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I can feel the bird-woman looking at me. Up and down—her eyes miss nothing. I tug at the bottom of my shirt, trying to make it longer.
    â€œHello, Fiona,” the woman says, taking a sip of her coffee. “I’m Alicia Bernstein. I’m from Social Services. I’m here to talk to you.”
    From the corner of my eye, I see Gran go rigid. Her hands become tight fists, one still wrapped around the kettle handle. Then she returns the kettle to the stove, and without turning to look at us again Gran says, “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
    Grabbing the newspaper, my grandmother quickly exits to keep the cold air from escaping. At home, we leave all the doors and windows wide open to encourage the breezes to sweep through the old house, but here all the windows and doors are shut so tight, I can’t breathe.
    The davenport has been folded back into a sofa, and I find my clothes waiting for me on the center cushion. Alicia Bernstein from Social Services watches. She watches me pull my jeans on, and then she watches me come into the kitchen. Even though I’m dressed now, I still feel naked.
    I look out the window before I sit down. Gran is sitting in a lawn chair working a crossword puzzle, and I can feel Alicia Bernstein’s eyes watching me. A squirrel drops out of the oak tree and darts across the small square of lawn, but my grandmother doesn’t look up. As she ponders a clue she fiddles with her mechanical pencil. She waves it back and forth the way she wags her finger at me when I’ve done something wrong. And now she is bending over to fill in another blank space.
    *  *  *  *
    Alicia Bernstein from Social Services asks the same questions the police kept asking the other night. She, too, wants to know what happened in the orchard.
    I hold my breath and cross my fingers before I tell her I think I saw coyotes. This time I perform the ritual to make her believe me. I pronounce “coyote” the way Mama does, and Alicia Bernstein looks surprised. Then she scribbles something on a pad of yellow paper with green lines.
    â€œI met your father last night,” she says, finally looking up again. “We talked for a long time. He told me all about how smart you are.” And this is when she pauses. She sits there with her mouth slightly open, looking at me like I’m supposed to agree with her about me being smart. But I don’t say anything. I stare at my hands. My fingernails are dirty and need to be trimmed.
    Alicia Bernstein makes a clicking noise with her tongue and I know she is still watching me, even though I refuse to look at her. She puts the manila folder and pad of paper back into her briefcase and focuses on drinking her coffee. She acts like this is the only reason she is here. She takes her time and she never stops watching me. She slurps every time she takes a sip and the slurping makes me thirsty. The cup she is using is from Gran’s china set—the set that inspired the entire kitchen decor.
    Every piece of china is so white, it is almost see-through. And so thin I can’t help but break Gran’s dishes all the time. The china is decorated with a simple splash of silver and aqua stars that remind me of the cartoon The Jetsons . The stars match the speckled Formica table and countertops. Uncle Billy tiled the wall above the stove to match the pattern on the china, and the tiles create their own repeating pattern: three white squares, two aqua, followed by one silver—again and again.
    â€œWell,” Alicia Bernstein finally says, “because you are so smart, we’d really like to study your brain to see exactly how it works.”
    I use one fingernail to scrape dirt from another, and I wonder who she means when she says “we.” I also think about Gran. Maybe she’s right. Maybe being smart is a bad thing.
    The bird-woman leans forward and says, “We asked your dad, and he gave us his