***
It was late, long after my Wednesday night shift had ended. And I was still awake, sitting cross-legged on my bed with a lap full of chemistry homework. I yawned over my scientific calculator but snapped my jaws shut when I heard the sound of a soft knock.
“Carrie?” I whispered.
But the knock sounded like it had been rapped on the hard glass of my window, not the dull wood of my bedroom door. If we’d lived anywhere but Upton, maybe I would have had the good sense to be spooked at the sound. As it was, I wasn’t even nervous as I slid off the bed, pulled back the curtain, and came face to face with Ben Jones, waving at me through the glass. I smiled, pushed back the pane, and let the cool night air flood into my bedroom.
“Nice one, Jones. Jeff’s room is the next window over,” I said, pointing down the length of the house.
“Yeah. I’m – uh – not looking for Jeff,” Ben Jones said. “I actually wanted to see if you were okay. Since you weren’t at the church for the activity again tonight...”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m fine. And no, I didn’t humiliate myself having another embarrassing public collapse somewhere, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, of course not,” he grinned back at me. “I would have heard about something as spectacular as that – along with rumours that you had leukemia, or a drug problem, or nervous breakdown...”
I groaned out a laugh. “I despise this town.”
“No, you don’t,” Ben Jones corrected me.
Maybe I didn’t love Upton but I didn’t really hate it anymore either. That’s what I’d told Tannis the night we sat by the irrigation canal on her parents’ farm and she taught me to sing the Upton High School Rockets fight song, purely out of irony. Upton wasn’t quite as difficult of a place for me to be happy as it used to be. But for some reason, I didn’t feel comfortable admitting it to Ben Jones. Instead, I just tossed my head. “I just had to work again tonight. It was nothing out of the ordinary – unlike the sight of you, out roaming the streets after midnight on a school day. That’s no way for a valedictorian to behave.”
He chuckled as he sat down beside the foundation of my grandparents’ house. He folded up his legs and leaned his face into my bedroom. “Well, I can’t sleep. Maybe a bedtime story might help.”
I laughed and gestured toward the landslide of school books on my bed. “If it isn’t a story about balancing redox reactions you’re looking for, you’ll find me sadly uninspired tonight. I’ve got kind of a one track mind right now.”
“You don’t have to tell me a story,” he said, further settling into the grass outside the window, despite all the spider webs. “I’ve got one to tell you.”
“Oh, did you finally come up with a fainting story?”
“No,” Ben Jones smirked. As soon as I spoke I knew it was a mistake for me to show that I remembered anything about what we’d said to each other the day I fainted at school. The more delirious he thought I’d been that morning, the better. “But since I’m ‘the best,’” he continued while I hung my head, “I think I can probably convince you to graciously submit to listening to another kind of story instead.”
I shuddered a little. Ben Jones was still thinking about what I’d said on my way out of the haze of unconsciousness. It was unsettling to know I’d accidentally revealed a little too much of my one-sided admiration for him. At that moment, I would have liked to have salvaged some of my dignity and excused myself from the window. But the prospect of hearing the story he’d made this strange night-time visit to tell me had made me curious. I played along, waving my hand at him. “Go ahead. Tell me your story.”
“Okay. You remember meeting our pet parakeet, Wazo, right?” he began.
“Yeah.” I paused to swallow. “I totally remember. And I’ve been trying to ask you something about it for the past year. What has your pet parakeet got to do with me?”
“With you?”
“Yes. I haven’t just imagined you calling me ‘Parakeet’ ever since last Fall, have I?” I was smiling like it was all a joke but my heart was beating high in my throat.
Ben Jones sighed. “No, you haven’t imagined it. And you’re right. It’s finally time for me to explain the parakeet’s connection to you.”
I waited.
Ben Jones cleared his throat. “Wazo is not our first pet parakeet. We had another one before her, named Clovis. He was a green one. And this story is about him.”
