Avenging the Owl

by Melissa Hart

  “I’m not moving!” I burst into the master bedroom, frothing at the mouth. “You can’t make me!”

  My parents traded a look over my head—one of those loaded stares the camera loves, where the eyes say it all.

  “We know it’ll be hard on you to leave your friends….” My mother reached to hug me.

  I jerked my head away so she ended up kissing air. “It’s not hard, ’cause I’m not leaving!”

  “Our house is up for sale.” My father’s voice came out stern, but his eyes were dark pools of saltwater behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “This way, we can spend more time together. I barely know you, Solo.”

  I’d give him that. For years, Dad had caught the carpool to Los Angeles before dawn. He didn’t get back until after dinner. Sometimes, he worked weekends. He’d come home and rip off his tie like it was strangling him, then collapse on the leather couch in front of the TV. Some days we said about two words to each other. But late at night, he would tiptoe to my door and stand there looking at me. He thought I was sleeping. He couldn’t see my eyes slivered open, trying to read his face in the dark. I never fell asleep until he’d gone.

  “Oh, Solo.” Since I wasn’t accepting any hugs just then, Mom crossed the bedroom and put her arms around Dad. Her voice came out all shaky. “I miss Oregon. I grew up there, sweetie. It will be a much simpler, happier life.”

  “We have a fine life right here in Redondo Beach!” I screamed.

  That year, I’d been vice president of the seventh-grade student council, and the principal put me in GATE—Gifted and Talented Education—which meant Rajen and I went to a special class every Wednesday morning. We designed our own board games, read Reader’s Digest to old people in the retirement home next door, and the Toastmasters people taught us to give speeches about how we shouldn’t have homework and the cafeteria should always serve pizza.

  After school, there was surfing. Some guys my age loved girls or video games. I loved the ocean. I understood it, and it understood me. My fingers gripped the board as a wave began to rise far out at sea. The water gathered momentum, and my heart began to pound. I squinted through golden sunlight, studying the swell. Right as it crested and roared, I turned, leaped onto my board, and rode the long, long wave into shore.

  I stopped surfing when the sign appeared, nailed to a post in our front yard. SOLD.

  Then, even the fishy smell of seaweed made me want to bawl like a first grader. But there was enough saltwater in the Pacific already.

  •

  Right after school got out that summer, my parents had a mammoth yard sale. People swarmed over our stuff like ants over spilled Coke. Mom walked into my bedroom and clicked off my stereo, then stood in front of the TV. “We’re selling the television.” She glanced at my notebooks full of screenplays, my surfing trophies, piles of CDs and DVDs.

  “That’s okay. Dad can watch mine.” I waved her out of the way, but she didn’t budge.

  “We’re selling all the televisions. We’re going to be a TV-free household.”

  I stared at her. She wore her designer jeans and the diamond earrings Dad had given her for their anniversary, but she’d traded her Hollywood hairdo for braids—Little House on the Prairie–style. With those braids, she looked as young as one of the senior girls at what was supposed to be my new high school in a little more than a year.

  “How’m I supposed to watch movies?” I demanded. “You’re joking, right?”

  Mom pursed up her lips, deadly serious. “There’s a lovely little theater in our new city in an old converted church. We can go all the time. You might as well sell your DVDs, too, and save the money for something you really need.”

  What I needed was for this to be some freaky tilt shot in the fictional film noir screenplay of my life. But it was real. “In living color,” as Dad would say.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this!” I shouted.

  I grabbed my box of DVDs and thrust it into her hands. “Happy now?” Then, I ripped the TV plug out of its socket. Orange sparks shot everywhere.

  My parents had turned into aliens with ray guns on a mission to annihilate my life. There went my TV—Bzzzt! There went surfing—Bzzzt! There went my friends—Bzzzt! and Bzzzt!

  “Solo, can you tone down the murderous glare?” Mom glanced out at Dad washing the lower windows of the house. “You know why we have to move. The doctor says your father needs a change, and you and I just have to … ” The doorbell rang and she sprinted down the hall to answer it.

  A minute later, Rajen clumped up the stairs. “What’s up with your mom, dude? She looks totally bizarre. Where’s she taking your DVDs?”

