The hummingbird stopped and perched on a branch. She was tired and her feathers were blackened with soot. She looked down at the big animals and spoke with her tiny voice.
“I am doing what I can,” she said.
I folded up the paper the way I had found it, tied the ribbon around it, and slipped it under my pillow. Levi must have dropped off the story while we were at the park or shopping.
Hummingbirds were our code. Hummingbirds were what had made us friends in the first place.
I got the telephone handset from the living room and brought it back to my room. I dialed the number and waited. The line picked up and I heard the familiar, wheezy breath at the other end.
I open my mouth to talk, but the words got stuck. I gripped the receiver, listening to the wheezy breath at the other end, the wheezy breath that was waiting for me to speak. I waited too long to say anything. I felt stupid and hung up. The worst thing was that he must have known it was me.
He knew it was me and he didn’t say anything either.
Chapter Seventeen
A Golden Elm Celebrity
I was still not talking to Mom when she gave me a pair of skinny jeans on Monday morning. She handed them to me at breakfast.
“I wish I were giving these to you when you had a better attitude,” she said. “But it was my plan to give them to you this morning, so here you go.”
I unfolded the jeans, held them up, and looked them over. Then I refolded them into my lap. “I don’t want to go to school today,” I told her. “I don’t want to go back until I can go without the crutches.”
Mom sat back in her seat and looked at me. Her eyes softened. She took a deep breath, leaned forward, and reached for my hand.
“I understand,” she said. “But your physio is going to take some time. Your first session is after school today.”
“But can’t I start the physio now instead of going to school?” I asked. “Please? Can’t I just work on my physio until I can walk properly? Then I will go back to school. Please?”
Mom sighed. “Wait here,” she said. “I have an idea.”
Mom took the phone into her room and closed the door. I played with my toast, cutting it into smaller and smaller triangles. After ten minutes she came back out again.
“Okay, I think we have a solution,” she said. “Dr. Schofield knows the physiotherapist at Golden Elm. He says he will speak with her about the physio you need to do. If she is willing, and I can clear it with Golden Elm and your school, you can do your rehab with me at work.”
“Yes!” I said, throwing my arms to the ceiling. “Thank you!”
“Okay, hang on a minute. I have to find out if Golden Elm and the school will allow it. Just eat your breakfast.” She looked at my geometric toast and made a face at me.
She got on the phone again while I crossed my fingers and waited. After what seemed like a century, but was in actual fact twenty-three minutes, Mom hung up the phone.
“We are in business,” she said. “Evelyn, the physiotherapist at Golden Elm, has spoken with Dr. Schofield. She is happy to supervise your physio, but her responsibilities are to the residents first, okay? You will have to listen and do what she says without any back talk. Understand?”
I hugged her. “I promise I won’t get in anyone’s way,” I said. “I promise I will listen and do everything Evelyn says. I promise.”
“Principal Ibrahim will give us a homework package that you can work on for the week. We can pick it up at the end of the day. No falling behind, okay?”
“I promise,” I said again, still clinging to her.
Mom stroked my cheek. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier. Besides, Sadie and the others will love it.”
***
I was pretty famous by the end of my rehab at Golden Elm. All of the folks there understood how much I wanted to walk without crutches. This was a goal they could totally get behind. I had the best pep squad ever. Every day my ankle felt less stiff and my foot and leg got stronger.
The Golden Elm physiotherapist, Evelyn, was super nice. She showed me some new exercises to help strengthen the muscles in my foot, ankle, and calf. I also used the stationary bike to help stretch the muscles. I even joined in the seniors’ yoga class.
“Yoga is excellent for balance and strength,” Evelyn told me.
I spent hours on the exercise bike and on my strengthening exercises. By the third day I could actually do the Tree Pose, balancing on Cleo for three seconds in a row.
In between my workouts I went to visit Sadie.
“Do a runway walk,” she’d say, and I would prance around her room, showing her Cleo’s improvement each day.
One day I told Sadie about the bee hummingbird. The bee hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world. It is native to Cuba and measures only two inches long. They make nests from cobwebs and lay eggs the size of peas.
Sadie could not hear enough about the bee hummingbird. I borrowed Mom’s laptop and found YouTube clips of the bee hummingbird to show Sadie. We watched them hover and dip on their gossamer wings, their tiny heads flashing green and pink in the sunlight.
Sadie watched the clips with a huge smile. “I always knew fairies were real,” she said.
Sometimes Sadie fell asleep during my visits, so I would go back to my physio exercises or do my homework or wander around making new friends.
I had afternoon tea with the residents in the recreational room and learned how to properly dunk the cookies into the milky tea without losing half of it. I watched too many daytime dramas. I made a poster of hummingbird facts and pinned it up on the community board. The residents were so jazzed about the poster that I promised to give a presentation at a later date.
I kept my hummingbird story in my pocket all the while. It became worn at the corners from so much folding and unfolding.
