We’re washing up inside when the phone rings. I let it go to voicemail because I’m still nervous about answering Patrick’s phone.
But then I hear Janet’s voice blaring on the message: “Good afternoon! This message is for Jack Royland. I’d like to speak to her if phone calls are allowed at the asylum. If she could be so kind as to use the phone and call her dear best friend, I’d be in your eternal debt. Ciao!”
I don’t get to the phone before she hangs up, but I call her right back and after I say hello she immediately says, “Please don’t erase that message. Please have Patrick listen to it and tell me what his face looks like when he does.”
“He’s not here right now, but he’ll be back in a bit.”
“Okay, whatever, whatever. I’m like two minutes from your house. I’m going to stop by, okay?”
“Stop by?”
“Yes. I have something for Birdie—be there soon!” And then she hangs up.
I go outside and here she is, jogging up to Patrick’s fence.
“Please tell me Birdie is here and not in some dungeon somewhere serving out his sentence.”
“He’s washing up,” I say. “Patrick had us doing yard work.”
“Hard labor punishment, huh? You got roped into it too, then?”
“I don’t think we were doing it as a punishment. Patrick was helping.”
“Well, why would he be doing that now? I’ve honestly never seen him do anything to his yard other than maybe cut the hedge in the spring.”
“I don’t know,” I say.
We head upstairs and I go to tell her about moving the bricks when she’s like, “Wow. Look at these bare walls. Talk about stark.”
When we get to Birdie’s room, his books and binders are on the floor, and he’s busy putting them back on the shelves one by one in order of color.
“Birdie, my man,” Janet says, looking around the room. “I heard about your debacle.”
Birdie shrugs, looking down at his Book of Fabulous.
Janet looks over at me and I shrug too. She soldiers on. “Anyway, I thought I’d come by with a gift—actually, two gifts—to maybe lighten the sting a bit.” She pauses. “Although in my opinion, you shouldn’t give two thoughts to a person like Teddy Garner. However, I understand you don’t have a hardened exterior like mine yet. But give it time. Anyway, your gifts!”
She hands Birdie a brown paper lunch bag and he opens it up.
“Also, they might jazz up this new prison uniform that Patrick has you wearing,” says Janet.
He pulls out a headband and a pair of sunglasses. The headband is simple. It’s made of bright red wire and it’s in the shape of cat ears. The sunglasses are white, with thick round frames. The lenses are a reflective sky blue.
“I got those from the thrift store ages ago. I kept meaning to give them to you, but never had the chance. I guess I was holding on to them until the right time.”
He just holds them in his hands.
“Well, come on, now,” she says. “Put them on. Patrick isn’t here.”
Birdie does and she brings him over to the mirror attached to his dresser.
“Perfecto!” she says. “Dang, am I good or what? Why am I doing hair? I should be a stylist to the stars.”
Birdie laughs.
Janet turns back toward me. “Listen, I also came by to tell you that I’m heading out of town with my mom. We’re going to go visit her sister in Utah even though she’s always called my aunt a self-absorbed cow. But I guess I have a new cousin or something and my mom is insistent on us going now.”
I nod. But I feel a little bead of abandonment roll around inside me.
This must have been what she felt like when she caught us leaving. But I guess probably worse.
Janet says she better go before the warden returns and then she kind of pushes the back of Birdie’s head, messing up his hair. Birdie just keeps smiling into the mirror.
He looks like Audrey Hepburn.
All at once, I feel this tidal wave of joy wash over the room.
• • •
The first tidal wave of joy I ever felt came after Birdie got his favorite purple jacket when he was seven.
Mama found the puffy jacket with its tiny hearts and stars during one of her thrift-store visits. The thing Birdie doesn’t know is that Mama had bought it for me. But when she came home, Birdie found it on top of one of the bags and picked it up. He hugged it to his face even though we hadn’t washed it yet.
Mama and me stood in the kitchen and I said, “I thought you said the purple jacket was mine.”
“I know, but look at him, Jackie.”
Mama could always tell when I was glowering, even if she wasn’t looking right at me. She put her arm around me and said, “I’ll get you another.”
She squeezed me tighter and said, “Imagine all those dark feelings inside of you being swallowed up by Birdie’s joy, his love for the jacket. Joy can do that, you know. Even someone else’s. It can swallow up the bad feelings because you know that joy spreads like a tidal wave.”
I watched Birdie as he put it on, watched him straighten it and pull the shooting-star zipper up and down. It was way too big on him, but he didn’t care. Purple was and still is his favorite color, plus anything “sparkly and amazing” like shooting stars.
“Whoosh,” whispered Mama as she moved her hand in front of me like a wave. As I watched Birdie in the jacket, and imagined the giant tidal wave, I could feel the dark, selfish feeling disappear. Down, down, down it shrank until it was at the bottom of the ocean.
• • •
Patrick comes back exactly an hour after he left and he has a big jug of liquid garden fertilizer, two bags of compost, and a giant pizza with him. I watch from my window as he puts the fertilizer and the compost near