  “Don’t ask.” It hurt to look at my best friend. Instead, I stared out the window while strangers below began to cart off everything that meant something to me—my movies, our huge stereo, even our computer.

  “That stinks you gotta sell your stuff.” Rajen smashed his face against the window, freaking out some woman walking off with my mother’s makeup mirror. “Bet you’re making a pile of cash on your garage sale.”

  “It’s a yard sale.” Thanks to my father, we weren’t allowed to use the garage anymore.

  Dad wandered upstairs to get my TV. “Hey, Rajen,” he said, then looked at me and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. Then he hung his head and skulked out of the room with his skinny arms wrapped around my flat screen, trailing the cord behind him. Bad sign. He was never tongue-tied before he got sick.

  “No way,” Rajen said. “You’re selling your TV?”

  I shrugged. “We’re getting a plasma screen after we move.”

  “Cool!” He flipped through a pile of surfing magazines. “Is your new house in Oregon as awesome as this one?”

  “Yeah.” Even best friends don’t tell each other everything. “But soon as we get to Oregon, I’m running away. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

  Rajen nodded. “You can sleep in my tree house. Hey, bro, how much for these magazines?”

  “Just take ’em.” I threw my pillow across the room. It clattered one of my trophies into the trash can. “Count it toward rent on the tree house.”

  After Rajen left, I stomped out to the front yard. My mother stood in the driveway, packing up the stuff that hadn’t sold. Boxes littered the lawn. “We’ll donate all this to Goodwill. It’ll go to someone in need.”

  “I’m someone in need.” I grabbed my Dodgers hat before she could toss it. “I need new parents.”

  This was grounds for a lecture on what my mother called Voluntary Simplicity. “We actually need so little, Solo.” She folded old beach towels and dropped them into a box. “The Native Americans existed beautifully on just three things—food, water, and shelters they made themselves out of sticks and animal skins.”

  I knew better than to argue with her when she got all historical. I slumped on a box and studied the things our neighbors hadn’t wanted. Literature textbooks. Ancient cassette tapes of Dad’s big band music. My Bride of the Monster DVD.

  You can’t just box up my life and give it away.

  I blinked hard and stumbled into the backyard, slumping down on my old swing beside the sandbox Rajen and I had played in as little kids. A movement in the grass caught my eye. I looked up to see a pair of my father’s old holey boxers crawling across the lawn.

  “What in the …”

  Had television finally killed off my brain cells, just like Mom warned? The underwear kept floating across the lawn, and I tiptoed over to find it clenched between the teeth of a gray and white kitten.

  I picked her up. She fit into one of my hands, paws cold on my palm. I rubbed my cheek against her soft fur. She smelled like saltwater, seaweed, and tar.

  “Mew!” she cried and reached to touch my face with white velvet paws.

  Her ribs stuck out, and her sides looked hollow. She wasn’t wearing a collar.

  You’re solitary, too.

  I tucked her inside my sweatshirt and walked upstairs into my parent
s’ bedroom. They stood in front of two suitcases. Voluntary Simplicity meant they could take only the clothes that would fit. Beside my father’s already-crammed case sat a pile of suits and ties. Mom held a Saks dress she couldn’t squash into her packed suitcase. “I could wear it on the drive to Oregon.” She smoothed it into a rectangle and dropped it on the bed. “But …” she sighed, “I don’t need it.”

  “I need this kitten.”

  The words surprised all of us. On cue, the kitten stuck her head out of my sweatshirt and mewed. “This is not a super … superflu … super-whatever frivolity,” I said. “It’s a need.”

  My words shocked all of us. I’d never been a cat person. Or a dog person. Especially not a bird person, thanks to Hitchcock’s eye-gouging crows. I liked Rajen’s mice just fine, but Blinky took care of them whenever Rajen’s family visited his grandparents in Pakistan. Still, everything inside me cried out to keep this kitten, like if I could just hold onto its little purring body, my life wouldn’t spin out of control.

  As if it agreed, the kitten mewed again, all pink tongue and white needle teeth.

  “Oh … dear.” Mom couldn’t help herself. She stretched out a finger and stroked the kitten’s fuzzy gray head. We looked toward my father for his approval.

