Chapter 8

I knew word travelled fast when it came to birds and bird sightings, but I underestimated how widely word travelled, the distance it could traverse over time and the long-lasting enthusiasm with which word was received.

Obviously, there’d been a lot of excitement about the purple-bellied parrot sighting over the weekend but that was on Bird Day. It was a bird-centric microcosm of the real world. I didn’t expect interest would extend beyond the weekend. I’d enjoyed my day in the sun, oh, how I’d enjoyed it, and now I fully expected to be back in the shade again.

On Monday morning however, I got on the bus and Mr Swanston had the radio playing. His beloved bird-watching program, Bird Heard, wasn’t on until Wednesday, but unbelievably, during the hourly news section the hosts mentioned there’d been a purple-bellied parrot sighting in Shellsville. ‘First time in 32 years, apparently.’

I was shocked. I turned around to look behind me — did everyone hear that? It was only a quick mention, and they didn’t say who exactly had seen the bird, which was unfortunate. It’s a lot harder to be famous if people don’t know your name. But everyone on the bus was looking at me. Well, they were facing forward, and I was up the front, but I felt I had their attention. That’s me on the news, is the energy I tried to project, but with humility. Like it wasn’t a big deal being mentioned on the radio as probably thousands or millions of people listened in.

Turning to face the front again, I looked out the window and noticed that there seemed to be an unusual number of people out birding. I saw two cars stop out the front of Mrs Swanston’s general store and half a dozen people get out. I could tell they were birders by the multi-pocketed jackets, the hiking boots and the binoculars. There were more down near the bird hide, by the shore, and at the turn-off to Ryans Swamp several cars were going in.

I registered all this, and I was pleased about the radio mention — I’d definitely see if Mum and Dad could get the recording — but at the same time, I didn’t think that much of it. I didn’t even really connect that the birders were there because of the parrot sighting. I thought it was an overhang from the weekend — additional twitcher energy unspent. Like how the day after Christmas you want it to be Christmas again.

Then I got to Holy Grace and saw Mrs Zeigler. She wasn’t normally that excited to see me. She wasn’t unexcited, she’d just been teaching for a long time and was probably sick of kids. I would be. But she seemed almost thrilled when I walked into the classroom. ‘Alma!’ She’d been sitting at her desk, now she stood up and bounded over. ‘Congratulations.’

It was a sign of how much I’d failed to realise the significance of the purple-bellied parrot sighting that I assumed she was referring to National Middle Child Day. ‘Thanks Mrs Zeigler,’ I said, appreciating the acknowledgement. Finally, someone realised the importance of Middles.

‘Your parents must be very proud,’ she said.

‘I guess.’ I admitted they hadn’t made much of a fuss. ‘They made my sisters pancakes, but they were pretty much all gone by the time I got up.’

Mrs Zeigler seemed surprised. ‘Your sisters? Did they see the bird too?’

‘What?’ It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about. ‘The bird? Oh no, they didn’t see it. Only me. I was the only one.’ The bell began to ring.

My fellow students had filled the classroom while Mrs Zeigler and I had been talking. Normally, the first thing we did every morning was roll call. Instead, once Mrs Zeigler had everyone’s attention, she said, ‘Girls, Alma has some news.’ She beckoned me to the front of the room where she asked me to tell the story.

Lucky I’d rehearsed it pretty well by then. ‘On the weekend, it was Bird Day and I went birding with Anika and Elizabeth. While they were eating snacks —’ I wasn’t going to say, and I was peeing — ‘I went for a look at a tree by myself and saw a purple-bellied parrot.’

Having repeated this multiple times by now, I had a sense of how people would respond. While not everyone was a bird enthusiast, the purple-bellied parrot was well known around Shellsville and Point Elizabeth and people could at the very least appreciate that it was rarely sighted. But hardly anyone reacted in the way I’d thought and I realised as I was describing looking up at the bird on the branch: they already knew. The class had already heard the news.

Of course, Simone Botheringham went out of her way to be annoying. She put up her hand in a show of correct classroom etiquette that was immediately counterbalanced by incorrect rudeness, ‘So? Is that it? You saw a bird?’

‘I saw a purple-bellied parrot,’ I said. ‘They’re kind of rare.’

‘It’s been 32 years since anyone last saw one!’ crowed Mrs Zeigler. ‘This is big news, girls. It’s quite extraordinary.’

‘Wow,’ said Simone and gave a fake smile in my direction, which if she noticed, Mrs Zeigler mistook for a real one. Then Simone asked if it was time for history yet. ‘I can’t wait to learn about the Cold War.’

