Caleb and Kit

by Beth Vrabel

  But that’s not what I really said. Instead, I blurted out, “No, man. Of course not.” This time when I held up my hands, he threw the ball back to me. We tossed it back and forth for a couple minutes, Brad having to jump and dive for my tosses while his always went straight to my open hands. Brad went on and on about the football team, how they won their first scrimmage and how he was named captain of the twelve-and-under league (“Of course you were,” I said and he grinned), and how all the guys play volleyball in the pool after practice.

  “You should be there, Caleb,” he said. And for a second, I sort of believed him.

  “Do you ever think about the baby bird?” I asked right in the middle of Brad telling me about some awesome play the team figured out at practice the day before.

  Brad caught the ball and turned to a statue for a second. After a long pause, he said, “No.” We didn’t talk for a long time after that, just threw the ball back and forth until Derek pulled into the driveway with Mom.

  “Brad!” Mom called, her lip glossy smile shining. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “No, thank you. I should be getting home.” Brad’s eyebrows peaked as he looked back at me, and I knew he was wondering who Derek was and what he was doing with Mom. I sort of shrugged.

  “Thanks for stopping by,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, “at the pool.”

  Mom and Derek disappeared into the house, talking the whole time.

  “Maybe,” I said back.

  Mom’s laughter poured through the house. Strange how odd it sounded to hear her laugh. I guess I hadn’t really heard it in a while. It made the house feel different. Like I was a visitor. I went into the kitchen to grab a juice box and a bag of chips to hold me over until dinner. Derek was telling Mom something about a picky client who kept nailing him with all of these ridiculous requests, and Mom was cracking up, her face shining. Both of them smiled at me when I walked into the room to grab the juice from the fridge, but I felt strange suddenly. I didn’t know if I should sit next to Mom in the kitchen or be in the living room, where I’d overhear her and Derek’s conversation. My room seemed like the safest place, except that when I made my way down the hall, there was Patrick leaning against the wall on the other side of my door.

  “What was all that about?” he asked.

  “Oh,” I said and slurped on the juice box. I swear, they only fill those things with three sips of fruit punch. “Derek’s telling her about some guy wanting a tree shaped like a poodle in his front yard.” I shrugged.

  “No, not that.” Patrick lowered his head so he was staring me down. “I meant Brad. What did he mean by not seeing you in a while? You’d think he’d see you all the time. You know, since you spend all day at camp.”

  I shrugged again, taking a useless pull on the juice box straw just because I knew the sound annoyed him. “Guess we keep missing each other.”

  “But you’re at camp all day, right?”

  “Where else would I be?” I ducked around him and into my room.

  “Right.” Patrick headed down the hall just as Mom’s laughter rippled again. He paused and then doubled back to his room, too.

  We ate out on the patio again that night. I wondered if Derek got sick of being outside all the time, but he smiled nonstop, so I guessed not.

  I filled my tacos with extra cheese, sour cream, guacamole, and beans. Mom gave me a look so I added some lettuce, too. Mom even made dessert… sort of. She brought out marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate for us to make s’mores over the grill. But we never got around to actually turning on the grill. Instead, we just ate the ingredients all separate or smooshed together cold. Patrick talked forever about the fund-raiser—they were going to have a 5K race to raise CF awareness in a month, and he had spent the day going from business to business requesting donations. “I scored more funds than any other volunteer by double,” he finished as Mom clapped and Derek fist bumped him. I didn’t say anything. Wonder how many of those donations were because Patrick told everyone his kid brother had the crap luck to be born with a fatal disease?

  “Check this out,” Derek said suddenly. He tore off a tiny bit of a marshmallow and then strode out to the middle of the deck. The sun was set but the sky was still holding on to color at the tree line. It kind of looked like a dark rainbow filling up the whole sky—a curve of gold, then reddish yellow, then blue, then indigo, then almost-black. A couple birds glided overhead, even though I didn’t think birds really flew all that much at night.

