by Melissa Hart
“Go away. I don’t have time for you.”
The owl spread out her wings and waited. I kept watering flowers. She called again, and the white feathers on her breast fluttered. Lucas said those feathers helped owls to recognize each other across a dark forest.
Did Artemis recognize me?
“Fine. It’s not like I have anything better to do.” I turned the hose on her.
She tilted one wing down and closed her eyes halfway. Water drops beaded on black and brown striped feathers. I studied the yellow irises, her curved black talons gripping the perch. “Minerva better keep that kitten away from you.”
“Don’t worry—I will.”
I hated the way Minerva always showed up beside me, like she’d been beamed from hyperspace. She stood there smiling at me, like we hadn’t just gone fifteen rounds together before she knocked me on my butt.
“Would you like to go with Lucas to the coast on Saturday? He’s releasing the great horned owl from the treatment room … the one you helped to rehabilitate.”
I looked sideways at her. “My shift’s Monday through Friday, remember?”
“Something bothering you, Solo? You seem edgy today.”
“So do you!”
I bit the words back too late. My community service was supposed to last another two weeks. If Minerva fired me from the raptor center, would I have to go to jail?
She only nodded. “You’re right. I am edgy. I lost a bird today.”
“Lost a bird?” I scanned the cloudless blue sky, peered into the tops of the firs. “Where is it?”
She didn’t answer.
“You mean … it died?”
She pressed her knuckles against her lips. “One of the red-tailed hawks. She contracted a virus….”
I whipped around to stare at the hawk mew. Only one bird sat on the perch, head drooping. They’d liked to sit side by side, sun gleaming on their red-feathered tails.
“I’m … uh … really sorry.”
Now I understood why people apologized after a loss. When someone dies, there’s nothing else to say.
“Death sucks,” I mumbled.
Why was my father so obsessed with it?
Minerva folded her arms across her chest. “If you’re going to participate in life, to fight for it, you’ve got to renegotiate death every day. I know that. But to lose a hawk today … on the anniversary of my mother’s …” Her voice trailed off, and she looked past Artemis at something I couldn’t see.
“I used to be a white-water rafting guide in Alaska. My mother came up to visit … she drowned on a river run. Not my fault; she was in someone else’s boat, and it hit a hole….”
Her throat bobbed, and she closed her eyes. “That evening, I saw a snowy owl on my cabin roof. They’re magnificent birds—huge and pure white. I guess you could say that night was my kriyā.”
“Cry-a?”
“It’s a Sanskrit word.” She reached for the hose and began to shower Artemis. “Means ‘spiritual emergency’ or ‘surrender.’ I gave up everything that day. My mother, my job, my home. A week later, I moved here and started a new life.”
My father’s gone.
I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t say the words out loud. That would make them true.
“It’s funny,” Minerva continued. “After a while, I stopped thinking about myself and focused on the birds … then, I began to heal.”
I thought of the bumper sticker on her car. FOLLOW YOUR BLISS.
“What if Alaska was your bliss?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Thankfully, I think we’re granted more than one bliss.”
The phone jangled from the office. “Can you get that? I sent Lucas to the vet’s office.”
I ran down the path and picked up the phone. Leah.
“Hey there, Solo,” she said in her high-pitched voice. “Is Minerva around?”
“She’s up with Artemis.”
I looked down at a note on the desk and recognized Lucas’s chicken scratch.
Solo—
I’m releasing an owl at the coast Saturday.
Want to come? Pick you up at your house, 3:00. Call me.
Lucas
Next to the note, he’d drawn a sketch of a great horned owl. A decent sketch.
“I’ll leave Minerva a message that you called,” I told Leah.
“Thanks. Hey, everything okay? You sound weird.”
Minerva said she felt better after she stopped thinking about her own problems and focused on helping someone else. But I was just a kid. What could I do to help anyone?
Suddenly, I knew. I thought of all those movies Dad had made me watch—screwball comedies, he called them—where Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant or Myrna Loy and William Powell argued and joked and finally fell in love. If I could write a screwball comedy on paper, why couldn’t I direct a real-life romance?
