Wild Bird

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  The Grizzly version of school.

  Except that they all look older than me—some of them a lot older. And even though I feel like the walking dead, caked in dust and sweat from the longest day of my life, they look worse. Their pants might once have been sand tan like mine, but they’re now two shades darker. And their bandannas, wrapped around their heads or tied at the sides of their pants, are limp and oily.

  John breaks away from Michelle and me to sit by the fire while an Asian guy and a white woman sporting what’s basically a buzz cut make their way toward us. I can tell they’re jailers, not inmates, by the color of their pants—army green instead of tan.

  “Welcome aboard,” Buzz Cut says. She’s got a crooked smile and an eyetooth that sticks out like a fang. “I’m Dvorka, one of the field staff.”

  “And I’m Jude,” the guy says. He’s wearing his bandanna around his forehead, his black hair shooting up behind it.

  Michelle eyes the sky and nods for me to follow her. “We’ve got to get you set up before the rains start.”

  “We’re ready for it!” one of the inmates calls as we walk past the fire ring. “Mia and me are roomin’ together tonight so my tarp can collect some of the sky’s fine wine!”

  “Yip-yip-aroooo!” another girl howls.

  I figure it out.

  They’re Coyotes collecting rainwater.

  I haven’t seen a drop of water the whole time I’ve been here—no river or lake or even puddle. So despite my miserable state, I already know—if we really have to drink from “local sources,” then having a stash of fresh water would be something to yip about.

  Michelle stops walking and looks around. “Right here is good,” she says. We’re standing in a random place, away from the other tarps. “Get your cord. Let’s set you up.”

  I have no idea what she wants me to do.

  “Your cord,” she says. “The one that’s holding your pack together? We need it to put up your tent.”

  I just stare at her.

  “Now?” she says.

  I dump my pack and then just stare at it. I am so tired.

  “Before the skies open up?”

  I start to undo the parachute cord, but it’s not easy. And gets all tangled. And I’m so tired.

  Michelle just stands there, watching.

  “A little help, please?” I ask. I mean, can’t she see I’m in pain? Is she that heartless?

  Apparently, yes. She just looks at the cord and says, “You can do it.”

  I hate her. To the moon and back, I hate her. And now I’m mad enough to tear the cord free, and since she doesn’t want to help me, I no longer want her help.

  I lash the cord so it’s strung between a couple of trees, then dump everything out of the tarp and onto the ground and hang the tarp over the cord.

  It sags. Badly.

  “Let me show you a magic knot,” she says. “It’ll keep the cord from slipping.”

  I don’t want to know about any stupid magic knot. I don’t want anything from her! I snarl at her, untie one end, yank the cord tight, and tie it again.

  I don’t need any stupid magic rocks, either. I straighten the tarp, find some rocks, and anchor the corners. It’s not rocket science. Or even algebra. It’s a two-sided tarp tent.

  “I know you’re mad right now, Wren, but please let me give you some pointers.”

  I don’t look at her. Don’t talk to her. I just tug and anchor and straighten. My tent is still saggy in the middle, but who cares?

  Looks good enough to me.

  “Wren—”

  “What!”

  “It’s about to rain.”

  “And you’ve given me this wonderful tarp to protect me. Thank you so much.”

  I’m pouring sarcasm all over her, but it doesn’t seem to sink in. She shakes her head. “The tarp won’t—”

  “It’s fine.”

  She tries to tell me I need to trench around my tarp. She wants me to find a rock and dig. I’ve been up since 3:47 a.m. and she wants me to dig. With a rock!

  I yell at her to leave me alone.

  She tries to tell me what to do with something called a ground cloth.

  I scream at her to LEAVE ME ALONE!

  Finally she does.

  It’s such a relief to be left alone. I unstuff my sleeping bag, which is mummy style and puffs up big and fluffy. I stretch it out on my pad and get comfy on top while I eat a power bar that’s in my rations and wash it down with water from my canteen.

