Friends of a Feather (2 page)

J
oseph!” I call when I see him.

He turns at my voice. He's surrounded by other kids, and his face is shining and happy, and my first thought is that he is the sun, because he's at the center of things. He's the sun, and the kids gathered around him are the planets and stars and space junk and stuff.

My second thought is that he must be embarrassed of his hair, because he's wearing his red woolly hat, which is the same hat he wore last fall when he got sick. He was absent a lot to go get treatments, and the treatments made him bald.

My third thought is,
So?
Because when he got put in the hospital for real, Mom took me to visit him almost every week, and I saw his bald head then. I thought he looked cool. And as he got better, and his hair started growing back, I saw his
fuzzy
head. I thought he looked cool then, too.

“Ty!” he calls back to me. His smile makes him light up even more.

I grin and hurry toward him, but I stop before I fully reach him. I'm not sure why. I know I'm still grinning, because my cheeks are tight, but for a second it's more of a frozen grin than a real grin.

It's strange. Joseph is finally back, and for some reason I feel shy.

I push harder on my smile and tell my legs to move.

“Out of the way, people!” I say to the kids circled around him. John makes room, and so does Chase. But Lexie, who was my loaner best friend while Joseph was gone, edges closer to Joseph instead of farther away.

“You're really here!” I say to Joseph.

“I know!” Joseph says back. “So are you!”

That makes me laugh, and my shyness melts away. Joseph is still Joseph, and I'm still me. He's wearing a shirt I've never seen before, but that's the only unexpectedness.

“
I
gave him that,” Lexie says, as if she grew mind-reading powers when I wasn't watching. “My mom took me to visit him last night, and I gave him that shirt to say ‘welcome back.'”

“Oh,” I say. I take a longer look. Joseph's shirt, which Lexie gave him, has an octopus on it with a big head and googly eyes. The octopus's arms have suckers on them that make me think
ploop ploop ploop
.

For a shirt, it's sort of pretty awesome, and I'm jealous that Lexie was the one who gave it to him. I wish it was a babyish shirt instead, or dumb, so that later Joseph could tell me his mom made him wear it. Except no, because that would be like saying I wished Joseph's shirt was dumb. That I wanted Joseph, my best friend, to be wearing a dumb shirt.

Lexie smirks, and I imagine a cartoon picture of the octopus going
ploop ploop ploop
all over her head. There could be a speech bubble that showed her saying, “
OH NO, OCTOPUS POOP!
”

I grab Joseph's arm. “Did Mrs. Webber tell you where to sit yet?” I ask. “Let's ask if you can be by me.”

“Too late,” Chase says. He points to the desk next to his. Joseph's stuff is on top of it, including his backpack with the broken strap that he and I fixed with a rubber band.

I pull Joseph toward Mrs. Webber anyway.

“Mrs. Webber, can Joseph please be in Crazy Crabs?” I ask. The desks are set up in clusters all over the room, and each cluster has a name. Crazy Crabs, Super Sea Horses, Dapper Dolphins—like that, for all eight clusters. All the names have to do with the ocean because . . . well, I don't know why. But, huh . . . is that the reason Lexie gave him an octopus shirt?

“Or he could sit with me,” Lexie says, elbowing her way in.

“No, because we don't have an octopus group,” I say. “We have Jiggling Jellyfish, but no octopuses.”

Lexie looks at me funny. “Octo
pi
,” she says. She turns back to Mrs. Webber. “There's tons of room by me and Breezie, and we'll take good care of him. Right, Breezie?”

Breezie is Lexie's real best friend. I scan the room, wanting to know what
she
thinks of this idea.

“Uh-huh,” Breezie says. She's in the beanbag chair in the reading nook, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. She's staring at the floor.

“We should let Joseph decide,” I say. “Joseph, whose group do you want to be in?”

“If you stay in Wonderful Whales, you'll be closer to Lester,” Chase says, because suddenly he's there, too.

“Who's Lester?” Joseph asks.

“Our class snake,” Chase says. He tilts his head, like how could Joseph forget Lester?

And I think,
Because Joseph wasn't here when we got Lester, that's how.
Chase would know that if he were Joseph's best friend. But he isn't, so he should stay out of it.

“I'll show you Lester after we move your stuff,” I say.

“Or I will,” Lexie says.

“Or I will, because you already have a desk, and it's next to mine,” Chase says.

Taylor bursts into the room. “Ooo-eee!” he says. He sticks out his booty and pulls his fists in at his sides, just like he did with Hannah and Claire. “Makin' bacon!”

