The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe

by Tricia Springstubb

  “That’s okay,” said Loah. “It is dumb.”

  “I think it’s all right to like dumb things, even if you know they’re dumb. PopPop likes country music, which is so corny and terrible, but some of the songs choke me up.” Ellis shook her head. “Dumb,” she said, smiling.

  At Ellis’s house they used a generator, and they ran out of hot water all the time. Here, the plumbing was unreliable, but tonight it decided to cooperate and let Ellis take a long shower. She came back to Loah’s room trailing a cloud of flowery steam, her skin pink and her hair silky as ribbons. Her toes were wrinkled, and the big one wriggled happily. She pulled a clean, faded T-shirt from her backpack, which also contained a sack of cookies, dense with nuts and raisins, and a mason jar of homemade grape juice, which tasted nothing like the watery store stuff Miss Rinker favored.

  By now they were pretty sure PopPop wasn’t coming, though who knew why. Ellis said maybe he couldn’t start the pickup, which happened all the time. Or maybe her mother was having one of her bad spells and needed him. Or maybe… She shook her head and grabbed the copy of Women Spacefarers, opening it to a photo of Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Valentina had piercing brown eyes and a chest covered with medals. The book said that when she blasted off, she shouted, “Hey, sky, take off your hat! I’m coming!”

  “So do you want to be an astronaut?” Ellis asked.

  This was such a ridiculous question, Loah laugh-snorted, which made Ellis look confused, which made Loah realize, She actually, truly thinks I could blast off into the unknown.

  “Miss Rinker says, ‘What’s so great about explorers? They only discover things that are already there.’ But how are you supposed to discover something that isn’t there? Besides, I didn’t know you existed, but now that I know you do, well… I can’t believe I didn’t know all along.”

  At the bottom of Ellis’s dark eyes, that spark kindled. It leaped across the space between them and kindled something in Loah, too. She could feel it flickering, shy at first, just a hint, just a glimmer, but then it caught and blazed, and warmth spread all through her. Ellis pushed her shiny, ribbony hair back from her face and smiled.

  Loah smiled back. She held up the photo of the very first woman in space.

  “Hey, sky, take off your hat! I’m coming!” they shouted together, and fell over laughing.

  Sometime, deep in the night, Loah woke to hear the screech owl wailing like someone who’d died and come back to complain about it. Ellis wasn’t in the bed. Loah pulled her scrap of baby blanket from under her pillow. Had Ellis changed her mind? Had she decided to go home?

  “Did you hear that?”

  Loah clicked on the bedside lamp and saw her, standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “It’s just an owl,” Loah said in relief.

  “Not that. Something else. I heard noises down the hall. Thumps.” Ellis leaned out the door, listening. “I don’t hear it now.”

  Climbing back into bed, Ellis noticed Loah’s blanket. Loah felt her face go red with embarrassment. But Ellis reached down and pulled a knotty tangle of yarn from her backpack.

  “My mother made it for me when I was born.” She rolled her eyes, then set her blanket next to Loah’s and smiled. “Hard to decide which looks worse.”

  “I think it’s a tie.”

  Loah turned off the light and, holding their baby blankets, they snuggled back down and soon fell fast asleep.

  A slumber of girls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Loah’s mother was home at last. She’d lost her keys (again) and was on the doorstep ringing the bell (which didn’t work but somehow Loah heard). The entryway was heaped with piles of rubble and dead branches (how had they gotten inside?), which Loah had to scramble over. It took forever, and by the time she reached the door, it wasn’t the front door at all but the door to the turret. She needed all her strength to open it and by the time she did, her mother’s arms and head were covered in white feathers. In the middle of her face—a long black beak.

  “Mama!” cried Loah as her mother beat her wings. “Wait!” Loah tried to catch her, but her mother lifted into the air. “Mama, no! You live here! Here!” Loah stretched her empty, so empty, arms toward the sky. “Come back!”

  “Loah?” Ellis was shaking her shoulder. “Wake up. The phone’s ringing.”

