Birdie (7 page)

Wes

The new student doesn’t
have warts. She doesn’t have a huge overbite or thinning hair.

She has black skin. Which might be worse. Or it seems Clay and Bryce think so.

“Dude, see?” Clay asks, shoving Bryce. We’re sitting on the bleachers on the end of the field near the parking lot. “Sight unseen means you woulda been dipping into hot chocolate.”

“Well, we didn’t shake on it,” Bryce sulks. He’s red in the face. He gets embarrassed a lot. Probably because he does a lot of stupid things and Clay and I have no regard for his sensitivity.  “So it’s a no go.”

I only half listen to their nonsense. I’m watching her, enjoying the ability to study her openly since she’s the topic of conversation. She’s climbing into Lacey’s car as Rachel moves on, probably to find Gretchen. I don’t call out. Rachel thinks I’m staying after school to study for the Calculus test tomorrow. In truth, my brain is a puddle of equations and when work paged to see if I’d cover an extra shift, I chose the extra cash over what promised to be a math-induced headache.

“She’s the girl from the diner,” I say and it must have been out of turn because Bryce’s mouth stops moving suddenly as he swivels to look at me. He then swivels back around to look at her anew as Lacey’s car pulls out of its spot, top down.

“Oh yeah. That loud mouth pissy chick who interrupted our debate.”

“Don’t call her names because she was right,” I say, shoving him in the shoulder. Bryce and Clay laugh like we’re all joking but I’m actually annoyed. I’m suddenly annoyed with my life. With my friends. With my dad being here at my school today, judging me without words. With my girlfriend who hates this small town and turns her nose down at me when I fit into it a little too well. I’m annoyed because this stranger is intriguing me and I keep getting waft of who she is, but it’s fleeting. It’s not enough.

“Well, fuck the closet. The sheriff must have a whole house of skeletons if he was hiding a black daughter,” Bryce declares.

“Niece,” Clay corrects.

“Whatever. Still.”

I’m about to interject. Defend her. Change the subject. I don’t know yet as my mouth is opening to speak but I’ll ever know because in that moment a blue gray Corolla pulls into the edge of the parking lot and I close my mouth again, my eyes watching it roll slowly into a corner space and finally park. I scramble to pick up my books and backpack.

“I have a shift at the diner,” I say, hopping down the bleacher stairs. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

But I don’t head for my car. Not yet anyway. I stride across the parking lot to the blue gray Corolla, double checking for my dad’s Beamer even though I know he left hours ago.

“Hey, Stephen,” I say into the open passenger window when I reach the car.

The man sitting in the driver’s seat doesn’t look a thing like me. He has red tints in his sandy hair as opposed to my blonde and he has freckles which are now just starting to lighten making him look several years younger than his true age of twenty-eight. He grins at me. His eyes are clear and alert and crinkle around the edges at me when he smiles.

“Hey, little bro!” he exclaims. “Want to go shoot some pool?”

I glance at his hand resting on the gear shift. Steady, not shaking or tapping. A small sigh of relief escapes me. My oldest brother is clean. For the moment anyway.

“Does Dad know you’re in town?” I ask. Stupid question. Like Stephen would ever drop by the house to say hi.

He knits his eyebrows together and throws his head back a little in a
You kidding me?
gesture that answers my question.

“I gotta work,” I say. “Until nine. How long are you around?”

“Ashley kicked me out,” Stephen says with a snort and my heart plummets. That means he’s using. Or he cheated. I hope he cheated. “I’m crashing at Marco’s for a few days while I sort things out.”

“Ok, well, call me later at the diner. If you’re free when I’m about to get off, I’ll swing by.”

“Sounds good, W!”

He burns his back tires in a show of immaturity before peeling out of the parking lot.

Birdie

I’m surprised it takes
me almost a week to realize Diner Guy is Royalty King Wesley at Shenoah High, married to Rachel Tessman, Royalty Queen. That’s how often my nose is in a book between classes or my music is turned up or I’m soaking in the scenery, oblivious to the students around me. If it weren’t for Lacey sticking her face in my field of vision every so often, I could probably make it through the school year without genuinely speaking to a soul.

“You’re so weird, it’s awesome,” she says with a full grin, tossing me a back pocket Baby Ruth at lunch. I learned quickly this chocolate consumption was a daily occurrence and she started bringing me one too.

“A friend who actually eats!” she had squealed when I asked for a bite one afternoon. “Halle-fucking-lujah.”

“What makes me weird today?” I ask before sinking my teeth into the chocolate bar.

“For starters, you sound like a nasally freak and you have a trail of snot coming out of your nose.”

“I have a cold,” I respond, wiping at my nose with a napkin. Saturday’s walk home from work included sheets of rain the sky had been promising all afternoon. I trudged through thirty minutes of it before one of Tim’s coworkers, an officer with a young face and a young name to match – Petey – saw me and drove me the rest of the way to the trailer park.

“And secondly, you’ve been staring at Wesley Lott this entire lunch period. Not a word about him this whole time I’ve known you, you pass him in the halls like he’s invisible, you ignore everyone on campus minus yours truly and today it’s like your eyes are superglued.”

