by Sally J. Pla
I yell upstairs, “DAVIS.” She doesn’t hear. I bring the phone up while Gram is still going at it:
“—And tell Davis to make sure the guest bed’s still nice and neat,” she says. I knock on Davis’s door. “—coming to straighten you dang noodle-heads out,” I hear.
Davis turns quickly from where she’s sprawled across her bed, phone in hand. Her long brown hair whips across her face as she turns, and she’s making her mushed-up-eyebrow face at me, a visual cue of anger that means: “How dare you barge in my room.”
Davis and Dad used to give me mirror lessons, to instruct me about visual cues. “Look, Charlie,” Davis would say, peering at us both in the mirror. “When my eyebrows smash together and my lips curl down like this? That’s a visual cue. It means I’m in a crummy mood, okay? Visual cue, leave me the heck alone.”
“Charlie! When will you ever learn to knock?”
I lob the phone onto Davis’s bed. “Gram found a babysitter of last resort.” I slam her door.
On my way back downstairs I hear Davis shriek, “You’ve got to be kidding!”
Gram does know some totally loopy old ladies. I wonder who she got.
5
An hour later, I find out. The twins, now joined by Jonathan Dylan Daniels, are clicking their controllers and grinding chips into the couch. Davis is upstairs, probably experimenting with her makeup or spraying her hair or something. I’m sketching a trumpeter swan into my Bird Book. I wanted to sketch him with his long neck outstretched, but the Audubon print I’m copying from only shows him with his neck all bent down by his feet.
Fun fact: Audubon painted his long-necked birds all contorted because otherwise they wouldn’t fit on the paper. He had to make things fit the printer’s page size. So a bunch of his long-necked birds are painted all hunched over, like they’re squashed into invisible cages.
Which is a feeling I can sort of identify with.
Anyhow, I’ve just about given up on getting his long neck right, when I happen to look out the window, and there’s a strange little gray car turning into our driveway.
My stomach does that washing machine chug-and-flip, like when the teacher says, “Take out your homework,” and you realize you left it at home.
Behind the wheel of the strange car, I see a flash of shocking pink. Intruder-Gorilla pink.
Something tells me Davis is not going to like this.
6
When you see a new and unusual bird, think like a scientist. Be systematic. Note the crown, face, throat, and body. Move from there to more subtle qualities of voice and behavior.
—Tiberius Shaw, PhD
Ludmila has a green leather dog collar with silver studs strapped around her neck, and black lace gloves with no fingers. She has leather shorts and black boots with wobbly high heels. She is carrying a leopard suitcase. Probably not real leopard, although you never know. There are tattoos on her ribs—I can see them through horizontal slashes in her shirt.
A guy riding by on his bike turns and stares at her. He’s wearing a skintight, bright yellow biking suit, so, to be honest, I don’t know why he’s staring. His outfit’s just as strange as hers.
I don’t understand why people wear weird, tight stuff with buckles and belts and zippers and laces, when it’s so much more comfortable not to. I always wear plain T-shirts, no tags, collars, or buttons. Loose cotton sweats or shorts, no drawstring, buttons, or zippers. A pair of blue indoor Crocs, a pair of black outdoor Crocs. A perfect, simple system.
Ludmila is pretty much the opposite kind of dresser.
I open the front door and we stare at each other for a second. “You just smoked a cigarette,” I say. I have a crazy-keen sense of smell. It is a burden, not a talent.
“I do not smoke. Hello, Charlie.” Ludmila points a short, poison-green fingernail at me. She has thick black lines on top of her eyelids that flick up and out in three sharp lines at the corners, like how Dad drew eye pencil on Davis once when she was a cat for Halloween.
“Why are you wearing a dog collar?” I say.
She shifts her leopard bag again. “Don’t worry, okay? I don’t smoke. My roommate, she does. I yell at her for it. You smell that, really?”
We just stand there, looking at each other. I sniff the air a few times to make my point.
“Let me in, Charlie. I’m here to help out.”
I hear Davis open her bedroom door a crack. She calls out in a high, tight voice that doesn’t sound like her. “Hello? Who’s there?”
