Flying Tips for Flightless Birds

by Kelly McCaughrain

  And not only are you transformed, you’re also protected, because if anything goes wrong, it happens to the Great Ennesto or the Amazing Alouette, not plain old Ennis or Lou.

  Try it. Pick your act. Pick your costume. Pick your name.

  I bet you feel braver.

  < < Previous Post

  Our school does have a uniform but you don’t have to wear it, so practically no one does. Except Hector.

  The day Birdie showed up in a pink tutu edged with fairy lights around the hem, a few teachers complained and Mum got called in to see Mr Cooper. She insisted we come with her.

  “This is your fight,” she said. “You tell him why it’s important.”

  But in the end we barely got a word in.

  “So, you’re saying they don’t have to wear the school uniform?” Mum said, sitting across the desk from Mr Cooper, the picture of parental cooperation.

  “Correct.”

  “But they can’t wear ordinary clothes?”

  “No, no, they can wear ordinary clothes, that’s what we want them to wear.”

  Mum looked at us, sitting on either side of her. I was wearing a tartan blazer, red skinny jeans, a bow tie and a straw boater, and Birdie was in the pink tutu and a purple jumper.

  “These are their ordinary clothes,” Mum said.

  “All right, let me put it another way.” Cooper rubbed his eyes and leaned his elbows on the desk. You could tell his heart wasn’t in it; he’d basically been forced into this by the Vice Squad (our vice principals), who would kill for a stricter uniform policy and were using the tutu as an excuse. But the reason we don’t have a strict uniform policy is that Coop doesn’t see the point in rules he will have to spend time and effort enforcing. He told us this once in assembly. He said it wasn’t for our benefit; it just left him plenty of time to chase up truants, smokers, bullies and foul-mouthed little miscreants, so we should all be very careful.

  “It’s just that it reflects on the school,” he said to Mum. “We want our students to appear neat, clean and respectable. When I say ordinary clothes, I mean nothing … outlandish.”

  “Outlandish.” Mum mused on this for a moment, nodding as if she was trying to see the argument from Mr Cooper’s side. Birdie and I shared a grin and sat back to enjoy the show.

  “That’s a subjective term, though, isn’t it?” she began. “I mean, if I’m to decide every morning which of their outfits is outlandish and which is ordinary, I might need a more specific definition.” She took out a notebook and pen. “Maybe we could put together a list? But you’ll have to be quite detailed. I mean, does colour and print come into it? Is a plain yellow bow tie better than a tartan one? Or are bow ties out altogether? Birdie, do you have any tutus in more muted tones?”

  Birdie shook her head. “But I could dress it down with boots.”

  “Finch has a lot of hats too,” Mum continued. “Could you specify which are outlandish and which are ordinary? I’ve noticed a lot of the kids wear woolly hats in the winter. Finch, do you have any woolly hats?”

  “I have a tweed flat cap, but it only goes with shorts.”

  Mum jotted this down and then turned back to Cooper, looking completely earnest. “Would that be OK?”

  Coop’s head slumped into his hand, probably imagining spending the next six months listening to the Vice Squad debate the precise diameter at which an ordinary boot-cut becomes an outlandish flare. Mum smiled over the desk at him. “Should we move on to hem length?”

  Coop knows when he’s beaten. He sighed, giving Mum a weary look. “Can we lose the tutu?” he asked without lifting his chin out of his palm.

  Mum grinned and stuck her hand across the width of the desk. “Done.”

  So Birdie’s tutu was put back in the warehouse costume box, our one and only concession to Murragh High’s uniform policy.

  It’s not as though Mum even likes our dress sense, so we were sort of surprised that she stuck up for us. “You can’t please everyone,” she said, when we stopped for celebratory ice cream on the way home. “Uniforms are proof of that. No one can agree on what to wear, so the solution is always to come up with something that absolutely no one likes. If you wear whatever you want, at least one person likes it, even if it’s only you.”

  She eyed the ice-cream menu. “Hmm, do you think a pistachio fudge nut sundae would be too outlandish?”

