Bird Girl Read online

  Lacey slowly and shakily made it to her feet and Mark got up, facing her. “I was just going underwater like normal people do, okay?” She was starting to sound like a snotty 16-year-old.

  “But why were you walking deeper into the ocean? You were under there for too long to be in that deep. You wouldn’t have made it up to the surface in time if you had gone any farther. What’s going on with you?”

  “Mark! I don’t need to be grilled. There’s nothing to figure out. I went in the ocean, you overreacted. The end.”

  “I did not overrea –“

  “Let’s go,” Lacey said, and she started to hike up the hill of sand. Mark figured that was that, and he decided he wasn’t going to argue with her anymore. If she said she was just acting like a “normal” beach-goer, then he’d say he believed her. After all, he had never been to the beach before. He was the newbie.

  Still, it didn’t seem like it was a coincidence that she had been talking about Penelope killing herself one minute and then walking into the ocean the next. His first evaluation of her had been correct – she really was crazy. He began to wonder if bringing her had been a huge mistake.

  They got to their spot on the beach and Lacey put on her sunglasses and lay on her towel, ignoring Mark. He started packing up their things so they could go.

  “I’m not leaving yet,” Lacey said, without looking at him.

  “Fine. I am,” Mark responded.

  “Fine. That’s my beach bag so you can’t take any of that with you.”

  “Wow, what will I do without the 25 pound beach bag full of necessities like Snapple and a copy of this week’s Us Weekly?”

  ✽✽✽

  Mark didn’t see it, but Lacey’s eyes started to fill with tears. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened, because she didn’t even know what had happened. She just had an abnormal feeling come over her and she remembered Penelope from The Odyssey.

  There was a strange part of her that wanted to walk into the ocean and see what it felt like. Walrus Girl would finally be home. Her instincts had told her to go back to the surface, but something stronger felt like it had been weighing her down. It was just like something in her head wanted to hurt her. Like deep down she wanted to feel her lungs fill up with water, by herself, in the silence of the ocean.

  Why would she do that? She knew she didn’t really want to walk into the ocean and never come back. She hated fish. Why was she ruining their trip to the beach? Tears were falling from her eyes now, and she turned her head further away from Mark, trying to hide it. She could not stand to cry in front of him again.

  “Lacey, look –“ Mark started.

  “Let’s just not talk about it, okay?” She choked the words out through her tears and hoped he couldn’t tell she was crying. Before Mark could respond, however, Aloe Vera Man came racing towards them.

  Chapter 5

  “Excuse me sir,” Aloe Vera Man said. Great. Just what Mark needed. “It seems that this boy over here is having some minor symptoms of an illness of some sort. His mother wants to take him to the doctor, but they can’t get him there very quickly, so she’d like to know if it’s safe to take him herself or if she should call an ambulance. She thinks he might just have been out in the sun too long, but she’s worried that it could be heatstroke.”

  “Why are you – “ Mark started.

  “Yes, Doctor Gamble.” Lacey sat up, looking perfectly neutral and perfectly not-crazy, not to mention perfectly perfect with her blonde hair naturally wavy from salt and wind. She prodded him in the ribs with her elbow.

  "Why don’t you go have a look?” She took her sunglasses off and gave him a look that was a mix between “you better get over there and do something” and “ha-ha that’s what you get.”

  “What about the life guard?” Mark asked.

  “Yeah, he’s over there too, but he’s not a medical professional so he can’t diagnose the boy with anything. He’d feel more comfortable if there was a doctor to make a judgment, and I told him you were here.”

  “Okay, yes, of course,” Mark said hesitantly as he wiped the sand off of the shorts he had just pulled over his swimming trunks. He made his way to the little boy, who was lying on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle towel with his eyes closed. “Why didn’t you have any towels like that?” Mark muttered to Lacey.