  My head’s splitting and the power bar makes me kind of nauseous, but at least I can lie down. I crawl into the bag with my boots and pants and everything on, and the world spins as I lay my head down.

  I am so tired.

  I close my eyes. And even though I fight them back, tears squeeze through until I finally just let them loose, sobbing silently until I’m all wrung out.

  And just as I’m sinking into sleep, surrendering to the darkness of the worst day ever, I hear a rumbling overhead.

  A low growl of warning.

  Then the sky opens up and rain comes pouring down.

  The rain scares me at first because it’s so loud—like thousands of little pellets slapping and bouncing off a plastic shield. But then…it’s okay. I’m safe.

  See? I tell myself, thinking about Michelle and her stupid magic knot. I’m fine.

  But then the middle of my tarp sags and water starts running off it in a stream, pooling on the ground outside, seeping under the edge of the tarp and inside my tent.

  It’s dark, and there’s no flashlight in my supplies. John gave Dax and me some line about the moon becoming our nightlight, but that’s not exactly working for me right now.

  So I can’t see the water, but I can feel it. First just a little. Then more. And more. Pretty soon, a lake forms by my ground pad. “No!” I squeal, and wrestle out of my sleeping bag. “No! Stop! Nooooo!”

  The water doesn’t listen to me. It keeps running in, making its own little route right through my tent.

  “Help!” I scream. “Somebody help! I’m drowning in here!”

  All I hear is the rain.

  Pellets of merciless rain.

  I pick up my sleeping bag, scrunch it to my chest. Pick up the jacket. The extra clothes. Anything cloth.

  I’m on my knees, on the pad, trying to see in the dark, and what I’m thinking is I want my phone! My phone with a built-in flashlight that comes on when I tell it to and doesn’t hide behind clouds or go from round to crescent to gone.

  They didn’t even give us matches. Probably because I wouldn’t just light one and use it to see what’s going on—I’d torch something!

  I can feel water all around me. I’m furious and panicked and desperate. How do they expect me to sleep in a lake?

  “Help!” I cry. “Somebody, please help!”

  I wait, holding my breath, clutching my sleeping bag and the clothes. But nobody comes or even invites me into their tent.

  Well, forget this. I can’t stay in here. The middle of the tarp is completely sagged in. It’s going to collapse on me any second!

  I remember that somewhere in my stuff there’s a poncho. My mind screams put on your poncho and get out because the tarp feels like a trap. Like I’m sinking inside a plastic cave.

  I scramble around, looking for the poncho.

  I’m desperate for the poncho.

  Where is the poncho?

  And then, suddenly, the rain stops.

  All at once, it just stops.

  I keep ahold of everything, waiting. I don’t know if the clouds are done or just resting. Are they reloading or moving on? I hold my breath, not knowing what to do.

  “Tomorrow I’m washing my hair!” a voice calls. “I am so stoked!”

  “Yucca shampoo!” another voice calls.

  “Do you think it’ll really work?”

  Michelle’s voice weaves through the darkness. “It works great.”

  “Good night, y’all,” comes the first voice.
<
br />   “Yip-yip-arooooo!”

  And that’s it. Nobody asks if I’m okay. Nobody checks on me. Nobody even seems to know I’m here.

  “I need help!” I call.

  Nobody answers.

  “Is anyone going to help me?” I scream. “The ground is soaked. I don’t know what to do.”

  There’s a stretch of silence, and then Michelle’s voice says, “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Are you serious?” I cry. “I’m in a puddle of mud! How am I supposed to sleep?”

  I wait for an answer, but the only sound is the drip-drip-drip of water from the trees. “I hate you!” I scream out into the dark. “This is abuse. You should be arrested.”

  More silence.

  I think about going around and ripping down all the other tents. Then maybe they’ll know how it feels.

  “Who are you really mad at here?” comes Michelle’s voice.

  “You!” I scream. “You knew this was going to happen!”

