Chapter 5 Bird
BIRD
One kiss. That was all it took to change everything.
It happened only a couple of hours after we took that picture.
We’d all gone back to our rooms for the night; I was almost asleep when I heard someone knocking lightly on my door.
More like a tap-tap whisper I wasn’t sure I hadn’t dreamed.
One minute the three of us were just friends who flirted and cuddled and laughed and held hands and smoked cloves and pretended that it was all just platonic adoration.
The next minute it was all big feelings and expectations, and I suddenly felt like I had to choose between them—not that either of them asked me to.
But more than that, it felt like I was trying to choose between two different lives, two entirely different identities. It still feels that way.
Part of me wishes we could’ve just kept pretending.
I’d planned on showing Kayla the picture.
But as the day passed and we went to the mall and she bought Victoria’s Secret bras and thongs, but did not eat anything except two bites of a McDonald’s parfait that I bought her, and did not drink anything except water, and gave herself mean looks in every reflective surface we passed, I couldn’t do it.
Somehow, this new her wouldn’t get them.
She wouldn’t get Silas’s stories or Coke-bottle glasses and ponytail, or Kat’s humor or buzz cut and makeup-free face full of freckles.
I couldn’t stand by while she judged them, while she judged me for liking them so much.
So I kept the picture hidden in my notebook, stowed safely away in my bag.
I fan the pages over; I need to stop thinking about them.
About me with them, about all my stupid regrets.
I find my poem for tonight. Reading it through one more time, crossing out lines, swapping words around, it’s still a mess.
“ ‘Wh-wh-what I Did This Summer,’ ” I stutter through the title.
“Fuck!” Too wordy—too many words to stumble over.
I scribble out the title so hard I tear the paper with my pen.
Above it, I write Providence instead. The place where it all happened, the word itself aptly describing it.
The divine order of meeting them when I did.
What was meant to be and maybe not meant to be.
“Providence,” I say out loud, the syllables gliding together easily.
Every day of July,
and part of June,
and most of August, you said nice things to me
You said you liked my voice
(even though you don’t usually like poetry that doesn’t rhyme)
And I liked your stories, too, even though I usually don’t like third person
At least you had a point of view
You used it on me constantly, tried to make me fall
A couple weeks in you were brave and I was not
When you asked if it was unrequited and I said, “Yes, probably”
You laughed and I cried
Sorry for that, by the way
You thought I was a better person than I really am
But still, you sent me lines from all the bird poems you could find.
Because, you said, I’m your favorite animal. Me.
“Ode to a Nightingale”—god, all those thous and thees
And “The Raven” with its nevermores
But I liked the Emily Dickinson one the best…
the whole Hope and Feathers thing.
And I never had anyone look at me the way you did
That night in your room
when you read me her “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!”
Another favorite of yours.
A secret I forgot to tell: You were my favorite too.
I slam the notebook closed. I don’t even know who or what I’m writing about anymore.
I told myself I just needed one day back in my real life to get them both out of my system.
One day to flush this whole summer from my veins.
So I pretended to sleep through Liv’s ungodly early Saturday morning cheer practice alarm, and pretended to sleep as she grunted and groaned through her Tae Bo tape to maintain her perfect body.
I would’ve asked why she needed to work out before going to work out, but she’s clearly pissed at me for fucking existing.
I’ve avoided checking my email, at least not in the daylight.
I’ve avoided writing any emails to either Silas or Kat.
Instead, I got dressed in yesterday’s clothes and borrowed my mom’s car, only because I agreed to take Bailey with me to buy school supplies.
We hit the public library after, where he was happy to sign out a computer and play SimCity while I worked on my poem for tonight.
I guess sometimes even a third grader needs a break from the chaos of our house.
Sliding on the cutoffs I made for myself this summer, I try for a different kind of look.
A different kind of person from the one everyone back home has always known.
Someone more carefree, more confident. I dig through the suitcase I still haven’t unpacked and find the T-shirt Kat let me borrow that night I slept in her room.
I bring it to my face and breathe in; it still smells like her.
I step over Liv’s line and look into her full-length mirror.
Yesterday with Kayla has left me self-conscious about showing my thighs.
No shorts. I step out of them and pull out my long black peasant-style skirt—I brought it with me this summer but never had a chance to wear it.
Definitely goes with my hippie sandals. I call Kayla and ask if I can wear her jean jacket—the one with the frayed cuffs and holes in the elbows.
I dig in my bag for my mascara and clumsily swipe my lashes, immediately regret my makeup attempt, and end up smudging it all around my eyes as I try to wipe it off.
I steal the Bonne Bell Dr Pepper flavored Lip Smackers—which I know for a fact she originally stole from me even though she swore she didn’t—off Liv’s desk and tuck my growing-out bangs behind my ears.
I’m ready. Physically, anyway.
Kayla picks me up ten minutes late, but she does at least remember the jacket, so I can’t be too upset.
