“Hey, girl! Hey pretty face, why won’t you talk to me?” That’s the third time he’s spoken, jeering from the seat behind her, his breath hot and acrid on the back of her neck. Andy cringes. She swallows her replies, her anger, her fear. He’ll only keep going if she replies. She pulls the stop cord, even though it’s two blocks before her usual stop.
When she walks off the bus, she doesn’t look back, but the boy and his friend follow. She can hear their shuffling feet. She heads off quickly in the direction of her family’s apartment. Maybe she can lose them. Maybe they’ll lose interest.
Half a block later, she can still hear them laughing behind her. She turns quickly around a corner, and finds herself in an alley. “Hey girlie, you lost?” he calls behind her.
Finally, she turns. “Why are you following me?!”
“Aw baby, don’t be like that. You have a pretty face and I just wanna talk to you!”
“Leave me alone! I don’t want to talk to you!”
His face contorts in a scowl. “You don’t have to be a b- aaahhh!” A large black bird suddenly swoops down, buzzing his head. He turns to his friend. “Did you see th-” the bird returns, this time clawing at his face, squawking loudly. The boys turn tail and run, screaming as the bird chases them.
After the boys leave, Andy slowly uncurls her protective arms from over her head. She can’t hear the bird’s caws anymore. That was really weird. I didn’t know birds did that except in like, Australia. But this is Chicago? Seconds later, the bird returns, interrupting her train of thought. She watches it warily. It’s flying more slowly this time, and its trajectory doesn’t look directly aimed for her head. She’s never been good at judging angles though, so she keeps her arms warily in front of her face.
The bird lands about ten feet away from her. It caws, twice, but it sounds softer, kinder. Andy slowly lowers her arms. She crouches, and looks at it. “Um. Thanks for chasing them off.” She laughs, embarrassedly. “Why am I talking to a crow? This is silly.”
“Raven, actually. It’s a common mistake to make.” Its voice is scratchy and small. Andy blinks.
“Did you just. What. No. Crows don’t- ravens don’t-”
“You’re right. Ravens don’t talk. Usually. One second, okay? I’m not a… not always a raven.”
The raven looks at the ground like it’s concentrating, and then the air bends around it, and a tall, angular girl stands when the raven was. Andy stares, unsure if she can trust her eyes. Ravens don’t talk, and they don’t turn into people. This can’t be real. Am I hallucinating?
The girl smiles uncertainly, and walks toward Andy. “Hi, I’m Rowan. I just… thought it looked like they were bothering you.”
“Um. Yeah? Thanks,” Andy said. Her mouth felt like it was running on autopilot. She still couldn’t believe this was happening. She could feel her whole body shaking.
Rowan took a step toward her, reaching out a hand. Andy flinched away, taking a step back as if to turn and run. Rowan sighed, raising her hands in surrender. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. I’ll just… I’ll leave. Stay out of alleys and you’ll be fine, okay?”
Andy nodded dumbly. She watched Rowan walk away, and in mid-stride the girl was gone. In her place was a small black cat. It ran off down the alley and turned the corner.
Andy stood frozen for a few seconds, then shook herself and walked out of the alley, arms wrapped tightly over her torso as if they were the only thing holding her together. In a way, they were.
All the way home, she kept seeing the boy’s face as the raven clawed him, and then the raven becoming a girl.
At supper, Andy didn’t feel like eating. As usual, her family was loud and full of energy, chattering about the events of the day. Andy couldn’t think of anything to say. Yeah, so I almost got jumped but then some bird attacked the guys who were bothering me, no big deal. And then I might have hallucinated the bird turning into a girl. So how was work, mom?
She asked to be excused even though she hadn’t eaten much.
Her mom looked at her concernedly. “Honey, are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just have a lot of homework.”
“Take your supper with you, dear. You can eat in your room.”
“Okay, mom.” Andy picked up her plate of pasta and turned to leave.
“How come she gets to eat in her room?” asked Andy’s little brother.
“Jeremy, Andy has a lot of homework.”
“Mommmmm, can I eat in my room?”
“No, Jeremy. Eat your vegetables.”
When Andy got to her room, she set her supper on her desk and flopped on her bed, pulling the blue quilt over her head. She really did need to do homework, but she didn’t feel like she could concentrate on Algebra.
She grabbed her earbuds and iPod after searching blindly in her backpack for them with one hand, head still under the covers. Her playlist was skittering between Panic! at the Disco, Frank Ocean, and Green Day, but it didn’t drown out her thoughts so much as it just gave them a really nice soundtrack. The girl had said her name was Rowan. Rowan. Wasn’t that a kind of tree?