I scowl at him, because this is all his fault. Everything that's making me feel . . . twisty-uppy is Taylor's fault. If he hadn't ambushed Hannah and Claire with his poot smell, then I would have gotten to Mrs. Webber's room earlier. If I'd gotten to Mrs. Webber's room earlier, then I'd have been with Joseph when Mrs. Webber assigned him a desk, and I'd have made sure he was a Crazy Crab.

“OOO-EEE!” Taylor says, even louder. “MAKIN'—”

“Taylor
,
no,” Mrs. Webber interrupts. “No more bacon, any of you,” which is unfair because no one was making bacon except Taylor.

Taylor says,
“Mwa-HA-ha-ha!”
and Mrs. Webber says, “Taylor? Enough!”

Her voice is sharp. Joseph flinches.

“Oh, Joseph,” Mrs. Webber says, softening her tone. She squeezes his shoulder, and he looks at her hand. She lets go.

“Right,” she says, going back to teacher mode. “Put away your free-choice activities, everyone. It's time to work on your vocabulary sheet.”

My heart flutters. “But—”

“We'll figure out the desk situation later.”

“But Mrs. Webber—”

“It's okay,” Joseph says. “I don't mind.”

Lexie smiles triumphantly. “Yeah,
Ty
,” she says. “He doesn't
mind
.”

A lump forms in my throat.

“Wait,” Joseph says. “I
do
mind, but I don't . . . you know . . .”

It seems like everybody is silent at the same time, and my twisty-uppy feelings get twisty-uppier. I'm blushing. I can feel it.

Then kids start talking and moving and tidying up the free-choice stations. Joseph tries to get me to look at him, which I know because we're so good at feeling each other's eyeball lasers. I don't meet his gaze, though. I don't know why for sure. It's more than Joseph being a Wonderful Whale, but I can't exactly say how.

I sit down, open my desk, and take out my pen with the four different colors: red, blue, green, and black. It's an excellent pen. It's a lot cooler than a pretend octopus. All I have to do is decide which color I want and click the clicky thing. Then,
cha-chink
! Out pops whichever color I choose.

I click the clicky green thing, and
cha-chink
, the green ink tip comes out. I click the red thing, and
cha-chink
, the red ink tip comes out. I
hmph
under my breath. At least my pen works.

I open my notebook to a clean page and draw Cyber Grape. He's supposed to be purple, but I draw him using blue. I invented him, so I can do whatever I want. Only he looks weird blue, so I open my desk again, thinking I'll trade in my four-color pen for a purple marker.

I do the switch and close my desk, but now I feel bad for my four-color pen. It's not fair to make my four-color pen go,
Yay! I'm coming out of the desk! I'm going to be used!
just to put it away and make it go,
Wh-what? No! Don't close the desk! Don't close the de-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-k!

But Cyber Grape is a grape, and not the green sort of grape but the purple sort of grape. And yes, I invented him, but he looks
weird
blue.

He.

Is.

Supposed.

To.

Be.

PURPLE.

“Ty? Are you working on vocabulary?” Mrs. Webber asks.

“Yes, ma'am,” I say, because I kind of am. I will in a second, but no one is doing their vocabulary sheet yet.

I think about things. I drum my fingers on top of my desk. Then I give a quick nod. I open my desk and take my four-color pen back out. I put my four-color pen next to my purple marker, and I say, “Just hold on, okay? You'll get a turn, too.”

I say this to the pen. I say it in my head.

I flip to the next page in my notebook. With the purple marker, I draw Cyber Grape. I draw him standing on top of the world, which is Earth, and which I draw with my four-color pen since Earth is green and blue when you're looking at it from outer space.

I draw more quickly. I'm on a roll. I draw all the planets, even Pluto, because I don't think it's fair to say out of nowhere that
Ha-ha, Pluto, you're not a planet anymore
.

I draw the planets out of order, though. I scatter them over the page like a handful of Skittles, with Mars in the top right corner and Saturn off to the left and Neptune squished beneath Pluto. I make Jupiter the smallest planet of all, even though I'm not dumb and I know it's actually the biggest.

I add stars and asteroids and space junk, which is a real thing and not something I made up. Space junk is made up of busted-up satellites, pieces of rockets that are floating around in space, and rocks that aren't big enough to be asteroids. They'll float around in space forever, unless they break through the atmosphere and burn up or turn into meteors.

Except space junk is a lonely thing to think about. It makes Cyber Grape lonely, too, and I don't know why I stuck him up in space or why I drew this stupid picture in the first place.

