Free The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen

construction paper and cushioned with brown felt. “What’s it like to be eighteen?”
    “Everyone gets married,” Cousin Bettie said.
    Twiss stood on her tiptoes. “Why aren’t you?”
    Cousin Bettie squeezed more liquid out of her blisters. After she peeled off the dead skin and tossed it into the grass, she wiped her hands on her housedress and stood up.
    “What’s it like to be so nosy?”
    She didn’t need to tell Twiss to follow her when she started walking toward the sandpile on the other side of the pond. Twiss adapted her gait to match Cousin Bettie’s, which made her look like she was trotting. The two of them kept bumping into each other.
    “Stop trying to hold my hand,” Cousin Bettie said.
    “I’m not,” Twiss said.
    A few more steps and they looked like they’d been walking along the bank together all their lives. When Bettie tossed a stick into the water, so did Twiss. When Bettie wiped sweat from her forehead, so did Twiss. It was as if their cousin had cast a spell on her.
    Milly stayed with the hip boots, the dead skin, and the paper bag. She couldn’t explain why the sight of Twiss and her cousin made her feel suddenly so alone, so useless. Twiss had left her behind plenty of times when she wanted to do something that Milly didn’t want to do.
    But she’d always looked back at Milly for encouragement, and Milly had always given it to her.
    “Aren’t you coming?” Cousin Bettie said to Milly.
    “Yeah, aren’t you?” Twiss echoed.
    The three of them walked to the sandpile, Cousin Bettie and Twiss weaving in and out of the murky water and Milly along the bank. Milly could already hear the hum of the bees, which surged, like her pulse, as they got closer to the other side of the pond. Since her father had paid a man to dump it beside the pond, Milly and Twiss had avoided the pile because the last summer a bee stung Twiss on her tongue.
    When the three girls arrived at the sandpile, Cousin Bettie rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. “Let’s see who can stick their hands in.”
    “That’s dangerous,” Milly said.
    “People only get stung when they think things like that.”
    “There’s no honey,” Twiss said. “What’s the point?”
    Cousin Bettie walked over to the pile. “There isn’t one.”
    Milly and Twiss watched as their cousin pushed her pale hands into the even paler sand. The bees came out in a giant black-and-yellow swarm, organized and armylike, and landed on their cousin’s hair and dress, her face and neck, accumulating in such quantities that she began to disappear. She didn’t flinch when a bee landed on her eyelid or when one landed on her nose. She simply closed her eyes and breathed out of her mouth, a maneuver that caused both Milly and Twiss to cover theirs. They’d heard of bee charmers, but it didn’t look like Cousin Bettie was charming the bees. It looked like they were charming her.
    “It’s like being God for a minute,” their cousin said.
    Milly took a step back. Unlike Twiss, when they went to church, Milly paid attention. Miracles, Father Rice had cautioned them when he was still the priest, were contrary to the laws of nature, and whatever was contrary to nature came at a price.
    “Your chicken may lay two eggs today,” he said. “But what happens tomorrow?”
    When Cousin Bettie pulled her arms out of the sand, bees occupied every inch of skin between her wrists and her elbows. Milly couldn’t tell where the bees ended and the sleeves of Bettie’s dress began. When Bettie backed away from the sandpile, Twiss stepped forward. She was still wearing their cousin’s shoes, which were too large to cause any blistering, but had left marks on her toes where the felt ended and the cardboard began.
    Milly took another step back, even though the bees had returned to the sandpile and her cousin’s skin had remained intact.
    “Why are you looking at me like that?” Cousin Bettie said.
    “I’m not looking at you,” Milly said, because she