Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Bird Words
Hello!
Ever feel like a fish out of water, or a pigeon in the middle of a flock of hawks?
I sure have. We moved around a lot when I was little, and I hated those first days at a new school. When I was a teenager, I moved overseas to Denmark and spent a year living on a farm there. Not only did I have to get used to a new house and a new school, I had to adjust to a whole new language!
At first I thought I’d never fit in. How could I make friends when I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying? But after a couple of weeks, I could speak a few words in Danish. After a couple of months, I could talk about anything I wanted. I learned a lot about Denmark (the people there are so nice!) and I learned even more about myself.
When you find yourself in new surroundings, take it slow. Watch, listen, and learn from the people around you, but don’t be afraid to be yourself. As long as you believe in yourself, you’ll fit in anywhere.
Laurie Halse Anderson
THE VET VOLUNTEER BOOKS
Fight for Life
Homeless
Trickster
Manatee Blues
Say Good-bye
Storm Rescue
Teacher’s Pet
Trapped
Fear of Falling
Time to Fly
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Kim Michels, D.V.M.; Lauren Powers, D.V.M., Diplomate A.B.V.P. (Cavian Specialty); and Cathy East Dubowski.
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Pleasant Company Publications, 2002
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2009
Copyright © Laurie Halse Anderson 2002, 2009
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-101-13550-1
[1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Grandmothers—Fiction. 3. Veterinarians—Fiction.
4. Parrots—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction. 6. Ambler (Pa.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.A54385Ti 2009 [Fic]—dc22
2009004862
eISBN : 978-1-101-13550-1
http://us.penguingroup.com
To Andrea Weiss, with thanks for everything
Chapter One
“Dirt! Dirt! Dirt! Ugh! Who knew there was so much dirt in the world?”
I brush my long hair back from my face and dip my scrub brush back into the bucket of soapy water. “I swear, it would be easier to just buy new kennels,” I remark to my friend David Hutchinson, who’s stuck with the same chore.
“You got that right,” he says. He shakes his shaggy bangs out of his eyes and gazes off into the bright blue sky. “It’s un-American not to be playing baseball on a day like this.”
It is a gorgeous spring day. We ought to be doing something to enjoy it. But for some reason Gran—otherwise known as Dr. J.J. MacKenzie, the best vet in Ambler—thinks it’s the perfect day for cleaning. She’s put all the Dr. Mac’s Place volunteers to work—me, David, my cousin Maggie, plus Brenna Lake and Sunita Patel—giving the clinic a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. Windows, cabinets, closets, cages, kennels…she wants everything to sparkle.
Spring cleaning, Gran calls it. Good for the soul, she says. Here’s Gran on spring. “A time of change, Zoe—when birds fly north with the warmer weather to build new homes. A time to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start!”
Well, I’ve got spring fever all right—I’m itching to do something. But scrubbing kennels is definitely not what I had in mind.
Back home in New York, I never had to do much cleaning. I grew up in a high-rise apartment with my mom, and we had a wonderful housekeeper named Ethel, who mothered us and cooked and cleaned while my mother went off to work every day. Mom’s an actress, and she had a regular part in a soap opera. Ethel kept the place so clean, I guess I never really knew just how dirty things could get.
In Manhattan, spring is a tulip struggling up in a three-foot-square plot of dirt around a tree—a plot a hundred dogs will use for a pit stop before the day is over. Spring is millions of people pouring out onto the sidewalks, trying to catch the sun between the high-rises.
Mom and I had our own spring rituals: long walks in Central Park, shopping at Bloomingdale’s for new spring clothes, buying fresh strawberries from the corner markets…Sometimes I really miss New York. And Mom.
“Kiiii-yaaaahhh!” David leaves the kennel-scrubbing to me and attacks some small area rugs hanging on a line for beating. His crazy, made-up karate moves make me laugh.
Sneakers, my black-and-brown mutt, thinks spring cleaning is a game. He barks at the rugs flapping on the line and tries to get us to play with him. Even Sherlock Holmes, Maggie’s ancient basset hound, trots slowly around the yard in an unusual display of energy.
David finally collapses onto the grass. “That’s it! I can’t do any more. My honorable opponent has defeated me!”
I laugh and pull a small folded piece of paper out of my jeans pocket. Gran has been kind enough to make a To Do list so we won’t run out of cleaning chores. Gee, thanks a lot, Gran. “Next chore on the list: ‘Scrub the deck chairs.’” I announce.
Who knew anybody ever had to do that?
We’re supposed to be cleaning the clinic, but I guess since I’m family, she decided to slip that home chore in on me. I glance over at the grimy furniture that’s been sitting out through an entire Pennsylvania winter.
David groans as I grab him by the hand and pull him up to help. I start brushing off the dirt and dead leaves. “You want to help me with this?”
“Uh, I think I hear an energy bar calling me!” he answers, and sprints into the clinic. David is always hungry.
