by Melissa Hart
“Meetcha back here in one hour.” She started to walk toward the garden store. Then she stopped and winked at me. “By the way, partners, nice hair.”
Eric giggled and led me down the street toward the arcade. Right as we opened the door, two boys pushed past us—the same ones I’d seen at the canal the day Eric and I went fishing.
“Hey, look,” said the one with the missing front tooth. “It’s Killer and the retard! Nice magnifying glass, dingbat.”
My heart began to flutter on nervous wings in my chest. “He’s not a retard,” I muttered. “Leave him alone.”
The short kid with the bandana and the baseball cap stepped back, but Missing Tooth snarled like a mad dog. “Don’t mess with us, trailer trash!”
The sun beat down, bouncing heat off the sidewalk. My hair felt sticky. A drop of sweat popped out on the back of my neck and crawled down my spine.
“Come in or shut the door!” A big guy waved a tattooed arm at us from behind the arcade counter. “You’re letting the air conditioning out.”
Missing Tooth wouldn’t bother us with an adult around. “Let’s go.” I pulled Eric inside. The two kids followed us, then brushed by and headed for the back of the arcade.
“That boy is mean.” Eric peered after Missing Tooth through his magnifying glass. Then he slapped a stack of quarters on the Final Fantasy game. “We do karate?”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like playing. I just didn’t want to see dead people, even if they were pretend. “I’m gonna play Skee-Ball instead.”
“Okey doke, Solo.”
The Skee-Ball ramps stood off to the side, near an old Pac-Man game. I wandered over and dropped in two quarters. Heavy brown balls rolled toward me. I tossed them one at a time, aiming for the middle hole of the target—fifty points. The short kid with the bandana and the baseball cap walked up to the ramp right beside me. He dropped in coins, and balls rumbled out.
He’s gonna crack me over the head with one.
He started rolling balls at his targets.
We each dropped in more quarters and played without talking. At last, he spoke up. “Heard you’re working at that bird hospital.”
He was baiting me, trying to start something. I ignored him and concentrated on rolling balls. One bounced into the 50 hole. Lightbulbs flashed on and off at the top of my ramp.
“Way to go.”
I whipped around to face the kid. He shrugged. “No, seriously. You’re pretty good.”
He was awful—rolled the ball way too slow so it bounced into 10-point holes only.
“You have to roll it harder, like this.” I curled my hand under the ball, swung my arm back, and let go. The ball rolled, caught air, and dropped into the 50 hole. Lightbulbs flashed again, and music jangled.
The kid tried to copy me. He swung his arm back and rolled. His ball took its sweet time wandering up the ramp, then dropped into the 20-point hole.
“Better.” I looked sideways at him.
He tossed a ball up and caught it, then opened his mouth like he wanted to say something.
“Um …” He finally got the words out. “Sorry ’bout my friend. He’s just fooling around.”
I snorted. These days, I could spot a predator a mile away. Missing Tooth was out for blood. But this kid reminded me of Blinky—quiet, a little shy.
“Wanna go swimming at the river?” he asked. “I’ve got an inner tube. We could float down a couple miles, hike back up.”
The river was nothing compared to the Pacific. No waves, no sand—just flat, boring water. But I missed swimming, feeling totally submerged like a fish. And it was hot.
“Maybe. Um … I’m Solo.”
“I know. I’m Cody.”
“How’d you know my name?”
“My dad’s a cop in juvenile corrections, remember?”
All at once, the word criminal felt branded into my skin once more. I’d forgotten how it burned.
But Cody didn’t seem to see it. “So you’re from Southern Cal? Can you really walk around in shorts on Christmas?”
“We used to surf after we opened our presents.”
“Cool!”
Missing Tooth swaggered up with a rope of licorice around his neck. “Look what I won, suckers.”
“Hey.” Cody socked him in the arm. “Solo’s coming swimming with us.”
“Whatever,” Missing Tooth said with his mouth full. “What about him?”
We all looked at Eric. He’d used up his quarters, but he was still pretending to play Final Fantasy, pushing buttons and gnawing on his tongue.