The day I could finally walk the entire length of the Golden Elm corridor without my crutches, without grabbing for balance, or without hopping, the residents stood in their doorways and cheered. Sadie clapped from her bed.
When Mom and I went to see Dr. Schofield, he said he was super impressed with my progress. “You’re made of tough stuff, cowgirl,” he said. “But you’ll still have to come and see me a day or two before your race. We’ll see how you’re doing and how you can participate, okay?”
The whole time away from school, every night before I went to sleep, I curled up with the dogs and thought about being normal. I thought about being in the race. I thought about brave little hummingbirds. I thought about space-time traveling librarians.
Mostly I tried to stop missing Levi.
Chapter Eighteen
Day of the Skinny Jeans
On the day I was ready to go back to school, I slipped on the skinny jeans that Mom had given me. I stared at myself in the mirror. With the jeans on, no one would even be able to tell what was underneath. If I wanted to, I could hide Cleo forever. I walked back and forth, trying to see how much I still limped. I left my crutches at home.
I arrived at the school gate with butterflies in my stomach. Kids were used to seeing me the other way. Now I looked normal, but I didn’t feel normal. This wasn’t how I had expected it would be at all. I felt like I stuck out even more. I stood outside the gate, chewing on my lip, watching the kids in the schoolyard. Groups of kids—two, three, or four—had their heads together, laughing and talking, telling each other stories about their weekends. How do you break into a friend-pod? I didn’t have a clue how it could be done. It had been much easier to make friends at Golden Elm.
Eventually I walked inside the gate. I kept my eyes on the ground. When I looked up, I noticed kids look at me and then look away. Did I look ridiculous? Did I look normal? How bad was my limp? I reached for my crutches before remembering that I didn’t have them anymore. It was hard to believe this was the moment I had been worki
ng so hard toward. The moment I had been dreaming about my whole life.
I looked around but I didn’t see Levi anywhere. Then I remembered it was the day for his chess team to play at the annual chess championship.
In the classroom I sat at my desk, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything Ms. Wright was saying. All I could think about was Cleo under my desk.
“Find a partner for group work,” I heard Ms. Wright say.
I looked around the classroom. Everyone else had paired up except me. The teacher came to my desk.
“Alba, would you like some help finding a partner?” she said.
The only thing worse than group work was the teacher having to find a partner for you.
“Alba, sit here with Stephanie and Olivia,” said Ms. Wright. “This activity will be fine with three.”
Stephanie Dorset and Olivia Demarco were sitting together at the desk in front of me. The girls exchanged a look but were perfectly nice and moved over to make room for me. I wanted them to say something about Cleo, about how great it was that I didn’t have a cast anymore, that I wasn’t using crutches. But at the same time I didn’t want anyone to look at me. I slunk down low in my seat.
“Trivia questions!” said Ms. Wright. “I am going to call out a question and you can consult with your partner. Or partners,” she said, looking at me. “Put up your hand once you have an answer.”
On a normal day Levi and I would have loved this game.
“First question,” said Ms. Wright. “Can you name three countries in Central America?”
I thought of my hummingbird migration poster at home and I knew that I could easily name three countries. But I couldn’t speak.
“You know this, right?” Stephanie said to me. “I remember from your eco-project.”
“Yeah, don’t you know, like, all the bird places in Central America?” Olivia added.
I got tongue-tied and flushed red. Before I had time to spit out the country names, another group beat us to it.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Stephanie and Olivia. “I guess I’m not feeling well. You guys go ahead without me.”
I left the class and hid in the washroom until the lunch recess bell.
At lunch recess, I ate my lunch alone and then went to the school office.
“Can I do the recycle bins?” I asked the office staff.
“No need, Alba,” said the office administrator. “You should go outside to play.”
Ms. Sharma said the same thing when I went to see if she had been sucked into another dimension. She was alive and well, and stamping library books.
“Alba,” she said, looking up from the books. “Look at you! You look great!” She sat beaming at me. “It must be wonderful to have your cast off.”
I nodded and tried to smile back. “Thanks,” I said. “I was just wondering if you needed help today.”
“Not today,” she said, returning to her work. “Besides, you must be dying to get out there in the playground now, right?”
“Right!” I said, making an effort to sound enthusiastic for her sake. “Just thought I’d check.”
She waved as I left. “Have fun!”
Coach Adams’s office door was closed and locked.
I went outside eventually and sat down on the bench that Levi and I use. After a while Miranda came over. She stood in front of me, resting a basketball on her hip.
“Do you want to play four square?” She asked.
Her niceness flustered me. “I’m busy,” I blurted. Busy? How lame was that.
Was Miranda asking me to play so that she and her friends could laugh at me? I wasn’t going to risk it. I kept my beet-red face on her orange trainers until they walked away.
I glared at my skinny jeans. I blamed Mom for giving them to me and for making me look so dumb. Not one kid had said anything about Cleo.
At the end of the day, I walked home slowly. I felt more and more miserable with each step.
