how wrong I was. I never even expected to outlive them; they were supposed to mourn me and feel all helpless, not the other way around. And I guess what I’m saying is: Can we be friends? I promise I won’t challenge your authority. I just want to be one of your lieutenants or something. Okay? For real.”
Drake craned her neck and unpuffed slightly. She gave Roberta a once-over, then seemed to nod slowly.
“Tell your sister,” the hen said, “she waited too long, and it’s too late.”
“What?” Roberta leapt to her feet, then tripped and fell on her ass again.
“You heard me,” Drake said. “Pass on the message. She said she needed more time to answer, we gave her more time. It’s a simple yes-or-no question, for fuck’s sake.”
“Uh.” This was it. Roberta was finally losing her mind. “Okay. I’ll, uh, tell her.”
“Good. Now give me my goddamn corn,” Drake said.
Drake never spoke to Roberta again—at least, not in English—but after that they really were sort of friends. Roberta learned how to read Drake’s moods and know when to give the alpha hen space. She knew when one of the other humans had pissed Drake off, and she would cuss him or her out on Drake’s behalf. At last, Roberta had found an authority figure she could please without hating herself.
She tried to get in touch with Patricia, but her little sister’s phone seemed permanently turned off and nobody knew where she’d gone.
A few weeks later, Roberta dreamed she was being chased by a giant metal statue, swinging a scythe whose blade was the size of a bus. She ran down a grassy hill, then lost her footing and plunged headfirst into the bushes. Roberta closed her eyes to scream, and when she reopened them, the statue was Patricia.
“Hey, Bert,” the giant steel Patricia said, loudspeaker-like. “Sorry to bust in on you. I got help from a friend of mine, who does dreamwalking. I’m going to be washing his car. Anyway. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m tying up all my loose ends.”
“Why would you do that?”
Big Patricia blinked, as though she didn’t understand the question.
“Loose ends are cool.” Roberta got upright and parted the bushes with both hands, craning her neck to look up at her skyscraper sister. “Loose ends mean that you’re still living your life. The person who dies with the most loose ends wins.”
“I don’t get you.” Patricia had the sun behind her, so she was just a shape. She wore mountainous jeans, with a belt buckle that looked like the square Art Deco face of the scary statue.
“Jesus, Trish. You’ve never understood me. Don’t act like that’s some big revelation.” Roberta could say things to this imaginary Patricia that she would never say to her real sister. “I tried telling you when we were kids, that you and I were the same kind of crazy. But you always had to be special. You’re never going to make it in this world if you always have to be a martyr.”
Patricia turned and kicked the hill behind her, sending sprays of sod over Roberta’s head. “All this trouble I go to, to check up on you, and you just want to bust my balls,” she said. “Fuck you.”
It came out before Roberta even knew what she was saying: “Don’t be a bitch, or I’ll tell Mom.” Then she heard herself and felt all of the air go out of her.
Patricia shrank. All at once the two women were the same size. Patricia looked gut punched, the way Roberta felt.
“Hey,” Roberta said. “You were always their favorite, you know. Even when they were torturing you and praising me. They loved you the most.”
Patricia reached out and touched Roberta’s face, palm first. “That’s so not true,” she said. “Hey, I can’t stay in your dream much longer. I’m already losing signal. But you’re safe, right? You found someplace safe to lay low? Because there are more shitstorms coming.”
“Yeah,” Roberta said. “I’m at the world’s most boring commune, in the mountains near Asheville. I’m looking after the chickens, and being super-sweet to them. Oh, speaking of which, one of the hens wanted me to tell you something.”
“What was that?”
“Basically, that you suck. That you screwed everything up. And that it’s too late to fix it.”
Patricia’s posture stiffened and her face grew masklike, too, so it was like she was turning back into a statue. Patricia let out a ragged breath.
“Tell the bird,” she said, “to get in