“Um … Leah?” I stammered, thinking hard as I spoke. “Lucas wanted me to tell you we’re releasing that great horned owl at the coast tomorrow. Be at my house by three in the afternoon if you want to go.”
I gave her my address. I’d make sure to meet her by the mailbox, so she wouldn’t see the trailer.
She laughed. “Awesome! That sounds like fun. See you tomorrow, then!”
Lucas would be so excited when he saw Leah the next day all ready to go on a road trip with us. In spite of the fear that banged itself against the sides of my brain like a crazy caged bird, the thought of Sergeant Bird Nerd happy actually made me smile.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JUST LET GO
I’m going to the coast to release a great horned owl.”
My mother looked up from the laptop she’d borrowed from Mrs. Miller to conduct her endless sleuthing for my father.
“With whom are you driving an hour to the coast? Shouldn’t you have asked me first?”
I couldn’t afford to make her mad. “I’m going with Sergeant … with Lucas from the raptor center.”
“He’s an adult?”
“He’s twenty-five. He works with at-risk youth.” I choked a little over the words.
Mom closed the laptop and studied me. Since I’d finally pulled the bandages off my arm, two raised white scars were the only evidence that I’d been gashed by a giant bird.
“Why do you want to go, Solo?” she asked me. “I thought you hated birds, and the center, too.”
I stood there with my jaw hanging down, but the words wouldn’t come out.
Because I’m sick of thinking about myself.
Because I’m sick of worrying that you might go even crazier.
Because I’m sick of worrying that Dad might be dead.
A knock on the door saved me from answering her.
“Dad?” I yelped without thinking.
But why would my father knock on his own door?
Leah.
I raced to the front door, combing my hair with my fingers. But Eric, not Leah, stood on the porch. He held out a book in one hand and a fuzzy black and orange caterpillar in the other.
I scowled. “What are you doing here?”
“We catch bugs today?”
“Sorry. I’m releasing an owl at the coast today.”
“Where on the coast?”
I wasn’t sure, exactly. “It’s where a lot of owls live. Go home, okay? I’ll catch up with you later.”
Leah didn’t need to see me hanging around Eric with his giant magnifying glass and his pink butterfly T-shirt.
But Eric stood rooted to the porch. He held up the book. “My father come home last night. He bring me this bug book.”
To make up for calling his son a freak.
I peered down the empty driveway, then reached for the book. “Lemme see.” I flipped through the pictures of beetles and centipedes. “Cool. I gotta go.”
I turned to my mother. She’d reopened the laptop, but just slumped at her chair, staring into space. “Bye, Mom. Mom?”
Startled by my voice, she sat up. “Sorry. Be
careful. Need some money?”
I grabbed my backpack and the crumpled five-dollar bill she fished out of her purse. “Thanks, Mom. Bye.”
Eric trotted down the driveway after me. “Who that girl?”
He pointed at Leah, who was walking up the driveway with her silver road bike. No way had she missed the tin can trailer. Maybe I could convince her it was Eric’s.
“Do you live here, Solo?” She tugged down the brim of her Dodgers cap. “That’s so cool! I’ve always wanted a trailer on some land. You off the grid?”
“Off the what?”
“Do you get your electricity from solar power?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could if you put solar cells on top of it.”
Eric stuck his hand out toward Leah. “I Eric Miller. Solo my friend.”
“I’m not his … he’s my neighbor,” I stammered. But Leah shook Eric’s hand and looked into his eyes like maybe lots of her friends had Down syndrome.
“Nice to meet you, Eric. Coming with us?”
His grin nearly split his face in two. “I am, Solo?”
Then Leah turned the full force of her smile on me. Serious solar power.
“Oh, fine.” I shrugged. “Go make sure your mom says it’s okay.”
“Hold my caterpillar!” Eric dropped the fuzzy black and orange caterpillar into my hand and trotted down the path to his house.
Leah laughed. “I can tell you’re a great friend, Solo.”