I rip it out of my notebook and crumple it up. Then I rip out my first picture, the wrong one of Cyber Grape being blue, and crumple
that
one up.

Lots of kids still haven't settled down, and Breezie is the only person doing her vocabulary sheet. Mrs. Webber claps her hands and tells everyone to go to their seats. When they don't, she flashes the classroom light off and on. Finally people jump to it, because the next step after flashing the lights is time-out. If you get a time-out, you have to sit in the hall or sometimes on the floor in another teacher's classroom. Nobody wants that.

Elizabeth steers John over to my cluster of desks.

“Sit,” she commands, pressing down on his shoulders.

He drops into his seat, and Elizabeth goes to collect her next person. Elizabeth likes telling people to do things.

“Hi, Ty,” John says.

“Hi,” I say. I shove my wadded-up drawings into my desk.

“I have a loose tooth,” he says. “Want to see?”

“No,” I say. “And just to warn you, it might not really be loose. It might be a fake out.”

“It might?”

I nod, because that very thing happened to me. Two weeks ago, Taylor whacked me on the playground and made my tooth loose, but a few days later, my gums sucked themselves back around it and suddenly it wasn't loose anymore.

Loose teeth becoming un-loose. Another thing that's not supposed to happen, but that sometimes happens anyway.

John doesn't reply. I peek at him, and his expression makes me feel bad, because it's possible I made
him
feel bad. I peek at Joseph, using my hair to cover as much of my eyes as I can. His expression makes me feel bad, too, but in a different way. Joseph is talking to Chase as Elizabeth steers the two of them toward their seats. His eyes are happy, and his face is lit up like it was earlier.

Chase laughs, and so does Elizabeth, and so do Silas and Natalia, who haven't gone to their seats yet.

The four of them crowd around Joseph when he sits down. They breathe up his air molecules. Elizabeth should make Silas and Natalia go to their own desk cluster. She should make herself go to her own desk cluster.

She doesn't, and everyone talks and laughs.

Joseph is the sun, Chase and Elizabeth are planets, and I'm space junk.

I put my arms on my desk and my head on my arms.

I want the universe to line up right again.

T
he next morning at breakfast, Winnie asks me what's wrong.

“Nothing,” I say. “Or . . . I don't know. Maybe something.” I shrug and push my eggs around with my fork. They're a shade of yellow that usually makes me happy, but not today. Today my stomach is too worried for eggs.

“Is it Joseph?” Winnie asks.

I put down my fork. How did she know?

Mom's off with Baby Maggie, Dad has already left for work, and Sandra is somewhere else in the house. Probably her room. Probably text-ing her boyfriend, Bo, who probably never gets stomachaches, because he's a baseball player and always smiles and does fun things like have doughnut-eating contests with Sandra.

But that means Winnie and I are alone. No one is listening in.

“When I was in fifth grade, a girl in my class broke her arm,” Winnie says.

“Why?” I ask.

“She didn't mean to. But it happened during recess, with everyone there to see, and she cried and got rushed off to the hospital. It was very dramatic.”

I imagine an arm with a bone sticking out of it. I'd cry, if I had that arm.

“And then the next day she came to school with a cast,” Winnie goes on, “and guess what?”

“She broke her other arm?”

She laughs. “No. But everyone thought she was so cool, like a rock star.”

That sounds about right, because the same thing would happen in Mrs. Webber's class if something very dramatic happened. Like when Lexie got hit in the head with Mrs. Webber's clog last week, or like yesterday, when Joseph came back and everyone hogged him because
he
was the rock star.

I don't care if he's a rock star. I just don't want everyone hogging him.

Thinking about it makes me not feel so good, and I drop my gaze.

“Hey,” Winnie says. “Ty.” She lifts my chin. “It's normal, whatever you're feeling.”

“What
am
I feeling?” I ask, because that's part of the problem. I honestly don't know, not for certain.

“Lots of things, probably,” Winnie says. Her brown eyes lock with mine, and there is not a speck of meanness in them. Not a speck of
you're wrong
or
I'm disappointed in you
or
it's your own fault for not expecting the unexpected
.

“But there's more to my story,” she says. “Maxine came back with a cast, like I said, and she got all kinds of crazy attention.”

"Like a rock star?"

"Yeah, so guess what I did?"

“Maxine was the girl who broke her arm?”

“Uh-huh. I went outside after I got home from school and climbed the climbing tree, the one in the backyard.” She makes a funny expression. “I went all the way out on the branch, as far as I could, and I dangled and dangled, trying to work up the courage to fall. Except Mom saw what I was doing and said, ‘If you break your arm on purpose, I am
not
taking you to the emergency room.'”

