Girls Don't Fly

by Chandler, Kristen

“That’s right. Darwin’s finches, so well known for being modern examples of evolution, haven’t weeded out the birds without fear, and yet they’ve survived. Not all the animals have survived this deficit, though. The vermilion flycatchers are just about gone, for example. But overall, fear doesn’t seem to be steering the evolutionary ship on the Galápagos. In fact, it kind of helps to be cute and stupid because people want to save you.”

  “They’re vulnerable as a defense mechanism?” Dawn asks.

  “Doesn’t play too well for humans,” says Pritchett.

  Erik cuts in. “I don’t know. Some people know how to work it.”

  I’m so busy thinking about flycatchers it takes me a second to realize who Erik is talking about. I cough to keep from suffocating.

  “You okay, Myra?” says Pete.

  “Just thirsty,” I say.

  Pete pulls out his flask and hands it to me. His flask. In front of everyone.

  I hold up my hand. “I’m good.”

  We all pile into the van again. Pete says, “Next time I bring you out here I’ll bring my kayak and we’ll all take turns. This is early for these cormorants. Damn early.”

  My phone rings. “When are you coming home?” says a whiny voice.

  “Carson?”

  “It’s Andrew.”

  Andrew only has a list of about three things that make him sound like he’s Carson. “What’s going on?”

  “Me and Brett need rides. Dad took Mel and Mom to Mel’s baby class. He was supposed to be home an hour ago.”

  “I’m at Antelope Island. On a field trip.”

  “My team will forfeit if I don’t show.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have a way to pick you up right now.”

  “Thanks for nothing.” He hangs up.

  Everyone looks at me.

  Pete says, “That’s probably enough for one day.”

  The twins sit by each other tallying up their lists. I don’t care about my bird list. I can’t believe Erik thinks I’m working Pete. Of course, why else would Pete talk to me or be interested in what I have to say?

  Five minutes later my phone rings again. Even in the noisy van everyone can hear it ring. I answer it. Andrew says, “How long till you get here?”

  “An hour.”

  “The coach will kick me off the team.”

  I say, “I’ll tell him it’s my fault.”

  The click of the phone tells me he thinks it is.

  Ho-Bong and Ho-Jun look up from their bird lists but don’t say anything in English or Korean.

  Dawn sits up front with Pete this time, which is fine by me. She yawns and rubs her hands in front of the heater. “So what’s it like in the Galápagos? Rainy and hot all the time?”

  I perch forward in my seat.

  “It doesn’t actually rain all that much. Mostly it mists, depending on the island and time of year. It does get hot. Sweaty hot.”

  “It looks so green. Is it like heaven?” she says.

  He shakes his head. “When Europeans first discovered the Galápagos, they actually thought they had discovered hell. They said the land was useless. And in fairness to the Spanish, most of the islands are barren lava heaps. Only one of the islands has enough water year-round to support human life, and it’s pretty inconvenient to get to the mainland. The first real settlement was a prison, but it was too hard to make crops grow and keep people from killing each other.”

  Dawn looks perturbed. “If it’s such a horrible place, why does everyone want to go there?”

  Pete drives for a few miles without responding. He has that look my dad gets when you talk about engines. “Millions of years of isolation created a place so unique that even stupid humans were smart enough to stop before we totally wrecked it. Once we did that, it kind of became this pristine jewel of evolution.”

  “The jewels of Isabela,” I say.

  Pritchett leans forward now too. “Lots of places have their own stuff, though, right? Lemurs and Komodo dragons and crap like that. I mean, the world’s full of stuff you can only find in one place.”

  “The world is full of many things, Pritchett, but not rareness. And the Galápagos Islands have almost a hundred and forty land and sea species and over a hundred and eighty plants that you can’t find anywhere else. Per inch they’re bursting with rareness.”

  Pritchett says, “That’s like saying that if I had a wart on my face that was different from anyone else’s wart that I’d like warts.”

