ord.Mom’s morning message says:
Dad is gone already, and he’s left a note and bagel money on the counter. I open the refrigerator and see that two of Mom’s yogurt drinks are missing.
First period. Science.
I’m sitting quietly at Table Six with Bob English Who Draws, who is drawing. Dallas pats me roughly on the head as he walks by. “Hey, G. Great to see you, G. See you later, G.”
“That was weird,” I say when he’s gone.
Bob doesn’t look up. “He’s out to get you, you know.”
“No kidding. Isn’t Dallas out to get everyone?”
“Yeah. But you especially. Ever since you knocked him over in the gym.”
“What? No one even saw that.” But as I’m saying it I realize I must be wrong. Obviously, someone did.
“Everyone saw it. Anita, Chad, and Paul were like, high-fiving. He’s been annoying them all year, calling them the Nerd Squad and asking Anita if she’s going to get a perfect score on her SATs.”
“The SATs? You mean for college?”
Bob is still drawing. “She thinks it’s because she’s Asian. You know. Like Asians are supposed to be super-smart or whatever.”
I wonder if I’m wrong about Jason. Maybe he has changed, if he’s willing to sit near a guy like Dallas at lunch every day.
“Speaking of the letter G,” Bob says, “did you know that Benjamin Franklin wanted to get rid of it?”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah. Not get rid of it totally. He wanted to keep the hard G and get rid of the soft G. You know, the hard G, as in go. And the soft G, like in Georges.”
“Wouldn’t that make George Washington really mad?”
“Well, he had plans for the soft G. He could have spelled it with a J, right? Except that J is one of the six letters he totally threw away.”
“He threw out six letters?”
“Yeah. But he invented six new ones. He invented this letter ish, which sounds like sh and looks like a lowercase H, except with a swirly top. He wanted to blend the ish with other letters to get certain sounds. So he made the soft G sound by blending the D and the ish. It’s a little confusing. And your name actually has a soft G at the beginning and the end, so it would look like this—”
He scribbles in the corner of his notebook and slides it over: Dord.
“Dehorda?”
“No,” he says, “you have to think of the ish as ‘sh.’ ”
“Shorsh?”
“You’re not saying the D.”
“Deshord-sha?”
“Are you even trying?”
“I thought the whole idea was to make it not confusing,” I say.
“Yeah. But first you have to get used to it.”
I don’t point out how that’s exactly the way regular spelling is. It may be weird sometimes, but you get used to it. I look at what Bob wrote, and I wonder: if Benjamin Franklin had his way, would Ms. Warner try to make everyone call me ish?
Bob English has his head down again. Then he passes me a note:
No ofens.
He sees me staring at it. “No offense,” he whispers.
Last period. Gym.
Volleyball! Again.
Ms. Warner is standing just inside the gym doors with a big smile on her face as we all troop in.
“Really?” I ask her. “More volleyball?” She holds up her hand for a high five, but I leave her hanging because it’s not Friday.
“Just try to have fun, G. Only two days till the weekend. Remember, we’re in this together.” She looks sympathetic, but I’m beginning to wonder.
Dallas and Carter are right behind me. Again. Three steps past Ms. Warner and they start.
“Yeah, G. Try to have fun.”
Ignore.
One of them squeezes my shoulder. “Big muscle, Gorgeous. I guess that’s where the awesome serve comes from.”
Ignore.
Carter says, “Hey, Gorgeous, I’m talking to you. Answer me. Is the big muscle where the awesome serve comes from?”
Dallas says, “Lay off him, Carter. You know freaks aren’t good at sports.”
Ignore.
After school, I catch Safer’s call on the first ring. I’ve even had time to grab a pudding from the fridge.
“You’re welcome,” Safer says.
“For what?”
“I fixed your lock.”
It hits me—for the first time, I didn’t have to wrestle with my key.
“Hey, thanks.”
“We have a problem. How soon can you get here?”
I eat my pudding on the stairs, glancing down at Mr. X’s doormat on the way.
The gum wrapper is lying there, looking like an innocent piece of garbage. According to what Safer said last night, that means Mr. X is home. At least, I think that’s what it means. I lean down and pick it up, hoping he doesn’t choose that particular moment to open his door. But as usual, I don’t hear a thing.
On six, Candy answers the bell and says, “You have chocolate on your chin.”
“I forgot a spoon,” I say, rubbing my face.
She walks me down the hall, as usual. When she’s gone, I present the gum wrapper to Safer, who’s on his knees, frowning through the window.
“Oh,” he says. “So I guess you-know-who is home.” But he seems distracted.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him, dropping into my green beanbag.
“The parrots are in trouble. Something is definitely weird over there. The nest looks different. Smaller. And sort of—disrupted.”
“Is that bad? Maybe they’re downsizing. Or redecorating. My dad says knowing what to throw away is the single most important thing about sprucing up your home.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Sorry. I thought it was a little funny. Maybe not America’s Funniest Home Videos funny, but, you know, a modicum of funny. That’s a vocabulary word. You probably don’t know about those.”
He turns around to stare at me. “What’s with you today?”
I shrug.
“Do me a favor,” Safer says. “Go downstairs and check the sidewalk under the nest. See if there are any sticks down there.”
“Sticks,” I repeat. I’m so comfortable in the beanbag.
“Yeah, sticks. Just go check it out, okay?”
“Why can’t you check it out?”
“I’m watching from up here!”
What I want to say is “Watching what, exactly?” But I say, “Fine, I’ll go,” and pull myself out of my beanbag.
In the elevator I imagine a bird decorator who’s wearing my dad’s glasses—the funky rectangular ones he wears when he has a meeting—and flipping through a bird-size binder full of twig samples.
There actually are a bunch of little sticks on the sidewalk across the street, and one green feather. It’s creepy, like I’m looking at a crime scene. I take the feather back to Safer, who holds it thoughtfully.
“I wonder if there was an attack on the nest,” he says. “It happens sometimes.”
“Who would want to attack some parrots? They have nothing worth taking.”
Safer looks at me like I’m nuts. “You’re joking, right? I’m not talking about a robbery. I’m talking about falcons or hawks—don’t they teach you about birds of prey at school?”
Well, no. They don’t.
Safer is staring out the window again, running the feather up and down one arm.
“Whoa!” Candy has crept up on us. Her pig slippers should be standard-issue spyware. They are that quiet. “Please tell me that’s not a real feather.”
“It came from—” I point through the window at the parrots’ nest.
Candy shouts at Safer, “Are you trying to give us all avian flu? Put that down! Throw it away! And—take a shower, for Pete’s sake!” She stomps away in near silence.
“Her stomping will be a lot more effective when she outgrows those slippers,” I say.
He ignores me. “After an attack, survivors usually flee the nest. I bet they’re gone. All we can do is wait to see if they come back.”
“Maybe we should watch the lobbycam for a while,” I say.
Which perks him right up.