Flying Tips for Flightless Birds Page 12

  Four weeks is the longest we’ve ever gone without speaking to each other, and that was when I had mumps and Mum made all the others go and live with Lou so they wouldn’t catch it. I was only quarantined for two weeks but Birdie wouldn’t speak to me for another two weeks after that because it was my fault she’d had to live with Lou, who had given her a haircut with the kitchen scissors and taken her to Karaoke Bingo.

  So I think, somewhere in my mind, I had this four-week deadline marked. Birdie will be back on the trapeze in four weeks. And then, Birdie will be recovering in four weeks. And then, Birdie will be awake in four weeks. And now it’s been over four weeks and she’s exactly the same. Which isn’t even “exactly the same”, because if she hasn’t woken up by now, then “exactly the same” actually means “worse”.

  Birdie and I both have a tendency to get angry when we’re upset. When we hurt ourselves, we don’t cry; we shout at each other, or Jay, or whoever’s handy. These days it’s usually Hector. But it wasn’t Hector’s fault Birdie fell. And it wasn’t Mum’s or Dad’s or Wren’s or Jay’s. Py wasn’t there, Janie wasn’t there. I wasn’t there either and maybe I should have been, but Birdie warms up alone all the time; me not being there probably wasn’t why she fell. It was no one’s fault, and that’s almost worse because there’s no one to get angry at.

  I lie beside her on the hospital bed and remember that night. What a great day I’d been having, bouncing down the road like a bubble, no idea that everything was about to pop, big time, until I ran into James Keane and he ruined my good mood by being a total josser. And for no reason, as usual; probably just lashed out at me because I’d caught him sneaking around with Sinead at Murragh’s unofficial make-out spot. Kitty wouldn’t be seen dead in that pigeon-infested hole of a biscuit factory, so I reckon it must have been Sinead he was with. I never thought I’d say it, but Kitty could do better. If she’d seen all that grey dust on his clothes that night, she would have known he was up to something shady.

  No, I muse, falling asleep, lulled by the regular beeping of Birdie’s heart monitor, it wasn’t grey, it was white. Would they still have flour in an abandoned biscuit factory? That’s what it looked like: flour. Or chalk. Like blackboard chalk. Or chalk dust, for your hands.

  Chalk dust.

  I sit up so fast I tumble off the bed.

  James Keane was there! It wasn’t dust on his clothes, it was chalk. He wasn’t coming from the factory, he was coming from the warehouse! What the hell was he doing down there? And why didn’t he say anything after the accident? He must have been the last person to see Birdie before she fell.

  Or had she already fallen when he left? A cold blade of an idea slices through my brain. What if he did something; some cruel prank that went wrong? What if he distracted her? Frightened her? He acted so edgy when I saw him.

  I pace the room, not knowing what to do, who to tell. Who would believe me?

  Birdie just lies there, beeping calmly, the only person who could tell me the truth. I can’t prove it, but I know. I’m certain. James Keane was there. And whatever happened, it was his fault.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Ugh, I knew you’d say that.” I fling myself backwards on the bed and Hector perches on my desk, looking down at me.

  “James Keane may be a prat but he’s not a cold-blooded killer.”

  I raise my head and growl at him, “Birdie’s not dead.”

  He holds his hands up. “Figure of speech.”

  “Anyway, I’m not saying he masterminded a whole murder plot. This isn’t an episode of CSI. But he did something; he made her fall, I know it.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know Birdie! She’s always careful, especially when she’s working alone. She only does warm-up stuff by herself and she hasn’t fallen during a warm-up since we were ten years old. And even when she does fall, she hits the net right; she wouldn’t bounce out like that.”

  “Accidents happen.”

  “There are no accidents. Everything is caused by something. I’m going to confront him at school tomorrow.”

  Hector looks alarmed by this. “I don’t think you should do that. If he’s guilty, he’ll hardly tell you anything, will he?” he says. “In fact, he’ll probably just punch your lights out.”

  “Well, I can’t just do nothing!”

