Chapter One

I swore the peacocks goading me from my grandfather’s lawn would be the death of me. While I assembled the new motion-activated sprinkler, at least twenty of the filthy fowl gathered on the lawn and strutted about, purposely taunting me.

Just wait until I get this thing set up, I thought, sinking the stake at the bottom of the unit into the bed of begonia that they had eaten down to almost nothing. I attached the hose, resisting the temptation to spray them outright. I wanted to see if they would activate the sensor on the sprinkler, so I clenched my teeth and did my best to ignore them as I maneuvered the little tabs to set the radius of the spray.

Satisfied the sprinkler would sweep the entire yard, I cranked open the spigot and waited. Nothing. The birds peck, peck, pecked in the grass, cocking their heads to fix me with their beady little eyes. I would have to adjust the sensitivity. Where was that knob again? I had to check the packaging I’d left on the counter inside. I climbed the shallow stairs to the small porch and swung open the heavy oak door to the kitchen area.

“Almost ready for dinner?” my grandpop, Marv, asked when I stepped inside.

“Almost. It’s not sensing the birds yet, but when it does, I’m going to nail ’em.” I pointed my finger like a gun and mimicked him telling stories from when he’d been a river boat gunner in Vietnam. “Pew, pew, pew.”

Pops shook his head. “Do they know you’re declaring war?”

“Someone has to protect the begonia! There’s hardly any left!”

“I can plant more,” he said.

I didn’t respond. We’d had the conversation often enough for me to have both our parts memorized. Back when I’d lived with him as a kid, a peacock would wander into the neighborhood maybe twice a year. Then some moron two houses down bought a female because the bird “looked lonely.” The birds were a constant topic of conversation, so I gathered that the population had been steadily increasing, but until I started coming out once a week to help him with shopping and chores, I hadn’t known how bad it was.

I was now doing something about it whether or not he agreed it was necessary.

“I’m picking some kale from the garden. Then dinner is on the table.”

“Got it.”

I skimmed the instructions as he slipped out through the sliding glass door to the back patio. I heard a yelp and looked out back. I couldn’t see my pops, so I opened the front door and jumped in surprise.

A woman was standing on the steps batting at her tight orange leggings.

“Argggghhh, Marv!” she said before looking up.

I was dumbstruck by her hair. As she flicked it to the side and out of her eyes, the colored layers shimmered. The top was layered somehow, the bright orange and red at the crown shifting to purple and blue. She snapped her head in the direction of the sprinkler, revealing that underneath the colorful mop, her hair was shaved short and dyed yellow and green. It was as if one of the peacocks had taken human form. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever seen before.

She gestured toward the offending object, pinned me with her dark blue eyes and then pointed toward her pants.

The sprinkler had soaked her crotch. Before I could stop myself, I started laughing. Not socially acceptable, I reminded myself searching for the right words to offer this stranger. “Oops.”

“Are you shittin’ me?”

I hadn’t meant to hit a human target. Wasn’t that obvious? Wait. I had not considered the mail carrier. I would absolutely have to modify the radius to avoid hitting anyone walking up to the front door. But what if the birds figured out they could avoid the spray by taking the same route? That would do nothing to solve the problem of the birds not only eating my grandpop’s flowers but also pooping all over the walkway. The woman cleared her throat, making me aware that I’d gotten lost in my thoughts. “I am trying to scare the birds away.”

“Well, I’m no bird.”

I couldn’t stop myself from staring at her hair. “You kind of look like a peacock.”

She extended a wet magazine. “Would you give this to Marv?”

“Sure.”

She smiled at me oddly with a lot of teeth. “Bless your heart. If it’s not too much of a bother, tell him it’s not my fault it got wet.”

Her tone suggested that she was upset with me. “I’m sorry you got wet.”

Even though I apologized, she still had that funny smile when she turned to go, running to avoid the hose when her movement activated another spray. She was agile and fast, so the hose barely got her, but she yipped anyway as she ran to the sidewalk and out of sight.

I walked over to the spigot and cranked off the water. I’d have to mess with it after dinner.

“Your Military Times is wet,” I said, joining Pops at the table.

“I see that. Is the rest of my mail wet, too?”

