Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend

by Alan Cumyn

  Sheldon was already leaning toward the solution. Newspaper coverage so far had not been particularly favorable. What was a pterodactyl doing in high school anyway?

  “Crowdsourcing might not work,” Shiels said. “It might not work in time. We have to get our hands on the money right away and for certain.” She let the words sink in. She had not tasted her coffee yet, and now it was growing cold on the table in front of her. She forced herself to take a sip. Snow was piling up outside, not the hard pellets anymore but large flakes, settling in for the duration.

  “I have a college fund,” she said. “My parents started saving before I was born. I get full access to it in a few months. I’ll pay everyone back. But I’m not eighteen yet, and my parents are against me.”

  Her eyes had not moved from Sheldon’s. Of course he understood. The way they sat across the table locked in one gaze, there might as well have been no one else in the whole place.

  Sheldon was eighteen already. He had his own fund he could draw on.

  “Wait a minute,” Rachel said. “You’re not suggesting—”

  “I don’t have anywhere near ninety thousand dollars,” Sheldon said. But calmly.

  “You shouldn’t even be asking—” Rachel said. “Ninety thousand dollars is just such a crazy stupid amount of money!”

  “How much do you have?” Shiels asked. “Sixty? Pyke is not going to fly off. I don’t imagine he can even walk now. He’s going to die in there. And I will be good for every penny in February after my birthday. You know that. You know I am true to you.”

  She said it as if Rachel Wyngate weren’t sitting right there, glued to the young man Shiels used to be glued to, in her own way. It didn’t matter. Truth was truth.

  Shiels and Sheldon would be true to each other through this life until neither one drew breath anymore, no matter who they married or what fortunes and abuses life sent their way. Their bond was their bond.

  “Sheldon!” Rachel was holding his arm now, trying to get him to look away from Shiels’s gaze.

  “You’re going to get a scholarship anyway,” Shiels said. “Everyone knows that. And Pyke should be a rock star, or something. He should get that chance. We’re holding his life right now in our hands.”

  “I have sixty-five,” Sheldon said finally. “That’s not enough anyway. Where are you going to get the rest?”

  Oh, she loved him. And she wasn’t going to have him, not anymore. He was welded now to Rachel Wyngate and her simple beauty, her feet-on-the-ground good sense. Shiels suddenly saw them surrounded by children, stupidly happy.

  “I have an idea for who else to ask,” she said.

  • • •

  A text might do it, actually. Or, Jocelyne Legault was so stuck on Pyke, so anxious to get him out of harm’s way, Shiels imagined she could have sent a crow with the request, and Jocelyne would have transferred money.

  If she had money. That was a question. There might not be family resources.

  Jocelyne lived in Delside, the low-income housing complex in the neighborhood adjacent to Vista View. Below the ridge, leading toward the river that snaked through town. She was a cross-boundary transfer, allowed in part because even in elementary school she’d been able to run faster than most of the rest of the world.

  Shiels got her address from the electronic school roll, which she had access to as a student-body chair who had watched Principal Manniberg type in his password a number of times when they’d been discussing student activity outreach in light of emerging fiscal restraint.

  2313 Lundlass Lane, unit 31B. Shiels followed the directions on her phone through Delside’s warren of “lanes” and “courts” and “boulevards.” No one was out, not in the new, serious snow slowly burying doorsteps and vehicles, walkways and postage-stamp lawns. Even a playground basketball hoop, bent and drooping, supported a growing ring of white. The backboard had gunshot holes in it.

  Running was Jocelyne’s ticket out of this place. She would pull in a scholarship, she had to. But had the family been saving too? Jocelyne had said the family didn’t have enough money. But did they have some?

  Shiels followed her phone’s instructions to the graying aluminum storm door of unit 31B. She pressed the bell and wondered if perhaps it didn’t work. Maybe she should knock? Or text Jocelyne that she was standing outside her door.

  She wanted to see where the girl lived.

  The girl who had so captured Pyke’s heart.

  A pause. Shiels pulled open the storm door and raised her knuckled fist to knock. But the wooden front door was already opening. Jocelyne Legault’s face looked chalky against the purple of her nose. Could it be darkening?

