by Simone Lia
“That’s right.”
“Can we go now?” asked the flamingo with
the big beak.
“No. I want you to say to Laurence, ‘You are
a flamingo. You are the best flamingo of us all.’”
There was silence.
“But he’s not actually a flamingo,” said the
small flamingo cautiously.
“I DON’T CARE if he’s a flamingo or not. I just
want you to SAY it and make my friend HAPPY.”
Laurence cleared his throat and put his
wing in the air.
“Yes, Laurence?”
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“I think, maybe,” he said softly, “I’m not a
flamingo.” His voice went up at the end like he
was asking a question, even though he wasn’t.
“I may have made
a mistake. I thought I
was a flamingo, but
now that I’m here and
they’re here, I can see
that we look just a little
bit different. I think that
maybe we’re different
types of birds.” He was
whispering so quietly that all
of us had to lean in to hear what he was saying.
“Do you still want us to say that he’s a
flamingo?” asked the flamingo with the scratchy
voice.
“NO. YOU MAY BE DISMISSED,” I said loudly.
“Thank you very much,” they replied, and
turned around.
145
They all nodded and continued on their way,
wading through the lake.
Laurence picked me up, and we flew to a bench
by some tall trees.
“What was that all about?” he asked in a high-
pitched giggling voice.
“What?” I asked, feeling my wormlike self
returning.
“Good-bye, and remember . . .” I said without
finishing my sentence.
They stopped and turned their heads.
I made them wait a while before continuing.
“Be good.”
146
“You were like a different worm. I’ve never
seen you act like that before.”
“I was inspired by a spider, and I pretended
that I was as big as a tall building.”
“Oh,” said Laurence, who seemed to understand,
but then looked like he really
didn’t know what I was
talking about. “Whatever
it was,” he said, “thanks
for sticking up for me.
You’re really kind.”
He put his wing on
my back to show
his appreciation.
I felt another
feeling that I’d never felt before. It was as if
someone had opened a bottle of soda inside my
head. My face felt fizzy.
“Are you embarrassed?” Laurence asked.
“Your cheeks have gone a strange color.”
147
“I like gherkins because they look like dinosaur
toes,” I said, trying to change the subject. “I don’t
like mustard, though, because it tastes like fire.”
It was overwhelming having so many feelings all
at once.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t like mustard,” I said.
“Oh. But mustard is really good. How can
you not like it?” asked Laurence, taking his
wing away from my back.
“Mustard is the worst!
It’s like eating a . . .”
I stopped in midsentence.
From the corner of my eye
I could see that squirrel
again. It was her, the one
with the terrible teeth.
And she was beatboxing.
“What is she doing here in Lake Nakuru?” asked
Laurence. He’d taken another sandwich from his
feathers and was eating and speaking with his
beak full. He offered me half, but it had mustard
on it, and, as I said before, I really don’t like
mustard.
Chapter Eleven
149
“Maybe she’s on safari with the kangaroos.”
We watched her beatboxing and dancing.
“I taught her how to do that,” I said. “She must
have practiced, because she’s much better than
she was before.”
The squirrel was doing cartwheels in a circle
and full backward body spins in the air. The
humans loved it. They were laughing and making
kissy noises so that she would look at them. Every
now and again she would stop dancing and
scamper over to a person, and they would give her
a peanut.
“I’ve had another thought,” I said with dread.
“Maybe they’re following us — her, the mole, and
that crow. And they’re going to put us in the
cooking pot after all.”
“I think she is just on vacation,” said Laurence
firmly. “She looks too relaxed to be up to any
mischief.” Laurence looked over his shoulder,
just in case.
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The squirrel saw us. She stopped
her acrobatic dance and beatboxing
routine. Then she smiled a toothy
grin while forward-flipping
over to us. I wondered if
Laurence had packed
any peanuts in his feathers.
“Quick,” said Laurence. “Let’s get
out of here!”
“Marcus! Wait!” the squirrel called
out. “I need to say something.”
She’d remembered my name, and she almost
sounded warm and friendly. That was confusing.