I stare at Ludmila’s dog collar.
“Charlie.” She looks at me hard. I have a tough time looking people in the eye, but somehow Ludmila sucks me into a hypnotic vortex. She might be some kind of witch.
“Your grandmother said come quick. Three boys out of control, young girl with boyfriend doing who knows what, emergency, emergency, house in uproar. So here I am.”
She peers over my shoulder at the family room, where the twins and Jonathan Dylan Daniels are still on the couch, click-click-clicking. They haven’t even looked up.
“I promise I don’t bite.” She smiles, and I notice pointy, crooked eyeteeth.
Maybe it’s because she has put me into a witch’s trance with her hypnotic vortex gaze. Or maybe it’s because I am mad at Davis and the twins for ignoring me. Or because the house is getting more contaminated by the minute. Anyhow, I let her in and close the door.
Davis has finally come downstairs. She stands on the bottom step, a hand on her hip. “My grandmother has clearly made a mistake. Why would she call you?”
“Apparently, to supervise a madhouse,” Ludmila says in her strange, husky voice, looking all around at the mess. Then she walks past Davis into the kitchen. She doesn’t even take off her shoes. The rule is to take off your shoes. She looks around at the dirty dishes, the crumbs and clutter everywhere, Jonathan Dylan Daniels’s collection of empty fast-food wrappers.
“Listen,” says Davis, following. “We’re fine, okay?”
Ludmila waves her arms around, flapping flustered hands, almost like I do.
Davis’s mouth is opening and shutting but she isn’t saying anything.
Jonathan Dylan Daniels comes into the kitchen, his eyes half closed, scratching his stomach—until he sees Ludmila. Then his eyes open wide.
“Well, hello, there,” says Jonathan Dylan Daniels to Ludmila, standing up straighter and smiling. “How’s it going?”
Davis’s face gets even redder.
Ludmila scrunches up her eyebrows at him. “You, sir, are going. Now.” She takes him by the shoulders and spins him around so that he’s facing the front door. “Good-bye!”
Davis’s mouth is hanging open. She starts making little gasping sounds. Finally, she says, “You can’t tell him to leave. You have no right!”
“I have every right,” says Ludmila, looking down at Davis. With her deep voice, spiky hair, spiky collar, and spiky heels, she is tall, and mean, and scary. And spiky.
When the front door clicks shut on Jonathan Dylan Daniels, Ludmila goes to the TV and turns off the game, just as Jake was about to win his level. There is a flurry of orange cheese dust.
“HEY!” both twins shout at the same time.
Ludmila hands them the garbage pail. “Time to clean up, boys. And you. Charlie. Please to show me the guest room.”
I look at Davis, but she is still standing there, making gasping goldfish noises. So I show Ludmila to Dad’s office, where Gram had left the pull-out couch all made up nice and neat for poor old Mrs. Bertolo. Ludmila puts down her old cigarette-smelling leopard bag on what was supposed to be poor old Mrs. Bertolo’s pillow.
Davis wants Dad’s office to stay exactly the way he left it, so it’s ready for him to work in again, when he gets better. She has his favorite coffee mug on his desk. His pencils sharpened. His green grading pens (he never uses red ink) at the ready. The rest of the house is a disaster, but Davis dusts in here. She didn’t even want poor old Mrs. Bertolo to stay in here.
&nbs
p; “Seriously?” Davis shouts. “First you take over my dad’s hospital room, and now you take over our house? You think you’re staying in his room?”
Ludmila sits down in Dad’s desk chair. She looks tired. She swivels around to face Davis. “I forgive your rudeness,” she says. “These are tough times, no?”
Davis’s eyes bulge out a little bit. Then she explodes into this weird screaming noise and waves her arms around uselessly, sort of like a T. rex imitation. Then she stomps away upstairs.
Ludmila takes off her thick black glasses, rubs her eyes. I notice the Amar tattoo on her hand has healed up, in the weeks since we first met her. The wings and hearts look like they’ve been curling around her wrist forever.
Davis says amar means “to love” in Spanish. There’s nothing much to love about Ludmila, though.