At home I went straight to my room and took off the skinny jeans. I screwed them up into a ball and threw them into the back of my closet. Then I buried my face in dog fur and cried. The dogs assembled in my room, watching me, taking turns being my cry mat.
After a while I wiped my tears on a scarf. I held the scarf in my hand and remembered Abigail and her trick. What the heck? I thought. I babbled my troubles into the scarf, then I put it in the washing machine.
Abigail’s mother was right. Strangely it helped to make me feel a little better.
I unfolded my hummingbird story and reread it a few more times. Then I got on the exercise bike. After that I did my physio exercises and practiced the Tree Pose.
Before I went to sleep, I got my skinny jeans from the back of the closet and smoothed them out on the bed, ready for the next day.
Chapter Nineteen
Love at First Sight
The next morning I saw my first hummingbird.
It was a male and he was perched on a branch in our cherry tree in the backyard. I could tell it was male by the flash of bright purple feathers around his neck. Only the males have the bright feathers. He was alone. Hummingbirds generally migrate solo. He sat beautifully still, his tiny body and feathers glittering in the early sunshine.
“Hey there, stranger,” I said quietly. “What took you so long? I’ve been waiting for you all spring.”
The hummingbird alighted from the branch and hovered at one of the sugar-water feeders. After a few seconds he returned to his branch. He appeared to cock his head and stare directly at me. He seemed to be saying, Me? I could be asking you the same question.
I wrote in my field-notes booklet and then I went inside and put the booklet in my backpack. I threw the backpack over my shoulder and grabbed my lunch. I told Mom I was leaving for school.
“So early?” she said.
“There’s something I am late for,” I said.
I went on the school bus and got off at the stop close to Levi’s house. I walked to his house and looked at his door. I knocked and waited. I knocked again.
Levi opened the door like he had been waiting there for me all of this time. We stared at each other for a while.
“How was the chess tournament?” I asked him.
“We won,” Levi said with a shrug.
“I saw my first hummingbird this morning,” I said, handing him my field-notes booklet. “He was alone. He was perched in the cherry tree.”
Levi took the booklet and looked it over. He nodded. “They like to perch,” said Levi. “They spend most of their lives perching, in fact.”
“Hummingbirds don’t like to walk,” I said. “Their feet are too small to walk.”
Levi looked up from the page and gave me a small smile. “Flying is their most favorite thing, I guess.” He handed me back the field-studies booklet. “They excel at flight.”
“I’ve missed them,” I said. “I thought maybe none would come this year.”
“It is highly unlikely that would occur,” said Levi, looking me in the eye. “I cannot imagine that ever happening.”
We stood staring at each other.
So much had happened, but Levi still looked the same. He still looked like his usual, crazy-smart, kind, freckly self. He still looked like my best friend.
“Do you want to go to school together today?” I asked him.
“Sure,” said Levi. Then he pointed to Cleo and said, “I like your jeans.” As if it was nothing at all.
And just like that, it happened.
Happiness, like hummingbirds, can land in your heart.
Chapter Twenty
The Break In
Our class had silent reading time in the library that morning. As we filed past Ms. Sharma’s office, we noticed she wasn’t there. Levi and I exchanged looks. Once we were settled into our beanbags, I passed Levi a note: Supply Clo
set.
He sent back: Affirmative.
So what do we do?
Break into the supply closet.
You’re cray cray. How?
Tools.
When?
Today.
?!?!?!?!
Critical!! I’ve been waiting for you. We can’t wait any longer.
Okay. What tools?
Meet me at the library. Give me ten minutes.
Okay.
P.S. Eat this paper!
When the lunch bell rang we nodded at each other. I packed up our books and watched Levi trot out of the library. I decided to go and eat my lunch while I waited. Mom had made my favorite kind of bagel and I was hungry—cosmic emergency or not. By the time I got back to the library, Levi was already there, standing outside the double doors. His face looked frozen—with either fear or excitement, I couldn’t tell which.
“Jeez!” I said, pointing to the screwdriver. “Where did you get that?”
“Janitor’s closet,” he said, giving it a timid wave.
“We are going to get in such deep trouble,” I mumbled.
“We have to do it,” said Levi. “Or we’ll never know. Not for sure.”
“Please breathe, Levi,” I said.
Levi peered into the library. “Her lights are off,” he said. “Come on.”
We crept through the library and stood outside Ms. Sharma’s office door.
“Here goes,” I said, gripping the door handle. I opened it slowly as Levi wheezed behind me. We went into the dark office and moved closer and closer to the supply closet.
“Wait,” I whispered. “We should leave a note or something. What if we get sucked in?”
We looked around Ms. Sharma’s desk for some paper and a pen. Levi wrote a note, his writing all jiggly because his hand was trembling so much.
If you are reading this it means we are in danger due to a space-time warp in the supply closet. Please send help!
Yours truly,
Levi and Alba
“Okay, good,” I said. “Let’s go.” I walked to the supply closet and put my hand on the handle. The closet handle was warm. I pulled it gently. Locked. I tugged a little harder. Still locked.
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