The Amazing Life of Birds

by Gary Paulsen

  And while part of me seemed glad to grow, another part missed that moment so much that it almost physically hurt. I shifted in my bed.

  “Doo-Doo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We have a new girl in school.”

  “Oh yeah. What's her name?”

  “Maggie.”

  “What about her?”

  “I think she's really hot.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I'm not sure exactly what that means.”

  “You know. She's, like, hot. Like her hair is pretty. Like a movie star.”

  “Oh. Well, then, I guess so.” I couldn't get a picture in my mind of a hot movie star girl. Major body. A blur with blond hair cut short, maybe blue eyes. Maybe green. Somebody moving fast all the time. I was still back in my grandmother's backyard, sad because I couldn't pretend anymore. I felt like I'd lost something I would never be able to find again and that's never good.

  “Yeah.” Willy sighed in the dark. “She's really hot.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Then it's cool.”

  “Yeah. Cool.”

  “I talked to Rachel yesterday.” Not bad. That was the truth.

  “Yeah? What did you say?”

  I thought, I hit her in the face with a volleyball and spiked her with my head and told her I have a skin condition that makes my hair stand up and I had four Band-Aids covering zits that looked like open wounds and I smelled like a cheap beauty parlor or a men's barracks. “Oh. We just talked.”

  “Is she hot?”

  “I don't know.”

  I really didn't.

  Day Ten

  It's official.

  I now have more zits than the bird has feathers. He got two more on his neck, I have four new zits on my chest and I don't even want to look at my back.

  The cowlick is still there but I've got all day to work on it. It's Sunday. Willy went home early this morning. I rode bikes with him halfway and then came back and went to work.

  Hair spray doesn't really help. Or maybe it does. It's only temporary and when the hair springs up again it has more force. Like it's angry.

  I tried combing it back and down and finally came up with a solution. Simple, really. Just cut it off. So I took a scissors, borrowed my sister's small hand mirror— first mistake—and then started to hold it over my head, looking from the bathroom mirror to the hand mirror. I didn't close the bathroom door. Second mistake.

  Just as I was getting ready to snip off the few prickly hairs sticking up, my sister came by the door.

  “What are you doing with my mirror?” she screamed.

  It startled me so badly that I jerked, snipped and dropped the mirror at the same time. The mirror shattered and I took out a chunk of hair half as big as my fist.

  Now I was a bald man with seven years of bad luck. If that was on top of the way my luck was going so far I might just as well stick my head in the toilet and pull the handle.

  “You broke my mirror!”

  I was on my hands and knees picking up glass and I looked up at her and said: “Believe me, that is the least of my worries. Do you realize I now have more zits than the bird has feathers?”

  That confused her long enough for me to get away before she peeled the skin off her skull and became the All-Evil Death's-head that Devours the World.

  It could happen any minute.

  Okay, back in my room. I'd wear a baseball cap. The solution was there the whole time.

  No. Wait. They had a rule because gangbangers wore baseball caps. No caps at school.

  A bag over my head?

  The way things were going that wasn't too bad an idea. I could cut holes to see, be the mysterious boy with the bag over his head, which everybody would of course know instantly was the kid with the skin condition that made his hair spike out who ran around slamming volleyballs into girls' faces.

  I sat at the windowsill by the bird. The bird family had totally accepted me now—unlike the entire rest of the world. I could be the new bird man. Like that guy in Alcatraz who had all the pet birds. I could just live in my room for the rest of my life, a giant zit and his birds, all alone.

  The baby was more sure of himself every day. He'd sit on the edge of the nest to go to the bathroom (this afternoon he caught Gorm on the head, a perfect bull's-eye) and flap his little wings like he was trying to fly.

  I suppose just to build his flying muscles.

  Acting as if.

  Maybe that was it. I was going about this whole thing wrong—clearly. Or I wouldn't look this bad. Maybe I had to be more positive. Act as if.

  But as if what?

  Where was this whole puberty thing going? That was the question. So far it was just something put on Earth to destroy me. Or maybe make my sister happy. Again, all I had to do was look in a mirror.

  As if I could fly?

  As if I were confident and sure of myself?

  As if I were Ferris Bueller?

  Nah. I would never have a Ferrari.

  But act as if I were something I'm not.

  Act.

  That was the answer. Don't be myself. Be somebody better.

  Like the bird, I had to act as if. I had to play the role of somebody cool.

  Cool.

  Day One

  I went for it. No Band-Aids, no hair spray. I headed out to school like I was proud of all those zits and the bald spot. I had earned the right to be ugly.

  And for a little while—fifteen or twenty seconds— it seemed to be working. Until I opened my locker and took out my books for first period.

  Right then Amber walked by and I turned with a flourish, kind of swinging my books around while I slammed my locker door and said, “Hi, Amber.”

  In one fluid motion.

  That was the plan.

