Bird

by Crystal Chan

  “Grandpa’s more than nice. He shares his music with me,” I said. Eugene and I had a lot of catching up to do.

  “Well, I’ll be dipped.” The light went out. Then on. “So what happened?” Eugene asked. “Why the change?”

  Light out.

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. But it’s really different now.”

  Light on.

  “Huh. So does that mean he won’t punch me in the face anymore?”

  Light out.

  “Oh, you mean like this?” I asked, and in the blackness I reached out and squeezed his face.

  “Hey, stop that!” he shouted, but he was laughing.

  I was laughing too, and snatched the flashlight from his hands. “Stop turning the stupid flashlight on and off,” I replied, and I clicked the light on and threw it at him.

  We grew quiet after a while. A starry-night kind of quiet. It felt like I hadn’t been to Event Horizon for a million years, and considering that the last time I was here it was with John, I suppose I was right. We looked up through the tree and into the circle of stars above us. There are some pretty good things about being an astronaut. You could see the stars up close. You could leave your problems behind.

  “Actually, I think Grandpa would still punch you in the face,” I said.

  Eugene’s head jerked back a little. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because,” I said, feeling like the teacher this time, “Grandpa probably still thinks you’re a duppy.”

  Eugene snorted. “I’m a duppy?”

  I forgot I never told him that. “Your name was John, you look a little close to what Bird might have looked like, and Grandpa thought you were a duppy in a human form, tricking me. So he punched you.”

  “Wow.” Eugene shook his head.

  “Well, you were tricking me,” I pointed out. “Just not how Grandpa thought.”

  “A duppy taking a human form?” Eugene asked. He rolled his eyes. “Please.” Eugene grabbed a granola bar from his stash. “I’ll tell him I’m not a duppy.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “That’s what he thinks.” Eugene gave a bar to me, and I took a hungry bite. You could really get addicted to these things. “Same thing with Mr. Robinson,” I continued. “Even Mom doesn’t think she can get him to understand.”

  “Then it looks like we’ll have to talk to him ourselves,” Eugene said.

  I tried to figure out if he was kidding or not.

  “I’m serious. Let’s go tomorrow,” he said as he shoved the whole granola bar in his mouth. It turned into a big wad of goo. He couldn’t even close his mouth, it was so big.

  I laughed. Eugene tried to laugh too but couldn’t, which made me laugh harder. “Looking like that, Grandpa would definitely punch you in the face,” I said.

  Eugene elbowed me. He chewed on his granola for a long time, making smacking noises. Finally he said, “Why’s your grandpa so angry?”

  “I asked him why he was sad,” I said. “It’s because of Bird.”

  “Right. But why is he angry?”

  That stumped me. Growing up, I never questioned why Grandpa was angry. He just was. That was how things were. The sun rises. The sun sets. The moon comes out. Grandpa’s angry. But I guess that someone could have different layers, like the earth, different strata piled one on top of the other. If you dig you can hit another layer inside someone. And sometimes those layers are surprising.

  “Well,” I said, “he did kill Bird. By accident.” The tips of my fingers made little circles on the earthen floor. I tried to push down something mad and bubbly in my stomach when I thought about how this came back to Bird. Again. “It’s just . . . my brother’s been dead my whole life, but everyone’s still fighting about him. Like he’s right in our house.”

  “Maybe he is,” Eugene said.

  “Something happened that day,” I insisted. “Grandpa told me so.”

  “How’d he tell you if he can’t talk?”

  I picked at a mosquito bite on my leg. “You can say tons of things without talking.”

  We got quiet then, as if talking about not talking made our mouths all shy. We ducked out of Event Horizon and walked to the edge of the trees, where the sprawled-out stars stretched from one horizon to the other. Then, through the crickets and the breeze that was blowing over the dark rows of corn, there was that silence again, a silence warm and thick and comforting like a blanket. I’d give anything in the whole wide world, I realized, to be surrounded by people and rocks and plants that could wrap me in that silence.