“That obvious?” I ask.

She nods.

“I only just realized he’s here,” I explain. “I actually see him every time I go to work at the library. I guess it’s just odd, my school world and my outside world colliding.”

It was true. I had been sitting on the lawn during lunch (just now realizing we could) reading, and when I glanced up he was standing on the other side of the fountain. Our eyes locked in that moment and I was startled. Yes, he’s close to my age so duh, he probably attends the only high school in the city. The thought never occurred to me. It never mattered. And suddenly for some reason, it does matter because I keep interrupting my reading to glance at him. Quite brazenly, apparently.

I shrug and take another bite. Lacey watches me warily. “Do you like him? Because Rachel is proactive. She’ll mince your face and serve it in the lunch line.”

“No,” I answer truthfully. “I think he just reminds me of you. Walking a little left of the herd. I notice those things because I’m usually not in the herd.”

“That, my friend, you are not,” Lacey agrees settling down beside me. I’m sitting in front of a bench, not on it, because I like the softness of the ground on my butt and the grass tickling my thighs. Lacey slings her elbows back on the seat of the bench, relaxed like this is the epitome of normal, with a huge chunk of Baby Ruth chipmunking her cheek. She chews and smiles. “No you’re not,” she says again around the chocolate and nougat.

Wes

The weather is holding
. It’s warm enough to eat outside again, over a week now in the wonderful sun. I close my eyes and raise my face into the rays and let it pink my skin.

              “There she is again,” Rachel mutters beside me. I crack one eye open to scout what she’s referring to. When I see Birdie, I open both of my eyes and glance between her and my girlfriend. Rachel’s face is uncharacteristically frowning. She’s usually in control. Even her snide, bitchy moods are draped in false smiles and smirks.

“The new girl?” I ask.

“
Birdie
. What kind of a name is that?” Rachel huffs.

I shrug. “Why are you picking on her all of a sudden?” I notice Lacey sitting by her again. Both girls are hunched over novels. You wouldn’t even know they were keeping each other company except that they both keep dipping absently into a can of nuts. And when Birdie bursts out laughing, Lacey leans over to peer at her book and her lips move in a question.

Maybe that’s why. Just last week Lacey spent her lunches with us at a window table in the cafeteria when she wasn’t eating with her boyfriend in the library. When I glance back at Rachel to ask, I realize she’s now glaring at
me
.

“You’ve been staring at her for a week,” Rachel accuses. “Lacey has been eating lunch with her since she was her guide that first day. The teachers moon over her answers like she’s some fucking genius. What’s so special about her?”

I single out the piece of her rant that will get me in trouble. “I haven’t been staring at her. Calm down.”

“Please. If I reach over and grab your crotch, you’d probably have a hard on from just watching her eat her damn lunch.”

“What the hell is your problem?” I’ve never seen Rachel like this.

She blows a stray strand from her forehead. “I don’t know.” A quick glance at me causes her to shrug and lighten the storm in her eyes. She sees my irritation and she knows from past experience stoking it only ends badly for her. I find long bouts of solitude comforting and I submerge myself in them if she starts swirling drama around me. Her attempt at freezing me out in a fight early in our relationship backfired on her when she realized after a week and a half that I didn’t mind.

“I think I’m just stressed over school,” she says. “I think the teachers from all the different departments come together and have a huge meeting and bunch their projects together so they can watch us squirm.”

“Well, don’t take it out on me. Or her. She’s actually pretty nice.” Rachel shoots me a look and I explain, “She works at the library. So I see her sometimes. And Lacey likes her,” I add, gesturing.

“Lacey likes everybody,” Rachel mutters bitterly.

“No, Lacey is eclectic. She likes different kinds of people. Not everybody.”

I actually at one time thought that Lacey and I might have a thing. She seemed more my style with her don’t-give-a-shit attitude and her brazen confidence. But she’s been tangled up with Ben, the valedictorian book nerd, since freshman year and after several platonic smiles and shoulder punches, I stopped seeing her that way. It also helped that Rachel latched onto me from day one and finally wore me down last year when I decided to give the boyfriend role a try.

I flick some stray grass off my pants. Birdie has been eyeing me all through lunch and I’ve been pretending not to notice but concentrating so hard on not looking back at her has taken so much of my attention, I don’t even know what Rachel was telling me before we switched to her dislike of the new student.

Mostly, I’m puzzled. I’ve seen her everywhere around school since I spotted her that first day in the parking lot and she’s looked right through me. She’s always reading, or staring past everybody like she’s thinking about something or concentrating on school work. Only when Lacey comes into the picture does she remember she’s not walking around this school by herself. Earlier in the week, she left me doing one of those pitiful half waves you begin to say hi to someone, then awkwardly stop moving your hand but leave it up in the air when you realize it’s a one way exchange.

I’m sorta jealous of Lacey. How’d she crack that shell so easily?