  But Dad was just standing there staring down at a red necktie, winding it around and around his wrist. I looked away.

  “Your kitty will have a whole acre to play on in Oregon!” Mom said too loudly, making the decision herself. “She’s adorable.”

  I carried the kitten to my room and set her on the bed in a pile of laundry. She rubbed her cheek hard against my hand, then gnawed on one of my socks, purring like crazy.

  “Are you real?” I scratched under her white chin, and she erupted into hard-core purring.

  If she was real, then so was the move to Oregon.

  •

  My father built a cage for the kitten out of a wooden orange crate and some wire. On the morning of our epic move, he wedged the contraption behind my seat in the purple Volkswagen bus Mom had bought to replace her Corvette. I coaxed the kitten into the carrier with some Friskies and latched the door.

  “Well, this is it!” Dad thumped the SOLD sign with his fist and grabbed my mother’s hands. “Say good-bye to Hollywood!” he sang, swinging her in a circle.

  “And good riddance!” she laughed.

  Anger burned in my gut. How could they be so happy when they’d ruined my life?

  My father climbed into the moving van and waved. He looked small and vulnerable in the high seat. But his lips stretched in a huge, manic smile. I ducked my head and shoved my skateboard into the bus.

  This is all your fault, Dad.

  But if I got really honest with myself, shoved the anger aside, I knew deep down that we had to move. We couldn’t stay in this house, in this life. Not after what had happened.

  For weeks, I’d tried to shove the memory away. But now it flashed through my head like a scene from an old horror movie you can’t help watching over and over even though it scares the pants off you. This is how I wrote it the night that it happened, but I never showed it to anyone, not even to Mr. Davies.

  FADE IN

  EXTERIOR. FRIDAY IN MAY - REDONDO BEACH - EVENING.

  MOM walks over to meet SOLO at the library. He says good-bye to his two friends. He and his mother talk and laugh, and stop on the way home for Japanese takeout. Solo swings the bag full of cartons of rice and vegetables. He inhales the steam wafting up from the bag and smiles.

  CLOSE-UP of elegant two-story house with the ocean in the background. PAN IN on the garage. Exhaust fumes seep from a crack in the closed door.

  MOM

  Is that smoke coming from the garage?

  She drops her purse and races into the house. Solo stands on the lawn. He looks confused. He’s still clutching the bag of food. In a moment, the automatic garage door rolls up to reveal a red Corvette in a haze of bluish exhaust. A black Shop-Vac tube stretches from the tailpipe to the driver’s side window.

  MOM (CONT’D)

  Call 9-1-1! Now, Solo!

  She yanks open the car door. Big band music—the kind from old black and white movies—fills the garage.

  Cartons spill rice and vegetables onto the sidewalk. Solo overturns his mother’s purse. Not seeing a cell phone, he races into the house.

  INTERIOR. LIVING ROOM WITH WHITE CARPET AND TALL BOOKCASES

  CLOSE-UP on Solo’s hands—they shake as he snatches the cell phone from the table and punches in numbers and an EMT answers.

  SOLO

  (into phone)

  There’s an emergency!

  DISPATCHER

  State location and nature of problem, please.

  SOLO

  I’m at my house! I don’t know what the problem is. I think our garage is on fire!

  Solo shouts out his address, then hangs up the phone and yells up the stairs.

  SOLO (CONT’D)

  Dad? You up there? I think the Corvette just exploded!

  No answer. Solo stands in the living room, staring out the window at smoke filling the air. Neighbors begin to appear in their front yards. They point toward the garage, horror evident on their faces.

  LONG SHOT through window. A fire engine and an ambulance speed screaming up the street. Solo’s eyes widen, and his mouth gapes with horror as three paramedics carry a limp, lifeless Japanese man out of the garage on a stretcher. Behind them, Solo’s mother, sobbing.

  SOLO (CONT’D)

  Dad? Dad!

  FADE OUT

  “Solo? Dude, are you alive?” Rajen stood in front of me, surfboard under one arm. He waved his hand in front of my eyes. Blinky hovered beside him, his wet suit pulled down around his waist. I leaped in front of the purple bus like I could hide it with my body.

