BEE-FACTORY

Kit keeps her nightmares in a jar on the floor next to her bed. The jar used to have peanut butter in it—SKIPPY® Reduced Fat Super Chunk!—but she washed it out and took off the label and wrote her name on its rust-colored top and now, there they are. They aren’t too happy about it, all squeezed together in that little plastic cylinder, but Kit is pretty sure nightmares don’t have any civil rights or anything so whatever. For a while she tried a dream catcher to give them some sass instead, one her sister Jenny got her at a thrift store for fifty cents, but it turned out to be kind of a crock. Kit hung it over her

Naomi dances on her way home from school. She’s not bad. Her rain boots scrape the sidewalk as she taps out her own, strange hybrid of a quickstep mambo. Puddles get kicked up in her wake, a mixture of dead, soggy worms and decaying leaves sent flying. She twirls her umbrella like a yellow baton, throwing it up in the air and catching it after a spirited spin or two. Sometimes music accompanies her steps—“One and a two! Ratatat-tat!”—sometimes not. Her voice is tiny but excitable, like a child let loose into a room lined with bubble wrap. It isn’t always dancing. Sometimes she rehearses little plays, drama

Part One In Which You Dream of Birds Four nights before your birthday, you dream of birds. There are a thousand of them perched in a great tree, their white wings drooped elegantly down their sides and their feathers trailing behind them like wedding veils. They sing a thousand beautiful songs each night, and you know this because they are singing them to you now. But one of them has no beak, and you know that if you catch it, it will grant you a wish. When you wake up the sky is like frosted pearls, and you know that you must have a bird. Part Two In Which There Are Ants in the Walls You have no idea why you didn’t think of purchas