  The boy’s mother looked at him. “He’s just had a headache all day and now he feels a little warm and he says he just feels awful and he doesn’t want to move. It could be nothing.” Nothing about her face indicated that she thought it was nothing. “I’m just worried. He was sick recently and I just want to make sure this isn’t cause for concern.” Her eyes were tearing up and looking hopefully at Mark, like he was about to perform a miracle. Ah, geez.

  “Well, um…the first thing I’m going to need everyone to do is…is to…”

  "Everyone, crowd around him. Make a real tight circle!” Lacey called. Mark looked at her like she was crazy (which, he had now concluded, she was) and she looked back at him in a way that told him he should trust her.

  “We need everyone to crowd real close around him and…block out the sun…just give him a little shade…It helps with…it’s often how doctors…it just helps.” The group that had formed near the boy, now growing even larger, crowded around him, and Lacey and Mark stepped back. “Take off your shoes,” she whispered to Mark.

  He blinked at her. “Just do it!” He took his flip flops off and held them in one hand.

  “On the count of three,” Lacey whispered, glancing back and forth between Mark and the group of onlookers, “run back to the beach house. Go right up the steps down there, onto the boardwalk, into the house. If we’re quiet and fast, no one will know what’s happened to us.” She looked excited.

  He didn’t have the slightest bit of belief in her plan, but he couldn’t think of anything else. “What about our stuff?” he asked.

  “We’ll have to sacrifice it.”

  “Okay…” Mark replied, skeptically.

  “Yes, everyone, please keep…making your own assessments! We need as many opinions as we can get!” she called. She looked exhilarated. “Ready?” she whispered to Mark. “One, two, three!” They both turned around in unison and started running up the beach.

  “The thing about sand, Lacey,” Mark spoke quietly as they sprinted on the hot sand, “is that it’s really hard to run through. By the time we get to the stairs, they’ll have called the cops on us. You’re the beach expert, you should know how difficult it is to run in sand. Why do I seem to be the only person here educated about beaches?”

  He realized Lacey was a foot or so behind him, and as his feet sank with every step, Mark grabbed Lacey’s hand and pulled her along with him so she could keep up.

  “You’re not fast enough!” he said. “You’re slowing me down!”

  “I have little legs!”

  “Hop on my back!” he slowed down to let her hop on.

  “What?! No! I’m not doing that. It’ll just slow you down, and I’m probably too heavy for you anyway – “

  “I’m not going to address either of those statements right now in the way that I want to because we don’t have time, but no you won’t and no you’re not. Hurry!” Mark stopped for a millisecond, giving Lacey just enough time to hop on his back like she was getting a piggy-back ride.

  They heard a ruckus behind them and realized the crowd was onto them. Mark picked up the speed and they disappeared from the view of the crowd quickly, up the steps, down the boardwalk, into the beach house.

  ✽✽✽

  The door flew open and they both collapsed on the couch, breathing heavily. Then Lacey started laughing. And Mark started laughing too. And they both laughed more than they ever remembered laughing before, and any strange behavior that had occurred on the beach was forgotten.

  “I guess we won’t be getting our stuff back,” Lacey said, when she finally could breathe again. She got up off the couch and made her way to the front hall, wh
ere she closed and locked the door.

  “Oh no – I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t have anything important down there,” Mark said, seeming to forget his comment about the beach bag and its contents being useless. He wiped a tear from his eye and sighed. “Well, we can never go back there again.”

  “Well, if we ever come back here, it’s not like the same people will be on the beach to burn us at the stake.” Lacey sat on the floor in front of the couch.

  “Yeah, but –" and then Mark realized two things at once. One: She had said “if we ever come back,” indicating that they might come back together which was, what? Exciting? She was his friend, after all, and he hoped they’d come back again too. You know, as friends. Two: He hadn’t told her about staying the night.

  “Hey Lacey –"

  “I’ve got to go take a shower,” Lacey said. “I’m covered in salt and sand. I probably just got the new couch all dirty. You can have the shower after me, okay? And then we can go home,” and with that she stood up and skipped over to the bathroom.