“I’m so freaking excited, Bird.” She glances over at me in the passenger seat, beaming, and I’m about to thank her for being excited for my big debut, but then she continues, “I can’t wait for you to officially meet Dade.
I can’t believe I never noticed him at school before.
You’re gonna love him. I swear, you’re just going to love him. ”
“Yeah,” I agree, but I can barely force a smile.
When she catches me grinding my teeth, she says, “Breathe. I’ll get you there on time.”
“I know. I’m just n-nervous. Thanks for letting me borrow your jacket, by the way.”
“Keep it. It looks really good on you, and besides, I’m never planning on fitting into that again, so… it’s all yours.”
“Gee thanks, Kay,” I tell her. She has insulted me by proxy while insulting herself more times over the last two days than in our entire decade of friendship.
“No, I mean it’s so much more your style than mine,” she attempts to course correct. Then sighs through the word “anyway” while speeding through a bleeding yellow light.
“It’s f-fine.”
It’s not, but I don’t want to argue. Not after being apart all summer.
Not when I don’t really have a handle on what in the actual hell is going on with her.
Not when neither Paige nor Brianne—literally my only other friends in the entire world—are returning my calls and I have no idea why.
Not right before this huge thing I’m trying to do.
The first day of the workshop, we each had to write down a goal and a fear.
My goal was to not be afraid. Of truth. Of myself.
Maybe I was afraid of being afraid. Maybe I still am.
We did readings in front of each other all summer.
But this is the first time I’ll be putting myself out there in front of strangers—or even worse, there could be people there I know.
I have to do it, though. It was our last assignment of the summer: Everyone had to make one concrete plan before leaving the workshop.
A plan to read, to share, to submit, something somewhere.
The only rule was that it had to take you out of your comfort zone.
I could submit anonymous shit to our school’s literary magazine year after year.
But to stand up onstage and read my own words in my own voice…
That was the fear—the one tangible fear I could dare to admit, anyway—that I wrote on that photocopied sheet of paper on the first day of the workshop.
Last week, my favorite professor, Sylvie Chen, sat there next to me in her office while I called Six Roots.
It was the only local place I knew that ever did poetry readings of any kind.
I asked—as awkwardly as humanly possible, I’m sure—if I could sign up.
They told me about this open mic night, and when I hesitated, Sylvie shouted over me, “She’ll be there! ”
It seemed far enough away. I thought I’d be prepared. But I’m not. The fear. It’s still here, sitting like a brick inside of me, weighing me down, making me sink deeper into myself.
“Hell-o-o? Earth to Birdie?”
“Wait. Sorry, what?”
“I said, are you gonna read the steamy kissing poem?”
“Are you kidding? Absolutely not. I can’t believe I even shared it with you.”
“Hey! Why not? You always show me your poems.”
“Well, this one was… different. It was—it was private.”
“All right. Ouch.” There’s this tinge of sarcasm in her voice. I know it well. It’s how she sounds when she’s trying to pretend someone hasn’t hurt her feelings, except I’m not usually the one on the receiving end.
“That’s not what I—”
“Since when is something too private to share with your best friend?”
“No, that is not what I meant. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just nervous,” I tell her again. “Can you not be mad at me right now?”
“Chill. I’m just kidding.”
No, she’s not.
The SIX ROOTS sign looms closer. As we pull up, a parking space right in front of the building has opened, magically waiting for us. The A-frame chalkboard sign outside the door reads, in thick pastel green letters:
OPEN MIC 2NITE! 7PM
SIGN UP W/THE DEADHEAD
IN THE PHONE BOOTH
My heart is in my throat, my pulse racing, my hands trembling as they clutch my bag, its contents bringing me only minimal comfort: notebook, favorite gel pen, my pack of Djarum Blacks I bought on campus, which only has three cigarettes left, and the recovered lip gloss.
“Kayla?” I reach over to touch her wrist, trying to stop her from unbuckling her seat belt. “Wait, I don’t think I can do this. I’m not r-ready. The poem’s not ready. I can’t. I s-seriously can’t do this. Do you hear me? I’m fucking stuttering again!”
“Okay, well, you don’t have to, right?” She’s not even looking at me; she’s looking in her compact mirror, reapplying her kohl eyeliner to each waterline.
“No, I have to.” I promised Silas and Kat and Sylvie. “I promised I would.”
“Then do it.”
“But I’m not ready.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“Kayla,” I whine.
“Bird!” She snaps her compact shut and turns toward me. “It’s not like this is for a grade. You wanna do it, great. If you really don’t feel like you can, then don’t torture yourself over it. What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say I can do it!” I raise my voice to match hers. “Like, can you just encourage me or something? I’m really scared.”
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “Of course you can. Just take your time. You won’t stutter, and even if you do, no one will notice.” She’s lying. People always notice.
I open my mouth, but the words to explain how it’s not only the stuttering I’m afraid of won’t come out. She’s already unbuckling, already opening her door. “Come on, I want to get in there already.” She steps out onto the gravel, but I’m frozen.