  Loah threw back the covers. She rushed along the corridor and down the stairs. She could hear the phone ringing but only faintly, like something about to give up and expire. She missed the last steps and tumbled onto her bum, but at last made it to the library, where she dived across her mother’s desk and grabbed the phone.

  “Hello?”

  A passing breeze. A sigh. The beat of a single wing.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Click.

  Outside the birds were making a commotion, the way they did every morning, but today they were even more raucous than usual, as if they, too, were trying to wake her up to answer the phone. As she slowly climbed back upstairs, she felt her dream clinging to her like an ugly, sticky cobweb.

  “Who was it?” Ellis was waiting at the top of the staircase.

  “I was dreaming about my mother. A bad dream.”

  Ellis, face creased with sleep, waited patiently.

  “And then she called. I could see it was her satellite phone number. But…”

  At the end of the dim corridor, Loah could see the turret door, still shut tight.

  “But?” prompted Ellis.

  “She didn’t say anything.”

  Loah shut her eyes. In her dream, she’d gotten to the front door—the turret door—too late. If only she’d opened it sooner, she could have kept her mother from becoming a small dot swallowed up by the vast sky. The dream was still so real her empty arms ached.

  “Call her back,” Ellis said.

  “I’m only allowed to call in an emergency. It’s a rule.”

  “Sometimes you need to break the rules.”

  They dressed, then carried the fishbowl down to the library, where Loah, for the first time in her life, dialed the programmed number. Ellis stood close, listening, too, as it rang and rang. Mama’s message came on.

  “ ‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’ This is Dr. Anastasia Londonderry. I am literally and figuratively on top of the world!”

  “Mama, it’s me. Please call back.”

  As they sat waiting on the window seat, Loah told Ellis about her mother’s other expeditions. The time she lost the tip of a finger to frostbite, the time her eyes swelled shut from the stings of vicious Arctic mosquitoes, the time she got hypothermia from falling into the sea.

  “But she always survived,” Loah said, trying to reassure them both. “She always came back okay.”

  The look on Ellis’s face was anything but reassuring.

  Call me, Loah thought. Call me call me call—

  The phone rang again. Without looking Loah knew—knew with every bit of her capable of knowing anything—that it was Mama.

  And it was.

  “Mama!” This was suddenly the only word she knew. “Mama!”

  “Oh, sweetie.” A sighing sound, like a dying breeze. “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  Her mother’s voice wasn’t squeaky now. The opposite—it was muted and flattened in a way Loah didn’t recognize.

  “Mama? You sound funny.”

  Another sigh.

  “Is it the loah?” she asked. “You found her, didn’t you?”

  When her mother didn’t answer, she knew something was very wrong. Had a predator gotten the bird? Had her breeding ground deteriorated too badly for her to nest? Sudden sadness clutched Loah’s heart. If that small, plain bird with the tiny streak of gold—if she’d managed to survive in spite of everything, only to be lost…? Lost forever? And if there’d been eggs? What would happen to them?

  “Mama!” If she felt this sad, think what her mother was feeling! The loah was a ray of hope for all birds, for the Arctic, fo
r the planet! Mama had risked so much to find it. Brave, hopeful Mama. The anger and hurt Loah had been feeling disappeared. “Mama, I’m so sorry. You did all you could.”

  “Oh, sweetie. I’ll be all right. It’s just… something’s wrong with my primary covert.”

  The primary covert is part of a bird’s wing. Loah must have heard wrong.

  “You mean the loah bird’s wing?”

  “My poor arm. And my poor old Jeep.”

  “I don’t understand. Could you explain? Mama?”

  Ellis, freckles in a knot, stood close.

  “I don’t think I can fix it,” Dr. Londonderry said.

  Did she mean her Jeep? Her arm? Both? The blood beat up in Loah’s ears.

  “Mama, are you hurt?” When her mother didn’t answer, she said, “Can you tell me where you are?”

  “There’s a ridge. A pond to the northeast, or no, maybe it’s west…”

  “Can’t you tell? What does your GPS say?”

  Her mother sighed.

  Ellis put a hand on Loah’s arm, which helped her keep her voice calm.

