Birds of Summer
Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Zilpha Keatley Snyder
To Alla, Diane, Eileen,
Margaret, Mildred, Pat and Ruth
for advice, assistance and moral support;
and to two very special Elisabeths.
A Biography of Zilpha Keatley Snyder
T
HE TEST DIDN’T TAKE
long. The Vonnegut story was an old favorite, so after a quick skim she was ready for the typically Pardellian questions about characterization and motivation. Pardell always asked about characterization and motivation. When she had finished, Summer folded the test and put it on the corner of the desk for the monitor and took out the letter she’d started the night before right after she’d found out about Oriole’s latest fiasco. She didn’t often write to Grant in class, especially not Pardell’s class, but at that moment everyone was too busy with the test to notice, and the memory of what she’d written the night before was like a dark shadow crawling around the edges of her mind. After she’d read it over, she scratched out most of it.
I crossed out that last part because it wasn’t entirely fair and rational—well, not rational, anyway. The thing is, I was really furious at Oriole when I wrote it. God knows why. I certainly ought to be used to it by now. But this time she’d kept the job for three weeks and it actually seemed like there might be a chance. Not a very good one, maybe, but a lot better than usual, because baking bread is one thing Oriole really does well. Maybe you remember—she says you used to like her bread. And her boss at the Franklin House was very enthusiastic at first. All the customers were raving about it, especially the sourdough dill, which is her most recent specialty. And then she has to go and show up at work stoned out of her mind. So what else is new?
An itchy feeling that somebody was watching made Summer look up quickly to find Nicky Fisher staring at her. The stare, like everything about Nicky, was super high intensity—no wonder she felt it. She covered the letter with one hand and returned his stare, questioningly. He looked at the finished test on the edge of her desk and then, pointedly, at his watch. Then he grinned and shook his head in a way that said something like, “How do you do it?” or perhaps, “Summer McIntyre is a brain.” She wrinkled her nose at him. Nicky was into paying compliments lately. In the last month or so he’d mentioned her brains at least half a dozen times—her hair nearly as many—her eyes once or twice—and once he’d even said he liked the way she dressed, which was really ridiculous and a good indication of just what a phony sexist hypocrite he was turning out to be. She knew enough about men—not that Nicky was one, although he obviously thought he was—to know why he’d switched to compliments instead of pulling her hair and kicking her in the shins the way he used to. She knew what he was up to when he stared at the front of her sweater and told her she had beautiful eyes. On the whole she preferred having her shins kicked. But for old times’ sake—for all the years of being favorite enemies, for all the trees climbed and club houses built and violent arguments over who got to be Darth Vader or the Sundance Kid—she gave him a semi-friendly smile before going back to her letter. It took her a while to get back into the calm philosophical mood she always tried for in her letters to Grant.
Would you have been angry if you’d been there last night? At her for getting stoned and losing another job? Or maybe at me for yelling at her? Both probably. Except, if you’d been there perhaps none of it would have happened. It’s something I think about sometimes—what it would have been like if you’d stayed and maybe even married Oriole. Not that I care about the marriage part. I really rather like being illegitimate. According to Pardell, bastards have been a significant sub-group, historically speaking. But sometimes I just wonder if you and Oriole would have gone sort of semi-establishment the way the Fishers did after they’d had three kids and inherited the property. Oriole says you would have married her if you’d known about the pregnancy, but she says she’s glad you didn’t because this way you left her with only perfect things—the poems and the memories and me—and if you’d stayed the not so perfect things would have started the way they always do. Sometimes she says, “Grant left me the memory of one perfect summer and the beginning of another.” Only she doesn’t say that when she’s mad at me like she was last night for yelling at her and telling her what a lousy mother she is. She didn’t yell back though. She just got something she’d hidden in the flour sifter and went outside. I didn’t exactly see what it was, but it was probably a joint. She was gone for a long time and I went around kicking things and yelling at Sparrow and Cerbe. Cerbe whimpered and Sparrow cried herself to sleep. Sparrow always cries when Oriole and I fight. I never cry anymore—but I didn’t sleep much, either.
“Okay. That’s it. Time’s up. Fold your papers and put them on the corner of your desks where the trustees can find them, and you’re all at large, God help us, until tomorrow morning.”
Alan J. Pardell, who had taught Sophomore English at Alvarro High for a long time, was a tall man with a face and head like an aging chewed-up lion. He blamed what he called his “desultory nose” on an early career as a sparring partner for several famous boxers, but nobody knew if that was the truth or just part of the Pardell mythology. The “Warden Pardell” bit was a favorite part of the myth so everyone grinned, even the ones who were still writing frantically. Nearly everyone laughed at Pardell’s jokes, even now in April after months of funnies about the terror-stricken warden in charge of a bunch of teen-age public enemies. It was hard to say why they went on laughing, except it made it funnier when Pardell carried on about “doing time” in Sophomore English because it was the one class that never felt like a jail term. And when he pretended to hate and fear his students, what made people laugh was knowing, without his ever saying, how he really felt. So when he took the roll and gasped, “My God! You’re all here. It’s a plot, isn’t it? There’s going to be a riot?” everyone cracked up, even the radical types who usually made it a point never to laugh at any teacher’s jokes.