  “What’s up, bros?” I managed to squeak.

  We stood there feeling stupid because only two of us had on wet suits, and one of us was smuggling his inside a pillowcase so his mom wouldn’t sell it.

  I rubbed my eyes. “Sand,” I muttered.

  Blinky just gazed at me through his thick glasses, silent. But Rajen gave me a back-slapping hug and dropped something into my hand. “Open it when you get to Oregon.”

  I looked down at an Altoids tin. “Uh … thanks.” I dropped it into my backpack.

  Rajen glanced at my parents and lowered his voice. “I’m getting the tree house ready. I’ll email you tonight. We need a code so we can plot your escape. We’ll call it … Operation Surf’s Up.”

  “We won’t have a computer for a few days,” I mumbled, leaving out the part about how Voluntary Simplicity meant no computer, ever, and no cell phone for me until college.

  “Then I’ll send you postcards. Stay cool, okay?”

  I chewed my thumbnail. “Yep.”

  My friends headed down to the beach. They’d surf all morning, come back to chow hot dogs wrapped in naan bread at Rajen’s, then head out again. By the time they came in for the night—their hair stiff with salt and their arm muscles aching—I’d be in Oregon. No ocean, no friends, nothing but a gray and white kitten with an appetite for old boxer shorts.

  Mom started up the Volkswagen. It coughed and sputtered black smoke. I slumped down in the seat so no neighbors could see me. Dad saluted us from the U-Haul. We pulled away from our house—from my room with the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and the backyard where I’d had birthday parties for thirteen years.

  I watched through the back window as the wide line of ocean grew smaller and smaller. The lump in my throat swelled bigger and bigger until I thought I’d throw up.

  But there was my kitten, climbing over the seats with a pair of Mom’s flowered socks in her mouth, landing on Mom’s shoulder with her claws extended.

  “Ow!” Mom laughed. “Your father’s never been very good at carpentry. Must not have latched the door on that cage.” She let the kitten ride on her shoulder and play with her braids.

  “You look lik
e an Indian,” I said, plucking the kitten off her tie-dyed shirt and cuddling her to my chest.

  My mother hugged the giant steering wheel. “I feel like Sacagawea, headed for the unknown. Think of the screenplays you’ll write, Solo. We’re going to have a wonderful time!”

  I buried my face in the kitten’s fur. She put her paws on my eyes, then licked off the saltwater. It would be hard to run away with a kitten.

  We’ll have to cross rivers and mountains, and when we get back to California, Steven Spielberg will make a movie about us.

  “You’ll have so many adventures,” my mother kept talking. “You can hunt for blackberries and build forts in the forest around our house. At night, we’ll sit on the porch and learn the names of the stars. We can buy a telescope with the yard sale money….”

  Mom’s idea of fun sounded ridiculous. Running away would be the real adventure.

  “What’s your kitty’s name, Solo?” She reached over to rub the back of my neck.

  I squirmed away. “I dunno.”

  Like I said before, labels are important. I was still working to come up with a good one for the kitten. But she never had a name, because a week after we moved to Oregon, she escaped through a hole in the trailer’s screen door and was murdered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE STRONGEST STORIES ARE BORN OF PAIN

  Saturday morning, after my first week of forced labor at the raptor center, I woke up to the sound of waves breaking.

  Maybe it was all a nightmare. Maybe I’m still in California and I can go surfing.

  I jumped out of bed to find pine trees rustling in the breeze outside the trailer window.

  My heart hurt.

  Seven a.m. Fourteen hours until I could go back to sleep. My skateboard stood abandoned in my closet. No way could I do grabs and pipes on the long potholed driveway that led to our house.

  No computer or TV meant no emailing Rajen and Blinky and no movies. I couldn’t go hiking in the woods—who knew what terror lurked out there. I glanced at the boxer shorts on my bedpost and my throat tightened. No kitten to play with, either.

  Finally, I pulled out the book Minerva had dropped onto my backpack. One Man’s Owl. Apparently, the author had raised an orphaned baby owl and eventually turned it loose in the forest. Big deal. Two months ago, you couldn’t have paid me to read that book.