by Melissa Hart
“You hafta see the owl,” he insisted.
That’s when I got the idea. People hate what they don’t understand. I’d despised Oregon and owls and even Eric until I began to see them in a different way.
If Artemis had any hope of surviving Mr. Miller’s wrath, she had to show herself.
I pushed through the crowd and grabbed the hose. Lucas read my mind and ran to turn on the spigot.
I aimed the hose toward the perch. The water sprayed out cold and silvery in the early morning light.
No owl.
Leah clasped her hands. “Be patient.”
I arched the hose, spraying mist onto the gravel. Beside me, Lucas hooted softly.
WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!
Come on, Artemis. Please …
And then, with a magnificent flap of wings, the owl rose up to her perch. Her yellow eyes shifted from one face to another, finally landing on mine. I danced the water around her, over the jutting ear tufts, the soft brown and white feathers. She spread her wings wide. Her white chest flashed as she called to me.
WHOO-hoo-oo-oo-oo-WHOO-WHOO!
“See. She’s beautiful!” I said, barely above a whisper.
Eric pulled the magnifying glass from around his neck and pushed it into his father’s hand.
“She’s a menace!” he growled.
Then something inside me snapped, like rubber bands that had been stretched around my heart. I felt them go zipping off into space.
“She’s not a menace!” I yelled. “She’s an incredible bird. You can’t kill her!”
Eric stepped in front of the mew and glared at his father with the same look he’d shot Missing Tooth before he kicked him in the jaw. “Don’t hurt this bird!”
“Here.” I gave Eric the hose. “Aim this toward Artemis, and see what happens. She loves to take a shower.”
As Eric sprayed her, Artemis lifted one shining brown wing and then the other, blissfully unaware that her life was in danger. A smile spread across Eric’s face. “Solo tell me owls have binocular eyes,” he said. “And lopsided ears.”
“Well?” Edgar said from her mew. “Ha ha ha ha!”
If this had been one of my screenplay scenes, everyone would have laughed and forgotten all about killing owls. But only my father chuckled.
Mom leaned over to whisper in his ear. “That’s Edgar Allen Crow.”
Then Dad really let loose, a laugh you could have heard clear at the top of the butte. “Edgar Allen Crow!” He slapped his thigh. “That’s a good one!”
Mr. Miller stared at him. “You really are,” he said slowly, “as crazy as they say.”
Then he turned to Eric. For an instant, he seemed to actually see his son. He turned and stalked down the hill. “I’ve gotta get to the airport.”
The rest of us huddled together, shielding Artemis. Mrs. Miller’s cheeks burned red as her husband’s car rumbled down the driveway. “Maybe it’s better this way,” she murmured to my mother. Then she kissed the top of my head. “Thank you for taking care of Eric, honey. You’re a real live hero.”
“He is a hero. He saved Artemis.” Leah pulled something from her pocket and placed it around my neck. A beaded necklace with a silver feather charm, just like Lucas’s. “I’ve got one, too,” she said. “We made mine and one for you after we released the owl at the beach.”
Lucas reached for the feather around his own neck and tugged it thoughtfully. “That guy can’t really have Artemis killed, can he?”
“Absolutely not,” Minerva snapped. “It’s illegal for children to be in the raptor enclosures without an adult.”
Here it came. My jail sentence.
My hands shook. I stuffed them into the pockets of Dad’s jacket.
Good-bye, Leah. Good-bye, Lucas.
Lucas squeezed Leah’s hand, then walked over to me. Quietly, he held out his arm and tapped the three white scars on his wrist. Then, I understood. He was the tough guy who’d once gone into Artemis’s mew and gotten attacked.
“From At-Risk Youth to Sergeant Bird Nerd.” He winked at me. “Heard you telling Artemis about my nickname.”
Minerva walked over and bent to my eye level. “Our new volunteer called me at midnight. She said she accidentally left the key in Artemis’s padlock.”
She nodded toward Eric. “I think you saved someone else besides our owl.”
Her eyes pierced mine. “I ran away once, too, Solo. Then I came here and started the raptor center. What will you start?”
How did she know I had been running away?
Mrs. Miller patted Eric’s hand. “I’m gonna get this young man over to the hospital. I don’t think he’ll need stitches, but we’ll just make real sure. You coming?”
My mom looked at me.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” I muttered. “I’m fine.”
“Even so,” Mom said, “I’d like to get some medicine on those cuts of yours and get you into warm clothes.”
Dad jangled his keys. “Let’s go,” he said.
My parents couldn’t wait to get out of here. I stared down at my filthy, bloody legs.
Good-bye, Edgar. Good-bye, Artemis.
Leah rustled a paper bag. “Hey, guys. I’ve got cookies for you.”
Eric clapped his hands, winced at the pain in his arm, and grabbed the bag anyway. “More cookies!”
So he got his wish, the wish he’d made on the falling star. And I got mine. Artemis was okay. Eric was okay. Even my father was okay. The only one who wasn’t okay was me.
What would I start? Nothing at all.
I closed my eyes, blocking out my parents and Minerva, the birds and my friends. Everything in my life felt like one huge bad ending.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HOME
Good-bye, Solo.”
Minerva pushed a bag of gauze pads through The Big Grape’s sliding door and handed me a bottle. “Antiseptic. For your back.”
I slumped on the ripped bench seat and closed my eyes.
“Hang in there,” she whispered.
Outside the VW, she spoke with my parents. Lucas and Leah stood beside Edgar’s mew, talking quietly. My body throbbed with pain. Even my soul hurt.