  What really happened is that my tongue wouldn't work, couldn't form the words Hi, Amber. Instead it seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth and make a sound like a little outboard motor: “Nnnnnnnnggh.”

  While I slammed the locker door, forgetting that my thumb was on the edge. The locker door latched. With my thumb stuck in the seam.

  At least it was one fluid motion.

  I didn't actually scream. It was more like a bleat, kind of a cross between no sound at all and what would happen if a semi ran over a duck. A big duck.

  I almost wet my pants.

  Books flew—Amber had to dodge my history homework—and my tongue continued to make that squashed-duck sound and I tried to act like it was something that happened to me all the time.

  Mr. Cool.

  I reached around with my free hand and, with one eye closed because of the pain, I worked the combination and opened the locker door.

  Gym was volleyball again and at least this time the boys and girls were separated so I couldn't cripple some poor girl.

  Like Rachel.

  The girls were playing at the other end of the gym. For a few minutes things almost worked out. My thumb hurt when I hit the ball but that seemed to lessen as we played.

  I made a couple of good setups and then one pretty fair spike and I hoped that somebody from the other end was watching.

  Like Rachel.

  But when I looked all the girls were in a circle choosing teams, and missed me being cool.

  The thing is I don't know why Amber and Rachel were important to me. Neither of them even really knew I existed.

  Now that I had loused up in front of them I wanted to impress them when I wasn't such a mess.

  Not that such a thing could ever happen.

  We played on and I kept an eye on the other end of the gym hoping that Rachel would turn and see me at least once.

  One of the boys on the other team had a smashing serve that just barely cleared the net and came in like a cannonball.

  I glanced at the gi
rls. Rachel happened to be facing the boys' end of the gym.

  Just as the rifling ball caught me dead in the face, splattering my nose, driving me back and down to the floor bleeding, and worse, tripping two other players, who tripped other players, who tripped …

  Pretty much the whole team went down and the last thing I saw was Rachel.

  Pointing at me.

  With a smile.

  Day Twelve

  Right about now I should mention that I'm a normal boy.

  I mean I'm crazy, sure, and I fall over and can't talk too much to girls and I'm a walking zit and, all right, I've never been cool. Ever. Which probably means I will never be cool. I'm just not wired that way: to be good at sports or play in a band or say the right thing at the right time. I'm not that person.

  I just looked at that last paragraph and realized it's all true. So I feel really good about myself….

  Come to the circus!

  See Doo-Doo try to play volleyball!

  See Doo-Doo the Zit Boy close a locker on his thumb!

  But I'm normal, which means we have to mention something that normal boys do. We don't have to talk about it a lot because everybody knows pretty much what I'm talking about and how it all works. It's not rocket science.

  So I have been on the Internet and seen the pictures. Sure. And the magazines. And what's happening to my body is what usually happens. Various parts function the way they're supposed to.

  I'm normal.

  But that's not what this journal is about. That part of it is kind of like going to the toilet: It's something lots of people do, but you don't have to talk about it.

  I have an uncle who told me once that religion, sex and money all had one thing in common: People who really had them never had to talk about them.

  I wouldn't know anything about that, since sex is off in the distance waiting for me. I hope it will be nice, not too scary, and won't destroy what brain I have left. I know sex is important but it's always been like a beautiful sunset somebody else sees and tries to tell you about. No matter how well they describe it you won't really know until you see it yourself. Although I'm a little concerned that it might actually be like rocket science: kind of hard to do well.

  Religion has always been private for me.

  I don't have any real money.

  So.

  I sat by the windowsill this evening. School had gone as usual.

  I tripped in the hallway.

  The school nurse saw the bald spot on the back of my head and had me come into the office to be examined and make sure I didn't have ringworm.

  Which isn't a worm, by the way, but a kind of fungus. Like athlete's foot.

  See Doo-Doo the Zit Boy grow fungus on his head!

  The rest of the day I noticed people moving away from me in the hallways because, as it turns out, ring-worm is very contagious.

  You can get it from your pet. Did you know that? Or from the neighbors' pet.

  I do not have ringworm.

  So now I sat by the windowsill and watched the bird. He's growing feathers all over. Today he's covered with a kind of fuzz that's spreading into feathers.

  He still looks silly…. I just realized that the guy who said that, me, has a thumb as big as a bratwurst, a ringworm-type bald spot on the back of his head, a nose splatted all over his face, and zits.

  And I think the bird looks silly.

  But … he does. His mom and dad bring him bugs constantly and he eats them as fast as they can shovel them in. The parents are starting to look bad. Feathers missing, scraggly looking, tired; I swear I saw the mother lean against the window to take a break.

  Meanwhile Gorm tried again. What is the definition of insanity? (I'm not so sure I want to know this.)

  It's if you keep doing something the same way but expect different results.

  Gorm once again tiptoed out on the limb. Then, stretch, reach, miss, gravity, plummet, dent in the flower bed next to the house, stagger away. At least he did the cat thing and landed on his feet. Like somebody'd dropped a four-legged anvil. He hit so hard I heard it on the second floor, through the window.

