How can so many good things make me feel so terrible? Mom called this morning to say she’s looking at an apartment and that soon I could start doing overnights with her at our new place.
Our new place.
A place where I’m going to have to start all over again.
And Rufus caught a mouse on his first try. Aunt Bea couldn’t believe it.
“He’s a prodigy!” she cried out.
I knew he was a genius. I’ve always believed in him. But to have it be real, to have him be so close to finished with me . . . It’s all happening too fast and all at once.
And what if it doesn’t work out? What if, when we fly him free, he flies away? What if he’s not ready? What if he starves and it’s my fault? It’s good to know that, worst case, we keep him. Maybe even not just worst case . . .
“Maureen?”
Mr. Brown is standing over me, tapping his arm.
“Um.” I have no idea what’s going on.
“Your team? How far along are you guys on your project?”
“Um.”
“We’re going to get together this weekend to finalize everything,” Jamie says, nudging me with her foot under the table.
“Yes.” Did we actually agree to that? What if I have to do this overnight with my mom?
“Sounds great,” Mr. Brown says, walking on. “I’m really looking forward to your presentation.”
“We can meet at my house!” Jamie says, practically vibrating with excitement.
“I’m supposed to go to my dad’s for the weekend,” Jaxon says.
Do I tell them about my mom getting better? About me possibly moving, maybe next week? Before we even get to do the presentation? No. That’s just too much to explain, too many maybes. “Can we do it today, after school?” Then, even if I have an overnight, it won’t matter.
Jaxon shrugs. “My dad isn’t picking me up until six. I could text my mom.”
“Can I text my aunt?” I ask, holding out a hand for someone’s phone.
Jamie says, “I’ll go get my phone from my locker. This is the best day ever!” She heads to the hallway.
Jaxon and I take off for recess and our spot behind the bushes. What if it’s my last day? What if this overnight with my mom goes well and the state sends me away from here? Jaxon would be fine. But Jamie? She’s already lost two friends . . . but now she has Jaxon . . . Would they even notice I was gone?
I scratch my wood so hard, it splits in two.
Jaxon gasps, his face contorted like he’s just witnessed a murder. “We can glue it.”
I drop the pieces. “It wasn’t working anyway.” I spend the rest of recess piling up pebbles and knocking them down.
Aunt Bea texted back while we were outside that she can pick me up at Jamie’s house, and Jaxon’s mom offers to give us a ride after school. Jaxon told her we could take the bus, but she insisted. She shows up in scrubs with messy curls springing from her updo. She took a break during her shift at the doctor’s office.
“It’s great to meet you girls,” she says, pulling out of the school’s parking lot. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Jaxon’s turning a shade of red last seen on a beet. Jamie and I glance at each other and have to choke down a laugh because just the thought of Jaxon saying anything at all about us—let alone “so much”—is too funny.
“Maureen, Jaxon says you have an owl you’re rehabilitating? He helped his dad with a rescued hawk once.”
He told her about Rufus? “Um, yeah.”
“She’s setting him free soon,” Jaxon says.
“If he gets better,” I correct. “If not, we might have to keep him.” Perhaps Jaxon is not aware of this fantastic option?
“You said he’s hunting,” Jaxon says, eyebrows crinkling.
“Turn here,” Jamie interrupts—thank goodness for needing to give directions. I don’t want to argue with Jaxon about my owl.
We pull into this development where it looks like a giant machine plunked down identical houses one-two-three along the stretch of road. Jamie points to one that’s sort of bluish, and we pull up to the door.
“Is your mom home?” Jaxon’s mom asks.
“She’ll be home soon,” Jamie says, noncommittal.
“Oh,” Jaxon’s mom says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We have Jamie’s cell phone.”
Jaxon’s mom eyes the house like it’s trouble. “All right,” she says. “I’m going back to the office, but it’s just a few blocks away, so I can be here ASAP if you need anything.”
We slide out of the car and walk up the driveway.
“Your mom never leaves you home alone?” Jamie asks.
Jaxon shrugs. “She told me not until I’m thirteen.”
“I turned ten and my parents were like, Here’s the key. We’ll see you at five.” Jamie brandishes a key and jams it in the door.
It’s funny to think of Jaxon being babied like that. He seems so independent, so self-contained, like a hermit crab. But maybe his mom doesn’t see him that way.
Will Mom give me a key to her—our new apartment? Will I come home on some strange new bus to some strange new place to wait for her to come home from some job? If she gets the apartment . . .
Jamie lets Jaxon and me into the foyer.