  Eugene spoke then, but softly, as if he could feel it too. “You know,” he said, “you and your brother are like a close binary system.”

  “A what?”

  “A close binary system. Stars, you know. Stars are rarely ever alone.” His voice got funny. “Stars can come in clusters, but they most frequently come in pairs. A binary system.”

  “Oh.” It was nice to think of Bird and me like that, twinkling pretty in the sky.

  “Sometimes stars in binary systems orbit each other really closely, much closer than normal. That’s why they’re called close binary systems. And the star with less mass orbits its companion, which has more mass.”

  “And more gravity,” I pointed out.

  Eugene grinned. “Sometimes these two stars orbit so closely that they transfer matter to each other.”

  “They what?”

  “Parts of them fly off and get pulled in by the gravitational pull of the companion star. And vice versa. Each star is changed by the other.”

  “They each have parts of the other?” I asked.

  “Yup,” Eugene said. “And because of that, the stars’ compositions change, as well as how they develop in the future.” He craned his neck up to the sky. “It’s like with you and Bird. He’s in you. And you are in him, wherever he is.”

  I don’t know why, but I started to cry right then, the second time that I cried in front of Eugene in just a couple days. I don’t like crying in front of people because it shows them the holes that you have on the inside. I guess with all the crying I’d been doing lately, I had more holes than I thought. It was okay with Eugene, though. He stood next to me, close, not touching, but in the way he stood, all attentive, his heart must have been talking to mine, and mine must have been listening, because after a while I felt better. When I caught my breath, Eugene started pointing out the constellations, one by one.

  And, he reminded me, the Perseids were coming soon.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It turned out that Eugene was completely serious about talking to Mr. Robinson. The next day, we met up on our bikes in front of our town hall.

  “We’re crazy,” I said to Eugene. He was even wearing a nice shirt for the occasion.

  “Who else is going to do it?” He grinned.

  We stepped inside the cool office just in time to see Mrs. Bowers, the secretary, finish putting on mascara. That was pretty funny since she’s old, and it’s pointless for old people to put on mascara. In Caledonia there’s no one to notice it, anyway.

  “Why, Jewel,” she said, giving a fake smile. “What brings you here?” Then her eyes got round when she saw Eugene. “And with your friend. What’s your name again? You’re Tim’s nephew, right?”

  “I’m Eugene,” he said, nice and polite.

  “Ah, yes. Eugene.” She picked up a pen and twiddled it between her fingers. “Tim’s told me about you.”

  Eugene smiled.

  Mrs. Bowers was talking really loud. It was the kind of loud that people talk when they’re uncomfortable or scared. I glanced around in the waiting area. Mrs. Jameson was there, her long hair pulled into a ponytail at her neck. She flipped through a magazine.

  “I’d like to talk to Mr. Robinson,” I said, trying to sound grown-up.

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Bowers said, not looking very upset at all, “I’m afraid you’ll need to set up an appointment for that.”

  “An appointment?” I asked. “But these are his open hours.” Mr.
Robinson had long ago announced his open hours, when anyone in the community could talk to him about their concerns. Mom said it was an excuse for a gossip fest, but I thought it sounded rather practical.

  “These are his open hours,” Mrs. Bowers said. She didn’t look at me. “But he’s quite busy right now.”

  “We can wait,” I said.

  “I’m afraid you’ll need to make an appointment.”

  Boy, was my blood starting to boil. I took a deep breath. “But why would I—”

  “Is this because of Jewel’s mom?” Eugene cut in. “Because it shouldn’t matter what Jewel wants to talk about if these are the open hours.”

  Mrs. Bowers sucked in a breath. “Oh, it’s not that,” she said, her voice getting higher. “It’s just . . . he usually doesn’t talk to children.”

  “That’s too bad for his kids,” I said.

  “Now that’s enough,” Mrs. Bowers snapped. Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure why you two are here—”

  “We’re here,” I said, just as loudly as her this time, “to tell Mr. Robinson that he’s a coward for being afraid of people’s talk, and that those stones at the cliff have nothing to do with him and are none of his business.”