  “Can I come in?”

  They walked along an entrance corridor that made Shiels think of the word “downtrodden.” It was the carpet, really, that attached to itself all the sad meaning of that word—the brown, filthy, threadbare carpet that should have been ripped up years ago, but what was underneath? The town house looked like it was made of sawdust and glue.

  “Do you have any news?” Jocelyne asked when they were in the back room, the one that got a modicum of sun and that overlooked a patio space piled with old furniture: a rickety table, some broken plastic chairs, a loveseat with stuffing bursting from inside, visible even with snowfall.

  Shiels filled her in. Jocelyne sat unnaturally straight, similar to her running posture. Her body seemed to be swimming in old clothes.

  “I will pay back the money to everyone in February, as soon as I get access,” Shiels explained. “I think it makes sense to bring Pyke to my house for rehab. Both my parents are doctors. Of course you could come and see him whenever you want.”

  But he will be under my roof, Shiels thought. I will see him whenever I want too.

  “How . . . how much do you need?” Jocelyne could not seem to keep herself from looking around at her sorry surroundings. The dull blue walls probably had not been painted in thirty years. A pressboard shelf sagged improbably under the slight weight of miniature porcelain figurines of cats and elves and chubby-cheeked ballerinas.

  Jocelyne’s trophies and medals must be elsewhere, Shiels thought. In her room, maybe.

  Shiels told her the number. When Jocelyne’s eyes widened, Shiels realized how preposterous she was being. It looked like Jocelyne’s family hardly had enough for groceries. They would not be bailing out the pterodactyl boyfriend.

  Shiels rose. “Look, I’m sorry. We can try other ways. We might be able to crowdsource this and—”

  Someone else entered then. Shiels turned to see a slight woman walking stiffly. Jocelyne bounced to her feet. “Ma, I want you to meet Shiels Krane. She’s the student-body chair. We’re just working together to get Pyke out. I think . . . I think we might need to dip into the buffer.”

  The woman held herself unusually straight. Her skin looked strangely tight, unhealthy, almost translucent. “Are you?”—her voice was breathless—“a friend of Jocelyne’s?”

  “We know each other from school, Ma,” Jocelyne said quickly.

  Ma looked Shiels up and down. “Your nose has gone purple too. It’s that pterodactyl boy, isn’t it?” She was shaking slightly, older perhaps than her years.

  “He has affected us all,” Shiels said simply. “I’m raising funds for his bail. No doubt Jocelyne told you what we saw in prison—”

  “We don’t have enough for the whole bail,” Ma said. “We can give some.”

  “Ma—” Jocelyne said.

  “It’s all right. We can talk about this.”

  Jocelyne seemed uncertain. Shiels wasn’t sure what to do. Finally she said, “Should we sit down?”

  “If I do that, I’ll just have to get up again,” Ma said. “I have a blood disorder. But there’s insurance. I want to do what’s right.”

  Shiels had a vague sense that Jocelyne’s father did not live here and that Ma probably didn’t work, that Jocelyne and her mother had been living thin for many years. Yet Jocelyne had mentioned a buffer. It might be
all that stood between the two of them and complete disaster.

  Nonetheless, Shiels laid out the plan. She looked Ma and Jocelyne steadily in the eye, one after the other, and kept her body still. A life was at stake. Today was Sunday. They could perhaps get Pyke out Monday or Tuesday.

  If he lasted that long.

  “I don’t want anyone else’s money at risk here,” Shiels said. “I will pay back all the creditors myself, no matter what happens. But I won’t have access to those funds right away. And Pyke needs us now.”

  Ma’s eyes too shifted between Shiels and her daughter. Shiels had a sense that this woman was watching her child grow up before her eyes. Crime, prison, punishment, bail—it was all in the realm of adults. Pyke, too, was technically an adult by age, although the football game had been played with boys.

  “Those players break arms and legs all the time on the field,” Shiels said. “No one gets hauled up in front of a judge. It was an accident of play. It wasn’t Pyke’s fault he has a razor-sharp beak.”