Mom hoisted the Pig Wheel into the back of the bus and climbed into the driver’s seat. My father climbed in back and put an arm around me. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said softly.
The Big Grape choked to a start. Mom pulled away from the center with its dozens of mews, its flower gardens, and the treatment room full of injured birds that someone else would care for now that I was gone. The black and white kitten peeked out at me from behind the clinic’s screen door. Someone else would get to take her home.
I watched through the back window as the center grew smaller and smaller. The lump in my throat swelled bigger and bigger. I pressed a fist into my gut.
Dad ruffled my hair. “Your mother and I had a marathon discussion last night when we couldn’t find you. You know, Solo, eventually you’ve got to stop running and commit to a place.”
My stomach went belly-up. An At-Risk Youth, and now a runaway. Would they commit me to juvenile corrections here, or would they wait till we got back to California?
“We’re going to go to family counseling,” Mom said.
“And I’m going separately once a week,” my father added. “It’s not a panacea, but it’s a step in the right direction.”
“Panacea?” I mumbled.
“He means a cure.” Mom pulled a Snickers bar from her purse and tossed it to me. “I thought you could use this.” She smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “Hey, don’t expect me to give up the no sugar rule. This is a treat.”
Dad caught my eye and winked. I stared back at him dully.
“I’m looking for part-time work at a bookstore,” he said. “It’ll give my day some structure and”—he reached to put a hand on Mom’s shoulder—“help with finances.”
“You’ll get inspiration from all those books,” she said. “We’ll have wonderful stories
to tell over dinner.”
Their words rolled off me and away. I stared out the window at the green smear of firs and fields. I never even got to pick blackberries. Now I never will, since we’re moving.
“Solo, did you hear me? I asked if you’d seen Minerva’s bumper sticker.”
“Why?”
“It said, FOLLOW YOUR BLISS. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Follow your bliss,” Dad repeated slowly. “Good advice, isn’t it, son? Minerva said she’d let me take a volunteer shift of my own … that is if you …”
Sometimes a raptor comes into the center so injured that all it can do is look at you—devastated eyes glittering from a ragged pile of feathers. I barely had the energy to blink at my parents through my tangled hair.
My father looked into my eyes. “Solo, we can stay.”
“Stay?”
“If you want to. Otherwise, we can go back to California. It’s not too late for either decision.”
“What would you prefer?” Mom asked me.
What would I prefer?
Minerva was right: a person can have more than one bliss.
“I want to stay,” I whispered.
My mother turned in the driveway and gunned The Big Grape toward our tin can trailer. A red-tailed hawk looked down at us from our telephone pole. Songbirds erupted in a tiny brown explosion from the feeder I’d hung in a cherry tree.
My father jumped out and scooped Mom into his arms. Laughing, he carried her up the porch steps and through the front door.
Then I knew we were home, for good.
FADE OUT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No writer ever truly works alone on a book. I’m grateful to my husband, Jonathan, who inspired me to volunteer at our local raptor center after inviting me out on a date to pick up six hundred pounds of frozen rats and a live baby barred owl. Thank you to my agent, Jennifer Unter, for believing in this manuscript, and to Julie Matysik and Adrienne Szpyrka at Sky Pony for their insight as editors. I’m grateful for help from Gail Udell, Sarah Howery Hart, and George Estreich regarding Eric’s speech patterns. A special thank you to the staff and volunteers at raptor centers across the world—they dedicate their lives to helping injured and orphaned birds of prey. And much gratitude to the raptors themselves, who bring good tidings and Nature’s peace.
RESOURCES FOR RAPTOR LOVERS
Nonfiction Books
Adopted by an Owl: The True Story of Jackson the Owl by Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen
Birds: Internet Linked by Gillian Doherty
Birds of Prey by Karen Stray Nolting and Jonathan P. Latimer
Eyewitness: Eagles & Birds of Prey by Jemima Parry-Jones
Owl Puke: The Book by Jane Hammerslough
Raptor! A Kid’s Guide to Birds of Prey by Christyna M. Laubach, René Laubach, and Charles W. G. Smith
Fiction Books
Flyaway by Hellen Landolf
Frightful’s Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Guardians of Ga’hoole by Kathryn Lasky
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
There’s an Owl in the Shower by Jean Craighead George
Websites
Hawkwatch International is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving raptors and their habitat: www.hawkwatch.org/
International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council is a great site for education and resources for wildlife conservation: http://theiwrc.org/
National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association provides links to finding a wildlife/raptor rehabilitator near you: www.nwrawildlife.org/content/finding-rehabilitator
The Peregrine Fund is a nonprofit working to conserve birds of prey: www.peregrinefund.org
RESOURCES ABOUT DOWN SYNDROME
Nonfiction Books
Count Us In: Growing up with Down Syndrome by Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz
Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey by Rachel Simon
The Shape of the Eye: A Memoir by George Estreich
Fiction Books
Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange
Dear Blue Sky by Mary Sullivan
Dear America: Down the Rabbit Hole by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Websites
Global Down Syndrome Foundation: www.globaldownsyndrome.org/
National Association for Down Syndrome: www.nads.org/
National Down Syndrome Society: www.ndss.org/
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Hart loves hiking, kayaking, and camping with her husband and daughter throughout Oregon. She’s the author of two books for adults—Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family, and Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood. She teaches high school literature for Laurel Springs, a distance-learning K-12 school, and for Whidbey Island’s MFA in Creative Writing program. See more of her work, including her essays about owls and about her brother with Down syndrome at www.melissahart.com.
