Before she left for work next morning, Mrs. Perkins said, “You’re too old to be going through the things in my room, Amy. I thought you’d grown out of that. I don’t want to have to lock my door.”

Amy didn’t know what to say.

When her mother and father had gone she made the beds and put the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher. The doorbell rang. Amy went to answer it.

Jean stood on the front stoop. She was wearing dungarees. “Mom was pretty mad at me for getting wet two days in a row,” she said. “My Sunday dress has to go to the cleaner.”

“That reminds me.” Amy pulled a pink slip of paper and a dollar bill out of her pocket. “Mother told me to pick up my skirt from the cleaner. Let’s do it now before I forget.”

“Where’s Beryl?” Jean asked.

“I don’t know,” Amy said. “I haven’t seen her this morning. That bird gets into everything. We’d better see what she’s up to.”

“Maybe she’s with Wispy,” Jean said.

The two girls went down to the laundry room. Wispy was leaning against the washing machine. The blue bristles were covered with spiderwebs. The jay was perched on one foot on the handle of Mrs. Perkins’ scraggly old broom. Beryl was nibbling what was left of a brownie.

Amy glared at her. “Mother left that for my lunch,” she said. “I was going to share it with you.”

The bird chirped something. She swallowed the last crumb and flew up the basement stairs.

Amy took a rag from the box. She used it to wipe the spiderwebs from the little broom.

The girls went to the cleaner on Church Avenue for Amy’s skirt. It was in a big plastic bag.

“Look, Jean, this is the button I told you about.” Amy felt the button through the plastic.

“The one Wispy found?” Jean asked.

Amy nodded. She hung the plastic bag over her arm, but she kept feeling the button.

On the way home they had to pass the bakery shop. Jean sniffed the air. She stopped to look at a gooey chocolate cake in the bakery window. “Wouldn’t Beryl love to get her beak in that,” she said.

“I’d like to see her stuck in it.” Amy was still rubbing the button.

At that moment there was a shriek from the woman behind the counter in the bakery. Now Amy and Jean saw that a bird was flying round and round in the shop. The bird banged into the plate glass window and fell, head-downward, into the sticky chocolate icing on the cake. The bird’s feet stuck up in the air. Her blue feathers were coated with chocolate, and she couldn’t fly.

“Amy!” Jean said. “That looks like Beryl!”

The woman behind the counter was yelling, “Somebody get it out of there.” But the other people in the shop just crowded around to look at the bird. Amy handed the skirt to Jean. She ran into the bakery and pushed her way between the people to grab the bird and pull her out of the cake.

“I’ll wash the icing off her,” Amy told the woman behind the counter. She took the bird out of the shop and started home. Jean came after her.

Once inside her house Amy went to the kitchen sink to rinse the bluejay. “Hang the skirt in my closet, Jean,” she said.

When all the chocolate had been scrubbed from her feathers, Beryl hopped onto the drainboard. She stretched her wings and flapped them to get the water off. Then, without even a nod of thanks to Amy, she flew out of the kitchen.

Jean was just coming back into the room. She ducked as the bird whizzed past. “Where’s Beryl going?”

“To find some more mischief, I guess.” Amy dried her hands. “Come on out in the yard, Jean. Beryl doesn’t want to be with us.”