Friends of a Feather (3 page)

I feel this same way at bedtime every so often, after Mom and Dad kiss me and say good night and then go away. It's a feeling of being lonely, and it comes to me with a shock that I miss Joseph.

I miss him even though here he is beside me. I DON'T
KNOW
WHY.

I look at Joseph. Joseph looks at me.

“Found him!” Chase proclaims, holding Lester in the air.

And
yay
for Lester, I guess, but I still feel lost.

O
n Wednesday, I come up with an idea. Actually, two ideas.

First, I go to my closet and pull out my secret candy bag, which is filled with candy from birthday parties and Halloween and Valentine's Day. It's basically filled with any candy that comes my way, and I don't even have to eat it to get the “feel better” feeling it gives me.

I like to feel how heavy it is and gaze inside at the different colored wrappers. I like to dribble fun-size Snickers and Dum Dums and Jolly Ranchers through my fingers. It's like I'm a pirate and the candy is my gold.

This morning, I dig around in my candy bag until I find my special cinnamon lollipop. The lollipop part is round, like a Ping-Pong ball, only it's red instead of white. Its wrapper says, “WARNING! CONTAINS FIERY CINNAMON FLAMES!”, which is how I know what flavor it is.

I go downstairs and put the lollipop in my backpack.

Now for the second part of my idea. I root through the junk drawer until I find the long stretchy Ace bandage I like to use when I'm wounded. I find Winnie, give her the bandage, and stick out my arm.

“Will you?” I ask.

“Oh my gosh,” she says. “Please tell me you're not pretending to be Maxine.”

“I'm not!”

“And yet you want me to wrap your arm up like you've got a cast.”

Yes. Well. But I'm not pretending to be
Maxine
. I'm just being someone—me—with a broken arm.

Winnie snorts and takes the bandage. “Forearm, elbow, or both?”

“Both.”

Sandra glances over from the sink. She's loading the dishwasher since Mom is upstairs with Baby Maggie. “Why are you pretending to have a broken arm?”

“Because of Joseph,” Winnie says, answering for me.

My face gets hot. “No.”

“Yeah-huh, because he's getting all the attention and you want some, too.”

“No! I
hate
attention!”

Winnie and Sandra look at each other. They laugh.

“Sure, tiger,” Sandra says. “Whatever you say.”

I clamp my lips together. What I'm going to say is nothing, because I'm mad at them, because they've gotten me all confused again.

When I had the idea of bandaging my arm, I didn't think,
Ha-ha, and now I will steal all of Joseph's attention!

I thought,
Ooo! If I show up with a broken arm, then at least half the class will switch from Joseph and his red hat to me and my cast. Half will bother him, and half will bother me, which means the bothering will be split between us. Which means more of Joseph will be up for grabs. Yeah!

“Hey, it's your arm,” Winnie says. “You can do whatever you want.”

I know I can, but she doesn't understand. It's not me doing whatever I want. It's me trying to even things out. I guess I won't
mind
if everyone crowds around me and says, “Oh no! Ty! Your poor arm!” I won't yell at them or anything.

But I'm almost totally positive that the
real
reason for my cast is to get more Joseph-time for me, and more Ty-time for Joseph. More Joseph-and-Ty-time, period.

Winnie circles the bandage up and over my arm. She tugs the end tight and tucks it under the top layer. “There. Beautiful.”

Sandra comes over. She nods her approval and says, “We should sign it.”

“Ooo, yeah,” Winnie says.

Sandra grabs some Sharpies, plonks them on the kitchen table, and calls me over. Winnie joins us. I'm still a little bit mad at Winnie for not knowing the truth of what's inside me, but I sit down with them at the table.

“L-o-l-a” Sandra writes on the bandage, using fancy, loopy cursive.

“Who's Lola?” I say.

“It's to give you an air of mystery,” Sandra says. “‘Who
is
this Lola?' your friends will ask. ‘Is she French?'”

Winnie puts her hand to her chest. “And you'll gaze off into the distance like this”—she makes her expression dreamy—“and say, ‘Ah,
oui
. Lola,
mon petit chou
! How I miss her!'”

“What's a
p'tee shoe
?” I ask.

“A cabbage,” Winnie says. “And now, some normal names.” She picks a red Sharpie and writes “BOB” in blocky capital letters. With a green Sharpie, she writes “Al.”

“Al?”
Sandra says. “Who names their kid
Al
?”