“Whoa,” Jaxon says. His voice echoes around the cavernous rooms, bouncing off shiny glass and polished wood. Jamie flips on lights as she walks down a two-story hallway into a white and blue kitchen of curving plastic cabinets and glass tile that looks like it was designed for a space station.
We huddle around a massive round white stone table reminiscent of King Arthur’s. Jamie grabs a box of cookies from this huge closet full of food and then a gallon of chocolate milk from the fridge and three glasses. I’ve always wondered what family buys not milk and chocolate mix, but the whole gallon of premixed chocolate milk. Tasting the rich yumminess of it—a fullness of chocolaty goodness that I’ve never achieved with my powdery additives—makes up somewhat for the imposing, off-putting wealth of the place. I’ve lived in apartments that were smaller than this kitchen.
“Your house is really shiny,” I say. The stone of the table literally glitters.
“My mom has a scrapbook filled with pictures of kitchens like this,” Jaxon says, gulping chocolate milk. “Some nights, she takes it out during dinner and pretends.”
Jamie runs her fingers over the tabletop. “It’s too big. When we eat dinner, my mom and dad and me, we’re so far apart, it’s like we’re eating alone.” She hefts her bag onto the table. “But it’s perfect for projects. Plenty of space.”
She produces a laptop computer and a tablet and her phone from her bag, then goes over and opens another closet, which is stacked with labeled plastic boxes filled with things like “ribbons” and “markers” and “duct tape.” A whole box full of different colors of duct tape. When Jamie told me she liked making stuff, I hadn’t quite understood the scale of her operation.
She digs a tall trifold presentation board out of a corner. “I was thinking we could put all our research on this.” She unfolds the cardboard, spreading it flat on the table.
Jaxon stares into the cavern of boxed craft supplies. “You have a whole box just for buttons?”
Jamie glances back at the closet. “That’s old,” she says, picking a cookie from the carton. “When I was little, my mom and I used to do crafts a lot. But that was forever ago. The other day I asked her if she wanted to melt some crayons with me, and she said, ‘Aren’t you too old for that?’”
The hurt and lonely look on Jamie’s face is only there for a second, but it’s one I know too well. There are so many ways to lose a parent. Even when they still live in the same house.
“I like doing crafts,” I say. “I’ll melt crayons with you anytime.”
“Whittling’s a craft,” Jaxon adds.
“Maybe that should be our team name? The Crafty Hunters?” I say.
“The Whittling Woodsmen?” Jamie offers, a tiny smile peeking through.
“Perfect,” Jaxon says.
Jamie looks like she’s about to cry, but instead, she turns on her tablet. “I made this chart to show how many people hunt in Vermont.” It’s a neat rectangle with different bars for each kind of license: fishing, bow hunting, duck hunting, falconry . . .
“I did these,” Jaxon says, laying a stack of drawings on the table: pictures of a kid in hunting fatigues, a hunting rifle, people in a boat covered in grass for duck hunting, with labels for the specific parts of each.
“We can put them on the poster around the chart,” I say, holding one up.
“I also made flash cards for the debate.” Jamie hands me a stack.
“Did you know that hunters were behind the early conservation movement?” I read. “President Teddy Roosevelt wanted to save the land and the animals, in part so he could keep hunting them.”
“Hunters are still a big part of conservation efforts,” Jaxon says, sounding defensive already. “And it’s even good for the deer. If hunters didn’t keep the deer population down, they’d starve in the winter.”
“I don’t think you can say it’s good for the deer who get shot,” Jamie says. “The audience has seen Bambi.”
Jaxon blushes and begins shading a corner of the hunting rifle. “Bambi is rough. But it’s also a lie. You’re not supposed to shoot does.”
“Law says you can shoot does.” Jamie taps away on her keyboard.
“But isn’t that just nature?” I ask, thinking of Rufus and the white mice I’m sacrificing to him. “Hunters eat the deer meat, right?”
“Some do, some donate it to food pantries.” Jaxon switches pencils, continues shading.
“But the point is that hunting can be a part of the ecosystem,” I say. “We don’t have big predators, so there has to be some way to fill that role in the food chain.”
“So, like, hunters can balance things out? Here,” Jamie says, handing me a note card. “Write that down.”
“Speaking of food chain,” Jaxon says, reaching for another cookie.
“I just can’t get past the dead animals,” Jamie says, pushing away one of Jaxon’s drawings.
“It’s not why I hunt,” he says, still scribbling on a sketch. “I guess there might be some people who do it for the killing. But my dad and I, we do it to be together in the woods. He hunted with his dad. And it’s nice, to be together in the quiet, watching for a lucky shot. And when you do kill something, you don’t let it suffer.