  It takes a lot of work to fail this bad

  Posted by Birdie

  Did you know it was statistically harder to get into the Ringling Brothers’ Clown College than it is to get into Harvard Law School?

  You don’t just roll out of bed one morning and decide “Today I’m a clown”. Or a juggler, or a trapeze artist. It takes time. Lots of it. It takes effort. Lots of it. It takes practice and practice and practice.

  And it takes focus. You have to focus on ONE thing. You will not have time for ANYTHING else. Believe me, I know.

  I’m just saying, Mum and Dad, when you get my exam results this week, please remember that physics is not the whole picture. Seriously, you should see my double back somersault with half twist these days. It’s an A+.

  < < Previous Post

  My maths exam comes back with red pen scrawled across the front. Finch! it says. 27%!!! it says. Then, Did you revise for this?

  I foolishly decide a straight question deserves a straight answer and write TBH, no below the red pen before handing it back.

  After class, Miss Allen calls me up to her desk.

  “Finch, what am I going to do with you?” she says. She looks so genuinely worried I stop feeling defensive and start trying to reassure her.

  “Hey, it’s not that bad, Miss,” I say. “Twenty-seven per cent isn’t terrible, it’s almost a quarter of the marks!”

  She closes her eyes briefly. “I don’t know. Either you’re not putting in the effort or I’m failing you in some way,” she says.

  Miss Allen is new. She’s young and smiley, and encourages you to talk about your feelings. She’s the kind of teacher who would think she’s failing you. She probably lies awake at night thinking about it, unlike all the teachers who actually are rubbish and never think about it at all. I feel bad.

  “It’s not your fault, Miss, I was just really busy this weekend. Plus me and Jay were doing unicycle jousting and he won, and I might have had a slight concussion on Saturday. I don’t really remember. I think all that stuff about gradients just literally fell out of my head. I’ll do better in the next exam, promise. We’ll aim for a fifth of the marks, how’s that?”

  She sighs. “Maybe you should get a study buddy, Finch. And work on your fractions.”

  “Birdie helps me – she’s really smart.”

  Miss Allen raises one eyebrow almost imperceptibly.

  “Relatively speaking,” I add.

  “The trouble is, when you two get together I’ve a suspicion not much work gets done.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair, me and Birdie work really, really— Oh. You mean at maths.”

  “I think you should try studying with someone else.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be queueing up,” I say, glancing around the empty classroom.

  She gives me a sympathetic head tilt. “Ignore them, Finch, it’s better to be yourself than be popular.” Obviously in my case it’s one or the other; I’m never going to be both.

  “Or perhaps you should work on your own,” she goes on, handing the exam paper back to me. “I want you to redo this before next week. I think Birdie distracts you, or vice versa. Either way, you could both do with buckling down.”

  We’re into the “buckling down” section of this lecture. All I have to do now is nod contritely for a couple of minutes, looking resolved to turn over a new leaf, pull my socks up, get my brain in gear, etc., and then it’ll be over and I can forget the whole conversation. Sure enough, two minutes later I’m backing towards the door. But then Miss Allen gives me a cereal bar out of her sad yellow plastic lunch box, “for studying energy�
�, and a pat on the shoulder before I leave and I’m back to feeling bad.

  After school I wait for the yard to clear and then I settle on the front steps of the building and get out the maths exam. Miss Allen has a point; there are too many distractions at home. There’s an unfinished trick diagram on my dresser, a book about the Ringling Brothers on my bedside table and a mustard-coloured blazer arriving from eBay, for example. If I go home I’ll never get anything done, so I decide to sit right here and work.

  But an hour later I realize I’m not getting anything done here, either, and it’s not because there’s anything to distract me, it’s because I have no idea what I’m doing.

  I’m about to rip the paper up in frustration when the door opens behind me and a voice says, “You know school’s over, right?”

  “I do, do you?”