  “Where’s your personal locator beacon? Your PLB? You have it with you, don’t you? Do you need to activate it?”

  Crackle.

  “Drat,” muttered her mother, who never muttered. “This foolish phone…”

  “You need to charge it.”

  “You’re right. What if I got cut off from you again? I must charge it.”

  Click.

  “Not now! Mama, don’t hang up!”

  But she was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Every year, the Arctic tern migrates from one polar region to the other, approximately twelve thousand miles each way. If Loah were a tern, she could have set her internal compass, spread her wings, and set off to find her mother.

  But Loah, this Loah, was a girl.

  “We need to get help,” Ellis said, once Loah had explained. “We need to tell someone.”

  We. Such a small word. Such a big word.

  “Miss Rinker and Theo are in the hospital,” said Loah.

  “I know. Who else is there?”

  “Dr. Whitaker, but—”

  “Who’s he?”

  Loah explained how he was her mother’s boss at the university, how the two of them were forever arguing, how Dr. Whitaker said there was only enough time and money to rescue the most significant species, and how Dr. Londonderry believed every single species was significant.

  “He’d say she was on a wild-goose chase. She isn’t even supposed to be there.” Loah pulled on her earlobes. She couldn’t cry now. But she wanted to. She really wanted to. “When her team left she stayed on by herself. It’s against all the rules. He’d be furious if he knew.”

  Something hit the upper windowpane with a soft thud. They ran to look. On the ground, a house sparrow lay perfectly still. Just a fledgling, its feathers still downy and gray.

  “Don’t be dead!” begged Loah. “Please, please don’t be.”

  The bird didn’t move.

  “If only she’d come home!” she cried, knocking her fist on the window. “She should’ve come home!”

  “Maybe,” said Ellis. “Probably. But she didn’t. She knew it was risky and still decided to stay. Loah, she really really, really wanted to find that bird.”

  Leaning her forehead against the window, Loah heard Mama whispering their favorite story.

  You were due in two weeks… I was so sad and lonely. My heart was lost and I couldn’t find it.

  The little sparrow gave a shudder. Life flickered in its breast.

  That unmistakable streak of gold, like a shining ray of hope. Like a promise that everything wasn’t over, and the world was still a place brimming with surprise and wonder and beauty for the finding.

  The sparrow twisted its head and opened its eyes. Up on its feet, it gave a hop. Another hop.

  As soon as I saw you, I knew your name.

  Cheep! Chirrup! A flap of fledgling wings, and the bird was in the air. If only she were a bird! If only she had instincts, instead of confused thoughts and feelings! Should Loah call Miss Rinker? But what could she do from the hospital? Dr. Whitaker was the one who’d know how to help, but Mama would hate for him to know, wouldn’t she? Maybe she should wait for Mama to call again. Mama was always so strong—she always knew what needed to be done. Maybe Loah should keep trying to call her back? But Mama had sounded so weak, so confused, so not-Mama.

  “Loah,” said Ellis. Loah hadn’t realized she was pacing in circles till Ellis suddenly blocked her path. “Your mother needs you.”

  Sometimes in life, not often but sometimes, a person says a thing that sets you vibrating, as if their words are the wind and you are a wind chime.

  Mama needed her.

  Trembling, Loah went to her mother’s desk, found the number of the university office, drew a breath, and dialed.

  “You have reached the Department of Mammalogy and Ornithology,” said a recorded message. “Due to reduced summer hours, the office is closed. Please leave a message or try again later.”

  Now she remembered—Mama had said Dr. Whitaker was off on his own trek. She began pacing again, bumping into the little table with the bowl of sunflower seeds she’d set out back when she still believed Mama would be home soon. The seeds skittered under the furniture and down cracks in the floor.

  “Later,” she said. “What does that mean?”

  Trying to think, trying to think. Mama hadn’t called for three days—had she been hurt all that time? Alone and hurt? Loah couldn’t stand to think of it, but she had to. Now that she’d decided to get help, she couldn’t wait for later.

