We fight for the joystick. He has crazy-eyebrow power, but I’m stronger.
The wheelchair stops.
I win.
Straining, I push him back into the building. The nurses flood around us, and Mom, and the lady. Everyone fusses over Mr. Marconi, but they also say, “Thank you, little boy,” and “Ty! What in the world?!” and “If you hadn’t been here, just think what could have happened!”
I put my hands on my thighs and lean over, breathing hard. I’m not a little boy is the first thing I think, but it doesn’t bother me too much because I know adults are bad at guessing ages.
The second thing I think is, I did it. I saved Mr. Marconi. Maybe he didn’t want to be saved, but I saved him anyway—and it did feel good.
The third thing I think is, Joseph.
Thinking about him makes me sad and happy. Sad because our best-friend-ness isn’t back to normal, but happy because it can’t be all the way gone, not if he’s the first person I want to tell about my crazy afternoon.
And he is.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mom calls Dad from the nursing home parking lot and tells him the whole story. She laughs as she tells it, and I hear Dad laughing on the other end. I’m not sure how I feel about this, because I didn’t know it was a funny story.
But as I listen, I start to smile. I guess it was pretty funny, with Mr. Marconi scowling and motoring forward and the nurse flapping her arms around.
If Mr. Marconi had gotten hit by a car, it wouldn’t be. But he didn’t.
“Absolutely,” Mom says after she’s reached the end of the story. “I know. I agree!” She listens for a moment, then laughs again. “If you say so. Bye, baby. Love you, too.”
Mom ends the call and twists to face me. Her eyes are soft and shiny. The softness is because she loves me, and the shininess is because her very own son rescued an old man in a wheelchair from escaping from Collindale Care Center.
Her very. Own. Son.
“Your dad is very proud of you, and so am I,” Mom says. “In fact, I think we should go out and celebrate.”
“Yeah!” I say.
“Your dad’s busy, but how about I take you to Chipotle for dinner? Sandra and Winnie can fend for themselves.”
“Can I get a Coke even though it’s after two o’clock? Can we invite Joseph?”
Mom laughs. “No to the Coke, but yes to Joseph.” She taps some buttons on her phone and hands it to me. “Here—you do the asking. If he says yes, I can talk to his mom after.”
Joseph does want to come with us, and we drive straight from the nursing home to pick him up. He sprints out of his house wearing his fuzzy red hat, and when he slides into the backseat, he grins. I grin back. I’m glad it’s just the two of us. I mean, Mom and Baby Maggie are here, but they aren’t kids. They aren’t Lexie or Taylor or Chase or Hannah or any of those people.
“Hi!” he says.
“Hi!” I say, and since it’s the first time Joseph has EVER MET MAGGIE, who’s sitting between us because the middle seat is the safest place for her car seat, I make her say “hi” to him, too.
I pick up her bitsy hand and flap it at Joseph. “Hi!” I say in a baby voice.
Joseph waves. Baby Maggie kicks her cute little feet.
“She sure is pink,” Joseph says.
I tilt my head. “I guess she is.”
Maggie pluhs at him, which means that she poofs out her lips and goes pluh and spits out a tiny spit bubble.
“That means she likes you,” I say. “Also, she has hair sprouts now, which she didn’t even a week ago.” I fluff up a tuft of Maggie’s pale brown hair. “See?”
“Me too,” Joseph says, and he pulls his hat partway off.
“Awesome,” I say. His hair is super short, but unlike Maggie’s hair, which so far grows only in patches, Joseph’s short hair covers his whole head. He looks like an army guy.
After that, Maggie wiggles and Mom drives, and I tell Joseph the Mr. Marconi story.
“Where did Mr. Marconi want to go?” Joseph asks.
“I don’t know. Back to his old house?”
“But he can’t go back to his old house,” Joseph says, but there’s a bit of a question in his eyes.
“I guess not. I guess he’s too old.”
“He probably can’t live on his own anymore,” Mom says, keeping her eyes on the road. “That’s usually why people move into nursing homes.”
