In English today, we get to listen to music during reading. We’re only allowed to on Fridays, and I’ve never taken advantage of it before, but I do today—I just downloaded a White Stripes album onto my iPod. I’m listening to them and holding The Perks of Being a Wallflower in my hand. I turn the music up and crack the cover. A flyer falls out. It’s bright blue and purple and says Gertrude Nix Rock Camp for Girls, with pictures of girls screaming into microphones, guitars weighing down their shoulders, drumsticks flying. It’s a monthlong sleepaway camp for eight- to sixteen-year-old girls. My throat tightens. I wonder if this is Mrs. Wexler’s last attempt to get me to open my mouth and make a friend. Missing her comes like a wave, fast and unstoppable. I can’t cry. Not here. I stuff the flyer into my backpack and go back to my book.

“Hi!” Mom shouts when she comes in my room, and I finally turn around.

“Oh, hey,” I say, glued to the screen. She reaches over and turns down the volume, which is annoying but also parental, and it feels good to have her be annoying instead of worried and sad.

“What is this?”

“Sonic Youth,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “How’d you hear about them?”

“School,” I say, trying to sound natural, trying to sound like my sudden interest in the old-school indie rock is what all the brown girls are doing these days.

“A friend?”

“I don’t know.”

“A boy?”

“No, Mom.”

“Okay, okay. Dinner in fifteen minutes.”

She heads downstairs, and I’m grateful for the mildly normal interaction, though I’m pretty sure that once we sit through dinner, things will be all awkward again. Soon the smell of macaroni and cheese wafts up to me and carries me downstairs by the nose.

“It smells good, Mom,” I say. Macaroni and cheese is my favorite, how she makes it, hot and gooey from the oven, four different kinds of cheese, and bread crumbs brown and crunchy on top. She takes a kale salad out of the refrigerator, for balance, I guess.

“Good,” she says. “Set the table.” This feels normal. I feel nervous. I put two plates on the island and try to grab the forks, napkins, and glasses in one hand—she would call it a lazy man’s load.

“How was your day?” she asks.

“Okay,” I say. “Yours?”

“It was busy. You know, too much work.”

“As always.” I smile. This feels good.

“Did you want to go to Central Park some weekend soon?” Central Park. Where we always go when springtime comes on strong. I sit and read and “watch” the birds (she thinks I’m only watching), and she reads. We have an actual picnic basket and everything. It’s usually my favorite thing. It’s like how most kids feel about Disneyland. I don’t know about this year. It might be too sad, since I’m obviously never going to get to fly again.

“Um, maybe,” I say, trying to keep the normal going. I have to put my fork down, though. The thought of sitting on the ground looking up for the rest of my life ruins my appetite.

“You don’t want to?”

“We’ll see.” There it is—the weird blanket of tension that settles in on both of us, my mother thinking, probably, that I don’t want to spend time with her, me thinking about the fact that I turn into a bird and am totally, certifiably crazy and she has no idea. She just wants to go to the park. Because I like the park. Or did. And because she loves me. Or did.

“Maybe a movie?” I suggest, trying hard to sound light, bright, happy.

“Sure,” she says, unsure. I’ve ruined everything. Again. We don’t speak for the rest of the meal, which isn’t much longer, since I’m just picking at my mac and cheese now and she seems to have lost interest in her kale salad.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I ask.

“I should really work,” she says. I look down. I say nothing. I’m not trying to guilt-trip her, I’m just trying to figure out how we’re ever going to stop being such strangers to each other.

“Maybe just for a little while,” she says.

“You pick,” I say, putting our dishes in the sink and heading through the swing door. She picks some show about doctors who love each other and work too much, and I don’t know what’s happening or care too much, but I’m pretty happy to be sitting on the couch with Mom like she’s Mom and not just some lady I live with.

On the show, one doctor is trying to save this woman’s life but the woman keeps insisting that she has nothing left to live for. I fall asleep, but I’m pretty sure that in the last five minutes her long-lost kids all come in and she finds her will to live. I don’t know what I dream about, but when I wake up gasping, I hear the sound of crushed bones in my ears—is it the TV? My mouth tastes like dirt, and my throat feels scratched and dry, like there’s something stuck in it—a feather? That’d be so predictable. I hate that this is the closest I’ll get to flying again. I hate that Mom is rushing to get me a glass of water and then she’ll ask me what I dreamt about and I’ll say I don’t know and she’ll ask if I’m okay and I’ll say yeah, and then we’ll go back to watching this show, and when I go to bed later, I’ll have trouble falling asleep and I’ll hate waking up because my mouth will taste like dirt and feathers and I won’t even remember the fall.