“I didn’t get the mail carrier. And I’ll adjust the spray, so it doesn’t hit them. But I might have to set it to sweep the lawn area. I’ll have to come up with another way to keep them away from your flowers.”

“Does that mean you sprayed Casey?”

“I didn’t spray anyone. The hose sprayed a woman with peacock hair and a funny accent.”

He nodded. “That’d be Casey. You gave her a towel, didn’t you?”

A towel! Was that what she was waiting for me to do?

“Adrienne Iris.” His tone and expression were stern. “You let her stand there dripping wet?”

“She gave me the magazine and ran away.”

“I told you it was foolish to try to set up something to squirt those birds. You can take it back and save your money.”

“I’ll think of something else. There are too many to ignore them.”

“They aren’t doing any harm. I don’t understand why you get so worked up about them. You’re making yourself miserable, and you’re going to get me into trouble with the neighbors. There are plenty of folks who love those birds.”

“Like Casey? Is she your neighbor? It looked like she walked here.”

“I’ve told you about her before, the nice gal from Mississippi.”

“You didn’t say she looked like a peacock.”

“A peacock?”

“Her hair looks like she’s one of the males ready for mating season.”

“Maybe she was hoping to meet you. I told her you’ve been coming over some weekends.” He took a bite of his burger. I liked burgers because there was no silverware to clink on his plate, but I hated it when he had fresh kale that crunched noisily.

“Why would she want to meet me?” I bit into my burger, hoping to tune him out with my own chewing.

“I told her I had a granddaughter her age. It’s hard to meet people when you move across the country. I thought she could use a friend.”

“Doesn’t she go to the bible university?”

“Are you judging a book by its cover? That seems out of character for a librarian.”

I frowned and popped a tater tot in my mouth, crispy and with a lot of salt, exactly the way I liked them. I didn’t like the way my grandpop smacked his lips while he ate, so I looked out the sliding glass doors and identified five things I could see: the pool, the peach trees, the picnic table, the towel bin, the rocks that separated the patio from the lawn. “I don’t see what we’d have in common. She moved here to go to a bible college. I went to a hippie school. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about my method of scaring off the peacocks. Do you think she’s one of the ones who likes them?”

“Most of the neighborhood does,” he said around his food, like he always told me not to.

“Well, they shouldn’t. They’re not native to the area.” I remembered, then, that my pops had said Casey occasionally came by with his mail that had been delivered to her house by mistake. “Does Casey like it here in California?”

“I said before, she seems lonely. Why else would a young person stay and gab with an old man?” He took a big bite and used his fingers to push lettuce past his lips. His face was covered in gray stubble, the way it always was late in the day, and he still wore his gray hair military short.

The urge I had to get up and leave the table was so strong, I went back to my coping strategy, distracting myself by trying to find four things I could touch: the ridge on my ear, the soft cotton of my napkin… “I don’t think she wanted to talk to me,” I said, trying to find two more things I could touch.

“My bet is that had more to do with the soaking.” He took another big bite.

I did my best to distract myself from his chewing. I could touch the little scallops at the base of my fork. I could touch the little crescent moon indentation my dad had made on the dining room table when he was a kid. “I told her that I hadn’t been aiming for people.”

“Well, I bet that made all the difference.”

Something in his voice reminded me of how Casey had said “bless your heart.” Their words sounded nice, and they didn’t sound mad, but I still felt like I was in trouble. Even if the hose hadn’t wet her, she would probably have been mad about me trying to scare the peacocks away. I didn’t see how I could have anything in common with someone as stylish as Casey. I’d never understood the amount of energy some people put into things like clothes and hair.

She looked like the girls I’d gone to school with here in Southern California, the ones who told me I shouldn’t wear the same sweatshirt every day. The ones who made my belly flip and my mouth go dry. I didn’t care what they thought about my clothes, but it stung to know from the way they talked to me that I didn’t fit in with their crowd.

Casey wasn’t exactly like them, though. None of those girls had peacock hair. “Why do you think Casey looks like a peacock?” I asked Pops.

“She didn’t the last time I talked to her. Why don’t you walk down the street and ask her? And apologize.”

“I already apologized.”

He raised his eyebrows as if he didn’t believe me even though I was much more precise with my wording than either him or Casey. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to read people’s expressions and social cues, most of the time, they confused me. I’ve always been my own best company.