  “But what if no one had ever had a wart anything like yours and never will again?”

  “Still a wart,” says Pritchett.

  I notice that Pete is driving faster. “There is other amazing stuff about the Galápagos besides the stats for endemic species. You know that girl in the picture? She’s from there. When she was pint-size, she entertained herself by riding the backs of sea turtles. Where else are you going to do that?”

  Pritchett says, “I bet you can’t do it there now, either.”

  Pete weaves along the causeway and then merges recklessly into regular traffic. “You can sit on the beach and listen to the marine iguanas snort water through their noses like little pipe organs and then follow them into the water and hear them scrape the algae off the rocks with their teeth. On one island the iguanas turn red around Christmastime and then fade out in the summer. No one knows why. There are six volcanoes on Isabela, and they go off all the time. And on Española, the oldest island, they have the only waved albatross rookery in the world. The gray chicks wander around with their parents until they get old enough, and then they drag themselves to the edge of a big cliff with a blowhole and throw themselves off, only to return home years later to mate. The whole island is crawling with red- and blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, and even Galápagos hawks. Paradise. Latitude zero.”

  I look up at the traffic light. “Red light,” I say.

  Pete hits the brakes and we all lurch forward just as he comes to the intersection. A minivan blows past us. “Wow,” he says. “Thanks, Myra.”

  “Dude. Learn how to drive,” says Erik. His is tone is light, but when I turn to look at him I see he’s clenched up like a well-tanned fist. He doesn’t handle surprises very well.

  “Seriously,” says Dawn, shaking her head at Pete. I don’t think Dawn’s a real fear fan either.

  “Totally sorry. Don’t get me going about the Galápagos,” says Pete, laughing. “Once you’ve been there, every place else is just every place else.”

  When I get home I sit in the driveway. I put my head down and close my eyes. Unlike the other morning I see something besides my house and family now. I see Pete’s islands. Latitude zero. I see turquoise water. I whisper to myself, “I’m going.”

  22

  Flush:

  When you scare up a bird so it’ll give away its position.

  I go to the library during lunch so I can surf the Web for my project. Not like the school library has anything but junk, but there’s a computer and it’s quiet. Everything is holding still so dust can grow. I have my own little screen with a view of the parking lot.

  “Man, you’re serious.”

  I look up from the screen. It’s Erik. His square shoulders hang over me. He’s mildly sunburned, so his eyes look more blue than they really are. “What do you want?” I say.

  “Just came to work. It’s quiet.”

  “Yes, it is,” I say. I used to think he was reading my mind with the way we would think the same thing at the same time. Now having him this close makes me feel like I’m having a body scan.

  He rubs his hand on the desktop. “Man, it’s dusty in here.”

  What guy notices dust? Erik.

  He says, “How’s your project?” His voice is quick and friendly.

  “Fine,” I say.

  “I wish mine was. I can’t even decide on a topic.” He sits down next to me, like it’s no big deal. “I’m sucking at this.”

  “Really?” This would be a whole lot easier to take if I hadn’t spent
the last nineteen months making out with this guy.

  “It’s like, who cares? How am I supposed to know what to say about stuff a million scientists have already written about?”

  “It’s just a proposal,” I say.

  “Are you still writing about those weird brown birds? What are they called?”

  Erik doesn’t forget facts that easily, even facts he doesn’t like. “Cormorants,” I say.

  “I am so screwed.” He puts his head in his arms on the desk. “My dad is going to kill me if I blow this off. But I can’t stay up all night studying when I have work and track. And the coach is breathing down my neck as it is.”

  I hold still in my chair. Don’t be a doormat, Myra.

  “That sucks.” Seriously, his dad is horrible. We hardly ever went to Erik’s house to hang out, and when we did, it was to get something and leave. His mom and dad would stand in their kitchen with salt shakers that matched their granite countertops and ask us questions like a parole board.

  “I swear, if the coach tells me one more time, ‘This is your year,’ I’m going to puke. How’s it supposed to be my year when I’ve got a jacked-up ankle?”