  Mrs. Bowers’s jaw hit the desk.

  “And now my mom doesn’t have a job and she’s really sad,” I said. “Even though Mr. Robinson is the mayor and all, that doesn’t mean he should be believing everything he hears. And sometimes he should stand up for people, like my mom. And,” I added, because I was on a roll and couldn’t stop if I tried, “since that’s what I was going to tell him, I guess I don’t need to see him during his gossip fest after all. Please give him the message.”

  Mrs. Bowers smiled coldly. “No problem, Jewel. I will.”

  I didn’t move, though, and neither did Eugene.

  “Is there something else?” Mrs. Bowers snapped. “I’m rather busy.”

  “We’re waiting for you to write the message,” Eugene said.

  Mrs. Bowers turned as pink as an eraser, and she snatched a pad of paper and scribbled something down.

  As we turned to leave, I saw Mrs. Jameson quickly averting her eyes from us. But then she looked back at me, and in that sliver of an instant I could tell she had already heard about Mom.

  Everyone had.

  “Let’s go to the cliff,” I said to Eugene when we burst outside.

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I spun around and stuck my face right in his. “I’m going,” I said. “You can come if you want.”

  He put his hands up. “Okay, okay.” But he was smiling.

  “I’m not going to have anyone tell me where I can’t go and make up things that they don’t know anything about and that’s not even true,” I said, my mouth going so fast I wasn’t sure if I was making sense. I don’t think I’d ever done that before, just shoot off at the mouth, but it sure felt great. Eugene’s eyebrows were practically hanging at the top of his forehead, he was so surprised. I mean, I’d filled him in on what had happened, but I guess it didn’t hit him how different everything was until I was right up in his face.

  We rode our bikes through the two blocks of Broad Street that was our downtown and took the shortest way to get to the cliff. It felt great to have Eugene back. I mean, Grandpa’s terrific and all, but I know for a fact that Grandpa would not have stood there in front of Mrs. Bowers and let me talk all snotty to her.

  I could have gone to the cliff with my eyes closed, like there was this invisible string attached to my heart, stretched taut, pulling me across the road and fields, right to the cliff. It was right then that I realized that places in many ways are like people: They think about you when you’re gone, wait for you to come back, and rejoice when you do. Eugene and I dumped our bikes in a ditch, and I ran on the path, not fast, but not too slow either, my fingers spread wide, ready to catch everything that I missed. Eugene kept up with me, not complaining, not even asking why, like he already knew.

  We were almost there when I started laughing.

  “What is it?” Eugene asked. He was breathing hard.

  “When you said, ‘We’re waiting for you to write the message’—that’s exactly what I was going to say.”

  “You’re kidding.” Eugene threw me a huge smile.

  I shook my head. “There was no way I was leaving until I saw Mrs. Bowers write that stupid note.”

  “Neither was I!” Eugene cried. “Wouldn’t it have been funny if we said it at the same time?”

  “We could have told her we just put a spell on her by doing that. She would have poked herself in the eye with her mascara, she’d have been so scared,” I said. I was smiling, big-time.

  When we came to the cliff, though, I stopped cold.

  “Wow,” Eugene said, stunned.

  I guess there was a part of me that just didn’t want it to be true, that Dad threw my rocks over the cliff. And there was a big chunk of me that was hoping those rocks jumped back up through the air while I was gone, soared up above the jagged ravine walls and plopped back down to where they’d been.

  I kept staring. My circle really was gone. The crucifix already had a light layer of dirt over it.

  My parents threw my circle away.

  When something bad happens, sometimes it’s so awful there aren’t any words to describe it. And when something really, really bad happens, you go numb inside because even your heart doesn’t know what to do. Like, it’s feeling lots of sadness and terrible things one moment, and then—poof!—it just shuts down.

  Maybe hearts can die like that.

  “I can’t believe your parents did this,” Eugene said.