“Who names their kid
Lola
?” Winnie says. Switching to a blue Sharpie, she writes “Serena.” She twists my arm over, and Pamela, Melyssa, and Jenny all sign my cast. Jenny adds “Feel better!” and throws in a smiley face.

I admire my cast. It looks awesome.

“Now listen, Ty,” Winnie says. “Nobody's going to believe you actually broke your arm.” She holds up her finger. “But! They
might
believe you sprained your wrist or something.”

“What's your cover story?” Sandra asks.

I tap my chin. The last time I wore my bandage, it was because I was a spy who'd gotten bitten by a poisonous earwig right on the ankle. Earwigs like arms just as much as ankles, I bet.

“A
believable
cover story,” Winnie says.

“But—”

“Ty
 
.
 . .” she says.

So no earwigs. Fine.

Oh! But yesterday after school, I did some bird-catching in the backyard. It was because of Chase and how he captured Lester and thrust him into the air, crying, “Found him!”

I imagined doing the same thing, only with a bird instead of a snake, and without the thrusting part, since squeezing a bird tightly isn't a good idea. I made up a whole movie in my head of how it would go.

First, I would cup the bird gently and hand it to Joseph.

“Here,” I'd say.

“Wow,” he'd say. He'd look at the bird, and then he'd lift his head and look at me. His expression would be happy and there wouldn't be any weirdness between us at all. “Wow, Ty. Thanks!”

When I think about it now, my movie doesn't make much sense.

But that doesn't mean I'm giving up on catching a bird.

Yesterday, I did all kinds of creeping and leaping and being-sneaky-ing, but all I ended up with was a scratch on my arm.

Scratches
are
real, though. Realer than earwigs.

I tell Sandra and Winnie that my scratch is my cover story.

Sandra says, “Hmm.”

Winnie says, “Yeah, because I didn't see any scratches when I wrapped you up.”

“There is one,” I assure her. “I snuck up on this one very cute bird, and I did a flying tackle, and I landed on a stick.”

“Birds are hard to catch,” Winnie admits.

“Sticks, on the other hand . . .” Sandra says.

“At school, make it more than a scratch,” Winnie says. She purses her lips. “Tell them you bruised your bone.”

“Can you do that?” I say. “Bruise your bone?”

“Sure,” Winnie says. “Happens all the time.”

Mom comes downstairs carrying Baby Maggie. “Girls? Ty?” she says. “Shouldn't you be heading to school?” She notices my bandage. “Oh, honey, what happened?”

Sandra, Winnie, and I answer at the same time:

“Gangrene,” Sandra says.

“Just a flesh wound,” Winnie says.

“I bruised my bone,” I say.

Mom takes it all in. “Ah. So the bandage is just for fun.”

“No,”
I say. “You don't need to take me to the hospital, but my bandage is
not
for fun.”

Changing the subject seems like a better idea than trying to explain yet again, so I hop up, grab my backpack, and say, “Hey, what's a weenis?”

Mom, Sandra, and Winnie swivel their heads toward me. Maggie grabs a handful of Mom's hair.

Dad jogs down the stairs wearing his man shoes. He glances from face to face. “What'd I miss?”

“I asked what a weenis is,” I say.

“The tip of your elbow,” he answers.

Mom and the girls swivel their heads toward him.

“For real?” I say.

“For real,” he says.

Winnie scrunches her nose. “Weenis means the tip of your elbow?”

“Joel, how on earth do you know that?” Mom says.

“Sweetheart, I know everything,” he says. He winks at me. I grin.

Sandra puts down her phone, which she's been tapping on. “Holy moly, it does. I just looked it up.”

So now I'm armed with my giant lollipop, my broken arm, and my weenises. Two of them, since I have two elbows.

I'm prepared for anything.

I
want to give Joseph the giant lollipop right away, but when I get to school, Mrs. Webber has already started morning meeting and I have to scurry to sit down with the others. The kids sit on the floor and Mrs. Webber sits in the chair from her desk, which she rolls to the center of the room. These days, she asks someone to crawl forward and lock the wheels, because last week her chair rolled out from under her. She fell backward, and her wooden clog flew off her foot and hit Lexie smack in the head. That's how Lexie got her bruise.

Mrs. Webber launches into her “Here's what we're going to do today” speech, and I scooch toward Joseph.

“
Look,”
I whisper, holding out the arm with the cast on it.

His eyes widen. He reaches out to touch the bandage, then changes his mind and draws back his hand. “Are you okay?”

“I bruised my bone.”

“Your
bone
?”

I catch Mrs. Webber glancing at us, so I sit up taller and put on my Good Listener face. “I'll tell you later,” I say out of the side of my mouth. “Be sure to sit with me at lunch.”