  Derek paused a moment and then threw the bit of marshmallow straight up into the sky. One of the birds swooped suddenly and caught the sugary treat before it even began to fall back down.

  “Wow. What just happened?” I asked.

  “A bat.” Derek grinned and threw another piece into the air for another bat.

  Mom shuddered. “I didn’t realize we had bats.”

  “Be glad you do,” Derek said. “That citronella candle you lit can only do so much. Bats are the best for getting rid of mosquitoes.”

  “How did it see that tiny piece of marshmallow?” I asked. “I thought they were blind.”

  Derek smiled again as he squinted up at the darkening sky. “They use echolocation. The bat didn’t know it was a marshmallow—I’m sure that was just a bonus. Obviously not part of its diet, but a little piece like that won’t hurt him.”

  “But how—”

  Derek smiled. “It only knew something was flying through the air, so it zeroed in and boom. Caught it. Pretty fascinating.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything else. Derek, I could tell, really got into this nature stuff. He seemed to be one of those people who just holds on to information, storing little details like archived files of a website.

  “Tell the boys of the birds you were talking about yesterday,” Mom said when it got too quiet again. She motioned for Patrick to sit back down when he rose to gather up the plates. “This is so cool, Patrick.”

  “Oh,” Derek said, and pulled out his chair from the table a little to rock back. “This family of crows lives at a property I help manage. The fledglings are just beginning to leave the nest.”

  I sat up a little in my seat. “Fledglings?”

  “Yeah,” Derek said. “The babies. Crows are pretty amazing. They live as families like us in a lot of ways. The parents take care of the babies, but the older siblings help out, too, bringing the babies food and watching over them. They have whole communities, actually, with everyone pitching in.”

  Mom rested her elbows on the table, placing her chin on her hands. “Tell them about the babies!” she cooed.

  Derek chuckled. “So, yeah, these fledglings—practically little balls of black fluff—fall from their nests, right? But they can’t fly yet to get back up there. So the older siblings keep an eye on them, hopping along behind them, bringing them food. But, I guess just like our families, older brothers and sisters get sick of the newbies after a while. This one guy I work with, Hank, he sees a baby all by itself and thinks it’s hurt or something. So he picks it up. Big mistake.”

  “Why?” I asked, my heart pounding up in my throat.

  “Because he ticked off the entire crow community. At first everything was cool, he was just talking to the baby, right? But then he went and took the baby with him into the truck. Nice guy, he was going to take it to a friend of his who works at an animal sanctuary. But the crows didn’t know that—they just figured he was stealing the baby.”

  Derek took a pull from the beer Mom handed him. “His friend tells him, ‘Hey, fledglings hang out at the base of trees. It’s cool, he’s not abandoned.’ And he warns Hank to bring the baby back to the tree as soon as possible. So Hank heads right back. Immediately, a crow flies over him and Hank gets this giant dropping right on the middle of his truck’s windshield. When he steps out, the baby still inside the truck, to wipe the mess off, another one swoops over him—low enough to make this giant bear of a man scream and co
wer. Then another one swoops, again and again, over him.”

  “You’d think he’d have gotten the message,” Patrick quipped.

  “Oh, he did!” Derek laughed again. “Hank took the baby out of the truck. Put it back where he had found it. He even tossed a bit of his sandwich at the baby and backed off with his hands up.” Derek took another drink and shook his head. “But it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The birds had marked him as a bad job. Every time he got to work, they’d gather in the trees and screech at him. They took turns dive-bombing him as he mowed the grass. Every single day, his truck—but no one else’s around him—would be covered in droppings. Poor guy had to swap out with someone else and work at properties miles from his house.

  “Here’s the weirdest thing: that was two years ago. Just last week, the regular guy on that property was sick and the client couldn’t wait—needed lawn care right away because they were having a wedding. Enough time passed where that fledgling should’ve been grown, right? Hank didn’t want to go, but I talked him into it.”