Missing Tooth snickered. “We could walk right out the door and he wouldn’t even notice.”
Words formed in my head. I’ll be right back, Eric. Or, Do you wanna come swimming with us? But they didn’t come out.
“Where d’you swim?” I asked instead.
“We got a sweet spot … a secret.” Missing Tooth narrowed his eyes. “But you gotta swear never to tell another soul. Not even your best friend, there.”
“He’s not my best friend. I swear.”
We’d be gone just a few minutes, back before Eric even noticed. I started to tiptoe out behind them. Then I stopped.
I couldn’t abandon him.
Eric turned to me. “Solo? You wanna play?”
Sweat trickled down his forehead, mixed with green Jell-O. Through his bangs, I saw the round, raised scar from where the shot had grazed him. My stomach went belly up.
Missing Tooth sneered. “Uh-oh. The retard’s onto us.”
I stared at a dried-up piece of gum on the dirty carpet. “I told you not to call him that.”
Instantly, Missing Tooth was in my face. “You wanna fight, trailer trash?”
The man behind the counter raised his head from his newspaper, sensing trouble. Through his eyes, I saw how the movie might end.
FADE IN
EXTERIOR. ARCADE - DAY
Video games beeping and whistling, kids whooping. Suddenly, a handheld camera begins to bounce around the scene. People rush over, pointing and screaming at something.
CROWD (together)
Get him, Missing Tooth—kick that guy’s butt. He’s a criminal. Show him who’s boss.
CLOSE-UP of blood spatters on the carpet.
PAN OUT to show a boy with long white hair pounding another boy’s head into a pinball machine. A boy with Down syndrome looks on, hands helpless at his sides. The injured boy slumps to the carpet, his head gashed and bleeding.
MISSING TOOTH
That’s for messing with me, trailer trash!
Now I’m gonna waste your retard friend.
FADE OUT
“I don’t want to fight,” I mumbled to the boys in front of me.
Cody shrugged and walked toward the door. “Leave ’em alone. It’s too hot.”
But there was no stopping Missing Tooth. “How ’bout you?” He stuck his face close to Eric’s. “You wanna fight, retard?”
What happened next shocked me more than if a hawk had swooped into the arcade, grabbed the dried-up piece of gum beside my shoe, and started blowing pink bubbles.
“I not a retard!” Eric yelled.
Then he karate-kicked Missing Tooth, Final Fantasy style, right in the jaw.
CHAPTER TWELVE
NICTITATING MEMBRANES
Eric and I didn’t tell Mrs. Miller what had happened in the arcade, how Missing Tooth held his jaw like his teeth might fall out, sputtering blood and spitting curses until Cody pulled him out the door and they disappeared down the street. How the man behind the counter saw the whole thing and only flashed this little grin at Eric before he went back to talking on the cell phone in his hand.
“Nice move, Eric,” I said when his mother went into Subway for sandwiches and chips.
He grinned. “I get a black belt in karate.”
We ate in a park with little kids who swarmed like ants around an ice cream truck that blared carnival music in the parking lot. Mrs. Miller bought us Popsicles to eat in
the truck on the way home. She let me out in front of the trailer. The Big Grape’s parking spot still stood empty. “When’s your daddy get back?” she asked.
I bit my lip. “Soon.”
“Come on over tomorrow if you want to help Eric and me make berry tarts. We’ll start early, before things heat up outside.”
“Okay. Thanks for the sandwich and Popsicle. Bye, Eric.”
They left, and I climbed the porch steps, dread slowing my feet. Inside the trailer, bluish smoke drifted down the hallway like car exhaust.
Mom’s dead.
I sprinted down the hall and burst through my parents’ bedroom door. My mother sat cross-legged on the carpet surrounded by flickering candles. Her thumbs and index fingers made circles on her knees. At the sound of my gasp, her eyes flew open. “What’s wrong, Solo?”
I coughed to hide the terror that had yanked me down the hall. “Geez. What’s with the smoke?”
