Soar (22 page)

“Here.” Mouton offers the painting to me.

I stop pacing and look at him.

“This is for you. For your birthday. I'm sorry about the symposium. Yip.”

I take the painting from him and hold it, looking it over. The only thing I can remember coming close to this is a golden eagle photograph in one of Dad's
National Geographic
magazines. I want to reach out and stroke the bird's head, but then I realize I'd be touching paint, not a real bird.

Mom leans over my shoulder. “That is some bird,” she whispers.

I turn to her, holding out the painting. “Take it.”

“Eddie? It's yours. I'm not taking it. Mouton gave it to you.”

“I know, I know. I mean, can you take it inside and put it in my room? But be careful carrying it through the house. I have to go find this bird.”

Mom looks at me. She's not happy.

“Please, Mom?”

“Eddie, you can't leave your own birthday party. I'm about to cut the cake. You haven't even opened presents yet.”

“I'll wash dishes for a month. Two months. A year!”

“Eddie?” She holds a look on me, a look that tells me I'm making a bad decision and she's not agreeing with me.

“But, Mom, this could be my only chance. Mouton saw the golden eagle.”

Mom leans in close to me. “You don't know if he's telling the truth. Do you really trust him after what happened at the symposium?”

I look back at everyone gathered around my birthday cake. Papa is showing Miss Dorothy and Sandy how to pet Silvio. Everyone came here for me, and now I want to leave them. Maybe Mom has a point. What if Mouton isn't telling the truth?

Then I see Gabriela. She mouths something to me that looks like “Go!”

I turn to Mouton. “Mouton, look at me.”

I grab on to his broad shoulders and hold on to them, just like Mom did to me in the hallway outside the gym. “Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. Did you really see the golden eagle?”

Mouton's eyes are big and blue. I've never noticed how blue. He tenses up and says “Yip-yip!” like twenty times without stopping.

“Mouton, answer me. Come on, you can do it.”

He looks at me, frozen in time and space. Then he speaks. “It was so big. It was like a flying dinosaur! Yip! I thought it was going to pick me up and carry me away! It had a spot on its wing.”

I look at the painting in Mom's hands. I lean in close, looking at the golden eagle's wing. Then I find the gray spot, right there on the primary feathers.

I turn to Mom. “He's telling the truth. I have to go.”

Mom looks back at Papa and Miss Dorothy and Gabriela and Sandy. Now they're all watching us, and I wonder how long they've been listening.

Then Mom reaches into her back pocket and shoves her camera at me. “Fine. But I want proof.”

I take the camera and hug her. “Thanks, Mom.”

Then I look at Mouton. “Come on! We have a bird to find.”

M
outon and I carry the brown couch from his front porch to his backyard. We flip the couch over and crouch behind it.

I take out my binoculars and scan the sky. It's midafternoon, and there's still plenty of daylight left.

“Thanks for the painting. I know exactly where I'm hanging it.”

Mouton only says, “Yip.”

“I thought it took you a long time to paint something that good.”

“Usually it does. But when I saw the golden eagle, everything came out faster.
A lot
faster.”

“Take a look.” I hand him the binoculars. “Maybe you'll have better luck.”

He takes the binoculars and moves them too quickly across the sky, so I tell him to slow down and I show him how to do it properly.

An hour later we share a bag of potato chips and try chewing without making any noise. Then we sit in silence for a while and listen to the songbirds in the trees. I tell Mouton the name of the bird that's singing, and every time, he says, “How do you know that?”

And every time, I say, “It's in my blood.”

After another hour and still no golden eagle, I hold up the binoculars and look from east to west. Then I finally work up the courage to confront Mouton. “So tell me, what happened at the symposium?”

“What?” he asks, staring at the sky.

“Out of all your paintings, why did you bring that one?”

“Because it was the only one that fit.”

“Fit what?”

“The symposium. You and me. Eddie and Mouton. Shovel and truck. Yip.”

It hits me all at once, like being slapped in the back with a science book. I lower the binoculars and look at Mouton.

“Eddie. Shovel. Truck,” I say slowly.

I remember Mom saying that Mouton and I used to play at the park in the sandbox together. We built sand castles and dug tunnels and . . . played with shovels and trucks.

“The painting is us,” I say, thinking out loud. “We're the two boys in the sandbox.”

Mouton nods, and I know I'm right. “I brought the painting because I want Eddie back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to be friends again, like before we were in kindergarten. Yip.”

I stare at the ground.

All these years of fighting with Mouton meant he just wanted to play in the sandbox and go back to the way things were. I don't know what to feel besides guilty and responsible for everything he did to me.

“When we started kindergarten, you stopped playing with me,” he says. “You only cared about birds.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you.”

He shrugs. “I'm sorry about your bike. I guess it was my way of getting revenge. I was mad at you and didn't know how to handle it. I feel bad about messing it up.”