Somewhat begrudgingly, Mrs Zeigler told us to get out our textbooks. We opened them to the chapter on the Berlin Wall and she started telling us about a famous speech President Kennedy gave, in which he said, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ However she kept getting side-tracked. ‘Speaking of Berlin . . . What’s your favourite German bird, Alma?’

Mrs Zeigler seemed to consider me an internationally knowledgeable bird genius, which was flattering, if inaccurate. I told her what I knew, passed a few things I wasn’t completely sure about as truth, but ran out of information quickly and had to bat her questions back, asking for her opinion and letting her talk.

Mrs Zeigler had been an avid birder for years. Her favourite Australian bird was the Gouldian finch and her favourite German one was the hooded crow.

‘What does ich bin ein Berliner mean?’ asked Mai, who, like her best friend, Simone, and if I am honest much of the class, wasn’t that interested in birds, German or otherwise.

Mrs Zeigler said, ‘It means, I am a Berliner. The president was trying to say he was with the Berliners in spirit but some media outlets incorrectly reported he said, I am a donut.’ Without further explanation she continued. ‘Speaking of media outlets, will you be going on Bird Heard, Alma?’

I shook my head, no. ‘But I am going to be in the paper.’

‘What paper?’ asked Simone. ‘The Point Elizabeth Press?’ It was just like her to be so pernickety about which one.

I admitted it was Bird-watchers Weekly.

‘That’s not a paper,’ said Mai, even as I pointed out that it came on paper. It was stapled, printed on A3 sheets folded over.

But Mrs Zeigler was excited and immediately vowed to buy each and every person in the class a copy. While her generosity didn’t garner a huge response, what she said next did.

‘I have a surprise, girls. I wasn’t going to mention it quite yet but I can’t wait any longer. Given the extraordinary events of this weekend I’ve decided that instead of going to the chocolate factory next month for our excursion —’

The chocolate factory was the long-anticipated highlight of Year Seven. Officially we were going as part of a study on local tourism; unofficially it was a chance to spend the day walking around eating unlimited amounts of free chocolate. I’d been there once before with my family and it was the greatest experience of my life. I ate so much I was sick for a week!

‘I’ve arranged an alternative excursion for our class and our class only,’ Mrs Zeigler was beaming. ‘Instead of going to the chocolate factory with everyone else, we’re going bird-watching at a sewage farm.’ She claimed it met the curriculum definition of a ‘tourist destination’, it was just a little more niche.

To say the response was muted would have been an understatement.

‘What?’ Simone was aghast. ‘No chocolate factory?’

‘Do we have to?’ added Elizabeth, which felt somehow unsupportive. I had the impression that some people in the class, not all of them, but maybe those without a fully developed frontal cortex capable of logic and sense, might think that I had something to do with Mrs Zeigler’s decision.

‘Who wants to eat chocolate when you can have the chance of seeing a purple-bellied parrot?’ Mrs Zeigler should have explained this was a rhetorical question, which means you don’t have to answer it, because Simone piped up at once and said, ‘Me.’

Anika, Elizabeth and I usually went to the front gardens at recess. On my way out of the classroom, Simone and Mai walked into me. It wasn’t an accidental bump as they squeezed past; it was a deliberate knock. ‘Thanks a lot,’ said Simone.

Mai’s arms were folded. ‘Yeah, great job, Alma.’

‘Thanks a lot for what? What’d I do?’ They didn’t answer.

Anika, Elizabeth and I went to sit down near the fountain. The two of them hadn’t seen what happened with Simone and Mai. We weren’t even talking about the excursion, so it was odd that Anika said, seemingly out of nowhere, ‘It’s not your fault the class has to go birding. People can’t blame you.’ The fact she said this and the way she said it suggested people — maybe even her and Elizabeth — would blame me or did blame me.

‘It’s so unfair,’ said Elizabeth, and she liked birding. ‘I was looking forward to the chocolate factory. I was going to get some seconds to send to my brother.’ The factory sold broken chocolate bars for half price.

‘We can go there anytime,’ I said. ‘It’s not far.’

‘But not anytime during school,’ said Elizabeth.

‘It’s not my fault. I didn’t ask to see a purple-bellied parrot,’ I said. ‘I didn’t ask Mrs Zeigler to change the excursion.’

Anika ran her hand along the top of the grass. ‘We know. We’re just disappointed, Alma.’

‘I’m disappointed. You think I want to be in the paper? You think I want to be known for seeing a rare parrot that no one, even the most skilled bird-watcher has been able to find?’

Was it my fault I was some kind of genius when it came to birds? Did people blame Einstein for inconveniently discovering the theory of relatives? Or the guy who first found gold, for realising how much it was worth?

‘All I did was go to the toilet,’ I said, but try as they might, Anika and Elizabeth didn’t seem able to muster a great deal of sympathy.