“You’re doing it again.” Jaxon taps my laptop’s keyboard.
The librarian has given us our library period to work on our Vermont projects. Instead of typing up my brief history of falconry, I’m doodling owls. But how can I not? Rufus flew to me from all the way across the yard on the creance. Aunt Bea can’t believe how far he’s come, how much he trusts me. But Rufus and I have come to an understanding: we need each other. Watching him lift off from the perch, spread his wings wide, and glide silently, yellow eyes glued on mine, then flapping once, twice, and swooping up onto my fist—it’s like seeing a part of me come back to myself.
In class, Mr. Brown calls for people’s attention. “You should have all completed your research at this point and be well on your way to putting that research into your essays as we discussed earlier this week. I want everyone to get into their groups and share what they’ve written so far. Start talking about transforming your individual pieces into your group presentation.”
The room rumbles with the thunderous sound of desks being dragged into new formations. Jamie, Jaxon, and I arrange ourselves into a tight knot.
“I’ve already finished my essay on the negative impacts of hunting,” Jamie says. “But I also found all this stuff on the economic benefits to rural communities. I didn’t know if that was okay—I mean, I don’t want to step on your toes, Jax.” She slides a folder of paper toward Jaxon.
“Step all over them,” he says.
A cold sweat prickles out beneath my shirt. She already has a folder of research? Of extra research?
“I was thinking for the presentation that maybe I could do some drawings,” Jaxon says, pulling out a sketchbook. He’s already done three amazing sketches of a deer, men up in a deer blind, and a compound bow.
“Have you finished your essay?” Jamie asks, smiling, blissfully unaware that I am definitely the weakest link in our chain.
I have not. I still have to do the interview part of the assignment to transition from the history of falconry to what it is today. “It’ll be done in time.”
Jamie’s smile falters. “But you’ve started, right?”
“Definitely,” I lie.
Jaxon’s eyebrows launch into the fringe of his hair.
“I’m sorry—Rufus has just been keeping me so busy.”
“I thought he was better. You haven’t released him?” Jaxon asks.
“He’s getting better,” I say. “He’s not one hundred percent.”
“The presentation is in a week,” Jamie says, eyes wide.
“It’ll be done,” I promise. Geez, they’re touchy about this project.
We spend the rest of the period working in silence on our individual essays, some of us starting from a blank page.
When Aunt Bea gets home, I am ready with my questions. Some of them we just skim over—how did you get into falconry, what stuff do you need to practice falconry today—as we’ve already covered that ground.
“Is falconry in Vermont different than other places in America?”
Aunt Bea nods. “I’ve met falconers from other places and they all offer me condolences. Vermont’s not a great place for falconry. Too many people, not enough open land.”
I put my pen down. “Jaxon said the same thing about deer hunting. His dad’s always griping about there being too little ground to hunt.”
“It’s the fight between nature and civilization that humans have been fighting on this land for centuries. You know one hundred and forty years ago, parts of Vermont were eighty percent deforested? It was all cut for timber and sheep meadow. Now we have residential developments and strip malls fighting with farmers and conservationists for land. Sometimes the balance shifts toward one group, then toward another. Unfortunately, falconers are not a loud voice in that fight.”
I begin doodling. “I wish everyone would just leave things the way they are, stop making parking lots and garbage piles and just let the animals and trees live.”
Aunt Bea smiles, huffs a little laugh. “It can’t be all one or the other. But things always change. That, too, is natural.” She gets up and grabs a pot to start dinner. “I heard from the social worker today.” I stop doodling. “Your mom is doing well.”
“Yeah.” She has to bring this up? But what’s funny is, the buzz doesn’t whisper anything. I feel sad. I feel scared. But that’s it.
Aunt Bea glances over at me. “You know that even if you go home with your mom, you can still come visit me, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, chin on the tabletop.
She nudges my elbow. “Red would miss you if you didn’t.”
A laugh escapes my lips. “What about Rufus?”
“You and Rufus are both going to have to fly free of me soon. But that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
I lean my head back against the chair. Is it? Mom has recovered other times. She would come to Gram’s and hug me and we’d be fine for a while, but it never lasted. I don’t blame Mom—I’ve seen how hard she fights the sadness when she can, seen the balance shift to her side. But the sadness is bigger than Mom and me put together.
What if I can have a voice in this fight—a choice? “What if I want to stay?” The words escape my lips before I really understand what I’ve said.
Aunt Bea gets her flustered face. “Stay? Here?” She picks up my pen, rolls it between her fingers. “Well, of course. I mean, as long as you need to, like I said before. But—Reenie, I—”
I stop her before she can say anything else. “It’s okay. I get it.” None of us have any choices, not with the state involved.
“But what if it doesn’t work out?” I ask. Her face crumples, her wrinkles getting wrinkles. I don’t want to upset her more, especially over a question I know has no answer. “I mean with Rufus. What if his wing doesn’t heal completely?”
The switch over to the topic of Rufus seems to calm Aunt Bea, as I’d guessed it would. “Then I petition the falconry school and the state to let me keep him as an education bird.”
“Wait.” I am all eyes and ears on her. “That’s an option?”
Aunt Bea shrugs. “Either that or see if the natural science center will take him. If not either of those, then he’ll have to be put down.”
My heart rate drops from full-speed excitement to heart-stalled dread. “Put down?”
Aunt Bea rumples my hair. “That’s a slim possibility. I think he’s going to be ready to go back home.
“Speaking of which,” she says, “we have to start getting him hunting.”
“But he can’t fly free yet,” I say. “He might fly off and—”
“Whoa, now,” Aunt Bea says, smiling. “You train a bird to hunt with you in stages, same way we manned him for the hunt.”
My heart drops back into my chest. “Right,” I say. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Aunt Bea says, smirking. “I’ll get some things together.”
“Okay,” I say, but my mind is stuck on the fact that there is at least a chance—a possibility, the merest sliver of a prospect—that Rufus could stay.