He gives me a thumbs-up.

After morning meeting, we do math. Then comes reading time. I sit at my desk and read
Sink or Swim
, which is about a brother and sister who fall into fairy tales and do funny things. Joseph is at his desk reading
Darth Paper Strikes Back
. Taylor is at the computer and taking one of the tests that says either yes, you really did read a certain book, or no, you didn't and you only said that you did.

“I passed!” he says when his score flashes up on the screen. He sounds amazed. “Mrs. Webber, Mrs. Webber, I passed!”

“Taylor, that's wonderful,” Mrs. Webber says. She gives him a smile, because reading isn't easy for him. She says, “Class?”

“Hooray, hooray, hooray!” everyone cries. That's what we do when anyone passes a reading test.

Taylor beams. I'm glad for him. Then something hits my cheek, and my fingers go to my face.
Ow
.

What was the thing, and where did it come from?

I hear a whistle. It's Lexie, who jerks her head to say,
By your feet, dumb-dumb.

I reach down and scoop up a small paper airplane. It's a good one, with sharp creases, equal-sized wings, and a pointy nose that's pointy even after crashing into me.

I'm impressed, because I am not the best at making paper airplanes. Instead of zooming through the air, my paper airplanes do nosedives or sad, floppy loop de loops. I'm good at other things, though. I can fling a playing card so fast that it slices through a Kleenex. Also, I can make George Washington's head turn into a mushroom by folding a dollar bill a special way. And I know
how
to make paper airplanes. They just never turn out right.

Lexie whistles again. She pretends to open a book, which is her silent way of saying,
Unfold the note, stupid-head
.

Oh. Okay. I unfold the paper airplane. It says,
What happened to your arm? xxx, Elmoneyfreshdogg
.

Right away a second paper airplane zings me. This one says,
Is that your fake bandage? We're not allowed to bring toys to school, you know. xxx, Moo Moo
.

My ribs tighten and I don't look her way. I forgot that she and I played with my Ace bandage one time when she came home with me after school. I wrapped her ankle up. Then she wrapped my ankle up. Then I wrapped her face up like a mummy, only with room for her to breathe. Then she wrapped me up like a mummy, only without room to breathe.

But bruised bones are real. They happen all the time. And Ace bandages aren't toys.

“
Aren't you going to answer?
” Lexie whispers.

I read my book. Or, I stare at the pages anyway.

Since it's a warm day, Mrs. Webber says we can eat lunch outside. I hurry to my backpack and dig out the giant lollipop, which I stick in my front pocket. It makes a lump. Then I grab my sack lunch. I'm careful to use my good arm and not my hurt arm, in case anyone's watching. But I'm no longer sure the bandage was a good idea.

“Is your arm okay?” Joseph asks after we claim a picnic table. “Does it hurt?”

I wave off his question and pull out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

He pulls out a Go-GURT.

“I'm fine,” I tell him. “I have a small flesh wound, but no one's worried about gangrene.”

His eyebrows fly up. “Gangrene?”

Oops. Shouldn't have mentioned gangrene, not if the point is to be fine and
not
talk about my arm. I take a bite of my sandwich—a big bite—and use my chewing time to try and find something else to talk about.

Oh! Winnie told me a joke a few days ago, and I still remember it. I swallow and say, “Hey, Joseph, did you know that in Africa, a minute passes
every sixty seconds
?”

“Really?” Joseph says. “Cool.”

Then he frowns.

I wait, fighting back my smile.

A grin splits his face. “Ha-ha. I get it.”

“A minute passes every sixty seconds,” I say, pleased. “Because a minute
is
sixty seconds.”

“Yeah, I get it,” he repeats. He squeezes out a bite of Go-GURT. “But for real. What happened to your arm?”

“Well . . . um . . .”

“Did you fall?”

“Kind of,” I say, and then some part of me makes me decide to just tell the truth. And the second I decide that, I feel better. Lighter. Plus, it
is
my arm, after all. I can do what I want, just like Winnie said.

I put down my sandwich and lean in. “I'm going to tell you something, but I need you to promise—
promise
—not to tell anyone else.”

“Okay.”

“Yesterday, I was out catching a bird for Baby Maggie—”

“Did you catch one?”

“No, but I almost did. But anyway, I might have scratched my arm, and might
might
mean yes, and that
might
be the reason, you know, for . . .”

“For your bandage,” Joseph says. He doesn't seem mad. He just seems interested. “Is it a bad scratch?”

