I want to write about the pizza in my notebook, but Birdie comes to my door. The headband and sunglasses are gone.
“Patrick brought home a pizza,” he says.
“You saw it?”
“I smelled it.”
“What kind of pizza, I wonder.”
“I’m guessing pepperoni and mushroom,” he says. “But it smells so good.”
Downstairs Duke barks. “Even the dog is excited,” I say.
“Should we go down or wait?”
I breathe in the smell. “Go downstairs.”
When we get to the kitchen, Patrick is nowhere to be seen. I’m just snagging a look at the pizza when he comes in from outside. I instantly let go of the lid and hop back.
“I hope you guys eat pepperoni,” he says.
We look at each other for a second, then he goes upstairs.
I grab a slice and so does Birdie. I stick my nose close to the cheesy heat, breathing deeply. It’s been more than six months since I’ve had pizza that smells this good. Uncle Carl would sometimes buy the frozen ones, but they just don’t compare.
Birdie does the same, closing his eyes as he breathes in. “I probably would have eaten it even if there were mushrooms.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Maybe even anchovies and monkey brains.”
“Gross.”
“Pizza is the best thing in the world.”
As I take my first bite, the salty savory amazingness that is cheese and pepperoni and sauce hits my tongue and I think that maybe pizza can solve every problem on the planet. Like if we just had enough pizza it would be all right.
After finishing the first slice, I pause and take a long drink of Sprite, which is another new thing Patrick brought home. I take a second slice from the box.
Patrick comes down and doesn’t say anything, but he seems to move about the room with lightness, which is also new.
“Don’t eat those frozen pizzas from Grocery Plus,” Patrick finally says. “If you’re going to eat pizza, you have to get it from Vincent’s over the hill. It’s the only pizza worthy of being called pizza in fifty miles.”
His voice is kind of serious, but he’s tipped his hat back a little and I can see his bushy eyebrows.
I think that this might be the perfect time to ask Patrick about going to the library to meet Krysten tomorrow for our project and then visiting Uncle Carl, but I just can’t get my mouth to form the words. I don’t want to change the air in the room. So I keep silently chewing, along with everyone else.
True, it isn’t green eggs, and it is a long way off from being a tidal wave of joy, but it is better than nothing.
It is definitely better than nothing.
**Observation #783: Inner Colors
Birdie is the color of a cloud, but one with secret rainbows like the cupcake ring & the cat ears headband & the giant round sunglasses.
Patrick used to be black. Or white. Something clear-cut, plain & obvious.
But now he looks gray.
What color am I?
CHAPTER 12 CRACKS IN THE ICE
I wake up thinking of two things: green eggs and Uncle Carl.
The sun is just beginning to rise when I find Birdie downstairs on the couch. He’s wrapped in a blanket with a novel open on his lap. He has the stupid plain black sweatshirt on. Across the room, in a small bed by the wood-burning stove, Duke is sleeping.
“Patrick is outside,” Birdie says without looking up. “He gets up early even on a Saturday.”
“I know. I saw him doing something in the silo shed.”
“So our plan is ruined.” Birdie sighs. “No Uncle Carl’s now.”
I peek out the window. The light is still on in the shed. “Have you eaten breakfast yet? Leftover pizza?”
“No, but I did try to get Duke to come onto the couch,” says Birdie. “It’s like he’s hibernating or something, because I scratched him behind the ears and he still didn’t move.”
“I’m surprised he’s not outside with Patrick.”
“He was, but then I overheard Patrick at the back door telling Duke to go inside and get warm. He walked right over to his bed and went to sleep.” Birdie tugs at the collar of the new sweatshirt.
“Guess what? I came to make good on a promise.” I hold up the little bottle of blue food dye.
“Really? What about Patrick?”
“What about him? He never said we couldn’t scramble some eggs.”
We go into the kitchen and while I get everything together, Birdie goes to the back door and looks out the window. “I think Patrick is making a garden. He’s got a big bag of flower bulbs. And you should see this thing he has.”
I go over to the window, and when I do, some kind of machine Patrick holds blasts on. He pushes it along the yard and it turns the dirt over as he walks.
“I think it’s a tiller,” I say. “I guess he is making a garden. I saw him take some plants out of the shed.”
I scramble the eggs and then add three drops of blue food coloring. I mix it all together until it’s a perfect peppy green. I keep thinking Birdie is going to watch me work, but he just stays at the window spying on Patrick.
When the eggs are finished, Birdie comes over and breathes deeply.
“They’re perfect,” we say at the same time.
We sit down to eat and for a moment, I wonder if we should say or do anything, like a prayer. But I have no idea how to do something like that, so I hold out my fork and say, “Cheers!” and we clink forks and dig in.
They are perfect—salty, buttery green eggs.
All of a sudden, I realize now how worried I was that they weren’t going to turn out right, even though I’ve made scrambled eggs about a thousand times.
Birdie eats while smiling and humming quietly. It’s the first I’ve seen him eat this way in a long time. Even last night with the pizza, it was more