“I’m burning sage.” She sucked in a long breath through her nostrils. “My yoga teacher says it helps ward off evil spirits.”
“Evil spirits? ”
“I’m meditating, Solo.”
“Why?”
My mother blinked, reminding me of Hermes at the raptor center. Owls have nictitating membranes—second eyelids that sweep across their eyes, windshield wiper–style—to protect them from injuries when they get into it with a rodent or smaller bird. Mom’s eyes looked blurry, as if she had nictitating membranes, too.
What were they protecting her from? Me?
She sighed and stretched her legs out in front of her, folded her arms tight across her chest. “I’m trying to calm my mind and reach out to your father. Wherever he is, maybe he’ll sense how much we love him and come back to us.”
“If he’s still alive.” I couldn’t stop the words from bursting out. I wanted her to get angry, to order me to stop all the drama and look on the bright side of life, to walk on the sunny side of the street, and to never give up hope … every cliché in the book.
Instead, she dropped her head to her chest. “If he’s still alive,” she echoed in a tiny voice.
I didn’t cry. Just slammed the screen door, grabbed my bike, and ran up the hill until my lungs begged for air. At the top, I climbed on and flew down the hill. I rode hard into town and skidded to a stop in front of the library. Wherever Dad was, maybe he’d check his email.
I loped up the round staircase to the second floor and the computers, logged onto the Internet with my new library card, and sent a message to my father’s Gmail address:
Dad,
How are you? I’m OK. Mom’s OK, too. I miss you.
Will you come back soon?
Love, Solo
I sent it. Biked home and waited. But he didn’t come back on Sunday. And he didn’t email me back. Sunday afternoon, I biked back to the library and stayed until it closed, checking my email every five minutes. Instead, finally, there was a note from Blinky.
Solo—
You back? My mom thinks she saw your dad at the DMV. Rajen and Eldon say hi.
My fingers pounded the keyboard, shooting back a message to my friend.
In the California DMV?
I raced home. Mom knelt in her garden, planting some poor seedlings from a plastic six-pack into hot soil. I left my bike against the trailer and tiptoed in, grabbing her phone to call my grandma.
“Hey, Gram.” I kept my voice low, not wanting Mom to hear and get her hopes up. “It’s Solo. Is my dad there?”
Her voice sounded confused. “Why would he be here, honey? Isn’t he with you?”
My mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she wiped one hand across her eyes, leaving a big streak of garden dirt. “I already called her.”
“Oh.” I looked away toward the spiderweb stretched across a corner of the kitchen window. A fly hung there, lifeless. “Sorry, Gram. He must be at the store. Thanks.”
I hung up before she could ask me any more questions, then walked slowly down the hall. I held my breath against the sickly sweet scent of incense wafting out of Mom’s bedroom—it was worse than any smell the raptor center offered.
Exhausted, I crawled into bed. It was only eight o’clock. The summer sun had just begun to set behind the trees. I fell asleep in a strip of orange-gold light that slipped in between the curtains and didn’t wake up for twelve hours.
•
The next morning, I rode into town to check my email before my shift at the raptor center. But as I flew down the hill, something hissed behind me. Rattlesnake?
I glanced behind me. My back tire splayed out floppy against the rim. I rolled the Pig Wheel off the road and flipped it upside down. I glanced at my watch. Nine forty. My shift started at ten. I kicked a rock across the road.
It took me fifteen minutes to patch my bike tube the way Sergeant Bird Nerd had showed me, with a patch kit and tire levers and a tube of stinky glue. Not even a green-shirter from the Tour de France could make it to the raptor center in five minutes.
I pedaled hard into town and raced toward Eyrie Road. Sweat poured into my eyes, burning them so that I had to squint against the sting. I jammed my sneakers into my toe clips and dropped the bike into the smallest gear. My pedals spun up the steep driveway.
Minerva met me outside the clinic, pale fists dug into her skinny hips. “You’re late!” she snapped. “Next time, call and let me know. I’d hate to have to report you to your social worker.”