  “Exactly!” Jocelyne said. “He’s just a boy with a beak . . .”

  “And if he’s not a person,” Shiels said, “he’s a pterodactyl, so all laws are null and void, they’re only for humans. If a cougar wanders into town and slashes someone’s arm, you don’t throw him in jail.”

  “No, you shoot him,” Ma said. She looked exhausted, yet Shiels could see something of Jocelyne’s steel there too.

  “So he must be a boy,” Shiels said. “And we need the bail right away.” She almost said, “How much can you spare?” but the words would not come out. What was she doing? Jocelyne’s mother was terribly ill, and no matter what she said about insurance, this family had no business funding bail for some pterodactyl, no matter whose boyfriend he was.

  Shiels stood quickly, before the feeling passed. “I’m sorry. I can find the money elsewhere, I’m sure. Don’t worry about—”

  “We’re not worried,” Jocelyne said quickly. “It’s not like we’re spending anything here. It’s an investment, right? To save a life.” She was looking at her mother, who smiled finally, perhaps to see such fire in her daughter’s eyes.

  • • •

  Eleven thousand dollars. That was what Jocelyne and her mother could come up with. Shiels felt humbled, in awe. But she was still fourteen thousand short. She had no money of her own, nothing to speak of. She got an allowance, but she had never worked a paying job, had always simply had to ask to use her parents’ credit card, which was never unreasonably withheld.

  She had not needed a lot. Until now.

  As she walked away from Jocelyne’s house, she was already texting Sheldon to get him to send her the money as soon as possible. She and Jocelyne would meet with Jocelyne’s uncle, the lawyer. Monday morning.

  It would happen. The money would come together somehow.

  Sheldon texted back that Melanie Mull was going ahead with a crowdsourcing drive to raise Pyke’s bail. Good luck with that, Shiels thought. But maybe they could raise some part of the missing fourteen thousand?

  Maybe it would be possible.

  Certainly something would happen. The feeling was too strong to deny now. Pyke was in her gut. He had been growing there all along. She felt his energy in her limbs, her heart. Her body was full of the possibility of him—the muscles in his shoulders, the darkness of his eyes, the slope of his beak.

  As she walked, she felt like she was carrying his wings for him.

  XXIV

  Monday morning breakfast. Shiels’s mother was preparing to go back to work despite her broken foot. She clumped about the kitchen in her tailored jacket and slacks and her plastic ski boot cast. “The radio says it’s icy out, of course,” her mother said.

  “You could take a taxi,” Shiels said.

  “Of course I’m going to take a taxi. But I still have to get out the door to the driveway!”

  Shiels’s father had left already, but Jonathan was available, and he never fought with his mother. It was silently arranged that Jonathan would help her down the walkway. Also silently understood: Her mother didn’t trust Shiels. Not on ice. Not with a lot of things.

  Shiels was terribly aware that her parents’ spare credit card was sitting where it always sat in the little bowl on the kitchen island. It was good for pizza, for take-out Greek, for taxis and such. The credit limit, she happened to know, was fifteen thousand dollars.

  Her parents would freak, of course they would, but that would be down the road. They could absorb a hit like that, and no one would go hungry. It was just a number to them.

  All right, a large number, but still . . .

  Her mother settled at the door with her purse, her briefcase, her tablet, her shoe bag, while Jonathan stood by, the obedient son. Maybe this was a good change, Shiels thought, this journey she was taking into disobedience. “Have a great day, Mom!” she called. “I’m sorry again about your foot. I’ll make it up to you!”

  She could be a good daughter and a delinquent at the same time.

  Purse, briefcase, the shoe bag, the coat, the scarf, the tablet. Her mother checked her face again in the hall mirror. “You will make it up to me,” she said. “Come give me a kiss for now.”

  Shiels reported as requested.

  “What’s happening with the pterodactyl?”

  Shiels looked at her mother’s socked toes sticking out of the cast. “There’s a crowdsourcing thing,” she said. “For the bail.”

  “Melanie Mull is leading it,” Jonathan said helpfully.