  Plluumppffhh!

  The birds weren't excited this time. I guess they knew he wasn't a problem. They just kept cycling back and forth with bugs for Junior.

  I've never seen anyone eat like this guy. Not even when Willy ate ten corn dogs at the Kiwanis Fair.

  Junior did one thing that made me feel good. Or at least not as lonely. He moved to the side of his nest to go to the bathroom and when he came back to the center he tripped.

  Plain as day. Tripped and fell on his head.

  Puberty bird.

  I called Willy.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “The cat tried for the bird again and fell.”

  “Cool.”

  “How was your day?”

  “I leaned down in science lab and caught my hair on fire with the Bunsen burner. Just one side.”

  “Did it stink?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How's it look?”

  “Bad.”

  “Join the club.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  “See you.”

  These little talks do wonders for me. Just knowing Willy is having some of the same problems …

  Although I did make one error. For a second I felt just a little superior. A least I hadn't done anything like set my hair on fire.

  Big mistake.

  Day Thirteen

  Let's talk about ringworm, shall we?

  I thought the false ringworm scare was all over. But I hadn't figured on school administrators, parents and rumors.

  I think this is what happened: One kid went home and told his parents that Duane Homer Leech had been checked for ringworm.

  And apparently that set of parents called another, who called another and yet another, who finally called the school administration and demanded to know why a child …

  Named Duane Homer Leech.

  … had been allowed to come to school and start a ringworm epidemic.

  The nurse said I didn't have it, but the principal ignored her and brought in a team from a clinic that checked every kid in school: every boy, every girl. They used a little whirring machine and took a tiny snippet of hair from every kid, which left a little— very tiny—bald spot.

  Much smaller than the bald spot on me.

  Duane Homer Leech.

  Who brought the epidemic to school.

  Things went rapidly downhill from there. Even though there had never been ringworm in the school, not a single case, because of the rumors science teachers were instructed to devote time to studying socially transmitted diseases.

  Ringworm. Measles. Chicken pox. Influenza. Bubonic plague. Leprosy. Ebola. AIDS.

  We learned that a single boy could bring one of these diseases to school and start an epidemic.

  Any boy.

  Duane Homer Leech.

  It didn't matter that they didn't find a single case of ringworm. Or that I didn't even have ringworm or any other disease.

  All that mattered were those little bald spots. Less than a quarter of an inch in diameter, easily covered by hair.

  The bald spots caused by Duane Homer Leech.

  I'd walk down the hall and the other kids would part around me like water around a rock in a river. I was like a giant, moving booger.

  At two-thirty, just before the last class, the principal came on the public-address system: “Now that the ringworm scare is over, I want you to tell your parents that there is nothing to worry about. It was all a mistake. Even the boy who was thought to have ringworm is disease free.”

  He didn't say my name. But he didn't need to. Everybody in school knew Doo-Doo the Zit Boy!

  The boy who brought the bald spots to school.

  Now disease free.

  It was nice of the principal to announce it over the intercom. It wasn't embarrassing. No more than, say, walking a
round school naked.

  Where was Ferris Bueller's Rottweiler when you needed it?

  Day Fourteen

  “Look,” my father said the next morning, drinking coffee over the sink while he read the paper. “There was an epidemic scare at your school yesterday. You didn't get exposed to anything, did you?”

  “Are you sick?” my mother cut in. “Do we need to have you checked at the clinic?”

  “Of course he's sick.” My sister had three strands of hair in the wrong place and was trying to relocate them without disturbing the rest of her head. “Have you smelled him? How can he stink like that and not be sick?”

  I couldn't look at the cereal box. The rooster was gone and in his place …

  “They say,” I started, “that there's a lot to be said for homeschooling. You learn more. You can study longer and there's less hassle.”

  “Homeschooling? What? We don't do that. We pay taxes.” My father was proud of that. He paid taxes. “They pay for the school. You go to the school. That's how it all works.”

  Yeah. It works really well. I go in today and they'll probably burn me at the stake.

  For the first time in my life I almost skipped school. I think I would have except for Willy.

  The night before I was sitting in my room and staring at the wall. Not the poster wall. The blank wall. I was ready to go backward. This whole puberty thing wasn't working out for me at all and every day just seemed to get worse.

  So I called Willy.

  “All right, when you burned your hair, were you embarrassed?”

  Willy snorted. “No more than if I had peed my pants in church …”

  “Well, how did you handle it?”

  “You drive on. I acted like I meant it. Like I was experimenting with hair burning. Why? What happened?”

  So I told him. The whole day, ringworm, disease, all of it. And when I finished there was a little pause and then: “Cool.”

  “Cool?”

  “Absolutely. The coolest.”

  “Were you listening to me?”

  “You bet.”

  “Ringworm, disease, bald spots is cool?”

  “Totally.”