“But she would have if you really did,” I say.

“Eh,” Winnie says. “Probably.”

I tilt my orange juice glass, but not enough to spill any. With Winnie and Maxine . . . I
think
I get it. Winnie thought if she traded places with Maxine, or if her arm traded places with Maxine's arm, then everyone would have crowded around her instead of Maxine.

But with me and Joseph, it's different.

Winnie wanted the “everyone” part. I just want Joseph. I'm not sure how I feel about the “everyone else” part.

Winnie stabs a bite of my eggs with her fork and puts it in her mouth. “But after a few days, things went back to normal. Okay?”

I nod. I'm still confused, but I definitely like the idea of things going back to normal.

• • •

As soon as I get to school, I can see that it hasn't happened yet. Things
haven't
gone back to normal.

Part of it might be Joseph's red hat. Red is a hard color to look away from, for one thing, and the second thing is that nobody else is wearing a hat. Nobody at all. So his hat is like a cast, sort of, and everyone swarms all over him again.

Finally Mrs. Webber gets tired of it. She turns around from the whiteboard and puts down the marker.

“You kids are driving me crazy!” she says about all the whispering and fidgeting and fake pencil sharpening going on. Kids want an excuse to pass Joseph's desk. That's why they keep sharpening their pencils.

Joseph looks worried. So does Elizabeth, who is squatting beside him. She got out of her seat a few minutes ago in order to tell Silas to go back to
his
seat, but she stayed on after Silas left.

“These rascals can't leave you alone for a moment, can they?” Mrs. Webber says to Joseph. Elizabeth tries to sneakily duckwalk back to her desk, but ducks are probably the least sneaky animals in the world other than hippopotamuses.

“Elizabeth, I can see you, you know,” Mrs. Webber says, and Elizabeth topples over. Her legs splay in front of her and her hair falls out of her barrette. Everyone laughs but me.

“Joseph, would you like to come up front and let everyone ask all the questions they're so desperate to ask?” Mrs. Webber says. “And then maybe, just maybe, we can focus on fractions?”

Everyone says please and makes begging hands, and Joseph rises from his desk and walks to the front of the room. That's where we stand when we do recitations, except Joseph hasn't done a recitation for ages.

“All right. If you'd like to ask Joseph a question, raise your hand,” Mrs. Webber says.

Lexie's hand shoots into the air. She doesn't say “ooo ooo, pick me, pick me,” because she knows Mrs. Webber doesn't like that, but she
does
perch on her bottom and make herself as tall as she can.

“Yes, Lexie?” Mrs. Webber says.

“I have a comment, not a question,” Lexie says. “It's about my bruise. Do you remember my bruise? From last week, when you kicked me in the head?”

Mrs. Webber sighs. “I did not kick you in the head, Lexie, and we're not here to talk about your bruise. Those days are over.”

“No, because it hasn't gone away yet,” Lexie says. “See?”

She pushes her hair off her forehead, and her bruise is a good one, I admit. It's bluish purple in the middle, but turning yellow around the edges.

“Ooo-eee! Makin' bacon!” Taylor says.

“Absolutely not, Taylor,” Mrs. Webber says sternly. “Now. Who has a real question?”

Taylor sticks up his hand. Mrs. Webber gives him a look, and he slumps and puts it down.

Claire raises her hand. Claire is a good kid and not too rascally, so Mrs. Webber says, “Joseph, would you like to call on Claire?”

“Um, Claire?” Joseph says.

“Are you better now?” she asks.

“Well, my doctor says I'm cured,” Joseph says. “So . . . yeah.”

“Did it hurt?” Elizabeth says.

“Did what hurt?” Joseph says.

“Being in the hospital.”

“Oh. Um, I guess.”

Chase raises his hand.

“Chase?” Joseph says.

“My sister went to the hospital when she had appendicitis, and she had one of those pole things that gives you fluids,” Chase says.

“An IV?” Joseph says.

“Yeah, that. It made her have to go to the bathroom
all
the time.”

Everyone laughs. Joseph does, too, but he twists his hands at the same time.

He calls on Lexie, even though she's already had a turn to talk. She says, “Did you know that a bruise means having dead blood trapped under your skin? That's why bruises turn different colors. It's the blood dying more and more until it goes away.”

“Oh,” Joseph says.

“I'm not sure that's entirely accurate, Lexie,” Mrs. Webber says.

“It is,” Lexie says. “Red, blue, purple, green, yellow, and brown. I'm almost to the brown stage.”