  “Look, maybe James was with Sinead that night. If he was with her at the biscuit factory, he couldn’t have been at the warehouse, could he? So why don’t I just ask Sinead for you?”

  “That won’t look at all suspicious. If James heard you’d been asking questions, he’d know we were onto him.”

  “I’ll do it subtly.”

  I raise my head plus one eyebrow.

  “I am capable of subtlety, Finch.”

  “No, you’re not; you say everything that comes into your head out loud.”

  He says “Hah!” so loud it startles me. “You’d be amazed,” he mutters. “Leave it with me, and don’t go accusing anyone of anything in the meantime, OK?”

  “Fine,” I agree, reluctantly.

  Rules, bones and other things you don’t want to break

  Posted by Birdie

  A good circus always seems anarchic, but like our trapeze bars, if you look closely you’ll see that the anarchy is firmly bolted to some heavy-duty rigging. There are rules at the circus. There is etiquette:

  1. Do what you’re told, when you’re told. The rig team (that’s me and Finch) are responsible for your safety. If we tell you to check your harness, you check your harness. If we tell you to wait while we examine the rigging, you wait while we examine the rigging. (And if we tell you to make tea, you run for the kettle.)

  2. Don’t walk, stand, sit or ride unicycles under the net. You’ll distract whoever’s on the trapeze and when they fall, they’ll land on your head.

  3. Leave the piercings at home, unless you want to leave them, along with parts of your ear, lip, eyebrow, nipple, etc., embedded in the safety net.

  4. Wash your hands! You know where they’ve been, and if it’s anywhere near sun cream, moisturizer or the butter off your toast, we don’t want them anywhere near our trapeze bars!

  5. Check your partner’s safety harness. It’s what friends do.

  6. Don’t wear out your catcher. Remember, while you’re having a blast up there, feeling lighter than air, they’re knackered and feeling like an overstretched elastic band.

  7. Be aware of your own limits. This means more than your skill level: it’s your mood that day too. Don’t fly mad, sad, sick or while experiencing a major sugar rush. And don’t fly to please anybody else; they might have fun for a while, but they won’t enjoy scraping you off the concrete.

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  Saturday lunchtime, we’re sitting at either end of Hector’s bed, cross-legged, lobbing three tennis balls back and forth between us. The bed is good because you don’t have to bend down to pick up the ones you drop, or to be more accurate, the ones Hector drops.

  “How’s Birdie?”

  “Horizontal. No change. I thought her eyelids flickered yesterday, but Tony says that’s normal and the doctor said it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You never know, though.”

  I shrug. “I don’t like the doctor; she never says anything good. At least Tony’s optimistic.”

  Hector’s doing all right – he must have been practising – so I start to speed up my throws. “Nice date with Sinead last night?”

  “Blissful. No one yelled at me the whole time!”

  “You didn’t show her your juggling then.”

  “If I could think and throw at the same time, I’d come up with a scorching response to that.”

  “If you could throw and catch at the same time, we’d be getting somewhere. Did you ask about James?”

  “Not yet. I only walked home with her after school; there wasn’t time.”

  “I’m surprised she let you get that far.”

  “Hey
, I can be pretty charming when I have to.”

  “Hmm, maybe she felt sorry for you.”

  A tennis ball hits me square in the nuts. “Ow! You little…!”

  I make a lunge for him and he laughs, trying to fend me off as I stuff tennis balls down his T-shirt. “I was aiming for your head!” he gasps, writhing and wriggling beneath me. I’ve almost got him in a headlock when suddenly he freezes. Then he rams himself into my chest so hard I fall backwards and he falls on top of me, his hands pinning my shoulders down. I stare up at him, kind of stunned and heart pounding, not sure what’s going on, but he just frowns at the bedroom door and says, “Did you hear something?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  He gulps. “You’re not supposed to be here.” He scrambles up and grabs my arm. “Quick!”

  I follow him out to the landing, both of us on tiptoes, through a door and up a narrow staircase to the attic. He shuts the attic door silently behind us and holds a finger to his lips.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper.