  Hector manages to trip over his shoelaces coming down the two front steps and I grab the hem of his blazer just in time to stop him face-planting onto the tarmac.

  “Thanks.” He sits next to me to tie his shoes and I tuck the red 27%!!! under my textbook.

  “I was at the library,” he says.

  “No kidding.”

  “Is this an average Grumpy Finch Day or is something wrong?”

  “Flipping maths. What is Pythagosaurus’s Theorum anyway?”

  He smothers a grin. “I don’t know but it couldn’t have been that good since all the Pythagosauruses are extinct now. Maybe you should look at Pythagoras’s Theorum instead.”

  “What?”

  “Do you need some help?”

  I remember Miss Allen’s suggestion about getting a study partner. Hector would be good at that. Hector would be perfect, in fact, but I can’t bring myself to ask. The thought of spending hours and hours with Hector while he goes on about gradients and intercepts and axes… Ugh.

  “It’s up to you but if you want a study partner or something…” He gives a whatever shrug and fidgets with his blazer cuffs.

  But I can’t say yes even if I wanted to. Because study partners help each other. And there’s nothing Hector needs help with. Even if there was, I wouldn’t be much use. I’d be sponging off him, and I refuse to do that.

  “I’ll manage,” I say, gritting my teeth and opening my textbook again. “I’m sure you have better things to do.”

  He stands up, and I’m sort of glad he’s leaving and sort of not, because it means it’s just me and the Pythagosauruses again, but then he says, “Not really.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t have much else to do. I thought maybe, if you had time, maybe you could teach me some stuff.”

  Like what, how to make your teachers cry? “What stuff? I’m not bad at art but I’m not great at it.”

  “No, I mean circus skills,” he mutters, his face the colour of Miss Allen’s marking pen.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Forget it,” he says.

  “Hey, no, come back. I’m sorry,” I call as he turns away. “That was harsh, I didn’t mean to laugh.” I laugh. “It’s just that I didn’t think the circus would be your scene.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you’re so … shy. And so quiet. And so… How can I put this?”

  “Uncoordinated?”

  “I was going to say ‘like a puppy on roller skates’ but we can use your word.”

  “But that’s why I want to learn!” he says. “I thought it might help with all that stuff.”

  “You don’t need help, Hector. There’s nothing wrong with just being yourself.” Classic Miss Allen line.

  “Yeah, right.” He looks me up and down. “You don’t believe that for a second. No one does. You’re just saying it because you don’t want to teach me.” He whips the exam paper out from under my textbook and looks at it while I try to grab it back. He has a surprisingly strong grip for someone that pale.

  “You need help as much as I do,” he says. “Come on, deal?”

  I hesitate, but the thought of going back to the textbook alone is just too depressing. I stick my hand out. “Ugh. Fine.”

  “Really? Hector?” Birdie says when I tell her about the plan to teach Hector circus skills.

  “I know. It’ll be hell, but I’m not going to survive this year at school otherwise.”

  We’re in the back garden. I’m on a pair of stilts and Birdie is measuring me for new trousers; they don’t come ready-made in Primark for people nine feet tall.

  “But will Hector survive you teaching him, that’s the question,” she says, handing me one end of the tape measure.

  I glare down at her. “I’ll be nice. If he doesn’t force me to murder him.”

  “I think it’s great he wants to learn,” she says. “I could teach him some stuff too.”

  “Nah, he won’t want to embarrass himself in front of a girl. I mean any more than usual.”

  She looks thoughtful. “Maybe you’re right. I suppose he’ll show me when he gets good at it.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  She jots down some numbers, snaps her notebook shut and leaves me to walk up and down the garden path on my stilts, looking over the neighbours’ hedges and freaking Dad out as my top hat bobs past the window of his study upstairs.

  “Getting a new perspective on life, Finch?” he calls after me, which is his standard stilts joke. I give him my standard very funny look and keep going.