  “Lacey, actually,” Mark started, “we may have to stay here a bit longer.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter when I get back tonight. Just don’t expect me to keep you awake on the ride home. After that escapade I’ll probably be asleep the whole way.”

  “Maybe,” said Mark, “we could leave tomorrow and then we wouldn’t be so tired?”

  “Are you going to be too tired to drive?” Lacey asked.

  “No…”

  "I wanted to be back early tomorrow to invite Connor over so we could discuss our plans for our ‘date.’” She put air quotes around the word. “He called me while you were dealing with the couch guys.”

  “We might have to sleep over.”

  “Oh…well I guess that would be okay. And then we could leave early?”

  “The earliest we could leave would be a little bit after 10:00.”

  “What? Why? I told Connor we could meet early. He’s really excited.”

  Mark wanted to say that Connor would be fine and they shouldn’t even be going on a date in the first place but instead said, “There’s another delivery coming between 10:00 and 2:00 tomorrow, so we have to wait for that too.”

  “Oh. I thought it was just the couch.”

  “Me too.”

  “Well, that’s not the worst thing in the world. There’s another bedroom, right? I’ll sleep in there.” She began heading towards the bathroom once more.

  “That’s the thing," he said. “Tomorrow they’re delivering the bed.”

  “Um…that’s okay. I’ll just sleep on the floor,” she said happily and turned around, once again, to go into the bathroom.

  “No, I’m not letting you sleep on the floor. I’ll sleep on the floor,” replied Mark.

  “How noble of you,” she said and rolled her eyes. “I’m not even supposed to be here. This is your cousin’s house and you should get to sleep in the bed.”

  “Well, I’m not going to,” Mark said.

  Lacey said, “Well, neither am I.”

  They both stood, each with their arms crossed, and stared at each other. Lacey was the first to make a move.

  “I’ll be out of the shower soon,” she said, “and then I’m going to sleep on the floor.”

  “We forgot about the couch,” Mark called. “Once we somehow clean and vacuum it someone can sleep there.”

  “Okay, you go find a vacuum. And I don’t suggest heading out to buy one, as an angry mob might come upon you and carry you off to the guillotine,” she said.

  ✽✽✽

  Lacey showered and then so did Mark. They ordered take-out so they weren’t in danger of being recognized. They hung their bathing suits up over the tub and had a very awkward conversation about their lack of pajamas. Lacey forced Mark to give her his shorts so she could wash them, because they were full of sand.

  She told him he was a boy and sleeping in his boxers was just like sleeping in a pair of shorts. Mark just felt like it was weird. Lacey was his friend that he saw sometimes during the day, but they weren’t supposed to have sleepovers. It’s not like they were girlfriends.

  Maybe that’s what she thought, that they were basically girlfriends. Nothing was going right. This was supposed to be a simple trip to the beach. There weren’t supposed to be extra deliveries or rescues or boys with heat stroke or fights about who was sleeping where.

  Well, maybe it was a good thing if she thought of them as girlfriends. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about feeling awkward around her. He had bought all those Maxi Pads…but he also told her that he wasn’t gay. Maybe she didn’t believe him. Mark blinked. What was he doing? Now, he was thinking like a girl. No wonder she thought of him as a girlfriend. This was ridiculous. He was a man. Hear him roar.

  ✽✽✽

  Lacey was sitting on the couch, flipping through channels on the TV when Mark came out of the bathroom. “Hey,” she said, “the channels are all different here – can you believe it? We’re not even that far from home. I’m trying to figure out what everything is, though. See if I can find something we’ll both like. E! True Hollywood Story Taylor Swift?” she said as she switched on VH1. “I don’t suppose you want to watch that.” She smiled at him.

  “Hey Lacey, maybe we can just talk for a minute.” Mark sat on the couch next to her.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not upset about having to stay the night or anything. I’ve had sleepovers with boys before,” she commented.