Well, at least this chore is outdoors, where I can enjoy the fine weather. A soft breeze flutters the new leaves on the big oak tree. Songbirds flock to our next-door neighbor’s collection of bird feeders. I wish we could have a bird feeder in our yard, but Gran jokes that we’ve already got enough animals flocking to the clinic without advertising a free lunch. Besides, Socrates the cat would terrorize any bird that stopped for a snack. In fact, any bird in our yard would run a mortal risk of becoming Socrates’ snack!
The birds flit between feeders. I see a flash of blue and look closer. A bluebird, maybe? They say it’s good luck to spot the first bluebird o
f spring. I drop my brush and walk over to our neighbor’s fence for a better view.
Wait a minute—that bird’s not blue. Its head is blue, but its body is green. Besides, it’s too big to be a bluebird. And its beak—
I peer closer. That’s no bluebird. It’s a parrot!
“David! Maggie!” I shout. “Come here—quick!”
Maggie comes running out of the house, her red ponytail bouncing; but by the time she gets here, the startled parrot has flown away.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie cries, looking concerned. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine—I just saw a wild parrot at Mr. Cowan’s bird feeder!”
“Yeah, right.” Maggie jams her hands on her hips and looks at me like I’m nuts. “Ha, ha, very funny.”
“No joke,” I insist. “It was green with a little blue cap—”
“And a little pink dress and black patent-leather shoes?” Maggie finishes. “Zoe, parrots don’t fly around wild,” she says in that I-know-more-about-animals-than-you-do voice she uses sometimes. “At least, not here in Ambler, Pennsylvania. Maybe in South America.”
“But I saw it!” I insist.
“April Fools’ Day was last week.” Maggie smirks, then arches her eyebrows at me. “Are you trying to create a distraction to get out of cleaning? Give it up, Zoe. Even Houdini couldn’t get out of doing spring chores for Gran.” She flips her ponytail over her shoulder and turns to leave.
“Maggie, wait—I’m serious!” I say. “Maybe it’ll come back—”
“I’m busy cleaning closets,” she calls over her shoulder as she heads into the house. “Call me if you see an elephant or a chimpanzee.”
Oooh—she’s such a know-it-all sometimes! I grab a wet scrub brush and go to work on the deck chairs, taking out my frustration on the dirt.
When I first got here, a year ago, Maggie and I didn’t exactly hit it off. Maggie has lived with Gran ever since she was a baby, when her parents were killed in a car accident. She was used to having Gran and the clinic all to herself. Right around the time I came into her life, Maggie started having trouble in school—and David, Sunita, and Brenna started helping out in the clinic. So both Maggie and I had to make some major adjustments in our lives, and it wasn’t easy. But once we found we shared a real love for animals, things started to click between us. Now we know each other so well, it’s almost scary—Maggie knows how to push all my buttons, and I can usually tell just what she’s thinking. But annoying as she can be, it’s still a really neat feeling to be that close to someone. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I sit down on the steps of the deck and stare into the backyard next door. I should really keep scrubbing—I’ve got three more chairs to do after this—but I can’t stop thinking about the parrot. Back in New York, there was this man who used to go jogging in Central Park with a big red macaw flying from tree to tree right behind him. I’m sure pet birds escape once in a while, just like any other pet. So why doesn’t Maggie think that could have happened right here in Ambler?
It’s true that Maggie knows a little more about animals than I do, having grown up with Gran. OK, I admit it—she knows a lot more. In New York, I never had a pet, just an aquarium of saltwater fish. And sometimes my mom took me to see the animals at the Central Park Zoo. But Mom never wanted us to have pets. It seems kind of odd, considering her mother’s a vet, but I guess not everyone’s crazy about animals.
Maybe that has something to do with why Mom and Gran haven’t been very close. I mean, I barely knew Gran when I arrived here last summer, after Mom lost her job. When the network canceled her soap, Mom took the opportunity to do something she’s always wanted to do: go to California and try to break into movies. But she didn’t want to bring me along. Our separation was supposed to last only a little while, but every “sure thing” Mom auditioned for fell through. So “a little while” turned into almost a year.
I went out to Los Angeles to visit Mom for Christmas. That was wonderful and awful at the same time. I mean, you’re not supposed to visit your mom for holidays. It was frustrating, too. She had three callbacks while I was there, so we spent hours hanging out in waiting rooms for her turn to audition. At first it seemed exciting—what if she got the part?!—and we kept the boredom at bay by playing trivia games or quizzing each other with lines from our favorite movies. But when, one by one, Mom didn’t get the parts, all the excitement went out of it. Mom summed it up: “Welcome to the glamorous world of acting.”
Sometimes I wish my mom were a normal mom, the kind who makes home-cooked meals and checks your math homework. Brenna’s, David’s, and Sunita’s moms are all like that, even though they have jobs, too. But then I think about how talented my mother is—about all the times she made her soap character seem so real, I almost forgot it was my mom there on the TV screen.