  Stilts are pretty basic circus stuff, but I can just imagine the carnage if I let Hector loose with a pair. I wouldn’t have to murder him – he’d break his own neck. What on earth am I going to teach him? I probably should have let Birdie take over; she’s a lot more patient than me. But I don’t like the idea of her teaching him, and it isn’t because I care about Hector being embarrassed.

  The truth is, I have this sneaking suspicion that Hector and Birdie like each other, and the last thing I need is those two pairing up. You see it at school all the time: someone gets a girlfriend or a boyfriend and it’s like they become this two-headed monster. Like James and Kitty; even when we were best friends, it was difficult to get him on his own, and you couldn’t say anything to him without it being passed on to her. Couples are designed to make you feel like you’re in the way.

  I walk the stilts down the driveway and try balancing along the length of the low wall at the bottom of the front garden. Some passing kids stop to watch.

  Anyway, for now we have to concentrate on the show, and that means I need Birdie here, not mooching about behind the bike sheds with Hector the Walking Outtake Video.

  As I negotiate a step up halfway along the wall, the kids start chucking pens and rubbers at me, like I’m a human coconut shy. That’s the thing about audiences: some part of them that they’d never admit to really wants to see you plummet to your death. Just so they can scream and cover their eyes, and then repeat the gory details to their friends. If circus people are weird, flirting with death on a nightly basis for kicks, what does that say about the candyfloss-munching crowd who come to watch?

  Half a dozen felt tips whizz past my nose like coloured bullets and I wobble as I dodge them, but that only distracts my attention from a larger missile in the shape of a homework diary flapping tattered wings in the direction of my ear. Direct hit. I reel sideways, ending up in a heap of tangled legs, arms, rose bushes and stilts as a triumphant cheer goes up from the kids.

  I don’t even bother to get up. “Thanks, guys,” I call over the wall, but they’re laughing too hard to hear.

  Just to make things worse, there’s a squeal of metal as Lou and her trolley round the gateposts.

  “Leave him alone, you little weasels, or I’ll have your hides!” she shouts and they laugh even louder. She bends towards me and I hold a hand out, expecting her to help me up. Instead, she twangs one of my elastic braces and, while I grab my nipple in agony, says, “Good grief, boy, all you need is the big red shoes.”

  I glance over her outfit, which looks like a floral duvet cover with lace in odd places. �
�You’re one to talk,” I say. Then she and the trolley squeal on up the driveway.

  One of the kids peeks over the wall. I’d like to think it’s to see if I’m alive, but the sight of me just makes him snort Coke out of his nostrils.

  I have one thought as I lie there, settling into the soil and putting off the moment I have to get up and count the bruises: I’m glad Hector wasn’t here to see this. After all my ribbing about him being uncoordinated! Although if he had been here, he might have stopped the kids chucking stuff, or at least drawn their fire. Would Hector take a bullet for me? I doubt it. And the chances of him catching the homework diary mid-flight would be approximately nil, so he’d probably be lying next to me right now.

  And then I realize what I can teach Hector.

  I can teach him to look like an idiot. I mean, he’s halfway there already. He can be a clown!

  In reality, clowns only look uncoordinated, but if we can harness the inner bouncy ball that is Hector’s sense of balance, maybe we can do something with it. He can learn basic juggling, pratfalls, getting whacked in the face by cream pies, toppling from stilts. As my friendly neighbourhood kids have just demonstrated, people love that stuff.

  It could be good for Franconis’ too. We’ve never had an official Circus Fool before; it’s not a popular job. Mainly because (and this, I realize, thinking about Hector and Birdie again, is the best part) the clowns never ever get the girls.

  It’s derelict chic

  Posted by Birdie

  Obviously by now you’re all dying to join the circus, but you should know what you’re letting yourselves in for.

  When Mum and Dad started Franconis’, before Finch and I were even born, it was just one big room that they hired at a community centre in the city, and they taught juggling and high-wire walking on a wire half a metre from the ground, because that’s all they had space for. Eventually they started looking for more permanent premises and Finch and I, though we were only six years old, flatly rejected anywhere that didn’t have space for a flying trapeze.