Summer was halfway down the hall when Nicky caught up with her. “Hey, slow down,” he said. “I’ve got some dynamite stuff. Want to meet me in the parking lot?” and then taking in her frown, without even a pause for breath, “Well, how about a root beer at the Pelican?” She shook her head. “Some ice cream? A double dip? Butterscotch and fudge ripple?” It was tempting, especially the fudge ripple, but she went on shaking her head.
“I can’t,” she said finally. “Sparrow’s waiting for me.” She grinned. “You want to buy her one, too?”
Nicky made a face. “Not really. What’s with this big-sister bit all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden. I’ve been walking home with Sparrow ever since Marina went away. It’s too far for her to walk all alone.”
Nicky’s gaze, fixed as usual on the front of her blouse, flickered and shifted. Summer watched him, wondering about the shifty eyes and why he didn’t say any of the things you might expect under the circumstances. Things like, “Yeah, it’s too bad about Marina,” or, “Marina misses her, too.” She’d noticed it before—how any mention of his little sister, who’d been sent to live with relatives because of her asthma, seemed to make him uneasy. But this time his behavior struck her as really peculiar—almost strange enough to make her wonder if Sparrow’s latest fantasy about Marina was so ridiculous after all.
It was only natural that Sparrow was upset about Marina. Growing up on the hill with no other kids their age around, they were as close as sisters, or closer. So when Sparrow started pretending—playing with an imaginary Marina—Summer hadn’t been very surprised. Lots of kids have imaginary companions. But what had happened on Saturday was different. On Saturday it became clear that Sparrow really believed that Marina had come home, or else had never actually gone away at all.
“About Marina and Sparrow—” Summer began, but Nicky interrupted.
“Hey, there’s Judson with his new wheels. See you tomorrow,” and he hurried off to where Dan Judson was just pulling up in front of the school with a car load of other guys—flakes mostly, whose vocabularies, when stretched to their outside limits, just barely covered cars, beer and girls, in that order. Halfway down the slope Nicky looked back and waved and hurried on. There was a definite feeling that he was glad to get away, and for some reason, it made her a little bit angry. Not that she cared about Nicky Fisher deserting her for a bunch of flakes. It was just another example of what a hypocrite he was turning out to be. If he didn’t want to talk about Sparrow and Marina, why didn’t he just say so? She shrugged her shoulders and headed east across town toward the elementary school.
In spite of the fact that most of the town lay between the two schools, the walk didn’t take very long. Although its full name was Alvarro Bay City, the “city” part was an obvious euphemism—village would be more like it. A village in size as well as in picturesque charm … and also in the way its inhabitants lived in their own little world in which everyone knew a great deal about everyone else and people moved in tightly spun circles that overlapped only in certain special ways.
Sometimes Summer thought that she was probably the only person in the world who had any doubts about the perfection of Alvarro Bay City. Tourists raved about its setting, high on the headlands overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and the quaint charm of its buildings, many of which reflected the New England origins of the earliest settlers.
She’d give it quaintness and charm, all right—and fog-softened air and vacant-lot jungles full of wild nasturtiums and surrounding hillsides where redwood groves formed towering green cathedrals—and still count the days until she could get the hell out of Alvarro Bay City and out of any town where everybody knew, or thought they knew, everything about everybody else.
It was 3:45 by the time she reached the elementary school and most of the kids had gone home long before. Except for four or five little boys playing kickball way out on the diamond, there was no one in sight except Sparrow. All alone in the playground area, she was hanging upside down, her long braids almost touching the ground and her face almost as red as her hair. When she saw Summer, she yelled and waved and went on hanging.
“Your face is really red,” Summer said. “You’d better stop that before you have a hemorrhage or something.”
“Five hundred and seventy-six, five hundred and seventy-seven,” Sparrow said.
“Sparrow. I mean it. You nose is going to start bleeding again.” Summer moved purposefully forward, but Sparrow waved her away frantically and went on counting. “Five hundred and eighty-two,” she screamed despairingly as Summer grabbed her around the thighs and pulled her off the bar.
“You ruined it. You ruined my new record. I was just about to beat Marina’s record.” Sitting on the ground, Sparrow frowned fiercely and rubbed the backs of her knees, while her bright red face slowly faded to its usual pale tan, sprinkled with tiny golden freckles.
It occurred to Summer to wonder if the record in question was established some weeks ago by the flesh and blood Marina, or more recently by a fantasy version—but she didn’t ask. At the moment she was feeling too hungry and tired to cope with imaginary acquaintances—real ones were bad enough—but she might as well have asked. Sparrow volunteered the information immediately—and continuously—all the way home. Just as Summer had suspected, the record was a new one supposedly established since Marina’s return. “She is home again,” Sparrow kept saying. “I know she is, Summer. Last night she looked in the window and told me she was home again and I should come up right away to see her.”
“Look,” Summer said finally, “I’m not trying to get on your case about lying, or anything. I used to have …” She stopped. She had never told anyone about the Grant thing and she didn’t intend to start now. “… an invisible friend, too,” she went on. “But if you want me to help you, you have to tell me the truth. The absolutely real no-pretending truth. You know what I mean. Seven years is plenty old enough to know what’s absolutely real and what isn’t. Have you really seen Marina lately?”