“If Lacey likes her, I’m going to see what she’s all about,” I say suddenly. Rachel narrows her eyes at me, her soup spoon pausing en route to her mouth.

“What for?” she demands.

“Why not? She’s new. It looks like she doesn’t have a lot of friends. We only have a handful of months left of school. We should make her feel welcome.”

The corners of Rachel’s mouth curve down in an irritated scowl. “I’d rather stab myself.” My producing a plastic knife from her lunch cooler only deepens her scowl further.

I laugh lightly and toss it back in. “Then by all means, avoid her like the plague. I’m going to make an effort.”

I hop off the table and give her shoulder a quick squeeze before heading to my next class as the bell rings.

I can feel her glare burning into my back but I don’t care. Now that I’ve voiced it, the air around me hums and the rightness feeling rolls off me in waves.

Birdie and I are going to be friends.

Birdie

The knock comes before
my butt even hits the sofa.  I sigh, setting down my pizza and scrambling back up.  I would have ignored it but there haven’t been any visitors yet since I’d been here and I don't know the protocol, if Tim is the type to turn the TV up and ignore it or pick up every ringing phone and answer every knock.

Wesley Lott is standing on the other side of the screen. Okaaaay…

“Hi,” he says, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets.  “Is the sheriff home?”

“No. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

I start to close the door, but he presses his hand to the screen.  “I came to see you.”

I crack the door back open to the original angle and squint at him.  “Why did you ask for Tim?”

Wesley shrugs.  “I thought Sheriff Dobson was going to answer the door.  And I would have asked him if you were home. But since you answered I just…switched it.  Wow, I’m sounding more and more like an idiot with every word.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I come in?”

I regard him for a moment then shrug, walking away from the screen.  He takes my half-hearted response silently, slipping through the door and shutting it softly behind him.

I take up my seat again on the frayed sofa and bite into my pizza.  It's a large bite, my teeth scraping out and reaching almost to the middle of the triangle where the microwave didn’t quite heat the cheese. 

“It’s Birdie, right?”  Wesley asks, hovering to the side of the couch.  I nod, sparing a glance at him from my paper plate.  His hair is slightly damp from the mist and he still has his faded blue t-shirt on.  It’s weird to see him standing in Tim’s living room. Now my work, school, and Tim’s trailer have all collided into each other and it seems there is no where I can go without looking into Wesley’s blue eyes. “I’m Wesley Lott.”

“I know,” I reply. Silence. Wesley is still standing next to the couch but now he’s doing a three-sixty turn of the living room. “Did you like the book?” I finally ask when he completes his perusal and starts poking through the sports magazines on Tim’s counter. I don’t know what else to say. The last time – of the only three times period – we exchanged words it was about Michael Creighton. I still don’t know how that brings him to Tim’s porch.

He looks surprised at the mention. “Uh, yeah actually,” he answers. “I’m a little more than halfway through it. It’s pretty good.”

He drops to the couch beside me and unzips his backpack. I watch with interest, still chewing. I briefly wonder if I should offer him some pizza then decide against it since Tim barely buys enough food for the two of us.

“What’s that?” I ask instead.

He pulls out a black game console. A Sega Genesis.

“Shining Force,” he answers. “One and Two. Which one are we going to play?”

And then he looks dead at me. Straight into my eyes, holding my gaze. I knew he was different, I’ve known since that morning in the diner when my mom and I stopped for breakfast. He’s been noticing things and filing tidbits away to bring out later. I can see it the way he holds up the two different games. He doesn’t care which one I choose. His eyes are completely readable. As soon as I pick one, we’ll play it, and we’ll be friends.

It’s a contract. It’s an agreement. I don’t know if I want a friend. I already have Lacey strong arming her way into a friendship with me. But looking into his stare, which still hasn’t broken from mine despite the long silence, I know I can’t say no.

I point to One.

His grin covers his face. “Like you read my mind.”

“This isn’t normal you know,” I inform him as he crouches behind Tim’s TV to hook up the console.

His voice comes out muffled from behind the wires. “I know.”

We play for two hours and don’t speak much. It’s a role playing game so the main character goes on a quest and battles enemies along the way. We take turns playing the battles. He protests slightly when I insist on naming the hero Tubey.

“What the hell kind of name is that?” he demands, but he’s smiling so I keep punching in the letters. Darla and I used to play this game when we were younger, one of the last things we did together before drifting apart. In a silly fit one day, we decided to name the main character after her stuffed kitten we put a doll’s tube top on and called him Tubey before breaking down into senseless giggles. It wasn’t even that funny except that it
was
. From that point on, when we played this game, the hero had to be Tubey.

I don’t tell Wes any of this. I just finish typing the name.

“You showed up here unannounced with an old Sega in your backpack even though we technically never even exchanged names. You don’t get to call me out on my odd name choice.”

He nods. “Point taken. Free pass, Birds.”

And just like that I’m nicknamed.

When we’re done playing, I get up to unhook the console but he shakes his head as he slings his backpack over his shoulder. “No, leave it. I’ll be back.”

And then he heads out, me watching through the small rectangle window.

Friend number two.