  “What did you do to your ankle?”

  He props his head up and shakes it dismissively. “Flag football. Eddie fell on me. Can you believe that? After everything? The whole track team is pissed at me.”

  He’s worked his butt off for that team for three years. “Wow, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. It happens.” He puts his head back down.

  Except I don’t know what is actually happening.

  “Erik,” I say. “How come you’re talking to me?”

  “Oh.” He lifts his head again and really looks at me. I can smell spearmint gum on his breath. “Shouldn’t I be talking to you?”

  “It’s just that you haven’t. Not really. Since we broke up.”

  He looks around the cubicle like he’s suddenly lost something. He looks back at me and then starts inspecting his hands. “I was trying to be ... straight with you, you know.”

  “Straight?”

  “Myra. You know I miss you. Man, are you kidding? But ...”

  “You what me?”

  He grimaces. “I miss you.” He rubs his flush cheeks with his hand. “We were ...”

  Come on, Myra. “Yeah, but we aren’t now.”

  He sighs. “Yeah.” He gives me one of his perfect smiles, except now it’s perfectly sad.

  “Hey, I’m going to clear out of here and stop bugging you. Thanks for talking to me. Good luck with the birds. You’re amazing with that kind of stuff.”

  He passes his hand over mine. His touch moves up my arm and goes through the circuits of my heart before my brain even knows what’s happened. And then he walks out, dragging my traitorous, beaten-down, good-for-absolutely-nothing heart behind him.

  23

  Instinct:

  Doing something without thinking about it first.

  HE MISSES ME?

  I break at least five traffic laws driving to the marina, but I don’t kill anyone or get a ticket. The radio plays a ridiculous song that Erik and I used to sing at the tops of our lungs. Follow your heart / it knows the way back to me / this is home ... blah, blah, blah. I’m not sure why we thought the station was playing it for us. Probably the same reason I think that hearing it right now is karma’s way of kicking me when I’m down. Or maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me Erik really wants to get back together with me, but he doesn’t know how. And if I would just be patient ... and follow my heart back to him.... Or maybe the universe and this radio station have better things to do than worry about my love life. There’s always that remote possibility.

  And the problem with following my heart is that I don’t think it could find its way out of a paper bag right now.

  The office is a sty. Papers everywhere, a coffee cup half full, a newspaper, and a sweatshirt that looks like it hasn’t been washed since you-know-who bought it from the Salvation Army clearance sale. My first attempts at cleaning were polite. Superficial sorting. Today I’m putting on the latex gloves.

  Except for answering a few useless phone calls, I work like I’m possessed. Erik misses me? I need to get a few shelves arranged before I can be reasonable. By the time I finish with this dump, I’ll be too tired to care.

  By three-thirty I’m well beyond the desk and entryway. I’m into the hard-core cleaning of the building at large, and I feel like Lewis and Clark in virgin territory. The coffee table in the clubhouse is a different color brown when I finish. I find a dinner roll molding into a new life-form behind a reading chair. The air reeks of bleach, but at least it doesn’t smell like rot. And with each square foot clean, I feel a little more organized on the inside.

  An hour later, I look out the window at the marina. The sun is setting. Nearly closing time. The orange light spreads across the water as it drops behind the Promontory Mountains. I look out at the parking lot to make sure that people are leaving. There are two hatchbacks and an older SUV. Pete should be here soon to kick people out.

  One of the groups is in the restroom. Two thick-necked guys in their forties. The owners of the SUV is my guess, since neither of them look like he would fit in the smaller cars. One has a dog, which he is yanking on for some reason. I step closer to get a better look. He’s jerking around a faded brown pit bull. The dog’s scrambling to get away, so the man keeps yanking on the leash. I can hear him yelling at the dog through the glass. I stand transfixed as the man doubles his fist and hits the dog right in the side of the head. The dog crumples then rebounds to its feet. The man punches the dog again. The dog flops to the ground. “Stay!” yells the man.