She runs her hands over Dad’s desk and the shelves above it, full of journalism awards, photos of students, photos of us, stacks of messy folders. She picks up one of my favorite photos of Dad. She touches his face with her poison-green fingernail, and then puts the photo carefully back. “Nice room,” she finally says. “Lucky kids, to have nice father. Nice house.”
Something about the way she says it—something about the way she touched Dad’s face in the photo with her finger—it just doesn’t seem right, even to me. Maybe Davis’s suspicions are correct. Maybe there is something strange going on, with this already strange Ludmila person. Should we worry about having her here? Was Gram right or wrong to send her?
Something’s wrong. It is. But I can’t put my finger on it.
7
Bird migrations start with a single bird. One little creature senses that conditions have changed, something is off, not quite the same in their world, and it is time to be on the wing. Once a single bird senses it, the others quickly join in, as if destined to follow.
—Tiberius Shaw, PhD
After it gets dark, I put away my sketch of the trumpeter swan and wash up as usual, soap-rinse-one-soap-rinse-two-soap-rinse-three-soap-rinse-four-soap-rinse-five-soap-rinse-six, and repeat. I get into my clean pajamas and settle in between my left and right pillows, lying straight down the middle of my bed, the covers pulled up evenly to my chin. If I just keep doing it this way every night, with no variation, no change, then the odds are better that Dad will get better.
I doze off right away. I am just starting to dream I am a little green bird, gliding over the water of a marshy glade, looking down at the tops of pine trees . . .
Then, my super senses detect a disturbance in the Force.
There’s someone in my room, poking my arm.
The rule is: no one touches me without my permission. Everyone knows this. If I don’t have enough warning before a touch, I’ll jump out of my skin.
So I flail out with my hand—and hit something warm and soft.
“Ow! Jesus, Charlie!” I hear Davis’s hoarse whisper in the dark. “You just punched me in the face!”
“Whaaa?” I am still half thinking I am a green dream-bird.
“News flash, we’re winging it out of here, kiddo. I already packed your clothes.”
Wait. I must still be dreaming.
“Jon’s parked his car just down the block. We’ve got to sneak out super quietly. Here are your clothes. Get dressed quick.”
I rub my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Davis sits on my bed and makes the whole mattress slope down. I hate it when she does that. “I’m talking about a road trip. Why should we be stuck thousands of miles away from Dad, with that—that—evil witch?! Because Ludmila is evil, Charlie. She’s got some hidden agenda. I’ve been spying on her. She’s been snooping around down there. She’s been looking at all of Dad’s old photos, and crying! Who does that? What kind of strange—I mean, who the heck is she, anyway? The whole thing gives me the creeps. I’m not gonna stay in this house with her.”
I don’t say anything.
“Why does she have to stay in his office? It’s a total invasion of privacy. Who knows what she’ll do? It’s one thing to rifle through his photos. Next, she could decide to go through his private papers, or his computer files!”
I still don’t say anything.
“Well, I’m taking action. I’m protecting Dad. When she went to wash up, I saved most of his work files on this.” She waves a flash drive under my nose.
“What?”
“Also, I locked his file cabinet and took the key. I mean, he’s defenseless, and she’s in his office!” Davis says. “She could be some kind of Russian spy.”
I think about this. It seems unlikely.
“She’s got Gram wrapped around her finger. What right does she have to be in Dad’s office? And what right does she have to kick out Jonathan? Really!” Davis’s voice gets totally shrill when she says Jonathan’s name.
I am too tired for this.
But she whips the covers off of me. “So, Charlie, come on, get your stuff.” She turns on my desk lamp and I wince. “Ludmila’s fast asleep. Now’s our chance. And we’re leaving. We’re all of us going to drive to Dad and Gram.”
“Davis, that’s crazy!”
“No, it’s not. It’s totally within reason. Jonathan’s a great driver. He drove to Michigan all by himself last summer; he’s good on the highways; he’s eighteen already, anyhow. And I have my debit card and my phone. We could be with Dad and Gram before you know it.”
Davis knows there are two very important things about me. They are: I hate change. And I hate travel.
“Charlie, come on. The twins are already out in the car.”
I pull a pillow over my head.