“Or they get moved in there by someone else,” I say, remembering the lady in the hall who’d dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex.
Mom nods. “Things change. Life goes on. It’s not always easy.”
I shift. Joseph fiddles with his seat belt. Then he brings up LEGOs, because we both love LEGOs. From there we go to Origami Yoda and chocolate-covered potato chips, which I’ve never heard of.
“Really?” Joseph says. “You’ve really never heard of them?”
“I’ve really never heard of them.”
Lexie, if she knew about something that no one else did, would be a show-off about it. Like, she’d brag about how good chocolate-covered potato chips were to make the rest of us feel like we were missing out.
But Joseph isn’t Lexie. He sits up taller and says he’ll bring me some tomorrow.
At Chipotle, Joseph and I both order chicken quesadillas and chips, and Mom lets us get Izzes for our drinks, since they don’t have caffeine. We both pick the orange kind, which is called Sparkling Clementine.
The guy at the cash register asks if Joseph and I each want a rubber bracelet. He has a big plastic container of them, and I wonder if the bracelets are like Chipotle’s version of a kids’ meal prize.
Joseph and I look at each other. “Sure,” we say.
I take a blue one and slip it on. It says BUILDING A BETTER COMMUNITY.
Joseph picks a red one. It says CHANGING THE WORLD ONE DAY AT A TIME.
The guy behind the cash register says, “Looking good, dudes.”
We eat on the patio. Mom and Baby Maggie sit at one table, and Joseph and I sit at another. The cheese in our quesadillas is warm and melty, and our Izzes are just the right amount of cold. I take a swig and let out a loud burp.
Joseph laughs. He takes a sip of his Izze and tries to burp, but no burp comes out. He tries again. Nothing.
“You have to swallow a sip of air,” I say.
“I know, but I can’t.”
“Like this,” I say, and I show him. I don’t even drink any of my Izze, and still I make a nice, loud burp.
“Ty,” Mom says from the other table.
“Sorry!” I say. I giggle, expecting Joseph to giggle back. Instead, he stares at the iron picnic table.
I put down my drink. “Um . . . well . . . can you crack your knuckles?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Plus, I’m not allowed.”
“Taylor can,” Joseph says. “Taylor cracks his knuckles all the time.”
“Yeah, and it’s annoying.”
“And he can make himself burp. So can Chase and John and every boy in our class. Even Lexie can make herself burp.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Does everyone think I’m weird?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“I can’t burp. I can’t crack my knuckles. I didn’t even know about Lester,” he says unhappily. “Why didn’t you tell me about Lester?”
Lester, our class snake? Again, all I can say is “Huh?!”
He tugs his fuzzy red hat lower over his head. I have a just-out-of-reach feeling, like there’s something I should be figuring out. Something I could be figuring out, if I could stretch up and pluck the answer from the sky.
Instead, a big black crow swoops down and plucks Joseph’s quesadilla off the table. And then the crow takes off with it! Gone!
Another crow meets t
he first crow in the air. It snaps its beak and steals some for itself.
“Wow,” I say.
Joseph’s eyes are big. Together, we watch the crows.
“Check out all the crows by the trash can,” he says.
“Whoa.”
The metal trash can is overflowing with Chipotle wrappers and Dairy Queen cups and even some Dairy Queen unfinished ice-cream cones, and at least a dozen birds are fighting over the scraps of food. Maybe more.
Some are crows. Some are just regular birds. The regular birds are smaller than the crows, but they’re quicker, and good at darting in for the fast grab.
“That one bird never gets any,” he says, pointing at a small brown bird a couple feet from the trash can.
“Poor bird,” I say.
The brown bird hops closer to the trash can, but a bigger bird flies down and lands in front of him. The brown bird hops to the left. A crow caws and says, in bird language, “Get out of here, buddy.” With its black flapping wings, the crow shoos the brown bird off.
“He can’t fly,” Joseph says. “That’s why.”