She used to tell me, “I don’t want to spend my life sitting in some office somewhere, typing something nobody cares about till my fingers drop off.” I can’t argue with that. I know she’s lucky to be doing something she really loves, even if it’s a hit-and-miss kind of career. I just hate having her be a five-hour plane ride away. Too bad nobody makes movies in Ambler, Pennsylvania.
Something tugs at my sneakers. I look down. It’s Sneakers, my dog. He’s made living here a lot easier. I reach down to scratch behind his ears, but suddenly he runs to the edge of the deck and barks at the oak tree.
“Sneakers, what’s gotten into you? Are you defending me against a tree?” I glance up—and catch a flash of blue between the green leaves.
“There it is again, Sneakers! I knew I didn’t dream it!”
Chapter Two
Of course, everyone else is inside, so nobody sees the parrot but Sneakers and me. And Socrates. He stares up at the tree too, his tail twitching.
The parrot flutters to a higher branch, then perches and looks down at me. He cocks his little round head first one way, than the other, as if sizing me up. Suddenly he lets out a loud “Brwaaaak! Phone home!”
I can’t help giggling. The parrot is so cute. “Hey, bird, are you talking to me?” I call up to him.
“Pretty girl!” the parrot replies, bobbing up and down on the branch. Then he begins to preen his wings, just as though he wanted to make himself look nice for me. A green feather drifts to the ground.
I knew I was right—this is obviously an escaped pet parrot. Wait till I tell Maggie!
I pick up the feather and run inside, with Sneakers at my heels, as the parrot shrieks after me, “Pretty girl! Phone home!”
Gran is pouring milk to go with the brownies everyone’s scarfing down.
“Guys, quick!” I shout. “There’s a parrot in the backyard!”
“And I’m an Inca princess,” Maggie says. “Have a brownie, Zoe.”
“What’s the matter with you?” I exclaim. “Don’t you want to see it?”
“Sure, if it’s got a pirate under it,” David jokes.
“Look!” I say, holding up the green feather as evidence, like a lawyer in a courtroom.
Gran reaches for the feather. “Where did you find this?” she asks, suddenly interested.
“In—the—back—yard,” I say slowly, as if they’re all a bit dimwitted.
“It’s beautiful,” Sunita says.
Brenna frowns at the feather, puzzled. “But it’s the wrong color for any of the native birds around here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I say. “It’s not a native bird, it’s a parrot. It even talks! It said ‘Phone home,’ just like E.T. in the movie.”
Gran blinks. “It talked?”
“Yes!”
“Show me.”
I shove through the screen door onto the deck with everyone crowding right behind me. But if the parrot is still in the tree, he’s well hidden now. Avoiding the skeptical looks I know must be coming my way, I quickly scan the yard. Nothing. I check Mr. Cowan’s bird feeders. Just ordinary birds. But what’s that bright green spot on Mr. Cowa
n’s lawn? “Look!” I whisper, pointing. “See?”
There he is, a bright green tropical bird like you’d see in a zoo or a pet shop, sitting loose in the middle of a very untropical Pennsylvania lawn. They can’t miss him.
I slant Maggie an I-told-you-so look.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I believe you, I believe you!”
The parrot just sits there with his eyes half-closed, as if he’s sleepy. Do parrots sleep on the ground? I don’t know much about birds, but I would think parrots usually sleep in trees, where it’s safe. I take a few steps closer. The parrot’s beak opens and opens again, but no sound comes out, as if he’s just too tired to get the squawks out. His feathers are all ruffled up, too. “He looks like a bright green feather duster,” I whisper. “Gran, what do you think is wrong with him?”
“By the looks of him, he’s either exhausted or sick,” she replies.
“But he seemed fine when I saw him before,” I say. “He was fluttering around in our oak tree. How could he get sick so fast? Do you think he fell?”
“Maybe some of the other birds attacked him because he looks so different. Maybe they know he’s not from around here,” David says.
“I don’t think so,” Gran says. “Let’s see whether—”
Suddenly something low and orange streaks across the yard, straight toward the parrot. Socrates!
Before anyone else can even react, Sunita sprints to the fence and scoops Socrates into her arms. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she tells him firmly, carrying him back into the house. Sunita is our resident cat expert—she’s always one step ahead of the rest of us when it comes to reading a cat’s mind. And Socrates, who treats the rest of us as if we were his personal servants, responds to Sunita as if she were a mystical cat charmer. (Is it just a cat thing? Or could Sunita teach me how to do that with Sneakers?)
As soon as Sunita gets Socrates inside, I start toward the sick parrot, but Gran stops me. “Wait, Zoe,” she says in that soft but serious vet-to-the-rescue voice that we know to instantly obey. “Run and get me a towel, please.”