I stood there speechless with a bug crawling around in my hand.
“Nice of Lucas to let me come along,” she said then. “I didn’t think he liked me much.”
“Yeah.” I remembered my plan from the day before—to direct a real-life romantic comedy. “Sergeant Bird Nerd’s pretty cool.”
But when Lucas drove up and saw Leah standing by the mailbox, he looked anything but cool. He almost ran her over.
“Good afternoon,” he enunciated, getting out of his truck. The way his eyebrows thundered over his nose, I knew it wasn’t a good afternoon at all. He wore a ratty blue sweater that looked like a bird had nested in it, and his bandana was crooked. Real quick, he straightened it and smoothed down his blond ponytail. His eyes fired a question into mine. What’s she doing here?
“Leah’s gonna help us,” I said before he could give me grief.
The eyebrows leapt into his hairline. I looked away. Why had I thought this would work? He hated girls. And now, he hated me.
Mrs. Miller rumbled up in her truck. Eric jumped out with a huge backpack and his magnifying glass around his neck. “My mother say I go!”
Lucas looked from me to Leah. “Who’s this?”
Eric stuck out his hand. “I Eric Miller.”
“Howdy,” Mrs. Miller called out the window. “So, you run the raptor center.”
He shook his head. “I’m just a volunteer. We all are.”
“Well, it’s awful nice of you to invite Eric to the coast to release that owl.”
“Uh … well … no problem,” Lucas said. Did she hear the annoyance in his voice, too?
I dropped Eric’s caterpillar on a nearby bush and yanked him into the back of the truck before Lucas could reconsider. “We’ll keep an eye on the bird,” I called and jumped inside.
The owl shifted in its pet carrier, covered with a sheet. Lucas walked over to close the tailgate. “Why’s she here?” he hissed at me.
I squirmed like one of the mealworms he fed to Hermes. “We needed help. It’s a big bird, and I’m a short kid.”
Lucas looked down his hawk nose at me. He looked about as far from a romantic hero as I looked from a surfer in my hiking boots and wide-brimmed hat.
“You’ve got it all thought out, don’t you, kid?” He slammed the tailgate closed and started the truck. Was it my imagination, or did he take off extra fast, lurching into gear so Eric and I fell forward and thwacked our heads against the seat? Under the sheet, the owl clacked its beak.
“Relax, Eric.” I nudged his chubby legs with my sneaker. “He won’t bite.”
“I not worried. This is fun!”
The truck bed had narrow, tinted windows. Up ahead, I could just make out two kids at the bus stop. Cody and Missing Tooth.
Eric saw them, too. “I kick that guy’s butt!” he giggled.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “You sure did.” I slid open the window.
Then, amazingly, Eric read my mind. Together, we yelled the same thing: “I not a retard!”
Missing Tooth stared at the truck and opened his mouth to yell, but Lucas sped off before he could make a sound.
After that, the day got better. I leaned against the pet carrier and studied Lucas and Leah through the little open window separating the truck bed from the cab. It reminded me of a movie frame. My screenwriting teacher had told us that if we wanted to study the way real people talk, we should eavesdrop whenever possible.
I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down as much as I could of the conversation in front of me. Nothing Oscar-winning, but it got better the longer we drove.
FADE IN
INTERIOR. TRUCK - DAY
LUCAS and LEAH sit on opposite sides of the long bench seat, silent as hawks. His back is sergeant-stiff, and he grips the steering wheel with both hands. She leans against the door, looking out the window. Finally, she turns to him with her eyes blue as the summer sky.
LEAH
Thanks for asking me along on the trip. I’m writing a report on raptor rehabilitation for my environmental studies class.
LUCAS
(like he’s a professor)
Owls are fascinating. They’re at the top of the food chain, so we can study them to see the effects of pesticides and environmental changes.
Leah nods. Then she reaches into her backpack and pulls out a paper bag.
LEAH
Want a cookie? They’re chocolate chip. I just baked them this morning.
Lucas bites into the cookie she hands him. Suddenly, he smiles.