Laurence must have been confused too. He had
me dangling from his beak and was standing in
a takeoff position, ready to fly away. He waited
for her to say something else.
“I just wanted to thank both of you for
teaching me how to dance,” she said.
“OK,” said Laurence, dropping me from his
151
beak onto the ground. I wished that he would
remember that he can’t speak and hold me in his
beak at the same time.
“We can be friends if you like. My name is
Jennifer-Peggy — or J-Peg for short.”
“Umm,” said Laurence nervously.
J-Peg continued. “Before meeting you, I was
scrawny and hungry all the time. Then you two
came and taught me how to beatbox and dance,
and it meant that I could move here. Humans give
me tons of peanuts to reward me for my routines.
I’m not hungry anymore thanks to you.”
She did look much healthier now.
“Oh!” Laurence started patting his feathers
down like he was looking for something. “We
don’t seem to have any peanuts with us, but
please take this,” he said, offering her half of his
cheese-and-mustard sandwich. “You must have
been SO hungry to travel all this way just
to get a few peanuts. You poor thing.”
152
J-Peg looked confused, but
she gratefully took the sandwich.
“Thank you very much. That’s
kind of you.” She looked up at us
with a remorseful expression on her
face. “I’m sorry about what happened
with the stew before, with the others.
hungry.”
“That’s OK,” said Laurence, quickly
passing her the rest of the sandwich.
“We wouldn’t want you to go without
any food.”
J-Peg gave us a big smile, and even
though she had awful teeth, she looked
beautiful.
She put the sandwich in her mouth
and scuttled up a big tree. When she got
to the top branch, she waved at us.
Laurence waved back to her.
153
“I didn’t expect
to see her here,”
he said. I nodded
in agreement.
“And will you
look at that!”
said Laurence,
putting his
wing around my
shoulder. “I can
see my neighbors
from home over there,
eating ice cream.” He waved
at them as well, and
they waved back.
“Marcus, it’s like
we’re living in a
movie that is full of
funny coincidences. This is
such a great movie.”
154
Something didn’t feel quite right. So far we’d
seen J-Peg, the kangaroo, some penguins, and
there in front of us were Laurence’s neighbors.
They couldn’t all be on safari. And another funny
thing was that no matter where we were in the
world, everyone spoke perfect English. In worm
school they taught us languages so that we could
speak to worms from other countries. It took me
forever to learn Mandarin.
“Laurence, do you think that perhaps we might
not be in Lake Nakuru after all?”
“Of course we are!” Laurence answered hastily.
He took his wing off my shoulder. “Whatever in
the world makes you think that we’re anywhere
but Lake Nakuru?”
155
“Bernard?”
“Yes?”
“We are in Lake
Nakuru, aren’t we?”
“Hello, Laurence,” said one of Laurence’s
neighbors. He had hopped over to join us.
“Bernard! Hello!” said Laurence, who was
beginning to sweat now.
“Would you like some of my ice cream?”
Bernard asked.
“No, thank you. Are you on safari, Bernard?”
“No,” he said, taking a lick from his
ice cream.
“Oh,” said Laurence.
He looked around.
156
“No, Laurence. We’re at the zoo,” said Bernard
casually.
“The zoo? Oh. Is it a zoo in Lake Nakuru?”
“No,” said Bernard. “It’s a zoo that’s ten
minutes from where we live.”
“Really?” said Laurence. He thought for a
moment. “But it can’t be, because we’ve been
flying for days to get here, and we even flew past
the Eiffel Towers in Paris, which must mean that
we’re in Africa now. And we’ve seen lots of wild
animals as well — the kinds of animals that
only live in Africa.”
157
“I’m not sure why it took you days to get here,
Laurence,” Bernard said, taking another lick from
his ice cream. “Maybe you came the long way
around, through Paris. Or,” he said, tipping his
head to one side to think, “it could be that the
Eiffel Towers that you saw were the transmission
towers. They sort of look like the Eiffel Tower.
Transmission towers are used to carry electricity,
and there are lots of them near where we live.
And as for the animals . . . well . . . you get all
kinds of animals in a zoo.”
“I thought we were in Kenya,”
said Laurence, looking as
though he might cry.