I study the bird. One of his wings flutters, but the other one doesn’t. He’s able to hop around, but he never leaves the ground.
“You’re right,” I say.
Then it soaks in.
That bird can’t fly.
I glance at Mom, who’s talking on her phone and using her foot to rock Maggie in her car seat. I slowly stand up.
“Hey, Joseph,” I whisper.
He’s already with me. He stands up slowly and silently, too.
We both put our fingers to our lips.
We are going to catch that bird.
CHAPTER EIGHT
One good thing about Lexie is that she taught me how to tiptoe while I’m wearing sneakers. The trick is to tiptoe inside my sneakers. Most people try to put their shoes down quietly, but the real way is to put your toes down quietly inside your shoes, and that makes your shoes go down quietly, too.
Joseph is also good at tiptoeing.
We approach the trash can from opposite directions. Animals know you’re creeping up on them if you’re obvious about it, so I gaze at the blue sky and think thoughts like, Hello, blue sky. What a pretty color. And look! The sun’s starting to set! Good job, sun.
I think these thoughts loudly. My footsteps are quiet, and my thoughts are loud, and this way the birds can go about their business without having the bird-thought of, Yikes! Big thing coming! FLY!
We close in on the brown bird. We are so amazingly sneaky until a crow flaps its wings and caws, right in Joseph’s face.
“Ahhhh!” Joseph cries.
The birds fly away in one big mass, and there goes our sneakiness. We burst out laughing, even though I’m sure we’ve scared every last bird away.
“Custard!” I say.
“Wait,” Joseph says. “Look. Over there.”
I scan the ground. The brown bird isn’t gone. He’s just hiding behind the trash can. We move slowly toward him, and he hops as fast as he can. He tries to fly, but his wings don’t work right.
Still, he’s quicker than I am, because when I lunge for him, my hands close on empty air.
“Almost!” Joseph says.
“Try again,” I say.
We circle the bird. He definitely can’t fly, or he’d be gone already.
“We’re not going to hurt you, bird,” I tell him, since our cover has already been blown. I bet he’s scared with the two of us looming over him. I don’t want him to be.
“Boys?” Mom calls. She has one hand on Baby Maggie’s car seat and the other on her phone, which she’s holding to her chest. “What are you two up to?”
Mothers are like birds. It’s better, sometimes, if they don’t know exactly what you’re thinking.
“Just playing,” I say, which is true. We’re having fun, and that counts as playing. There’s no need to say, “And the game we are playing is called Let’s Catch a Bird.”
“All right, well, I’m chatting with your aunt Lucy,” Mom tells us.
Her remark might seem random, but it’s not. Mom has her own Mom-language, just like the birds have bird-language and Joseph and I have boy-language.
I’m pretty good at Mom-language, though. What she’s really saying is, So please let me keep chatting, because I don’t get the chance to talk to Aunt Lucy nearly enough. Life is so busy! And plus, Baby Maggie! So stay out of trouble and let me have a few minutes to myself. Will you do that for me, boys?
I give her a thumbs-up. “Tell her ‘hi’ for me!”
Mom smiles. She puts her phone back to her ear and I hear her say, “Luce? I’m back. Now about this Sam guy . . .”
The birds that flew away are beginning to return. They pick at the leftovers in the trash can, but they make sure to keep an eye on me and Joseph.
“Sure is a nice night,” I say casually. “Don’t you think?”
“Huh?” Joseph says.
“And the sunset—isn’t it beautiful?” From the side of my mouth, I say, “Play it cool. Don’t let the crows make you go, ‘Ahhhhh!’ again.”
“I didn’t mean to the first time.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just saying.” I hook my thumbs through my belt loops and bounce lightly on the balls of my feet. La la la, just out for a stroll.
In my casual, talking-about-the-sunset tone, I say, “You walk toward me, and I’ll walk toward you. If we keep Fernando between us, then he can’t get away.”
“Fernando?”
“Don’t. Laugh. Didn’t we just cover this?”
“Fernando,” Joseph states.
“Yes. Fernando. Now come on.”