“That's okay,” I tell him. “Sandy fixed it. I'm just glad you showed up at my party and told me about the golden eagle.”

Mouton looks at me. “Eddie-shovel-truck. Eddie-shovel-truck.” He can't control it.

Then I say, “Mouton-shovel-truck.”

We both laugh under our breath, and then we end up laughing harder and harder until my stomach hurts. The funniest part is that we're trying to laugh quietly since we're on an important birding trip and we shouldn't be making any noise at all.

But that only makes us laugh more.

While laughing, I roll onto my back, looking up at the sky, holding my stomach, my breath rolling out into the cold afternoon air. Then I notice a dark speck against the clear blue sky.

The speck is a bird. It starts out small, but I can tell it's a lot bigger than an American crow or a brown-headed cowbird.

I grab the binoculars off the ground and scan the sky. It takes me a second to find the bird and focus on it.

The bird's wings are lifted in a V-shape, its feathers spread like fingers.

As it gets closer, the sunlight shines off the golden
glow on the back of its head. And then it tucks its huge talons underneath its body. Its sharp call fills the sky, and that's when I know I'm not dreaming.

I keep my eyes inside the binoculars and reach out and touch Mouton's arm. I don't say anything, just touch him and hope that he's seeing the same thing as me.

“Here.” I hand him the binoculars.

I pull out Mom's camera, point it to the sky, and click, click, click away until I'm sure I have enough proof.

The golden eagle flies closer to us and swoops down, and for a moment we're caught in its shadow, which spreads over us and covers the whole couch. It circles above the backyard, showing off its massive wings, including the one with a gray spot on it.

I stare past the bird, into the bright sky, and see a glimmer of light.

Maybe it's a reflection, or a star that's come out early. Maybe I'm imagining the light and it's not really there.

Or maybe it's Dad—yeah, Dad—and he's looking down on me.

He reaches down—all the way down from above the clouds—and puts his hand on my shoulder.

I look up at him.

I see his smile.

I breathe in his woodsy smell.

I hear his words.

“That's my boy,” he says.

And the golden eagle—
our
golden eagle—spreads its wings and soars higher, disappearing into the never-ending sky.

American crow

American goldfinch

American robin

Carolina chickadee

eastern bluebird

house finch

house sparrow

mourning dove

blue jay

brown-headed cowbird

downy woodpecker

great blue heron

indigo bunting

northern bobwhite

northern cardinal

northern flicker

northern mockingbird

red-bellied woodpecker

red-headed woodpecker

ruby-throated hummingbird

American kestrel

bald eagle

barred owl

black vulture

Cooper's hawk

eastern screech-owl

golden eagle

great horned owl

peregrine falcon

red-tailed hawk

sharp-shinned hawk

great green macaw

hyacinth macaw

scarlet macaw

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology—All About Birds

allaboutbirds.org

National Geographic—Birds

animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds

American Birding Association—Young Birders

youngbirders.aba.org

National Audubon Society

audubon.org

World Parrot Trust

parrots.org

The ARA Project—Saving Macaws

thearaproject.org

(This means ‘thank you' in bird talk.)

Writing is very much a solitary art form, but in reality it takes an entire flock to give a book its wings.

I'd first like to thank my awesome agent John Rudolph and my amazing editor Alyson Heller. You both championed Eddie from the beginning, and without that enthusiasm and support, the world would have one less book.

I'd also like to thank the following birds; you all helped this story take flight:

The entire team at Aladdin! You rock the book world!

Brian Biggs—for creating the perfect cover for this story.

Elizabeth Kuelbs, Tina Christopulos, Dee Garretson—for being the best critique partners ever, and for never tiring of Eddie and his golden eagle.

Claudia Antoine—for hiring me all those years ago and changing the course of my writing life.

Cherie Boss—for introducing me to birds and their unique personalities, and for being a wonderful friend and colleague.

Craig Didden (Mr. Dover)—for wearing bow ties and being a real-life bird nerd.

Barbara Williams—for your breadth of bird knowledge, and for your expertise and guidance.

Evelyn Skye—for reading early on, and for pushing me to become a better writer.

Mike Winchell—for being an entire support system in just one person! You are a fine friend and tenacious storyteller.

Paul Murphy—for your useful feedback on early versions of this story, and for your humorous take on everything in the world.

Mr. Dicken—for introducing me to Shakespeare, and for letting me read my poems in front of the whole class, even when my writings were slightly inappropriate.

Teacher-Librarians—for your support, for always talking books, and for embracing my stories. You have the most important jobs in the world.

Linda Sue Park—for teaching me how to write scene by scene, and for being a mentor and inspiration on the long road to publishing a book.

Diane—for putting up with me when I talk too much about birds.

Mason and Logan—for always being excited for daddy's new books, and for reading them (or pretending to read them).

Mom and Dad—for always being proud of my accomplishments, big or small.