“Well, maybe we are. I’ll
check,” said Bernard. I think
he was trying to make
Laurence feel better.
“TANYA!” he shouted.
“Yes?” asked Tanya. She was eating strawberry
Laurence took the cone.
Instead of taking one lick — which was what
Bernard was offering — he slowly ate the whole
thing while staring into space.
li
c
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c
k
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r
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n
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h
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r
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h
ice cream, and there were drips of it all around
her beak.
“Are we in Kenya?”
“No, Bernard. We’re at the zoo. Why?”
“Just checking,” said Bernard. “Sorry about
that, Laurence. We are at the zoo. Are you sure
you don’t want some of this ice cream?” He put
the cone under Laurence’s beak.
159
Bernard watched Laurence with his beak open.
“If you need to get home,” he said, “just fly over
these trees and keep going straight. You’ll see the
Eiffel Towers, and after two more fields, you’ll get
to our tree.”
“Thank you,” said Laurence, looking at the
ground.
“And another thing . . . we come here all the
time. You can come with us on the next visit
if you like.”
“Thank you,” said Laurence, still looking at
the ground.
Bernard hopped back to the others. They were
talking and looking over at us in between licks of
their ice cream.
Except for Bernard, who didn’t have any ice
cream.
Laurence and I were sitting on the ground.
I couldn’t believe it. We had just been flying
around in giant circles the whole time, going
nowhere. I thought I knew how to navigate
Chapter
Twelve
161
in my sleep, and Laurence thought he had
learned how to sleep-fly. There was a moment
when both of us felt on top of the world, where
anything was possible with our shared secret
genius skills. But it turned out that we were
both still as useless as when we had first met.
The whole experience had been a total waste
of time.
Laurence was probably really depressed
now. It was my job to try to think of something
helpful and supportive to say. I couldn’t think
of anything.
“Do you have any sandwiches with pickled
onions left?” I asked.
Laurence rummaged in his feathers with
his wing, looking for extra sandwiches. “No.
I gave the last sandwich to that squirrel because
I thought that she’d walked all the way to
Lake Nakuru — for a peanut.”
Without meaning to, I laughed.
162
“We’ve just been flying in circles for DAYS!” he
said. “And THEN, when we got here and saw the
flamingos, they were REALLY rude.”
Laurence looked at me. “It’s not funny,” he said.
Then he started laughing. I’m n
ot sure why,
but neither of us could stop laughing, and people
stopped to look at us. Laurence wheezed and
thumped the ground with his wing.
163
“They were SO rude,” I said in between
laughing fits. “I can’t believe that you wanted to
be a flamingo. No, I can’t believe that you thought
that you were a flamingo.”
“But I do look like a flamingo,” Laurence said.
I laughed so much at this that I thought my
stomach might explode.
“You don’t look anything like a flamingo,”
I said. “You look like a chicken.”
I was bent over double, but when I finally
finished laughing, I
noticed that Laurence
had stopped laughing
a while ago.
164
“Do you think that I look like a chicken?” he
asked seriously.
“No . . . you don’t, Laurence,” I said, suddenly
worried that I might have hurt his feelings. “Well,
you do sort of look like a chicken.”
Then I got annoyed.
“What’s wrong with looking like a chicken?
All of your neighbors look like chickens, and
there’s nothing wrong with them. I don’t know
why you want to be something different. You’re
great just as you are.”
“Am I?” he asked.
I’d just said something nice to Laurence
without thinking about it in advance. Was
Laurence really great?
“Yes, you are great, Laurence,” I said.
“Oh,” he said.
I wasn’t used to having conversations like this.
I waited for him to change the subject. But
then, suddenly, tons of words came out of
my mouth. “It doesn’t matter that you look like a
little round chicken. What matters is that you are
kind. You could have eaten me for breakfast, but
you didn’t. You told me about your dream to fly
to Lake Nakuru, and then you took me there, sort
of. I was scared at first and only agreed to come
because I didn’t have any choice, but in the end
it turned out to be much more fun than staying
at home, digging holes in the mud. I prefer being
with you to digging holes in the mud, Laurence.”