“Well . . . not exactly,” I say.

“Did it bleed?”

I giggle. “Um . . . not exactly?”

He giggles with me. “Did it even break the skin?”

“Um . . . not exactly?”

“What about your bone? Is your bone at least bruised?”

“
Well
 . . .” I say, stretching it out to be silly, and then we finish together:

“Not exactly!”

A
bum bum bum
noise reaches my ears. It's the sound of feet marching our way. Too many feet. The feet in the front belong to Lexie, and my stomach clenches.

I talk to Joseph fast and low. “But don't tell. You promised, remember? And especially don't tell Lexie.”

Joseph glances at the marchers. They're getting closer. “Then we need to talk about something else. We need to be talking when they get here.”

“Right. Yes. Um, nose hair?”

“Earwax?”

“No—shoehorns! My dad has a shoehorn, and when you blow it, it goes, ‘
Shooooooe!
'”

“What goes ‘
shoooo
'?” Lexie says.

“A shoehorn?” I say.

Joseph and I laugh. Lexie narrows her eyes. Elizabeth is with her, and Hannah and John and Chase and Silas and Taylor. They all squeeze into our table, which is only meant for four people.

Actually, it's only meant for me and Joseph.

“Don't believe him, people,” Lexie says. “A shoehorn does not go ‘
shoo
.'”

“What
is
a shoehorn?” Elizabeth whispers to Hannah.

Lexie puts her hand up to tell them to hush.

“We want to know how you got hurt,” she says, jabbing my bandaged arm.

“He bruised his bone,” Joseph says.

Lexie rolls her eyes. “
Riiiight.
And who are all these people who signed their names?”

“Well . . . they're Chloe and Bob and Serena,” I say.

“Al?” Lexie says. She turns over my arm.
“Lola?”

“Lexie, you're being too rough,” Joseph says. “You need to be gentle.”

“Or what? I'll bruise his bone more? Unwrap your arm and show us, because I know bruises, believe me.”

My body gets hot on the inside and prickly cold on the outside.

“You can't see a bruised bone,” Joseph says. “Right, Ty?”

He's trying hard. But Lexie will try harder. I know she will, and she'll never give up, and now lunch is ruined. Joseph didn't ruin it. Lexie did. Or maybe I did by wearing this stupid bandage in the first place.

I leave. I get up and walk away from the picnic table altogether.

“Ty, why are you leaving?” Joseph asks.

“Don't go after him,” Lexie says.

“But—”

“Joseph, sit,” Lexie commands. “If Ty wants alone time, let him have alone time.”

Taylor says something about his boogers, and Elizabeth says, “Nasty.”

“But where are you going, Ty?” Joseph calls.

I don't answer, and pretty soon his voice blends with all the others.

I go to my private spot under the play structure. I scoot on my bottom until I'm all the way in, and then I lean against a metal pole that's part of the bouncy bridge.

I unwrap the bandage from my arm. I dig through the dry sand on top until I get to the damper sand underneath. I always get to damp sand eventually, and when I do, that's when I know I've gone deep enough.

I scoop and scoop until I've got the right size hole. I roll up the bandage and shove it in. I pile the wet sand on top of it, and then I fill in the rest with dry sand. I push my hair out of my eyes and examine my work.
Hmm
. It looks pretty good, but I sprinkle some small rocks around for good measure.

I rest my head on my arms. I'll stay here until Mrs. Webber calls us in, I decide. If Lexie wants me to have alone time so much, then I will.

“You have sand in your hair,” someone says.

My head flies up.

“Your hands and knees are sandy, too,” the someone says. It's Breezie. She's sitting farther back in a shady spot. There are shadows all over her.

“I know,” I say. “It's a playground.” My heart is racing. “What are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?”

We stare at each other. Neither one of us wants to bring up Lexie. Neither of us wants to bring up Joseph.

Breezie looks away first, but she pretends she didn't lose the staring contest by gesturing at my front pocket.

“What's that lump?”

I pull out the giant red lollipop. It feels like a month since I got it out of my candy bag. A year.

“Can I have it?” Breezie asks.

Well. I don't know the rule about this. I brought the lollipop for Joseph, but Joseph isn't here.

Breezie is.

And she's a girl.

And her hair is pretty and long.

“I won't tell,” she says. I know she's talking about the Ace bandage, not the lollipop.

I make my arm as straight as a stick and hold out the lollipop.

“I was going to give it to you anyway,” I say.

Her eyes are sad, but she halfway smiles. “Thanks.”