Chapter One
Queens, 1965
The bolt slid back from the latch easily, but the doors were rusted shut. Oxidation from water on metal. The canal flooded when the moon was full and the tide was high or when rain came on suddenly enough to flip leaves to their underbellies; that was when the water lapped over bulkheads and rolled up the street, gobbling concrete and lawns, sometimes getting as high as the front porch, where the bunny hutch sat next to her mother’s tomato plants.
Today the sun was a hazy ball in the sky. There weren’t any airplanes. The tarps on the new houses across the swimming canal flapped in the breeze. There were only a few minutes until her mother would ask for help before everyone came over for coffee and cake after church, as they did every Sunday. The metal door was hot beneath her foot as she tugged at the other until it sprang open, jarring her shoulder, stale musk rising as strong as when she lifted a lid off a saucepot on the stove. Gia flicked on her flashlight and took the first few steps into the cool basement air, where she’d certainly find chemicals.
The basement dripped. Weathered posts cut into the earth every few feet to hold the house up. The flashlight made a fuzzy circle on the ground, on the old kitchen cabinets where her father stored junk tools, empty paint cans, wood varnish, sprays with faded labels. Holding her breath, she flipped a can; a skull and crossbones warned against touching, the ingredients unpronounceable, even for Gia. She was thirteen, the best reader in her class, but couldn’t be bothered with Nancy Drew or Tiger Beat, not when Silent Spring claimed people were poisoning the world. Even the author had died of cancer, which proved chemicals built up in living things until they killed them.
It was happening here, right at Mr. Angliotti’s house. His wife had died a few years ago, and his three grown kids lived on Long Island. Mass was said for his wife at Our Lady of Grace every month, and he always sat in the first pew when her name was read. He watered her rosebushes and had planted a fig tree, which didn’t fruit because it was too sad. Gia couldn’t remember what his wife had looked like, only that she’d thrown steaming buckets of pasta water into the garden instead of down the drain. Gia’s family wasn’t related to the Angliottis, but they had lived on the same block for so long they might as well be.
Last week, when Mr. Angliotti had been reading his newspaper on the stoop, Gia had ridden by on her bike, streamers flapping lazily in the heat, when the birds had suddenly gone quiet, and then they’d spiraled onto the lawn. Birds didn’t fall. It was wrong and had stuck to Gia’s bones, so she’d dusted off the book Sister Gregory had given her before summer vacation, rereading the parts about orange groves where people fell down dead or bees making poisonous honey, the places in the book no longer far away and fairy-tale-like but right here.
They’d put the dead sparrows in a garbage bag, and three days later, men in white suits had taken the tree down with a chain saw, carting away branches, leaves, and trunk until all that was left was a stump.
They were probably Soviets testing a new radioactive signal or something, a Cold War weapon, dissecting those birds in an underground bunker. Her brother, Leo, said it was a stupid idea. Her cousin Ray said sparrowcide was a thing, and yes, he’d heard of it, and the cats were next—but Ray was usually full of it.
The scariest thing Gia could imagine was sucking in poison all day. It was everywhere: in the hose bulbs that watered lawns; in the wax on supermarket fruit; soaked into thin berry skin; in the trails planes left behind when they took off over her house from John F. Kennedy, so close kids playing in the street jumped for the underbellies of the metal birds, hoping to touch them if they timed it right; or in the oily rainbow slicks in the canal. She’d found these in one week. Chemicals were everywhere.
“Gia!” Her mother’s voice was muffled from above. Plates clattered. The lawn mower revved outside; a shadow passed in the square of light through the basement door. It was time. These buttoned-up chemicals couldn’t have killed the sparrows. She should have known there wouldn’t be anything important down here, not where the floodwater could get it. She did a quick search for fish bones, but only pebbles crunched under her Keds. That was another thing her mother wouldn’t be happy about, dirtying her Keds.
The lawn mower passed again, closer. Gia shut the cabinets as the lawn mower stopped, spinning a blade over the same patch of grass, opening up its insides. How did grass bounce back week after week? Like hair or fingernails.
The basement door slammed shut. The bolt latched. Gia had to blink back the darkness, even with her flashlight. Trapped, she found the things in the cabinets scarier now, leaking stuff that would soak into Gia’s spongy lungs until she suffocated.
“Shit.” Gia pulled her T-shirt over her mouth, banged on the door with the butt of the flashlight, rattling the battery until the light sputtered out. Not even a line of light came through the basement doors. The mower was on the other side of the lawn now, near the garage. If it was her father, he wouldn’t hear her. If it was her brother, he’d probably done it on purpose.
She sat on the dark steps, damp seeping into her shorts. At least she’d changed out of her church clothes. Her mother couldn’t be mad about that too.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the mower to cut out so someone would hear her. If it didn’t, she’d dig a tunnel. Solving problems without adults was good practice for taking the boat out alone. She imagined the bay now, saltwater air filling her nose, waves lapping over the sides of the boat. There were probably a thousand centipedes down here. And spiders. They could see her in the dark, but she could not see them. Her breath left a hot, wet spot on her shirt. Just a few more minutes. She was bigger than everything down here, top dog in the basement animal kingdom.
The lawn mower stopped. Please, Gia prayed, let it be Dad. She banged on the door until her fist buzzed. Yelling meant breathing the air down here. No. The soft thud the sparrows had made when they’d hit the grass was enough to keep her hand over her mouth. She banged harder.
The door sprang open, the sudden sun blinding.
“What’d you expect from playing in the basement?” Her father, Eddie, smirked, rubbing his hand through his hair, spiky with sweat. “Playing” was for kids in miniature plastic houses with food that snapped together. Gia was not “playing.”
“Promise me you were not looking for chemicals.”
The blue ink anchor on her father’s arm came into focus, done on a navy cruiser. He always knew. It was the most annoying thing about having a cop for a father. Even off duty, he still angled to the side, never baring his full chest, one hand ready where his holster would be, and he listened to what people weren’t saying instead of the words coming out of their mouths. She couldn’t lie, so she said nothing.
“Your mother’s looking for you.”
“Did she actually leave the kitchen?” The words shot out. Too far. Gia braced. She wasn’t too old to get smacked.
He held up one warning finger. Thankfully, it was the first one today.
“Your rabbits are back.” Her father threw the oily lawn-mowing towel over his shoulder. “Whoever took ’em didn’t want any part of the babies.”
Gia darted off, the flashlight swinging against her thigh. A cardboard box had her stolen black rabbit and red-eyed white one, plus five pinkish babies, too small to open their eyes yet. They’d been gone one morning, the latch swinging, maybe a joke, but now she picked them up, nestling them in her hands. All five fit together as snug as a single breathing thing. She’d never seen anything so small except mice or fiddler crabs, but this was different. Their backs were warm under her fingertips, new hearts beating inside paper-thin skin.