Honestly, even without the shapeshifting, Andy thought Rowan was pretty cool looking. Her dark hair was tightly french braided, and her eyes were dark brown and lined in heavy eyeliner. She had been wearing this gray jacket that looked like it had come from a thrift store and she had sewn on patches haphazardly over the course of years. It was covered in them- lots of bands Andy had heard of, and even more that she hadn’t. The jacket hung off Rowan’s body, at least two sizes too big for her small frame.
Andy shook her head, telling herself to stop thinking about Rowan. So what if Rowan was really detailed and cool? She could still be a hallucination. Andy rolled over, pulled the blankets over her, and tried to go to sleep.
It seemed like her alarm went off way too early the next morning. Andy turned it off and promptly fell asleep again, waking up fifteen minutes later to the realization that she was late. She rushed through breakfast and had to walk as fast as she could to catch the bus she took to school. No one bothered her on the bus this time.
At school, the minutes dragged by. When the final bell rang, Andy was out the door as fast as she could. At the bus stop, she sat with her earbuds in until the bus came. When she got on, she walked toward the back of the bus. And there, sitting in the window seat of the second-to-last row, dark hair shiny and tightly braided, jacket looking even more patched than Andy remembered, was Rowan. Rowan looked up and smiled at her. Andy turned and looked for a different seat, but the only empty one near her was right beside Rowan. Andy quickly sat down, pulling her backpack into her lap and holding on tightly. She didn’t look at Rowan. The bus rumbled to life and began to carry them down the street. Andy nervously twirled a strand of her strawberry blond hair around her finger.
“Hey. I’m sorry if I scared you yesterday,” Rowan whispered. “What’s your name?”
Andy jumped. Before she could stop herself, she whispered back “You’re not real please go away please go-”
“What? What do you mean, not real?” Rowan looked confused. Andy was staring at the floor.
“I’m probably hallucinating!” Andy hissed back. “And it freaks me out!”
Rowan’s forehead creased in confusion. “No, I know this is strange, but I swear I’m real. Look,” Rowan reached in front of her and tapped the shoulder of a middle-aged businessman sitting in the next seat. When he turned around, she smiled pleasantly and asked, “Hi, sir, do you have the time?”
“Of course. It’s 4 PM.”
Rowan thanked him, and he returned to facing front. She turned to Andy again. “If you were hallucinating me, would other people be able to see me? Able to hear me?”
“No… probably not.” Andy conceded.
“Okay. Good!” Rowan cheered up. “So can we talk now?”
“Um. Okay, my name’s Andy. This is my stop. I don’t know where you’re going, but we can walk a little bit?”
“Sure, I’m not going anywhere in particular.”
“Where do you live?”
“I live in the city.”
Andy nodded. “And you can… become a bird whenever you want to?”
“Yeah. Actually I can be any animal I want to, as long as I can picture the animal in my mind.” Suddenly a hedgehog was sitting where Rowan had been. Andy stopped, staring at the animal, then looked quickly around to see if anyone had noticed. No one seemed to be nearby. She crouched down to the hedgehog, whispering urgently, “Rowan! What if someone saw you! Jeez, don’t surprise me like that! Okay, I can carry you to the alley and you can change back?”
She put her hands on the ground, and the hedgehog (the hedgehog that was Rowan? This still felt really strange to think about) stepped onto her palms. Andy carefully carried the tiny, warm, prickly animal down a nearby alley, looked around, and put her down. In a split second, Rowan was again standing where the hedgehog had been.
Rowan grinned. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. Really startling, but yeah, it’s awesome! What animals are you most often?”
“A lot of the time I like being a cat or a bird. As a bird, it’s easy to get away from anyone bothering me, and easy to travel. And as a cat, taking naps is easy and getting petted is so nice. Best part is, no one questions the presence of a cat or a bird- it would be a lot more noticeable for me to be, like, a pangolin just waltzing down the streets.”
The girls walked out of the alley, continuing on their way as they talked. When they got to Andi’s apartment building, they stopped at the door.
“Do you want to come in?” Andy asked. “My mom comes home at like 5:30, but she’s always fine with me having friends over.”
“You count us as friends?” Rowan asked hopefully.
Andy laughed. “Of course! You saved me from those boys yesterday, and besides you’re super cool. We’re totally friends.”
Rowan grinned, and then asked, “Hey, do you have snacks at your apartment? I’m starving.”
FIN
Author’s note: there will be further installments forthcoming! Stay tuned for the continuing adventures of Andy and Rowan 🙂