LUCAS
I’m impressed. You know how to hold owls and bake cookies. Um … can I have another one?
“What’cha writing, Solo?” Leah interrupted my screenplay and pushed a handful of cookies through the window. Oatmeal chocolate chip, still warm. “You guys okay back there?”
Eric popped a cookie into his mouth. “Smells like trash,” he said, spraying crumbs.
My stomach lurched. The truck bed did smell like garbage—raptor center garbage. It pretty much killed my appetite.
“Hey, Lucas. Don’t you wash this thing after you dump the trash?” I called through the window.
Lucas glanced at me over his shoulder. “Why, I’m sorry, Solo. I didn’t realize you’d be riding in the back this afternoon. Otherwise, I would have hung up an air freshener.”
The truck rounded a corner. Fir-covered mountains spread out before us. In the middle of all that green stood one lone hill, bald and brown.
Lucas shook his head. “Wow. Two weeks ago, that was covered with trees. Betcha some landowner’s just made a fortune clear-cutting it and selling the lumber.”
Rajen used to get a kick out of pretending he was a Buddhist monk. It was when we were studying haiku—Bashö and Issa and those guys—in class. He’d sit cross-legged and sober up his face, eyes half-lidded. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around,” he’d intone, “does it make a sound?”
Stupid question. There’s always someone in the forest, someone listening when a tree falls.
The bare mountain depressed me. I turned to Eric. “Hey, know what kind of raptors live in those Douglas firs?”
He barely heard me. His eyes stayed fixed on Leah, a big grin on his face. “She pretty,” he said.
“Dude.” I shook my head. “She’s in college. Way too old for you.”
He shrugged. “I love that girl.”
I understood. I guess I sort of loved her in a way, even though I knew it was impossible. Maybe Lucas was beginning to lov
e her a little, too.
“Hey.” Lucas stretched his right arm across the top of the bench seat. “Did you hear about the woman who lived in a tree for two years to protest logging?”
Leah bounced in her seat, eyes wide and excited. “Yeah! Wasn’t there a guy who sat in a tree downtown for a month?”
Now they were off, chattering about people who lived in trees, slept in trees, and chained themselves to trees to keep loggers from chopping down forests.
Eric gave up staring at Leah and turned to the pet carrier. He lifted one corner of the sheet. The great horned owl huddled in one corner, a trembling pile of brown and black feathers. He hissed when he saw us.
“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him,” I told Eric.
•
After an hour, Lucas slowed his truck to make a left turn. For a while, we followed a river bluer than the one that ran through our city. I showed Eric a big osprey nest on a piece of plywood nailed to a long post. “They’re fishing birds,” I told him. “Big black and white guys who swoop down and grab trout in their talons.”
The air cooled, and I smelled something familiar … kelp and saltwater.
“Here we are!” Lucas called. I followed his finger to the long line of blue stretched out between sand dunes. The ocean.
Eric held up his magnifying glass. “I see sharks!”
“You can’t see sharks from the land…” I began, then gave up. “Are we getting out soon?”
I had to see those waves.
“Soon.” Lucas drove a while longer, then pulled into a parking lot. He hopped out of the cab and swung open the tailgate. “How’s our owl?”
“Scared.” I jumped out, sucking in salty air. Pines bent into weird shapes stood around us, hiding the ocean from view.
“We have to hike a little ways to get to where they found the owl.” Lucas opened the passenger door for Leah.
Eric jumped to the ground, shouldered his mammoth backpack, and walked over to her. “I have more cookies?”
She shook the paper bag, giggling. “Lucas ate them all.”
Now Sergeant Bird Nerd was all business. “Let’s get the owl out of the hot truck. We don’t want to release him all dehydrated.”
He lifted the pet carrier. We walked after him past the parking lot to a sandy path and followed it to a pond, dark water surrounded by more crooked pines. The owl rustled and screeched. He knew he was home. But when we got to the pond, instead of just setting down the pet carrier and letting him go, Lucas decided to make a speech.