“Oh.”
She smiled then, as though my reluctance really surprised her. “Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“No! I mean—”
“One of your best friends had just been taken to the hospital. And weren’t you having an episode yourself?”
When she called Sydney one of my best friends, something let loose inside me. Calling Sydney one of my best friends wasn’t exactly right. Not anymore.
“Everybody knows it was my fault. It’s not like I deserve a break.”
“What’s wrong with me giving you a do-over? There’s nothing wrong with a second chance. Can you imagine? What if instead of a season your team just played one game? Or if the winner of the game was the team that scored first? And then that’s it—one point?”
She was smiling and I knew she thought she was giving me something awesome and I shouldn’t have felt so deflated about it, but I did. There wasn’t much I could say about it, though. “Okay.”
“Good. I also want to give you fair warning. I’ve contacted your father.” She held up her hand to stop whatever I might have said. “You know it’s school policy. Now, finish your lunch and find a pencil. We’ve got some reviewing to do.”
Dad was home from work early that day. He was waiting for me in the kitchen. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “How was school?”
“Are you going to make me quit the pheasant farm?”
Dad walked into the dining room and set down the bowl of pretzels he was carrying. “How about we take this one step at a time.” He pointed to a chair. “Let’s get started. Get out your math book.”
He’d cleared off the dining room table. The only things on it were his special mechanical pencils. Mom always had some cloth going down the middle of the table and some candlesticks with brand-new candles we never lit because they were a fire and air-quality hazard. Usually she had some decorations out. Maybe some little wooden pumpkins if it was Halloween, or a glass turkey for Thanksgiving. Dad had moved the summer decorations, a bouquet of brightly colored fake flowers, that had been out since Mom left.
“Tell me about this retest.”
“Mrs. Anderson is letting me take the test again. She’s giving me a second chance.” Saying it out loud was different than just thinking about it.
“That’s good. It’s good of your teacher to do this for you.”
“I put my head on my desk and fell asleep the first time. I didn’t even try.”
Dad arranged his fancy mechanical pencils next to my open math book. He rubbed his beard. “It was a bad day.”
“It was the worst.”
“Did you find Sydney? On Halloween?”
I said no. Not really. I could tell Dad wanted to follow up on that, so I asked, “Did you know your beard would grow like that?”
“Not quite like this. I’d never gone longer than a week without shaving.”
“Are you going to keep it?”
He rubbed his cheek through his beard. “Probably not.”
“Good. It’s weird. You look like someone else. Do you feel like someone else?”
“No,” he said. “I forget about it until I look in the mirror. Then I’m surprised.”
“Really? I don’t believe you. You itch it all the time.”
“What can I say? It itches.”
That made me laugh. “Dad,” I said, “you don’t know itching,” and he laughed too.
“No, kid, I guess I don’t.”
And maybe it shouldn’t have been fun or funny, but it was. Dad shook his head and finished laughing. “Are you going to tell me how you got that black eye?”
“I already told you,” I said, “I ran into my locker. The corner part. At the top. They’re short. The lockers.”
He didn’t believe me. After a while he said, “Let’s get started. We’ll go slow. Let me know if I go too fast—”
“Or make those frustrated noises if I don’t catch on.”
“What frustrated noises?”
“Those big sighs.”
“Big sighs?”
“Yeah,” I said, “those big sighs when you think I’m missing something obvious. I’m just going to tell you right now, Dad, nothing about any of this is obvious to me.”
“Okay,” he said, “got it.” He handed me one of his special pencils. “If I do that you go ahead and break one of the pencil points.” That sounds silly but for my dad it’s serious. He’s had those pencils since college. He doesn’t like to share them, not even with Mom, and once I lost one of the metal eraser caps. He was not happy.
I looked at the book and the opened, unmarked pages of my notebook, the cleaned-off tabletop, and Dad. I don’t know. I didn’t want to quit the pheasant farm. And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe this would be the thing we’d figure out how to do together while Mom was gone.
CHAPTER 17
MR. EPPLE DIDN’T care about my black eye. When he’d seen it all he said was, “No trouble. Not if you work here,” and then he turned and walked away and that’s all there was to say about it. He didn’t wait for me to agree or disagree or explain anything about it.
It was November. Except for the new fields of winter wheat, as green as golf courses, the farmland had turned brown and bare. Mr. Epple had started emptying out some of the pens. Every Monday when I came there were fewer and fewer birds. The front two pens were completely empty. I scrubbed the empty feed and water containers and thought about Sydney, Mrs. Anderson, multiplying fractions, making things divide into pieces and then making them more again.
The farm was the only place I’d been able to follow any of my itching rules. No itching, check. No itching in front of witnesses, check. So I was covered on my third rule. No itching at the farm. All I’d ever had was an itchy feeling. Which was funny, because no itching at the farm was the least important of all the rules. Mr. Epple wouldn’t care if I swelled up like something out of a horror movie or a gross internet video clip. I’d just do my stuff and he’d leave me alone. The birds wouldn’t care either. Not as long as I had their food. Maybe they’d think I was showing off. Maybe they’d think I was puffing up and I was the biggest, baddest bird in the pen.