  “I need to get to the university,” she told Ellis. “Someone there will know how to get in touch with Dr. Whitaker. If only Miss Rinker was here to take me! I don’t think I can ride my bike that far. Maybe I could call a taxi? How much do you think that would cost? There’s some money in the sugar—”

  But Ellis was already out the door, calling over her shoulder, “Come on. I’ll get us there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Along the straight main road, onto the crooked side road, left at the fork, and around the bend to the signs shouting KEEP OUT and TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED OR WORSE, all the way to the crest of the dirt driveway. Below, all was still. The ONLY DEAD FISH GO WITH THE STREAM banner hung limp on its pole. An empty wheelchair stood on the porch, and a calico cat slept on a shed roof. The pickup was parked where it had been yesterday—where, from the looks of it, it had been parked for a century. Only one thing moved. Up on top of the old washing machine, Aquaman did a tap dance.

  THIS CONSTITUTES YOUR FINAL WARNING

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Loah asked. “Aren’t you going to get in a lot of trouble?”

  “I already am.” Ellis pushed off. As her bike bumped down the hill, she called back, “Stay there. I mean it. Don’t come unless I give you a signal.” At the house, she dropped her bike and disappeared inside.

  It was so quiet. Too quiet. Like in a horror movie, just before the killer lunges out of the closet with his bloody knife or the brain-eating monster lurches over the hill.

  Then.

  Maybe the walls of the house didn’t actually shake, but they should have. The front door blew open and Zeke bolted out. Incredibly, he was still wearing the poncho. Spying Loah on the crest of the hill, he raised his arms like a living emergency beacon.

  “Sorry, birdbrain! I tried!”

  Inside the house, the yelling got louder. And louder. Ellis’s voice was mixed in there somewhere, like a flute in a hurricane. Something crashed to the floor, and there was a sudden silence. Somehow, this was louder than the yelling.

  “Run for your life!” cried Zeke. As if to demonstrate, he tore across the yard and ducked behind the barn.

  Usually, when something is so frightening a person’s stomach churns and her knees go to jelly, she has to summon her courage.

  More rarely, courage s
ummons her.

  Down the bumpy hill, bones rattling, brain capable of a single thought. Help Ellis.

  Loah, you don’t need to be told, was not athletic. She wasn’t even very coordinated. So when her bike hit a pothole (where did that come from?) at the bottom of the drive, there was no way she could recover her balance. Worse. She was going so fast, her own momentum pitched her over the handlebars and hurled her face-first onto the ground. Where she lay, stunned and aching and afraid to move, as something began to nibble her T-shirt.

  “Baa!” Aquaman nudged her with his heart-shaped nose. “Baa?”

  The front door opened. Footsteps pounded the ramp. She kept her face down, hoping to become one with the ground, but all at once she felt herself lifted into the air. Like a feather, a dust mote, a thing that weighed nothing at all, she was lifted and set on her feet.

  Mr. PopPop Smith was an enormous person. If Stonehenge were human—that kind of big. Loah was used to small, scraggly old people, not colossal ones with arm muscles the size of navel oranges. She tried to look past him, to see if Ellis was near, but he blocked the view. Trembling, Loah fixed her eyes on his sandaled feet, which had long, yellowish toenails. The talons of the turkey vulture flashed before her.

  “PopPop!” Ellis was suddenly there, inserting herself between him and Loah. “Quit scaring her. I told you—she’s my friend, and she’s in trouble.”

  “I’ll give you trouble!” he snarled. “Get your sorry self inside, Squirrel.”

  “If you’d just listened to me instead of breaking Mama’s lamp—”

  “That was an accident!”

  “Loah needs help!”

  “You made your brother lie! He told us you were with your cousins. There I was, trying to cut you some slack and let you have a little fun, only to find out you snuck off behind my back. You spent the night who knows where, with who knows who!”

  “I didn’t make Zeke lie, and if you’d just calm down, I could introduce Loah and you’d see she’s—”

  “I don’t care if she’s the Queen of England.” He fixed Loah with a fierce scowl. “What kind of friend talks you into running away? No kind, that’s what.”