Mollyâs wrist. Mollyâs eyes widened. âLook out the window. The Bird Ladyâs right there!â
Molly turned and squinted through the glass. Snow fell thickly from the gray sky. The old lady was gone.
âYou are so random, Natasha,â Molly said. âFirst you say thereâs a bird in the cafeteria, only ha ha, not really. Then, âLook, thereâs an old lady!â, only not really again. And then you completely zoned out, like you werenât even here.â
âThere was an old lady,â Natasha said.
âYeah, this morning on your way to school,â Mollysaid. She took a sip of her Sesame Street smoothie.
âAnd the birdâyou saw the bird!â Natasha cried. âYou fed the bird!â She gestured at the floor beneath Mollyâs chair, where Molly had dropped the bread crumbs.
They werenât there.
She glanced up and around the cafeteria ceiling.
No bird. Not even a feather.
âNatasha?â Molly said.
Natasha looked out the window. Then she looked at Earbud Boy, who held a graphic novel in one hand and his sandwich in the other. There were bite marks on the sandwich, but no missing strip of crust.
The little hairs on the back of Natashaâs neck stood up.
It was as if the real world had collided with a hidden world, a world which other people couldnât see. Possible and impossible, tangled hopelessly together.
    Â
            I wish to be in charge of something,
            so I can boss people around
            and theyâll have to listen.
            â V ERA K OVROV, AGE THIRTEEN
CHAPTER SEVEN
N atasha stayed on high alert for the next several days, waiting for more odd things to happen.
When nothing did, she felt curiously let down.
Then, four days after her encounter with the Bird Lady, she overheard her aunts talking about her. It was Tuesday morning, and Natasha was heading downstairs for breakfast. She froze.
â. . . but what you donât seem to understand is that I want whatâs best for her too,â Aunt Vera was saying. âNatasha was five years old when Klara left. Five years old!â
âYes, Vera,â Aunt Elena said. âI was there, too.â
âSheâd started kindergarten only days before, and afterward, for weeks, she said, âWhy isnât Mama taking me? Why canât Mama pack my lunch?ââ
âIt broke my heart,â Aunt Elena said.
â Klara broke her heart,â Aunt Vera said. There was an edge to her voice. âKlara broke everyoneâs hearts.â
âVera, please. Iâm not trying to rewrite history,â Aunt Elena said. âI just . . . I donât want you to erase history.â
âThe past belongs in the past,â Aunt Vera said. âI told you that on Natashaâs Wishing Day. I told you nothing good would come of it.â
âHow do we know nothing good came of it? How do we know if anything happened at all, since we donât know what she wished for?â
âElena, leave it alone,â Aunt Vera said.
Aunt Elena lowered her voice, and Natasha strained to hear. âKlara never told me her wishes, either. Did she tell you?â
Silence.
âThe girls used to ask. They asked what our wishes were and what their motherâs wishes had been,â Aunt Elena said.
âNot Darya.â
âYes, even Darya. They adored talking aboutWishing Dayâuntil they learned not to.â
â Learned not to. Exactly,â Aunt Vera said. âYou say it as if I did something bad, but I did it to help them.â
âWhy did you go with us to the top of Willow Hill, on Natashaâs Wishing Day?â Aunt Elena asked.
âBecause . . . well, because . . .â
âBecause one thing we do know is that Klara
Learning to Kill: Stories