I liked how Mr. Epple left me alone to do what I was supposed to do. I was glad he wasn’t that interested in me. It felt good. Right then, it was the only thing about my life that was easy.
Even if I’d decided I was going to get Nate a pheasant egg.
Because an egg was better than nothing.
And I’d been thinking about second chances.
An egg would be easier to take than a bird, even though a bird was what Nate wanted. An egg would be easier to transport than a pheasant even if it would be harder to steal from the barn because Mr. Epple always counted the eggs. Not like the pheasants, which I counted.
Slip the egg into a pocket, keep it warm against my body, and walk my bike out to Nate’s storage unit.
When I imagined it, I tucked the egg inside my work gloves and put my work gloves inside the deep pocket of my cargo pants and I walked along the road steady and easy. When I imagined it, it seemed important. Taking care of something. Because an unbroken egg meant something, it meant something after I’d broken everything.
When I give the egg to Nate, he holds it in his hands as if it’s beautiful and important to him too, and he says, “You did it, man. You did it. I didn’t think you would. You’re okay after all.” Sometimes, when I imagine him holding the egg carefully, he says he knows it was an accident. “I know that. Everybody knows that. You didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Or he’d give the egg back. He’d give the egg back and say, “I don’t need an egg, man. I don’t want your dumb peace offering.” He’d say, “What’s this for? I don’t need this. You stupid Michigan fan.”
If I got a chick, it would die. Mr. Epple kept everything just so. The temperat
ure. How much space each animal had. How much food and water, and even the location of the feed containers. When a chick hatched or was moved from one box to another, he picked up each small bird and dipped its beak in the water so it would know what water was and where to find it. Heat lamps hung low and glowed red over each box. Mr. Epple checked the thermometers all the time and moved the heat lamps up or down.
And taking a pheasant? Impossible. How would I do that? I could slip away with an egg. But pheasants were real, squawking things that would run away as soon as they hit open ground.
But I could get Nate an egg. I could show everybody who voted for me to get Nate a pheasant. I wouldn’t be the kid who nearly killed Sydney. I wouldn’t be the kid who used to be from somewhere else. I wouldn’t be the kid who wasn’t a Buckeye. I wouldn’t be the kid who itched. Next time I passed Sydney a note, she’d read it.
Mr. Epple, off doing his own work, waved. Waving back, I stared at the red brooder barn, thinking about stealing an egg. Planning it out. I’d have to do it soon. He didn’t have any eggs or chicks or birds after January when pheasant season ended. Dad hadn’t made me quit yet, and he hadn’t given me a minimum test score I’d have to beat if I wanted to keep working. All he ever said was We’ll see. And I had to steal an egg soon before I remembered what was right and what was wrong. While I thought it was a good idea.
I imagined giving the egg to Sydney. She cups it in her hands. The egg is warm. Sydney knows what’s inside. She looks at it in wonder. She knows exactly what it means. “Thank you,” she says, “thank you, Isaac.”
I opened my eyes and saw the pens and heard the pheasants in the brush and remembered how I’d blown it on Halloween and how she wouldn’t even read my sorry Sorry note. Dad and Mom both said I should talk to her. Call her up on the phone. Knock on her door. They didn’t know how I’d tried and how I’d just made it all worse. Stealing a pheasant egg for Nate in comparison seemed like a piece of cake.
Once I started thinking about stealing as a second chance, it got easier and easier.
Get into the barn. Slide my hand, palm down, over the warm egg. Get the egg into my pocket.
* * *
—
Coasting by the Storage-U after on my bike, I heard the thwap-thwap of a ball hitting the metal doors. The road rises right before the gravel driveway. It slowed me down. Thwap. Thwap. The light was on in the office. The top of Nate’s grandma’s hair showed through the window. Thwap. Thwap. Nate was playing slow. He was bored.
Except for class, I’d avoided him since the punch. What else could I do? I hid out at lunchtime, took my sandwich and slipped away to a wide spot in the hallway near the busted cafeteria or went to the spot by the band room where Sydney and I had studied.
Nate’s basketball rolled out under the partially closed door of the storage unit. He stood at the opening and stooped down, watching the ball roll away down the gravel drive, and then he spotted me.
“Nate!” My bike bumped over the gravel as I hollered. “Hey, Nate!” Tipping to one side to plant my foot, I kicked the ball back toward him.
The door rattled all the way up. Nate scooped up the ball and stood there in the dark space, holding the ball in front of him like he was going to shoot me a hard pass. “Yeah?”
There was something I had to know. “Are you going to scramble it?”
“What?”
“The egg—are you going to scramble it?”
He gave me a look. I knew what it meant. Too stupid for words.
“If I get you a pheasant egg, are you going to scramble it?” I didn’t tell him he couldn’t scramble it. There was a bird inside. Curled and wet and ugly.
His face blanked. “Shut up,” he said. “I want a bird.”
“I can’t get you a bird. If you want a bird you have to find another way.” It was impossible. Ridiculous. I’d seen Mr. Epple do it, one afternoon when one of the birds made a break for it, and I knew it wasn’t anything I could do.
