. Idly, she reached down and scratched Midas behind his ear, knowing that it didn't matter. This dog had been worth waiting for.

She spent a quiet night absorbing every detail of the map, walking her fingers down every path and through every meadow, imagining how they would feel under her feet the following day. This process was punctuated only by one more foray into the dining hall to acquire more meat, and bolt down the cereal she had been having cravings for all day. At dusk, she took Midas outside briefly, and stood on look-out while he sniffed around the playground equipment. 

She started a little when she thought she heard someone call out in the woods; Midas, too, paused in his excavations to raise his head. A bird, maybe? Both of them listened breathlessly for a moment, but the woods were silent, and she quickly hurried him back inside. For some reason, the thought that someone might come to take him disturbed her more than whatever was out there. 

***

"Get up, Isa." She heard a thump as Cass chucked something on the bed. Her friend's shadow moved around her head – she could see her outline through the thin grey-blue wool of her blanket. The blanket smelled like peachy body spray and industrial detergent, but after nearly two hours of having it pulled over her face, Isa had ceased to smell anything at all. Her friend gave a little growl, and ripped the blanket up, towering over her like an avenging ginger angel. Her features were decorated with exasperation.

"It's gone bloody eleven, woman. You missed cake. You missed fresh air. You missed Kate's skirt getting caught in the van door, and the driver taking her for a little jog before he realized."

"I'd have liked to see that."

"It was the best thing I've seen all week."

Cass wandered over to her desk and sat down in the chair, legs sprawling open. Isa was well acquainted with every pair of panties her roommate owned. Today, they were navy lace. Cass was always what Malcolm would have described as painted up - polish and lacquer and powder carefully applied to every surface. Every inch of her was perfumed, and the perfumes changed according to temperature: sour-sweet grapefruit in the heat, a complex vanilla blend in the cold months. Despite this, Cass sat as though she were a drunk college boy in a pub where everybody knew his name. This habit made her carrying, ultra-feminine, sing-song voice all the more jarring. So exuberant was Cass's voice that Daphne, listening from her room down the hall, would sometimes choose a word that Cass had just said, mimic the pitch, and shout the name of the note back at them. She did it now.