All the Birds in the Sky

“Yes, because memorizing the speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes will prepare you for life as an adult.” Laurence rolled his eyes and walked away.

Laurence wasn’t sitting around feeling sorry for himself, he was making things. She had never met anyone like him before. And meanwhile, what could Patricia do with her so-called magic powers? Nothing. She was totally useless.

4

LAURENCE’S PARENTS DECIDED Patricia was his girlfriend, and they wouldn’t hear reason. They kept offering to chaperone the two kids to school dances, or to drive them to and from “dates.” They wouldn’t shut up about it.

Laurence wanted to shrink to nothing.

“Here’s the thing about dating at your age.” Laurence’s mom sat facing him as he ate breakfast. His dad had already gone to work. “It doesn’t count. It’s just like practice. Training wheels. You know this isn’t going to amount to anything. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.” She was wearing sweatpants with a blouse.

“Thanks for your input, Mom. I appreciate all of your keen insights.”

“You always make fun of your poor mother.” She swept her hands in opposite waves. “But you ought to listen. Puppy love is when you learn game, or you never do. You’re already a nerd, honey, you just don’t want to be a nerd with no dating skills. So I’m just saying, you shouldn’t let thoughts about the future keep you from making the most of your middle-school fling. Listen to one who knows.” Laurence’s mom had gone to her fifth-choice grad school instead of her first choice, to be closer to his dad, and that had been the first of many compromises that had ended them up here.

“She’s not my girlfriend, Mom. She’s just someone who’s teaching me to appreciate tick bites.”

“Well, maybe you should do something about that. She seemed like a very sweet girl. Very well brought up. She had nice hair. I would make a move if I were you.”

Laurence felt so uncomfortable in this conversation, not just his skin was crawling — his bones, his ligaments, his blood vessels were crawling, too. He felt pinned to his stiff wooden chair. At last he understood what all those old horror stories meant when they talked about an eldritch dread, creeping into your very soul. That was how Laurence felt, listening to his mother attempt to talk to him about girls.

Even worse was when Laurence heard the other kids at school whispering about him and Patricia. When Laurence was in the locker room before PE, kids who normally paid zero attention to him, jocks like Blaze Donovan, started asking him if he’d gotten her shirt off yet. And offering him make-out advice that sounded like it came from the internet. Laurence kept his head down and tuned them out. He couldn’t believe he’d lost his time machine, just when he needed it most.

One day, Laurence and Patricia were sitting adjacent to each other at lunch — not “with” each other, just adjacent to each other, at the same long table where boys mostly sat at one end and girls at the other. Laurence leaned over and asked, “People think we’re … you know … boyfriend-girlfriend. Doesn’t that kind of weird you out?” He tried to sound as though he thought it was no big deal, but he was just expressing concern about Patricia’s feelings.

Patricia just shrugged. “I guess people are always going to have something, right?” She was this weird fidgety girl, with eyes that looked brown sometimes and green sometimes, and dark straight hair that never defrizzed.

Laurence didn’t really need to hang out with Patricia at school, because he only needed her to vouch for his after-school time, and maybe weekends. But he felt awkward sitting by himself when she was also sitting by herself, usually frowning out the nearest window. And he found himself curious to ask her stuff and see how she responded — because he never, ever knew what Patricia would say about anything. He only knew it would be something weird.

* * *

LAURENCE AND PATRICIA sat under the up escalator at the mall. They each had a Double Chocolate Ultra Creamy Super Whip Frostuccino with decaf coffee in it, which made them feel super grown up. They were lulled by the machinery working right over their heads, the wheel of steps going around forever, and they had a view of the big fountain, which made a friendly splashing noise. Soon both their drinks were nothing but throaty snorty noises as they took the last pulls on their straws, and they were both blitzed on sugar.

They could see the feet and ankles of people passing on the down escalator, between them and the fountain. They took turns trying to guess who these people were, based just on their footwear.

“That lady in the white sneakers is an acrobat. And a spy,” Patricia said. “She travels around the world, doing performances and planting cameras in top-secret buildings. She can sneak in anywhere because she’s a contortionist as well as an acrobat.”