  But there’s a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like a stone in my gut, heavy and cold. And when she doesn’t say anything back, I start to cry. “Please! What am I supposed to do?”

  All I get back is silence.

  And the drip-drip-drip of water from the trees.

  For the next two days, I cry and I sleep. I don’t let anyone see me crying, and I hate that I do it. But I’m so mad. So, so mad, and it sometimes comes out as tears.

  I don’t say a word—unless I’m squatting over a hole, counting. The counting is humiliating, but it’s better than having Michelle or Dvorka stand by with one eye on me in case I make a break for it.

  Whatever “it” is. There’s nothing but desert for as far as I can see. I’d be buzzard bait in no time. If there are even buzzards out here.

  The morning after the sky tries to drown me, I stretch all my wet stuff out on a big bush to dry. It’s a needly bush, with a fat trunk and long, sagging branches. It looks angry. Like it’s glowering at the world. And since that’s something my mother accuses me of doing, I feel at one with this bush.

  Man-bun John comes over and gets all chitty-chatty. “Nice way to use the arms of a pinyon,” he tells me. “The tree is an amazing resource, on so many levels. The Paiute lived off the pine nuts and heated the resin to waterproof baskets; they used the wood for fuel and building…even chewed the pitch like we chew gum.”

  I don’t know who the Paiute are, or care how the tree was used. He’s either showing off or trying to get me to talk. Well, I’m not impressed, and I’m sure not falling for the talking thing. Like I haven’t spent the last year dealing with therapists and counselors who do the same exact thing? The difference here is, I’m not out the door in forty-five minutes, so I’m not going to play along.

  “Have you smelled it?” John asks, then sticks his face in a branch and takes a huge, exaggerated whiff.

  I don’t say a word to him, since that’s exactly what he did to me when I was drowning in my ridiculous tent. When I begged for help and nobody came.

  I hate him.

  I hate all of them.

  Later, Michelle tries talking to me. She explains why nobody could help me when it rained. “We don’t force the students to listen, Wren. We can’t stop the rain. Or the sun, or the wind. We can only try to help you prepare for it. If you’re unwilling to listen or take advice, that’s your choice.”

  I look straight ahead.

  I know I can wear her down.

  Make her apologize.

  Have her say, Come on—let’s start over.

  She’s not my mom, so she’s holding out longer than Mom ever did, but she knows she’s wrong. She knows this is abuse!

  “Well,” she says, taking a deep breath, “you’re going to get pretty tired of eating power bars…and you’re going to run out. Your other rations require cooking, and in order to cook them, you need to use local water and learn how to build a bow-drill fire. Have you read any of your handbook?”

  I stare straight ahead.

  “Well…if you want help learning how to build a fire, or how to find local water, let any of the field staff know.”

  Then she walks away.

  I’m expecting Jude to come over next and try out his counseling chops on me, but he never does.

  Something about that tweaks me.

  What game are they playing?

  The next day, Dvorka hands me an envelope and tells me I can write a letter home. I scrawl three notebook pages hard and fast, telling my parents what they’ve done by shipping me off to Desert Prison. How I’m living in the dirt with no food or water, how I had to squat and cough, and now have to squat and count. How nobody here cares if I die, and if this keeps up, I’ll be dead by the end of the week. I tell them all about the rain and the flood in my stupid tarp tent and how nobody would help me. I tell them that I heard the other girls talking about killing a scorpion, and if I die they can spend the rest of their lives knowing they killed me. I also tell them they’d better not tell my brother anything bad about me. I do a lot of underlining, and scribbling out, and I sign it “Heartbroken and Dying, Wren.” Then I seal it in the envelope and hand it over to Dvorka, hoping it’s my ticket out of here.

  Dvorka takes it and says, “Did you tell them how we’re mean and horrible and trying to kill you?”

  My face gives me away.

  “They’ll call, we’ll talk, it’ll be okay,” she says, wagging the envelope. “All students write one of these. Good to get it out of your system.”

  I want to snatch it back and rip it up, but she’s already walking away.