  He shakes his head and presses an ear to the door. Floorboards creak on the landing below. Hector’s dad coughs, and his mum calls something from the kitchen.

  “Just a sandwich, I’ll take it with me,” his dad calls back. “Where’s Hector?”

  I make out the word “library” in response.

  “I’m supposed to be at the library,” Hector hisses. “I thought they’d be out all day.”

  “Why can’t you just say we were at the library and came back here for lunch?”

  He looks apologetic. “I’m not supposed to be with you.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  He shrugs. “My dad thinks… He thinks I see too much of you. He thinks all the circus stuff is a waste of time and I should be studying more. Or doing proper sports.”

  “Proper sports?!”

  “Shusssh!” He goes back to listening at the door and I wander off to look around the attic. It’s a huge room floored with random offcuts of wood jigsawed together and it’s stuffed with old furniture and packing crates. Different sections of the ceiling slope in different directions, so there are various heights and shadowy corners everywhere. It’s lit by one window, which overlooks the side garden, and in front of it sits a wooden desk piled with books, and a chair, the only objects in the room that aren’t covered in dust.

  “Do you study up here?” I whisper.

  “Yeah. It’s quiet; no one bothers me.”

  It’s not like Hector’s house is noisy. He should try living in mine. I notice a set of juggling rings on the chair, so I pick them up and start throwing them for something to do.

  “Stop that!” Hector hisses. “If you drop one, he’ll hear – his study’s right below us.”

  I give him a disdainful look. “Drop one? Me? Drop one? I’ll show you proper sports.” I throw the rings higher, faster.

  “Seriously, Finch.”

  I throw one high, spin around, catch it and keep going.

  “I mean it!”

  I give him a wicked grin and close my eyes for a second. The rings land neatly where I want them, but when I open my eyes again Hector is hyperventilating.

  “You really have no faith in me, do you?” I whisper. “Or do you want to join in, is that it? Here.” I make as if to toss him a ring. I’m only joking; surely he knows I’m only joking. But he panics and makes a grab for it, knocking my arm in the process. Leaping sideways, I manage to save two of the rings, but one hits the floor behind Hector with a clatter and we freeze, clutching two rings between us and staring at the attic door.

  “Sorry!” I breathe.

  “Hello?” Hector’s dad calls up the stairs.

  Then his mum shouts from the ground floor. “Who are you talking to, Brian?”

  “Is Hector in the attic? I thought I heard something up there.”

  “He said he was going to the library. Maybe something fell over. You should check in case it’s that bookcase. I told you the shelves were rotten. It’s probably collapsed.”

  They’re coming up the attic staircase but I’ve already grabbed Hector and wedged us both in the little triangular gap behind a tall bookcase, which is jammed against the sloping eaves of the roof. We’re curled up with our chins on our knees and his elbow in my ribs, but I can’t tell him to move because the attic door is opening and his parents are coming in.

  “I don’t think it’s rotten, it just needs to be sanded,” Mr Hazzard is saying. “It seems fine.”

  “Must have been something else then. We really need to sort through all this junk, Brian. It’s dangerous the way it’s all piled up. We could make a proper study for Hector. With a sofa so he can bring his friends round.”

  “He can’t study and have friends round at the same time, Nuala. He spends too much time at this sort of nonsense as it is.” There’s the sound of something being set on the desk and I realize it’s the ring we dropped.

  “I think it’s nice he has a hobby, and some friends at last. He’s always had trouble making friends.”

  Ouch. Poor Hector. I can feel him cringing in the dark beside me.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” his dad says.

  “Oh, it is too! He’s never been popular. And he’s so sensitive; remember how his little bottom lip used to tremble when the bigger boys were mean to him?”

  I wince and Hector puts his head in his hands. His parents seem to be poking around the junk in the room while they discuss their son’s social problems.

  “And I think it was worse than he let on,” his mum mutters. “They used to call him Hector Spectre. I heard them.”

