When she tried to go to sleep, her head was fil ed with the weird things people had said to her. She lay and listened to them, and then final y she got up to write them down. She thought maybe if she got them on paper, they would stop bothering her. She got out a pad of paper. The neighbors are neglecting their exotic birds, she wrote. Then, I won’t drink the Kool-Aid. Then, It’s a more humane way to kill birds. Then, We can still live together. Then, I’m not getting married. She read these over again and again, until the sentences didn’t mean anything. Then she closed her eyes and fel asleep.

Abby woke up to the sound of a child screaming and sat up in bed with her heart pounding. She’d been having a nightmare, but she couldn’t remember what it was about. She walked downstairs, and found her mom peering out the kitchen window.

“It’s the peacock,” she said, without turning around. “He’s been getting noisier. One of the peahens is sick, and we think he’s upset.”

The peacock bleated and bobbed around the pen, and the peahens fol owed. One of the peahens was slower than the other one, and she limped as she tried to keep up.

“Why is she fol owing him like that?” Abby asked. “Why doesn’t she just take care of herself?” It made her angry, that stupid fucking bird, using al of her strength to waddle after him.

Her mom shrugged. “If we knew that,” she said, “we could solve al the mysteries in the world.”

Abby watched the peacock raise his feathers, and they were beautiful. The peahens raised their feathers too, but they were shorter and not nearly as magnificent, which seemed unfair. The peahens waddled around, fol owing the peacock wherever he went. He couldn’t see in the night, so he wandered aimlessly in the pen. Go the other way, she wanted to scream at the gimpy peahen. Stop worrying about where he’s going and just rest.

It seemed to Abby that the peacock was strutting, showing off his feathers to an invisible audience in the night. It didn’t look like he was worried about the peahen. He looked selfish and self-absorbed, like he knew he was beautiful. Abby watched his feathers blow in the wind, and she watched as the peahens fol owed with al of their strength. They fol owed because it was al they had ever done; they fol owed because it was al they knew how to do.

W hen Isabela waitressed in colege, she saw customers come in for blind dates al the time. “Has a man named Stuart come in yet?” they would ask. Or “Is there someone here who’s waiting for a Jessica?” When Isabel a would shake her head, they would look around nervously. “I’m meeting someone,” they would explain, and she would nod. “Someone,” Isabel a would think. “Someone that you don’t know.”