Mrs. Webber says we should get back on topic. She calls on Natalia.

“Not to be rude,” Natalia says, “but are you bald?”

Joseph blushes. “No. But . . . sort of.”

Excitement ripples around the room. I raise my hand.

“Ty,” Joseph says.

“I think being bald is cool,” I say. “All the way bald
or
partway bald.”

He's glad I said that. I can see it on his face.

“In fact, I'll probably shave my head when I grow up,” I continue. “I'll have a shiny bald head, and it'll be awesome.”

“Me too!” Taylor says. “
And
I'll be a race-car driver.”

Beside me, John tugs on his hair. I can tell he's thinking that he might want to be bald, too. Lexie tells everyone that if she was bald, we could see her bruise better, and Taylor says, “Shut up about your bruise already!”

“Hey!” Lexie says.

“Taylor, we don't say ‘shut up' in this classroom,” Mrs. Webber says. “You know that.” She picks up the egg timer she uses for time-outs, and Taylor says, “Aw, man.” Then he calls Lexie a weenis. I don't know what a weenis is, but it's a word that makes everyone giggle and talk out of turn.

Mrs. Webber closes her eyes.

Elizabeth raises her hand and doesn't wait to be called on. She cries, “Mrs. Webber, Mrs. Webber, Lester escaped again!”

“What?!” Mrs. Webber says. Her eyes fly open. “No. Please tell me he didn't.”

“He's not in his aquarium,” Elizabeth says, pointing. “He's gone!”

There is a madhouse of girls squealing and drawing their legs off the floor and onto their chairs. John squeals and pulls his legs up, too. His knees bang the bottom of his desk, and a container of pens and pencils goes flying.

Chase and Taylor and Lexie get out of their seats to look for Lester. So do other kids.

I go to Joseph and say, “Let's look behind the bookshelves. He likes dark places.”

We go, and we look, but Lester isn't back there.

Joseph sets off to search somewhere else, but I grab his wrist.

“Um . . . we should keep a lookout,” I say. “Just in case.”

Joseph pulls his eyebrows together. Then he lets them relax. He slides his back along the wall and sits down.

“Taylor is loud,” he says.

“I know,” I say, sliding down next to him.

“Even louder than he used to be.”

“I know.”

There is chaos all around us, but Joseph and I have the book nook to ourselves. We watch people shriek and run around.

“Does Lester escape a lot?” Joseph asks.

“Not a
lot
a lot. Maybe once a week.” I straighten my legs. “Mrs. Webber keeps trying to give him away, but nobody will take him.”

“
I
would, except there's no way my mom would say yes,” Joseph says.

“Same with mine,” I say. “And it's too bad, because Teensy Baby Maggie needs a pet, but oh well.”

“Huh?” Joseph says.

“Teensy Baby Maggie,” I explain. “She needs a pet.”

“She does? Why?”

For a second I can't come up with an answer. Why
does
Maggie need a pet?

I almost say, “Because I said so,” but that's the kind of thing a kindergartner might say, or even a preschooler.

“She just does,” I say.

“What would she do with it?”

“Be nice to it. Feed it crackers. I don't know.”

“Feed it crackers?”

“That part's not important. The important part is that my mom said no to five thousand of my good ideas, but guess what? She said yes to a bird!”

Joseph tilts his head. “Why a bird?”

“Why not a bird?”

“A parrot?”

I'm getting frustrated, and my fingers tighten into a fist. “Not a parrot, because parrots don't live in the wild. My mom's one rule is that I have to catch the bird myself.”

“Huh?
How?!
”

“
Agh!
I don't know! Maybe with a butterfly net! But if I do catch a bird—” I open my fingers and press them hard on the floor. “I mean,
when
I catch a bird, I get to keep it.”

“Cool,” Joseph says. He hesitates. “But . . . I thought you were giving it to Baby Maggie.”

“We'll share. Also, Lexie thinks I can't, so I
have
to catch one to prove her wrong.”

Joseph doesn't get it, I can tell. Then I remember that he doesn't know about our recitations last week. Mrs. Webber made us do an act of kindness, and I wanted my kindness to be a pet for Maggie, only it didn't work out. The bird-catching bit was part of my speech to the class, but Joseph didn't hear my speech.

I press the back of my head against the wall.

Joseph really was gone a long time.

He missed
a lot
.

I don't mind helping him catch up, and I don't mind all his questions. Not truly. I
do
mind everyone else in the world hogging his attention . . . but that isn't happening this very second, so why do I feel like there's a hole in my chest?