I stared at her in her stupid owl shirt. My shirt dripped with sweat and my legs shook like saplings on a windy day. Before I could say something I might regret, Lucas walked out of the office and socked me in the shoulder.
“Flat tire?” He raised his eyebrow at my black, greasy hands.
“Took a while to change,” I muttered.
“First time’s the hardest.”
Minerva didn’t seem to hear us. She kept barking orders like a prison warden. “I want you two to clean the mews really well. I found algae in Xerxes’s water tub.” She glared at me. “Solo, I noticed you’re not feeding the great horned owl in the treatment room like I asked you to. From now on, Lucas will feed him.”
“Fine. It’s not like I …”
Lucas shot me a warning look that silenced me.
“You can feed the cat in the office bathroom. You won’t see her—she’s feral. Give her a bowlful of crunchies and change her water.” Minerva slammed the door behind her and stalked off to her apartment.
“She’s feral,” Lucas whispered.
I poured water from my bike bottle over my head. “What d’you mean, feral?”
“Wild,” he said. “Scared and mean.”
“She is mean.” I bent down to scrub bike grease off my leg.
“Don’t worry, kid. She’ll forget about it in a couple days, and you can go back to feeding the birds.”
“She can feed her own stupid birds!”
Sergeant Bird Nerd snapped to attention. “You’re here for the birds. Remember that.” He lowered his voice. “Better feed that cat before she comes out again.”
“I’m not here to help cats.” I stomped into the clinic and threw down my backpack. From his mew, Hermes clacked his beak and leapt onto his pink tennis shoe. “I’m not here for you, either,” I muttered and stalked to the bathroom.
The bathroom next to the clinic was small, just big enough for a microscope, a toilet, and a sink full of empty syringes. There weren’t many hiding places. Still, I couldn’t find the cat. I dumped food into an empty cream cheese container and looked around.
Nothing.
At last, I heard her. “Prrrpt?”
The sound came from behind the trash can. I got down on all fours and glimpsed the tip of a black tail, crooked as a bent finger.
“I think she’s got a broken tail,” Lucas called from the treatment room.
“No kidding.”
Carefully, I lifted the can away from the wall. A black and white blur shot by me and
disappeared into the clinic. This was no cat. It was a kitten the size of my hand, a ball of long-haired fluff covered in mats and burrs. I could take her home, I thought, clean her up, make her mine.
Then, I remembered the owl.
“People drop stray cats at the bottom of the driveway,” he explained, “thinking if we rescue birds, we’ll rescue other animals, too. Some of them find their way up here. She let me pick her up, but she hates being inside.”
He stretched out his arm raked with red scratches that crisscrossed the three parallel white scars near his wrist.
Hermes was going bonkers in his mew, dancing around and craning his neck to see where the kitten had hidden herself. Lucas found her and fished her out from behind the desk by the loose scruff of her neck. She yowled. He wrapped her in a towel and plunged a syringe of water into her mouth. “She’s dehydrated.”
“That makes two of us.” I downed a mug of water and turned away while he put the kitten back into the bathroom. I didn’t want to look at her—it hurt too much.
“Look, kid. Let me feed the birds in the treatment room this one time, just to pacify Minerva. Then we can clean enclosures.”
“Dude, I don’t want to feed the birds in the treatment room. I’m glad she took me off that job.”
“Solo, I want you to water all the flowers.” Minerva pushed through the screen door, red hair on top of her head in a sloppy bun and a wet towel around her sunburned neck. “Today’s gonna be a scorcher.”
I knocked my water bottle into the sink. It rattled around, and Hermes shot into a narrow brown arrow. He let out a surprised hoot.
“Quiet!” Minerva snapped. “We’ve got birds recuperating in here.”
“Can I ask you something about the red-tail’s medication?” Lucas stepped between Minerva and me. I bolted out of the office and unrolled the long green hose.
“I’m not a gardener.” I fumed.
Pots of flowers hung from the visitor’s center and the office. I splashed in water, slopping soil over the sides. Then I yanked the hose up the hill and shot a hard stream of water toward the butterfly garden.
WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!
Artemis called to me, already on her perch.