  “It was to protect me,” I replied bitterly. I glanced around. The area where I buried my pebbles was disturbed and pressed down from when Mom and Dad trampled them. Twelve dark marks sat in a circle on the earth, like ghosts.

  I grabbed the crucifix and chucked it as hard as I could over the cliff. It spiraled a little as it arched through the air, before gravity took over, before it plummeted. I couldn’t see where it actually landed. And it didn’t matter anymore, I realized. The numbness inside grew bigger: A moment ago, it sat somewhere left of my spleen. Now the numbness spread through my lungs and stomach and kidneys, hollowing me out from the inside.

  Nothing matters, I realized. Only Bird matters. And he flew away.

  “I can’t stand them,” I said slowly.

  Eugene leaned closer. “What?”

  “I can’t stand them,” I said louder. Harsher. “My parents.” I bent down and put my hand on the earth where my seventh-year rock used to be. “They just think about Bird,” I said, brushing my fingertips over the silken dirt. “They fight about Bird. They’re sad about Bird.” My hands clenched into fists. “What about me?”

  “Jewel—”

  “What about me?” I repeated. It felt so good to say that, so freeing, like there was a key inside my chest and those words just unlocked something that had been pressed down inside, pent-up, forgotten. “Do you know they never asked me why I come here?” I asked, and the anger inside me gushed from that locked-up space. “Do you know they don’t even look at me? Not really—not like how you or Grandpa look at me.”

  Eugene’s eyebrows knitted together. “Right now I’m looking at you because I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “And I don’t care about duppies or not-duppies anymore. What they fight about is stupid, anyway.” I sized up the boulder. “You know, I’ve never climbed to the top. Let’s do it. Now.”

  Eugene grabbed my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get out of here, Jewel.”

  “But what if Bird didn’t fall?” I insisted.

  “What do you mean?” Eugene’s voice grew more agitated.

  “What if he jumped and flew?”

  “You’re stupid for talking like this. Of course he fell.”

  “What if people really don’t fall if they jump off the cliff? What would you do if you saw me fly? If I actually tried it?”

&
nbsp; “Do you want me to hit you?” he shouted into my face. “Is that what it’ll take to get you to shut up?”

  I pushed his arms back. “Oh, so you’re the only one who can fly away, Mr. Astronaut? Mr. I’m-going-to-leave-everyone-behind-even-my-friends?”

  Eugene stood there, stunned. I didn’t realize I was shouting until I heard my anger echoing in the air. “That’s not what I meant,” Eugene said. “You know that.”

  I turned away. The grasses were tall now, August tall. I took a couple steps from Eugene, grabbed one of the long grasses, and ran my hand along its stem, bunching the seeds at my fingertips.

  Eugene shoved his hands in his pockets, stalked over to the boulder, and kicked it a couple times. Then he leaned his forehead against the granite rock and closed his eyes. I was confused; I thought he wanted to leave.

  “You know what I hate?” Eugene said quietly.

  I grabbed another length of grass and bunched up the seeds. I waited.

  “I hate the question ‘Do you have siblings?’” He laughed, but he wasn’t really laughing. “I can never answer that question. Not really.” Something changed in his voice, and I could tell he wasn’t really talking to me.

  “Because who knows,” he went on. “Maybe my birth mom did have other kids. My brothers and sisters. Maybe she decided to keep those kids.” He tilted his head against the boulder. “Maybe not.”

  My stomach did little somersaults just then. He was right. I mean, even though my answer was, I had a brother once and he died a long time ago, at least I had an answer.

  “Sometimes it gets to be too much, all the questions,” Eugene was saying. “Sometimes I just want to leave it behind. Everything.”

  “But people care about you,” I said.

  “My parents care more about their new kid,” Eugene said darkly. Then, after a split second he got it. He held my gaze for a long time, until his eyes wavered and he had to look away.

  I plucked a third blade of grass. “You know, the boulder understands how you feel.”

  Eugene’s lips twisted up. “Really?” he said, a little mockingly.

  “Sure. It’s an erratic.”

  He peered at me. “What do you mean?”