Free Grave of Hummingbirds by Jennifer Skutelsky Page A

maxed out a couple of credit cards. In one of the most expensive cities in the United States, Sophie managed to keep them going but not without occasional panic attacks. Soon Finn would start earning, too, and he’d make things easier for her.
    Ever since he could remember, Sophie had shown no interest in dating, and now he wished she would. There was something terribly lonely about his mother that had nothing to do with anything she said and everything to do with his certainty that she structured her whole life around him. If Finn was responsible for her loneliness, how could he save her from it? He wished for a father, not for his sake but hers. In a couple of months, he’d move out of the apartment they shared in West Portal, and then what?
    “Where are we staying, Finn?” Sophie asked.
    “I don’t know. I figured we’d find somewhere when we got here.”
    “What?”
    He walked off, and she had to hurry to keep up with him. This was not a conversation he wanted to have right now.
    “Finn, you mean to tell me . . . ?”
    “We’ll find somewhere, okay?” he tossed over his shoulder.
    As they followed a mixed group of travelers along a cobblestone path, past straggling cottages that formed a buffer between the cliffs and the rest of the village, Sophie began to draw attention. They crossed a stone bridge, and a young man about Finn’s age, riding by on a squealing bicycle, stopped to stare openly at her.
    A woman dressed in a bright-red wool skirt and a poncho watched them from under the brim of a worn cowboy hat, then walked close behind for a short way. Finn saw her join a pair of whispering women, who might as well have pointed. He hung back, stepping away from his mother, allowing some distance to grow between them so he could assess the storm she was gathering. It grew as the crowd thickened, and whispers spread through the streets between the stone-walled cottages.
    A hush followed the mutterings, a shimmering stillness that seemed to surround Sophie and push everyone away, even Finn. Into the weird silence, a humming sound started up, like the far-off rumble of a Harley-Davidson, muffled but sending vibrations through his ears and into his head.
    “Mom,” Finn said loudly. “Mom!” Heads turned slowly to watch her, synchronized, choreographed, bodies unnaturally still beneath the swiveling heads.
    The vibrations stopped and the silence returned. In the eerie suspension of time, pale figures emerged from the cobblestones and levitated above the street. Swaying, rocking, and lurching, they moved toward him, eyes stricken and pleading.
    Finn lashed out with his bag, swirling in a circle, and the bodies stood back, one by one, cowering, retreating between the rock fragments down into the earth. A few remained, staring back at him with wide, reproachful eyes: a woman with long black hair, shivering in a blood-stained slip, with ligature marks on her wrists; a man with black holes for eyes; a bruised teenager, his clothing shredded and skin minced by shrapnel. An old woman with bloody tears in her floral dress approached Finn, tentatively holding out a gnarled, grotesquely twisted hand. She opened broken fingers and three bullets floated into his palm. When they touched his skin, they turned to dust, which he brushed off on his jeans.
    Finn closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he stood alone, trailing behind Sophie, who had stopped walking and waited for him to catch up.
    “What’s the matter?” she said. “You’re very pale, Finn. The altitude here is incredibly high. Are you okay?” She added softly, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we started hallucinating.”
    When he didn’t respond, she tried to touch his forehead to check whether he had a fever. He pulled away, and she walked off again, undoubtedly controlling a sharp reaction. Only when he was sure that real people were moving and talking again did he follow her, recalling Rosita’s warning. While he’d ridiculed her claim that the