  “Is that on the Internet?” her mother asked. Then—“Do not use your own money. Do not gamble your education. Do not let your head be turned by a boy.”

  Shiels felt her face baking. “We’ll get him out somehow,” she said.

  Her mother kissed her. “You have a good heart,” she said. “That’s so impressive. Just keep your perspective. That’s all I ask.”

  • • •

  Shiels wasn’t sure of the process, but it seemed to her that after the meeting with Jocelyne Legault’s uncle, they might be able to go directly to the jail with the funds and bring Pyke home. She might see him later that day. She might be the one carrying him out of prison, cradling him in her arms. She could practically feel him against her chest, the weight of him and the lightness.

  So she wore her yellow shoes. In case she saw him. In case he saw her.

  She wore them despite the snow that had fallen, and the ice that had formed on top of it overnight. Those yellow shoes might as well have been ballerina slippers—they gave so little traction. She should have worn ice skates. And carried ski poles. She slipped and slid all along the roadway on the sidewalk, creeping like an eighty-year-old.

  I’m not doing this for a boy, she told herself.

  She was almost all the way to school before she looked up enough to notice them, the hundreds of crows lined along the telephone lines. Looking down. At first she thought they were frozen, they seemed so still.

  Watching her.

  And then it seemed to her they were mourning—that Pyke might already have died, that in their silence and stillness they were letting her know she was too late, that all this slipping and sliding came in vain.

  She stopped to look at them. “What is it? What?” she called finally.

  The crows did not move, did not squawk and bicker amongst themselves, did not acknowledge her in any way.

  • • •

  They were supposed to meet the lawyer at eleven o’clock in his office downtown, but Shiels felt she could not wait, and she certainly could not sit through biology lab with her head spinning in such different directions. She hunted down Jocelyne Legault in anthropology, and stood quite shamefacedly at the front of the class to tell Mr. Pinkle that Jocelyne was needed on an urgent matter of school council business. As she was saying the words, Shiels felt their truth; as she walked away with Jocelyne down the hall, she wondered if she wasn’t simply accessing mankind’s deep and ancient reserve of brazen self-deception.

&nbs
p; I say it and feel it, so it must be.

  “We’re way too early,” Jocelyne whispered.

  “I think we need to be there now,” Shiels said.

  Sheldon had not yet texted her to confirm that he had transferred his education fund to her bank account, the meager one she did have access to, so she brought Jocelyne to communication science and rapped on the door. Mrs. Keele opened it impatiently. Shiels said, as importantly as she could, “There’s an emergency meeting of the school council to work on the Pyke issue. Sheldon Myers is needed right away.”

  Mrs. Keele’s eyebrows knit together. “Do you have a principal’s note?”

  “Principal Manniberg has called the meeting,” Shiels replied. “You won’t be able to reach him on the office phone. He’s in the library, where the meeting is being held. Sheldon’s late. That’s why we’re here to get him.”

  Mrs. Keele was barring the doorway with her heavy arm. Under it Shiels could see Sheldon in the far corner, reading something, lost in thought.

  Mrs. Keele said, “I didn’t think Sheldon Myers was even on the school council.” At this mention of his name, Sheldon finally looked up.

  “He’s a friend of the council,” Shiels said immediately. “We need his input. He knows Pyke better than most of us.”

  Mrs. Keele stared pointedly first at Shiels’s nose and then at Jocelyne’s. “I doubt that could possibly be the case,” she said.

  If only Shiels could push the woman out of the way! If only she had a beak, Shiels thought, she’d slash the woman’s arm from that doorframe.

  “Please, Mrs. Keele,” Shiels said quietly. “A life is at stake. Believe me, Sheldon can help.”

  • • •

  But Sheldon could not help. In the school parking lot, when they were waiting for the taxi to arrive, Sheldon blurted out that his parents had forbidden him to use his education money to bail out a violent pterodactyl.

  “He’s not violent!” Shiels said. “He reacted in self-defense. And you promised me the money.” Sheldon could not look at her. “Why did you wait until we got all the way out here before telling me?”