  “Kids always have nicknames, that’s normal.”

  “Oh? Remember that birthday party we had for him and only two kids came? That’s not normal.”

  Hector grabs fistfuls of my T-shirt and buries his face in my shoulder in agony. I kind of want to die on his behalf but all I can do is pat him silently on the arm.

  “He didn’t want a party, Nuala. He never liked parties.”

  “Because he knew no one would come! It broke my heart that day, seeing him in his little paper hat eating his cake all alone.”

  Hector starts silently banging his head against my shoulder. The cringe factor is just rocketing. If it wasn’t so awful it would be hilarious.

  “Well, things will be better here; small-town kids are nicer than city kids.”

  “Exactly. So we should be pleased he has some friends here. I’m going to take this vase downstairs. It’ll do for the dining room, it just needs a wash.”

  “Yes, but it’s only one friend, isn’t it. That’s not normal either.”

  “You just don’t like that boy, do you?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “Brian, if Hector likes him, he likes him, there’s nothing we can do about it. And if he knows you disapprove, he’ll only want to see him more. He never stops talking about him as it is.”

  Hector reaches an arm around my neck and claps both hands tight over my ears.

  It’s not funny, but something about tension always makes me want to laugh, and this is about as tense as a steel high wire. I clamp my hands over my mouth and hold my nose, but my shoulders are shaking and I know I’m going to give us away. Surely Hector would prefer us to get caught. Surely he’d prefer anything to this. He takes his hands off my ears and covers my mouth instead, but his parents’ voices are moving away now and I realize they’re going out the door.

  “We should invite him round for dinner sometime, and his parents too! I’m sure if you got to know him…” his mum is saying as they leave.

  The door closes at last. Hector’s body crumples and the two of us spill out of the little space behind the bookcase, me weak with laughter and Hector trying to clamber over me and hold his hand over my mouth at the same time.

  “Will you be quiet!” he hisses. “They’re still in the house.” But a few minutes later we hear the front door shut and the car start, and Hector lies down on the floor, spread-eag
led and panting like he’s run a marathon.

  I stand over him, hands on my knees, out of breath. “I’m so sorry!” But I probably don’t sound very sorry, what with all the laughing.

  “Kill me,” he says.

  “Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “I’m serious, just batter me round the head with something. There’s probably a heavy bit of wood somewhere – apparently the bookcase is rotten.”

  “At least your dad stuck up for you. That was pretty cool of him, even if he is a circus-hating freak.”

  “Dad? He has no idea… Ugh!”

  “OK, it was awful. But everyone’s got embarrassing stories.”

  “Yeah? Tell me one of yours then,” he says.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I hate you.”

  “So why do you never stop talking about me?”

  He throws both arms over his face. “Seriously. Kill me now.”

  “Hey, I’m hardly Mr Popularity myself, you know. At least two kids came to your birthday.”

  “They were my cousins.”

  I burst out laughing again.

  “It’s not funny.” But he starts to laugh too as he sits up. “I’d forgotten that party. I was eight. When we played blind man’s buff, they blindfolded me, stole my presents and ran off.”

  It’s really not funny; it’s the most tragic story I’ve ever heard. But we’re both on our knees now, clutching our sides and shaking. My eyes are streaming, my jaw hurts, and Hector’s laughing so hard no sound comes out.

  Tension is a strange thing. That’s how you get the biggest reaction out of an audience; you put them on the edge of their seats with nerves, and then when you make the leap, or catch the flaming torch, or fall off your unicycle, they need to release it. The more you ramp up the tension, the bigger the gasp, the scream, the laugh. Three minutes of agony behind a bookcase and the two of us can’t stop.

  And it’s not just the bookcase. I realize, as I collapse on my back, that I haven’t raised a smile, never mind a laugh, since Birdie’s accident. In fact there’s been nothing but tension, inflating painfully like a balloon in my chest, for weeks. It was going to come out somehow or other, and as I wipe my tear-streaked face and feel my body relax, I’m so grateful to Hector I could hug him.