  “What happened?” I asked again as Derek finished the beer.

  “The birds remembered him. Same thing—dive-bombing his head, using his truck as target practice.” Derek leaned forward so I could see his serious face in the darkened sky. “Strangest thing. But I did a little research, and it’s true. Crows remember—and they don’t like to be messed with.”

  My leg drummed under the table.

  “The baby, though, he sure was cute. Bright blue eyes, fluffy little guy.” Derek stood and helped Mom and Patrick pick up plates.

  “Wait!” I said. “Blue eyes? I thought crows had dark eyes.”

  “All babies have blue eyes when they’re hatched,” Derek said. “They get darker later.”

  I stood, pushing out the chair behind me. “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Where?” Mom asked.

  “To bed,” I lied. “I… I’ve got to go to bed.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” Mom asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. I’ll do my physio and get to sleep, okay?”

  Derek looked from me to Mom and back. “I’ll head home, okay, Steph? Thanks for dinner.”

  “No,” Mom said. “No, we were going to watch that show, remember?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “stay. I’m just going to go to bed. That’s all.” I kissed Mom’s cheek. “Thanks for dinner.”

  “Good night, love,” Mom said.

  Patrick raised an eyebrow at me as I passed him on the way to my bedroom, but he didn’t say anything.

  I went to my room and locked the door. I set the vest machine so the noise would carry out into the room and then eased open my bedroom window.

  I had to tell Kit the truth and it couldn’t wait until Monday. It couldn’t wait another minute. I had to tell her all baby crows have blue eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The sky was light enough for me to see the bats swooping above me as I darted across the yard to the woods. But inside the tree line, the dark was thick as a blanket over my eyes. I turned on the flashlight app on my phone and held it in front of me; the little circle of light made what was just outside of it somehow scarier. I didn’t realize I was at the stream until my sneakers soaked up water to my toes. I kicked off my shoes and ran across the rocks. Of course, I stepped wrong and slipped in the stream in the middle, landing with a thud on my butt since I was too worried about holding my phone up and out of the water to brace my fall. I jumped back up and kept going, phone held out to light the narrow path our feet had forged over the past few weeks to Kit’s house.

  A bird called out as I ran, making me jump. All around me, the woods rustled. I even thought I heard a howl, but it was probably an owl or something. My mind filled up the blackness around me with a million images that fluttered faster than wings—dark fairies with faces folded like tree bark, winged girls morphing into giant dogs, crows with sharpened beaks, police officers crouching behind trees. None of them made sense, but I ran from them as much as I hurried toward Kit. I had to tell her she was wrong, that the baby crow wasn’t a gift but something she had stolen. I had to tell her it wasn’t magic that gave the bird blue eyes, that it was just the way it was born.

  It wasn’t until I reached the edge of the woods and was halfway across Kit’s sparse and dirt-packed lawn that I realized I might get her in trouble by barging into her house this late.

  But judging from the loud music pumping out of the open windows, no one was sleeping. Kit’s mom’s car was parked by the house and most of the windows were dimly lit with lamps, including the turret high above. I shoved my phone in my pocket and picked up a quarter-size pebble by my feet. I can do this, I thought as I reared back. But instead of hitting Kit’s window like I had hoped, the rock slammed against the side of the house. I crouched, ready to run if someone stormed out of the house to catch me, but nothing happened.

  “What are you doing here?” a small voice hissed instead. Kit. I breathed out and hurried to the porch. I almost didn’t see her. Kit, she usually sits right in the middle of things, soaking up the sun on Mermaid Rock or sprawled across a patch of grass. This Kit was folded up in the corner of the porch farthest away from the front door. Her face, pale and round in the weak light, was crossed by porch rail shadows. “You have to leave,” she whispered before I could speak.

  “I have to tell you,” I said, my words coming out in bursts as I tried to muffle the cough boiling up my throat. “It’s about the bird.”

