Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [best e ink reader for manga .txt] 📗

outside door. I see a look of intense dread cross her face as she swings open the inside door and we step into her house.

There’s an explosion of wings around me as Rachel closes the second door behind us, and for a second I think there are a lot more birds than are actually in the room. The downstairs is mostly just one really big room, with gauzy drapes over every window, plastic covers on every couch, and pictures painted on every wall—enormous, elaborate murals. On the biggest wall, there’s a picture of Noah’s Ark, except the giant boat has wings and eyes on eyestalks, and the creatures being loaded on include unicorns, pocket-sized dragons, and swamp monsters.

I look around for a long moment, speechless.

Then a bird swoops down and lands on my head.

“Shoo!” Rachel says, and she waves the bird away from me.

“It’s okay,” I say.

“No, you don’t want that one to land on you,” she says, “That’s Caravaggio, and he bites.”

“Who painted the walls?” I ask.

“My mom,” Rachel says. “She’s an artist. Do you want to come upstairs? It’s a little less chaotic because there’s only one bird. And mine doesn’t bite.”

Rachel’s bedroom also has murals, as well as these weird little boxes hanging up. I stop for a closer look at one. It’s a box made out of wood, painted and furnished inside with tiny toy birds. They’re toys, I’m pretty sure, not stuffed dead birds, but they’re made with real feathers. The bird is settled in an easy chair and smoking a pipe.

“That’s one of my mom’s pieces,” Rachel said, “It didn’t sell, so she let me keep it.”

“Your mom sells her art?”

“Yeah.” Rachel heaves a sigh, like this is another secret, like the birds. “Mom didn’t go to art school or anything; she used to just make these as a hobby, but a few years ago some guy saw her stuff and thought he could sell it. It’s not enough to live on or anything. Mom says she’s putting it away for college for me.”

“That’s really cool.” The other box also has a tiny sculpture of a bird in it. “Which came first, the birds or the art?”

“Well, she had birds before she started making boxes, but she made art before she had birds. She’s always done murals. When she gets tired of one, she paints over it and starts fresh. I’m still mad she got rid of the kitchen dragon. I really liked the kitchen dragon. She said he made her feel intimidated while she was drinking her morning coffee.”

“How many birds are there?”

“Downstairs there are four parrotlets and a conure. Plus my parrotlet lives up here.” She draws her curtains and then lets her parrotlet out of its cage. “This is Picasso.” Picasso is a tiny green bird who willingly hops onto her hand. “Do you want to hold him?”

I sit down on Rachel’s bed, which is not covered in plastic, and she has me hold my hand out flat, shakes some seeds out of a jar into my palm, and then tips the bird into my hand. He scarfs up the seeds, turning his head sideways to look up at me.

“He’s really cute,” I say. “You should upload some pictures of him to CatNet. Not while I’m holding him, though.”

“What if I zoom way in so it’s just your hand?”

“That’s probably okay.”

Rachel takes her phone out, carefully angling it away from my face.

“So where does the name Georgia come from?” I ask. “Were you born there?”

“No, it’s after Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist. All our birds are named after artists. Downstairs there’s Caravaggio, Vermeer, Chagall, and Monet, and the conure is named Frida Kahlo.”

“How on earth are you afraid of bats when you have birds flying around your head all the time?”

“Well, I had to get used to the birds.”

“Why are the birds such a secret?”

“I told you. Because they poop on people. The last time someone came over…” Rachel sighs, heavily enough to startle the bird, which flutters up into the air and comes back to roost on her head. “The last time I had anyone over, it was Bryony, actually, back in seventh grade, and Da Vinci pooped on her head, and it was years before I heard the end of it. Years. Also, technically we have more birds in the house than we’re supposed to. You aren’t supposed to have more than four animals as pets in New Coburg, although no one really cares if you’re keeping them in your house.”

“Is that why you keep all the curtains shut?”

“No, that’s because birds will fly into windows. It’s weird; birds are actually pretty smart, especially parrots. And parrotlets are parrots, just tiny, tiny versions of parrots. But they’re not smart enough to figure out windows. Hey, birdbrain.” This last is directed at her bird, which hops back onto her finger and lets Rachel pet its feathery little head. “Wanna show my friend how we play peekaboo?”

The bird chirps, and Rachel plucks a Kleenex out of a box by her bed. She drops the tissue onto her bird. “Where’s Picasso? Where’s Picasso?” She pulls the tissue off. The bird trills. It’s not a word, exactly, but it also sounds exactly like “peekaboo.”

“Could you hear it?” Rachel asks.

“Yeah!” I say.

She goes through the routine a few times. The bird starts joining in with her on the “where’s Picasso” bits. It’s not quite forming words, but the intonation is exactly right.

I really want to keep listening to the bird more than I want to think about running, or my mother, or the news coverage of the stuff with the robot, but I need to know what Rachel knows, at least about the last bit. “So the news reports are saying New Coburg, but is anyone saying I did it? Or has my name been in any of the reports?”

“No.” She glances up at me, then back at the bird. “I’m so sorry; I shouldn’t have tried to get you to—”

“It’s okay. I mean you