by Eric Walters
Of course, she knew that she couldn’t ever really be a bird. She’d learned that the hard way when she was five and jumped off the roof of their garage. She had flapped her “wings” as hard as she could. Not only did she not lift off, she didn’t even slow down. At least, not until she hit the ground. Her mother told her she was lucky she hadn’t broken a leg and made her promise that she wouldn’t do it again.
Since she couldn’t become a bird, Skye surrounded herself with them instead. Her room was filled with pictures of birds. Her bedspread was covered in birds. She had books about birds. She had little stuffed animal birds. Her family hung bird feeders outside the kitchen window. She had a tree house in the backyard that she called her “nest.” Sitting up there, she would sometimes be surrounded by birds that perched on the branches. Best of all, she had two canaries—Zig and Zag—who lived in a big cage in the corner of her room.
Zig and Zag loved to sing and would often wake her up in the morning with their melodies. When she closed the door to her room, they were allowed to fly all around. She liked to pretend that she, too, was a canary. She loved having them as pets, but sometimes she felt bad that Zig and Zag weren’t free to fly wherever they liked.
The plane touched down. The landing was so gentle that it felt like the wheels just kissed the runway. People in the plane started to clap. Skye was proud of her mother and clapped along with the rest of the passengers.