  The floorboards inside the house creaked. A shadow person moved by the windows. Kit’s head whipped toward the house and back to me. “You have to go. You have to go right now.”

  “Are you okay?” I whispered back. I grabbed the porch rails, my hands curling against them. “Is everything all right?”

  “Just go,” she whispered back. She scrunched shut her eyes.

  “Kit!” stormed the shadow person inside the house. “Kit! Where the heck are you? Off crying still about that stupid bird.” Through the window, I spotted Kit’s mom throwing up her arms. I crouched below the porch just as she threw open the door, a shaft of light from inside making an orange triangle across the front stoop onto the ground.

  I tried to be invisible, crouched there in the dark, but my stupid body wanted to move in a thousand directions at once. I shook all over, willing myself to be silent and still, not that my body ever listened to anything I told it to do. A huffing cough erupted out of me just as Kit’s hand darted between the rails and shoved my head lower to the ground.

  “There you are,” said the shadow person, her voice cold. Something clicked and then I heard a steady pull in of breath. A moment later, I smelled tobacco smoke. “Hiding in the corner like a stupid dog.”

  Kit pushed further into the corner. I covered both my hands across my mouth.

  “Get over here, Kit.”

  “I don’t want to,” Kit whispered.

  “Come here?” This time the words were a question, soft and gentler. The woman stumbled a little, and Kit rushed forward, half crawling until she was by her mother’s side. I peeked up over the porch without really thinking.

  Kit’s mother was a taller, skinnier, harder version of Kit. Like if Kit was an unfolded new leaf, her mom was the brittle-edged late-summer version. Kit flinched as her mom’s arm lurched out. I shuddered, remembering the bruise that had only just faded from Kit’s face. The one she got from falling down the tree. Unless she hadn’t fallen.

  “Come here,” her mother said. Her words slurred like she was speaking in cursive. “What do we know about raising birds?”

  Kit didn’t say anything, but tucked her body under her mom’s, holding her up.

  “Had to put it out there. Bird’s gotta toughen up. It’s nature’s way.” The cigarette tip was a red laser point at her mother’s mouth.

  “Can I just put it back?” Kit whispered. “Back to the tree where we—I mean I—got it?”

&
nbsp; “You’re lucky I didn’t put the thing out of its misery,” Kit’s shadow mom snapped. “Still could.” She lurched backward, but Kit wrapped her arm around her waist.

  “No, please, Mama!” Kit hiccupped.

  Her mom paused and moved back toward the door. “I’m going back to the doctor tomorrow, Kit-Kat,” she said. “Gonna go tomorrow and get back on the meds. Gonna get better.”

  “I know,” Kit murmured. “I know.”

  Kit opened the door with one hand, so again the light spread out from it like a spotlight. Her shadow mom cried. I could tell by the quick, shattering peak and fall of her narrow shoulders. “Grandmom knew how to take care of us both. I don’t know how.”

  “I know,” Kit said again, and dragged her mom forward toward the door.

  “I’ll go to the doctor tomorrow. Take the medicine. I won’t hurt you again, Kit-Kat. Not ever again.” They took another step, this time through the doorway. “What do we know ’bout raising birds?” she slurred again.

  The door closed so just a sliver of light escaped from it across the porch and onto a patch of lawn. There was a small black ball of feathers. Somehow I had passed right by it before without seeing it.

  For a horrible second I thought the bird had died. It was so still. Then its tiny wings rustled. A soft peep rumbled from it. Though my whole body still shook from seeing Kit’s shadow mom, I crawled forward. As I cupped my hands around the bird, I nearly felt the scrape of a half dozen talons and beak into my back, so much sharper than that of the dog. But it was just my mind creating more images in the dark. I picked up the baby and carried it back to the tree, waiting until I was a few feet from the house to shift the bird into one hand and fish out my phone with the other to light the way. At the base of the tree where Kit had found it earlier, I put down the bird.