  “No, what I – “ he paused, “what boys?”

  “Well, besides my ex-boyfriend, there was swimming camp where we snuck the boys into our dorm and thought we were really cool. It wasn’t like we did anything exciting. We whisper-giggled at absolutely nothing for about three hours, and then we slept in our beds and they slept on the floor. When we got changed, they dug their heads in their pillows so they couldn’t see us, and we did the same.”

  “How old were you?”

  “14.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they dug their heads in their pillows so they couldn’t see you…” Mark laughed.

  “What do you mean? They would never try to look – we were just friends! And we were only 14!” She stopped and thought. “Although that would explain why their entire boys’ hall knew what color underwear I was wearing. And then sang songs about it.”

  “Okay, wait.” Mark stopped himself from asking her what color her underwear had been. Why did he care about that anyway? “That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” he said.

  “Oh,” Lacey looked confused. “Okay, then…go ahead. Talk.”

  “I thought we should talk about what happened on the beach earlier. When you kind of…went away for a little while.”

  Lacey was still flipping through the channels and froze when he spoke his last sentence. He suddenly regretted his decision to bring it up. “Oh, I love this movie!” she said, with a sigh. Oh. She froze because of the movie.

  “Movie? What? No, Lacey – “

  “Have you ever seen it? Probably not. It’s my favorite.”

  “I thought your favorite movie was A Streetcar Named Desire.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she fidgeted, “that too. But it’s so sweet. This girl in high school, she has a terminal illness, and she winds up dating this boy who’s kind of, like, a ‘bad boy.’ And she shows him this list of things she wants to do before she dies, and he makes all of her wishes come true. It’s so sweet.”

  Her eyes clouded with tears. “At the end, she dies, but not before he marries her and spends a beautiful summer with her,” a tear trickled down her cheek, “and you can just tell he loves her so much.” She tilted her head at the screen and sighed.

  “Um…okay, maybe we –“

  “Oh this is the best part! They’re in the play. She’s about to sing this really pretty song and then he’s going to kiss her and the dad is going to look up at them, disapprovingly.”

  “I guess we’re spending the rest of the night watching this?”<
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  “Come sit on the couch!” She patted the seat next to her. They had shaken out the cushions and cleaned out as must sand as they could, and it wasn’t too gritty anymore. Mark sat down.

  “It’s cold – I should’ve brought a blanket over here,” Lacey said.

  “I’ll go get one –“

  “No! You’re gonna miss the song!” She had a look of wonder on her face, like this movie was the epitome of love. “Here, just come here,” she yanked him closer to her. “Let me lean on you, you’re warm.” Lacey snuggled up next to him and turned the volume up as the sound of a piano started playing.

  “Mandy Moore is just perfect,” she said quietly as the girl on TV began to sing. Mark didn’t know who that was, but if it was the girl singing he disagreed with her. He hadn’t seen the whole movie, though, and as he had established with himself earlier, he was not a girl, so of course he didn’t agree.

  She was mouthing the words “You’re my only hope,” along with the girl on the screen passionately, and she laid her head down on Mark’s shoulder. “Now, tell me that this isn’t the greatest movie ever.” Mark resolved not to tell her anything, so he wouldn’t have to lie and he also wouldn’t have to get kicked in the ribs.

  They spent the evening watching the movie about the sick girl, but Lacey fell asleep at nearly the end. The last thing she said before she went to sleep, with a yawn, was “People don’t do romantic things like that in real life. I mean, I shouldn’t have to have a list and be dying to have someone be romantic.”

  The movie came to a close, and Mark had to decide what he would do with Lacey. She was really out – he didn’t think much could wake her. So he picked her up and carried her to the bed in the master bedroom.

  Tucking her in, he patted her on the head in a very friendly manner and left the room, closing the door behind him. With that, he went back to the couch to find something to restore the testosterone he had lost during the girly movie and fell asleep wondering what Lacey’s list would consist of.