That time, the rooster hadn’t gone far. It ran around the yard and then stood outside the pen looking at all the birds on the inside. Mr. Epple picked up the bird with his crooked fingers, tucked the wings in gently even though the bird wanted to flap, and dodged the bird’s spurs. He shouted something about his jacket, so I grabbed it off a post where he’d hung it and followed him into the pen. When he let the bird go, it flapped its wings and flew into the brush.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wiring up some netting over the top of the pen where the bird had flown out. Mr. Epple told me the holes had to be big enough to let any snow fall through but small enough to keep the pheasants in and foxes and whatever else out.
I asked Mr. Epple, “What was the jacket for?” By then I’d figured out that in order to hear or understand me he had to see my face and my mouth, so I made sure to look him dead-on.
“Wrap it up.” He swirled a finger as if it explained everything. “Wrap it up if it had a mind of its own.”
Nate said, “I’m not going to scramble it. Why would I do that? I’m not going to do that. That’s insulting. I just want the bird. You know, put it in a box and shine a light on it and have the bird. The pheasant. I don’t want an egg. An egg’s too risky.”
“I can’t do a bird.” After Mr. Epple had recaptured the bird I’d gone online and read about handling pheasants, and I didn’t think it was something I’d be able to do. “A bird’s impossible. And not a chick either. It’ll die two steps from the barn.”
“Come on, man. Why are you making this so hard? I thought we were friends.”
That made me sit back on my bike. “You punched me.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I was mad.”
“You shouldn’t punch people.”
Nate shrugged. “Sorry.” He said it like it was easy. I wondered if he really meant it.
I kept seeing Sydney, how she’d looked on the classroom floor. How she didn’t even look at me anymore. How I didn’t talk to her anymore.
“Can you believe Homer?” Nate asked. “I still can’t believe it. He could have saved her. For real this time, not like in gym class. He had the medicine right in his hands.”
“The nurse came.” Right after Sydney, Homer must have been the most scared person in the classroom, even more scared than I was.
Nate just shook his head like he was disgusted with everything, and we were quiet for a minute, probably both of us feeling sick, remembering what it was like while we waited for the nurse to run in and give Sydney her shot.
Nate said, “I’d take good care of it, the bird.”
I started to pedal away.
Nate hollered after me. “So you’re getting me one?”
Like Mr. Epple, I just waved.
Right past the Storage-U is the only downhill on my route. It’s not much. I hit it as fast as I could. In town, my bike kept going. I rode past my house and on toward Sydney’s. I thought about what my dad said, that we were too close to not be friends.
Maybe she’d be out on the porch, reading or playing cards or doing her homework. If Daniel hadn’t flicked the note away, would Sydney have read it? What would she think? I’d bike by now, and maybe she’d say hi. Maybe I’d look surprised to see her. I’d say hi and then I’d say I was sorry. She’d say something like, I know you’re sorry, tell me something new, why don’t you, and it would be a joke and it wouldn’t be awkward for very long. She might not even call me Itch. She’s only about a block away. My house is in the middle of my block, and then across the street she’s three houses up. If I’m fast, we’re practically neighbors.
Maybe I’d tell her about my plan. About getting Nate an egg. That’s awesome, maybe she’d say. Maybe she’d ask why. I’d tell her I was doing something for my friend, for all of my friends. For her. I’d ask her if she wanted an egg. I’d tell her, If you want an egg, I’ll get you an egg, I promise.
And if Sydney was going to hate me forever—egg or no egg—I wanted to know. I wouldn’t blame her. The bike bumped over a sewer grate and my stomach flipped up and it gave me a little wave of sickness but I felt hopeful too.
As soon as I got close to her house, I saw her two brothers in their football jackets sitting on the porch rail. They were laughing and maybe arm-wrestling and they were pretty loud. Dylan stood up when he saw me and yelled, “How are the birds?” I gave him a thumbs-up and turned home.
* * *
—
Since what happened with Sydney happened, Mom decided we had to video chat twice a week. She used her phone. I’d only see a piece of her face at a time, and there were a lot of lags. I’d say hello and wait and then I’d think I should say something and I’d start to tell her about my bike or something and then she’d pop right into the middle of my sentence and wave and say, “Hi, sweetie!”
I wished I could talk to her about how I’d decided to steal a pheasant egg for Nate, because I knew she’d have a lot of good ideas about how to safely carry something so fragile.
She asked, “Are you putting one-third of your money from the farm into your savings account like we agreed?”
I tried to joke with her. “We said a quarter. I only had to save twenty-five percent, not thirty.”
She jostled her phone around and so I said, “I’m going to buy a new bike,” and she came in right in the middle of my sentence with, “See! You are getting your fractions! Are you ready for your retest?”
It always went like that.
I told her I couldn’t decide which kind of bike to get, a sleek and aerodynamic road bike with skinny wheels and low handlebars, or a mountain bike with sweet suspension and fat, knobby tires for riding along the muddy riverbank. I left out the part about the riverbank. She came in the middle of one of my sentences to tell me she saw a lot of bike riders.
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