I nodded. “Cool. So, what happened to Clovis? Something dramatic, I’m afraid, or this wouldn’t be much of a story.”
Ben Jones cleared his throat again in the dark outside my bedroom window. “Well, Clovis was really well trained. He was affectionate, loved humans, and seemed very attached to all of us, especially me. So one day, on the first warm afternoon since winter had ended, I thought it would be nice for Clovis to get some fresh air.”
“Oh no,” I interjected.
“Exactly. I took him outside the house. And at first, he was great. He stayed roosting on my finger and we walked him all around the yard. He didn’t even seem that interested in the outside world. But then a pair of robins flew overhead. That was it. He whipped his wings and took off with them. We all ran after him but he was just a tiny green dot disappearing into the horizon. It looked like he followed the other birds to a stand of trees so far away I could hardly see them. And by the time we got there to look for him, there was no sign of him at all. We whistled and called and prayed and cried for hours out there. But that was the end of Clovis.”
“That’s so awful,” I said.
Ben sighed into his chest. “Yeah. You see, we had done a pretty good job of giving Clovis everything he could have wanted except for the love and companionship of another parakeet. And when he couldn’t get the love he wanted living with a bunch of humans, he took his chances chasing after it with the robins.”
I shivered in the cool draft of the open window. “It’s the old fool-for-love tragedy only staged with cute little birdies instead of big, stupid people. Jones, that’s the saddest bedtime story ever – unless it’s possible Clovis could have survived away from home like in some crazy, inspirational nature movie.”
Ben Jones shook his head. “No. The night Clovis flew away, the temperature went below freezing almost as soon as the sun went down. His breed’s natural habitat is the Equator so, no, Clovis couldn’t have survived outside – not even for a whole day.” Ben Jones let out a long breath. “Of course, it was really hard on my faith when my prayers wouldn’t force him to come back. Like everyone else, kids always prefer miracles to painful lessons. But my dad hugged me and told me that maybe someday there’d be someone who really needed to learn from Clovis’ story. Maybe it would be me or someone in the family, or maybe it would be someone we hadn’t even met yet – someone who might be lonely enough to forget she’s really a beautiful, exotic parakeet. You know, someone who might be tempted to fly away with the robins and compromise her delicate, little self.” He punctuated his story by raising one finger and tapping the tip of my nose.
I smiled but wanly. “Well, thanks for the story. But people aren’t birds, Jones. People can decide to stop being robins and make themselves into parakeets if they want to. The parable starts to break down in the real world full of real choices –”
“I know, I know,” he hurried. “But if the parakeets are willing to follow the robins anyway, why would the robins ever really change? Sure they can change – but the parakeets should probably wait until after they change before they take off with them. Otherwise...”
I swallowed. “Look, it’s really nice of you to be concerned about my pathetic social life. And I really do appreciate Clovis’ story. Thanks for telling me about it. It couldn’t have been easy for you to relive all of that just now.” I reached through the window and tapped the end of his nose in return.
Ben Jones bent his head toward the ground and looked
away from me. “No promises though?” he probed.
“I – I won’t do anything rash,” was my feeble offering.
He unfolded his long legs and began to move to standing. “Good luck with the chemistry homework.”
“Ben,” I called after him.
He hadn’t quite finished standing and stopped in a crouch, his hands still pressed to the grass outside my basement window. It wasn’t a comfortable position but he stopped at the sound of my voice and held respectfully still, waiting for me to speak. He was so thoughtful – adorable, really. My pulse wobbled a little. But something came tearing into my mind, quick to remind me of his silence in the library a few days before. Boys like Ben Jones did not want me – not even as a last minute, emergency date to the senior prom. There was no way a parakeet like him would ever like me in more than an unofficial-older-brother kind of way. I remembered what he told his physics teacher: Heather’s a good friend of mine.
I gulped past the lump in my throat. “I mean it, Jones – thanks.”