“It’s why you do falconry, right, Reenie?”
I’m about to blurt, No, it’s because of the birds, but then I see me walking through the woods with Red . . . and with Aunt Bea. Training Rufus . . . with Aunt Bea.
“It started with Red,” I say, “but even that’s all because of my aunt.”
Jamie begins scribbling on another new card. “Here,” she says, sliding it across the table. She wrote, Hunting is about family.
Tears squeeze out along my eyelashes. Before reading that, I’d forgotten that Aunt Bea really is family and completely missed that, over these past few weeks, it’s what we’d become.
Jaxon peeks at the card. “That’s better.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and nod. “Yeah.” I place the card so it’s the finale.
When we get home, Aunt Bea and I rush to feed the beasts. Inside his aviary, Rufus is flappy, hopping from perch to perch. I take him out and fly him across the yard a few times on the creance to let him stretch his wings.
“He’s looking good,” Aunt Bea says. “I think we should try flying him free tomorrow.”
Rufus swoops across the grass, flaps once, and alights on my fist, gobbling the tidbit down and then squawking for more. “You think he’s ready?” I rub under his beak and he playfully bites my fingers.
“Do you?” Aunt Bea whistles and Red screeches, then emerges from the trees.
Rufus peeps and twitters, chattering on about something. Most likely, he just wants more food. I place him on the farthest perch and walk back, and then Rufus shuffles around to face me and barks a raspy squawk. I hold up my fist and whistle. He’s instantly off the perch, flying right to me, and hits the glove right where I tapped.
He’s proud of himself. I can tell by the way he gobbles down the tidbit and then gazes down his beak at the world. He thinks he’s hot stuff.
“He’s ready,” I say. It’s me who’s not ready.
Aunt Bea’s phone rings inside the house. Rufus and Red both snap their heads in the direction of the noise. Aunt Bea sends Red off into the trees and runs for the phone. Through the glass of the sliding door, I see her glance at the number and pause before answering.
Rufus squawks, nibbles my hair. He can sense when things start going all wonky inside me, and my guts are suddenly boiling.
Aunt Bea sticks her head out the door. “It’s your mom,” she says, waving the phone.
Mom calls every night now, but usually around eight, before I go to bed. It’s not even six thirty.
I start walking toward the house.
Aunt Bea points to my outstretched arm. “You want to leave the bird?”
Rufus swivels his head around.
“No,” I say, reaching out to take the cell phone.
“Reens?” Mom’s voice is all strangled—ugh, I don’t even want to ask.
“Hey, Mom,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. “What’s up?”
“Oh, Reens, just—gah! I have to blurt it out. We got the apartment! I can’t believe it—there’s so much paperwork and I had to talk to all these people to get approved, but it all worked out, just like that!”
Rufus bobs his head, tilts it like he can’t quite comprehend what’s coming out of the phone.
“Reenie?” Mom asks. “Did I lose you? We got our apartment—did you hear me?”
My brain snags on the word our. “Oh, yeah?”
“It’s great—two bedrooms. And you can go back to Rutland Intermediate, see all your old friends.”
I want to tell her I have no friends there. I say nothing.
“I have the weekend to get our stuff from Gram’s, and then we move in next week. Randi—the social worker—she said we could do our visitation on Tuesday at the place. Maybe try an overnight next weekend. What do you think?”
“That’s great,” I say, because what else can I say?
Rufus digs his talons into the glove. He knows everything’s sliding off the rails. I take a deep breath. I have to calm down—for Rufus.
“No, really,” I add, projecting calm and control. “I’m sure it’s really nice.”
“You’re going to love it, Reenie-beany,” Mom says, though she doesn’t sound one hundred percent.
A part of me wants to say, Of course I will! But then I look at Aunt Bea and the warm light in the kitchen and Rufus twitters and squeezes my hand through the glove and I can’t imagine loving anywhere else on earth.
“Okay,” I say.
“I’ll call tomorrow to give you an update.”
“Great.”
We say good night, we say we love each other.
“Everything all right?” Aunt Bea asks.
The buzz has returned like a nightmare, familiar and awful all at once. Rufus must sense it because he bates, flapping and scratching, and I do nothing for a second because I feel exactly like that: caught, frantic, whole world upside down.
I grab him. Set him right on my fist. At least I can save my owl.
“Everything’s fine,” I tell Beatrice. Because that’s just how things always have to be: fine.