  Later, they sic a therapist on me. I’m sitting on a rock by myself in the shade of the glowering pinyon when she walks up. I’m trying to keep out of the sun and the wind, but I’m still miserable because the tree smells like Pine-Sol.

  I hate Pine-Sol.

  It reminds me of hugging the toilet.

  The therapist’s name is Tara. She’s got an Australian accent, hair the color of dirty carrots, and freckles.

  I hate her, but at least she doesn’t beat around the bush. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

  Her voice sounds like honey. Sweet, warm honey.

  I glare at her. It’s dirty warfare to send someone to talk to you with a voice like that.

  “You’re full of rage, I can see that,” her uber-cool accent tells me.

  I hate that I love her accent.

  Why couldn’t I have a voice like that?

  “Do you see any reason—any reason at all—why your parents might have sent you here?”

  I just stare straight ahead.

  Maybe I should run away to Australia. Find an accent and some freckles.

  “We’re here to help you, Wren. We need to get to the bottom of your feelings. We want to help you communicate. Not just yell or blame or storm away, communicate.”

  She waits. It feels like an hour, she waits.

  I keep staring, straight ahead, breathing in Pine-Sol.

  “I understand the rain caused a problem the other night. I understand that you’re mad at everyone here.” She pauses. “Tell me, are you also a little mad at yourself? Because that would give us two sides to talk about.”

  I’m not about to cop to that—what they’re doing to me is child abuse and they know it!

  She just sits there, and so do I. Finally she says, “You hear the other girls laughing?”

  I hate the sound.

  Don’t they know I’m miserable?

  Doesn’t anyone care?

  “Each and every one of them was right where you are and hated it too. Look inside your heart, Wren. You don’t have to carry all that anger. Not just about the rain. About everything that brought you here. Let’s unload it, unpack it, and move forward without it.”

  Typical therapy mumbo jumbo.

  I won’t look at her, so she finally stands. Her Aussie accent drops down to almost a whisper. “It’ll be a long, miserable eight weeks if you don’t start dealing with your feelings
, Wren.”

  She leaves, and I sit under the Pine-Sol branches wondering what my parents will do when they get my letter.

  Wondering if Anabella is secretly laughing.

  Wondering if Meadow and Nico know what’s happened to me.

  Wondering if anybody anywhere cares.

  Nico.

  I met him last September while I was walking home from high school. He was in a lowered Mercedes getting high with a friend in the student parking lot.

  “Hell-ooooo,” he called out the window.

  I tried not to do the whole who-me? thing. It had been a long two weeks of being a freshman and trying not to seem like one.

  “Yes, you, beautiful,” he called.

  I tried not to blush, which is always pretty hopeless.

  He was wearing Wayfarers. His dark hair had buzzy sides, with ocean waves cut in and a swoop-flip top. The tips were bleached blond. It was amazing.

  He flashed me a smile—it was a little cockeyed, with a dimple.

  My heart started pounding.

  Be cool, I told myself as I walked by. Be cool.

  “You got a smartphone?” he called.

  I gave him a look. A don’t-be-a-dork look. Of course I had a smartphone.

  “Mine’s dumb,” he called after me. “Because it doesn’t know your number!”

  I turned back and smiled, and he grabbed at his heart. “Please tell me you have Band-Aids!”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “ ’Cause I just fell, really hard!”

  “Shut up!” I laughed.

  He started the car, then pulled up and cruised alongside me as I kept walking. “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Wren.”

  “Like the bird?” He turned to his friend. “Biggy-boy, my heart’s all atwitter!”

  “Shut up,” I told him.

  “Get in,” he said.

  And I did.

  Half an hour later, I was drunk on Fireball Whisky, and in love.

  “He kissed you?” Meadow gasped the next morning. “I couldn’t get him to say hello to me last year, and believe me, I tried!”

  It was nice to be at the same school as Meadow again.

  It was great that we’d patched things up.

  I’d really missed her.