  I’m out the door and in the man’s face before it happens again. “Stop that!” I say.

  The man is a foot taller than I am and about four hundred pounds heavier. His dog is flat on the ground, growling. At me, for all I know. The man’s friend hoots with laughter, but the man doesn’t say anything. We just stand there looking at each other. That’s when it dawns on me that he could hit me too.

  His arms are huge. He’s got a ring on his finger that could break a safe. “You work here, honey?”

  “Stop hitting your dog.”

  “You know what kind of dog this is?”

  The dog’s ear is bleeding down its neck. “I don’t care if it’s a saber-toothed tiger. Stop punching him.”

  “Or what?”

  I lock my knees so I don’t fall over. “I’ll write down your license plate number and get your sorry ass arrested for animal cruelty.”

  The friend explodes with laughter. “You better mind her, Kyle, she’s liable to kick your sorry ass herself.”

  The man looks at me. “Damn tree hugger.”

  “That’s not a tree on the end of your leash,” says Pete, stepping into the lamplight outside the restroom holding a wrench. He’s wearing his office jacket, so he doesn’t look quite as scrawny. And he doesn’t look even the slightest bit afraid of the two guys. “That animal is bleeding on my sidewalk. You two better take off. It’s closing time.”

  The two men walk their beaten dog to the SUV. The dog hops into the back obediently. I stand, watching them go, furious. That dog doesn’t stand a chance. My legs start to shake. I want to grab Pete’s wrench and go after both of them. See how they like bleeding on the sidewalk.

  “Myra,” says Pete. His voice is hard. “What were you thinking?”

  “They’ll kill the dog. You shouldn’t have let them go,” I say.

  “You must come from a rougher high school than I thought.”

  I watch the SUV drive away, trying to see the plate, but it’s too far away. Then I realize Pete is still talking to me.

  “... trust you to keep from getting killed. This lake brings out the crazies. A woman set her girlfriend on fire a block from here last winter.”

  I say, “I don’t feel so good.”

  Pete scowls and puts his arm around me. He smells like grass clippings. We walk
into the office. He stands in the middle of the room, looking from side to side. “What did you do?”

  I look at my afternoon’s work. “You don’t like it?”

  “You’ve sterilized the whole office.”

  “I’m not done, actually. I didn’t file anything.”

  Pete steps away and looks me over. “You’ve got real issues, don’t you?”

  I sit down on the hard plastic chair. My head is fluttery. “I need to eat.”

  “Look at this place! I’ll buy you whatever you want. Consider it a hiring bonus.”

  “Caffeine and french fries.”

  “I know just the place. But you better sit there for a minute. You look a little pale.”

  My cell phone rings. I look at it for few a rings and then answer.

  “Myra,” says Mom. “Are you on your way home yet?”

  “No,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?” Her voice is anxious. Big surprise. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just tired.”

  She sighs. “Okay. I need you to go get the boys. They’re still over at Harper’s. I just finished dinner and I’m going to be late for work.”

  “You made dinner tonight?” I can’t focus.

  “Don’t be sarcastic. I’m trying to help you. You told me you’d get the boys.”

  We didn’t have that conversation, but I don’t argue. “Fine. I’ll leave right now.”

  When I get off the phone, Pete is turning off the lights. “So no caffeine and fries then?”

  “My brothers need a ride.”

  “Doesn’t anyone else in your family drive?”

  I write down my hours on the time sheet Bobbie gave me.

  Pete says, “I don’t get it. You just stood up to the Godzilla brothers in the parking lot, but you roll over like a shelter puppy for your family.”

  “I’m not a puppy,” I say as I get my purse. “I’m a doormat.”

  “Why are you a doormat?”

  I like Pete, but I don’t want to talk to him anymore. I want to go get my brothers and then go to the basement and sit in the cool darkness and try to figure out what happened to me today. “Thanks for showing up, Pete. That whole thing out there was just stupid.”