“Charlie! It’ll be fine. You can do this thing.”
I pull another pillow over my head.
“You can wash your hands as many times as you want. We’ll only stop to eat where you want. We’ll be very quiet in the car.” She is whispering louder, and faster. She pulls on my arm and leg so that I slump over and slide—kerthunk—onto the floor.
“If you don’t come now, Charlie, I swear to God, I’ll—I’ll take toilet water and sprinkle it all over your bed. I’ll contaminate your shoes. I’ll put dog poop in your bird folders. I’ll—I’ll—”
“Stop. Wait. Did you say the twins are already in Jonathan’s car?”
She nods. “I knew we had to wake you last. We’re all packed.”
I swing my legs out of my comfortable, perfect bed. I look around quickly. I make sure my supply backpack is stocked with my soap, special towel, antibacterial wipes, Kleenex, and my Star Wars Velcro wallet stuffed with money and my old school ID card in it, even though it’s expired. I leave the Audubon baby elephant folio behind.
I add in some clothes. Grab my favorite pillow. Most importantly, I pack my Bird Book and sketching pencils.
Dad once asked me if I was a flocker or a loner. Well, I guess for now I’m a flocker, because Davis has already gotten her clutches into my brothers, and I’m not staying here alone. If I am going to keep us all together, there is only one thing I can do, and it’s to follow Davis quietly, fearfully, out to the car.
8
No one knows for sure why birds fall silent when their cages are covered. All we know is that they do.
—Tiberius Shaw, PhD
When I ride for a long time in a plane or a car, I conk out. Dad and Gram used to think I was actually fainting dead away, but I wasn’t. I just shut down my systems to avoid sensory overload. And barfing.
I’m out for hours, in the backseat of Jonathan Dylan Daniels’s grubby old Honda CR-V surfer car. It smells crabby, like low tide, and there’s sand in the cracks of the upholstery that stick to the backs of my thighs. My neck has that tired ache, and I can vaguely sense that I’m drooling now and then. But gradually, after eons, heat starts seeping into my brain. It starts to coat my skin and glaze my glued-shut eyes. The light’s different now—under my eyelids it’s not black anymore, but bright red and pulsing. Too bright to sleep. Too bright to pretend to sleep. Too . . .
hot.
I open my eyes to a glaring, beige world. Sand stretches away, flat as a pancake, on both sides. San Diego’s palms and flowery plants are history. The world is now a parched, pulsing desert.
“Where are we?” Davis stretches and yawns, then rests her hand on the back of Jonathan Dylan Daniels’s head and strokes his hair with her fingers.
Ick.
“Almost to Vegas, babe. Gimme your card; we gotta get gas.” He jerks the wheel and we jolt onto crunchy gravel toward the big red ball sign of a 76 gas station. Heat waves ripple off the top of bright orange pumps.
Jonathan Dylan Daniels hops out and holds out his hand for Davis’s card, then slides it through the pump slot. The twins are starting to rouse in the back. He raps on their window. “Yo, little buds. You gotta pee, do it now.”
Joel raps back. “Hey! I can pump the gas, Jon,” he says. “Want me to? I know how; my dad taught me.”
The twins think Jonathan Dylan Daniels is so cool. Once, he brought over a whole stack of M-rated games and they played for hours while Gram was in the kitchen making cookies. Gram had no idea what was going on. Dad would never have let them play those games. Dad says once an act of bad violence is stuck in your head, you can’t un-see it or ever get it out of there. So you have to be very, very selective about what you decide to allow into your brain.
Jonathan Dylan Daniels thinks I’m an old grandmother. A priss. He said exactly that to Davis once, said, “Hey, why’s your brother such a priss?”
Priss.
Old grandmother.
Kook.
Droid.
Lysol Louie.
Charlie.
Nerd.
I go by a lot of names, because no one really knows me that well.
“We’re almost to Vegas!” says Davis, smearing gunk on her lips from a little pink plastic container. “Let’s stop off, just to drive through and see it! No reason why we can’t enjoy the trip, right? We could pretend it’s a family vacation—Jon and I will be like the parents and you guys will be like our kids!”
