"Earthworms"

Poor little worm.

The robin hopped in a circle until it was facing me, stopped, and tilted its head. I tilted mine so that we were mirror-friends and asked, "What are you looking at?"

"Quiet," the robin answered with a snap of its beak. We sat silently for a few seconds. "Ah, they're too far underground," it said afterward. "I was listening to the earthworms."

"You can hear them?"

"You can't?" The robin tilted its head toward the other wing. "Listen," it told me. I heard a lawnmower in action somewhere around the corner. A tree stood nearby with its flowers tumbling down in catkins; I heard them brush against each other in the breeze as if they were bells made of whispers. But I couldn't hear the worms.

"Oh, wow," said the robin. "They're really wriggling down there. I don't know. I think they might be feeding on something. It sounds kinda big." It hopped forward and looked at me, its beak pointing like a finger. "So did you, like, put something down there? Maybe, you know, bury something? Not that it matters to me," the robin said. "I'm just wondering."

I let my jaw drop. "I'm not a killer!" I told it. "And I only moved here a month ago! I don't know anything about this place."

The robin's red breast puffed up as if the bird were drawing in a sharp breath. "Seems there's a lot you don't know," it said, giving its feathers a shake. "You don't know what worms sounds like, you don't know what's going on under your own front yard--just out of curiosity, do you even understand why you're able to talk to me right now?"

I didn't have to answer. The robin saw my frown.

"Okay, let me go speak to a few birds about some things," it said, in a gentler voice than it had been using, closer to its usual song. "Wait here. I'll be right back." I watched it spring into the air, wondering where it thought--given all that I had just heard, and all that I still wasn't able to hear--I would possibly go.

"Bright Little Blossoms"

 

I think I noticed Dorelle and Keith at the reunion the same moment they noticed each other. Ten years after the last time we'd all been together in that gym, and there they were, looking at each other with new eyes and offering each other smiles that neither one would have had the chance to see the other wear before, given how things had gone in junior high.

It was like this: some trees start out in spring with a show of bright little blossoms, the kind with petals that curl under perfectly, the kind that make everyone who sees them feel lighter and happier. That was Dorelle. Then there are the trees that, instead of flowers, present buds at the tips of their branches, dull, difficult things all covered with scales. That was Keith, and he'd had terrible acne. Yet none of that mattered, not ten years later, when they both had had time to grow and flourish. You doing okay? I saw Dorelle mouth to Keith. I am, I really am. You? Keith said to her. And suddenly it felt like the end of summer, when no sounds were greater than the whispers between tree leaves, and everything was about to happen.