I step toward Fernando. His sugar eyes blink, and he hops toward Joseph. Joseph steps closer, and Fernando hops back toward me. He chirps, and Joseph and I look at each other. We grin.
Fernando hops back again and lands on my toe. Eeek! Fernando is on my toe! Joseph drops to his knees. His hands fly out and close around Fernando, and . . . omigosh! He has him! Joseph has Fernando!!!
“You did it!” I cry.
“I did!” Joseph says.
“You caught a bird, a real live bird! And Joseph, that is way cooler than burping!”
Joseph is so surprised by this news that his hands fall open and Fernando drops to the ground. He lands on the concrete with a splumph.
Joseph and I suck in our breath.
“IS HE DEAD?” Joseph asks in a too-loud whisper.
“I DON’T KNOW!” I loud-whisper back.
Joseph gulps. “Fernando?”
I squat and say, “Please be alive. Okay, Fernando? Please?”
Fernando twitches.
I hold perfectly still.
Fernando does a full-body quiver, and just like that he’s back on his feet and hopping away in his extremely fast-hopping way.
“CATCH HIM!” Joseph and I yell.
It’s a mad scramble. Joseph’s elbow hits my eye, and my knee hits Joseph’s shin. Then my knee lands on the asphalt—ow!—and it occurs to me in a far back part of my mind that I’ll have another bruise, and possibly a nice bloody scrape.
Fernando hops and chirps—
And Joseph and I lunge and grab—
And this time I catch him. Fernando, not Joseph. His body is warm. His heart goes drub-drub-drub-drub-drub beneath my fingers.
My heart races, too, because . . . a bird! My very own bird! He flutters against my cupped hands, feathers and feet and a tiny sharp beak. It tickles. I’m suddenly afraid that I might drop him.
“Can I borrow your hat?” I ask Joseph.
“Why?”
“To put Fernando in, and also . . .” I glance at Mom, who’s still on the phone. She’s holding on to Baby Maggie’s foot and laughing at whatever Aunt Lucy is saying. She’s n
ot paying attention to Joseph and me at all.
“Well, just in case,” I say. “Only until I get Fernando home. Then I’ll find someplace better.”
“But you’re dropping me off first.”
“So?”
“So if Fernando is in my hat, I won’t have it for tomorrow.”
“So?”
Joseph looks away. He’s either frustrated or embarrassed or both, and I’m pretty sure I know why. I want to tell him he doesn’t need a hat, and that he can be bald or partway bald or not at all bald. Whatever he wants.
Instead, I say, “It’s so soft and comfy-looking.”
Joseph fingers the edge of his hat. I stay quiet.
He tugs it off and hands it to me. “Oh, fine.”
I ease Fernando into Joseph’s hat, and my heart swells. He’s so tiny and cute in there.
“Thanks,” I say.
Joseph rubs the back of his head. “You’re welcome, but he better not poop in there.”
CHAPTER NINE
Winnie thinks we should call Fernando “Sugar Daddy” instead of Fernando. I tell her that’s not going to happen.
Mom says, for the fourth or tenth time that keeping Fernando isn’t going to happen, either. She’s so sorry, blah blah blah, but it just isn’t feasible, sweetie.
I bow my head and don’t listen. Plus, feasible. What’s feasible? What I want is pleasable.
“Ty . . .” Mom says.
I can feel her looking at Dad, who is on her side because that’s what they always do. They always have to be on each other’s side.
We’re in the den, having a family conference. I’m on the couch, and Fernando is in a shoebox in my lap. Joseph’s hat is in the shoebox, too, like a fuzzy red blanket. Fernando hasn’t pooped or peed on it.
Winnie is sitting next to me. Sandra is sitting next to Winnie. Mom and Dad are standing by the fireplace, and Baby Maggie is in Dad’s arms.
“Ty, bud, he’s sick,” Dad says.
“So? That means we should be nice to him, not say, ‘Okay, and good-bye now.’”
“It’s not that easy,” Dad says.
“Why not?”