Migratory Birds

Ashton Freeman

I spent my Saturday asking Leo about the birds. I knew why they left in November but couldn’t figure out how they came back. What was the lifespan of a bird and, if not so long, what told them to return? The lake was full of loons in early summer, and I knew this because they spent blue hour crying outside my house. I was a fan of the waterbirds, but I knew very little about them.

Leo was two years my elder and my best friend, but I wasn’t his best friend. His best friend was Johnny, and then Alexandra, and then maybe he would consider me his third best friend. And because I was his third best friend he wouldn’t tell me about the birds. But Leo, it’s not like you own the birds. You can tell me about them, and I swear I won’t tell anyone. And then he asked if I was hungry and grabbed a couple yogurts. He always kept the kind with peaches at the bottom, and I was not a fan of peaches, especially in the off season, but I would do whatever Leo wanted. Leo wanted nothing from me, but I spent years pretending he did.

In the almost-spring the crocuses came early. I asked Leo about those too, but he wouldn’t give me the answer. He said it was still too cold to spend idle time outside, and if I wanted to go ice skating I should ask Sarah, or maybe even Alexandra would go with me. But Alexandra spent every other minute with her boyfriend who only wore skinny jeans and would make us listen to heavy metal in the car. I didn’t want my ears to ring so I went ice skating alone. I practiced figure eights. I busted my knee on the ice. I didn’t really like ice skating that much.

If anything, I was biding my time until Leo left me for college. He was the smartest, at least that’s what my mother said. I borrowed his old books, and they were annotated in a language I didn’t recognize. I asked him if it was French, and he asked me if I was stupid, and when I said no he said No, it’s not French.

He liked hanging out with me, he told me so once. Said he wanted to be my friend like a brother was. We were both only-children, so this was an easy thing to promise.

My mother loved to be busy. She loved to spend her days locked up in her home office and when she wasn’t behind a closed door she was scrubbing, white-knuckled, at the sink. She was frying eggs. She was cleaning a pan. She was throwing out everything over a week old from the fridge. She was cleaning the tile grout with an old toothbrush. She kept everything paper. Receipts, old boarding passes, marker drawings on construction paper I did in kindergarten. She was really keen on remembering everything. I asked her to stop remembering so hard. She didn’t need to remember my piano recital where I missed at least five notes. She didn’t need to remember the time I skinned my elbow learning to skateboard, and she definitely didn’t need to keep my old, bloodied bandages in a case under the sink. These weren’t the things we needed. I asked for mayonnaise and boxed macaroni and whipped cream from a spray can. I was so good at wanting things that I drew them, and she kept these drawings in her desk drawer.

I told Leo about everything I wanted. He didn’t teach me how to cook, but he gave me the leftover pasta from his fridge. He took me to the gas station where we stole whipped cream from the fridge with the energy drinks and we ran so far even though nobody noticed and even if they did I doubt they would have cared. We clutched our stomachs and laughed so hard we could barely breathe and later Leo threw up after eating too much aerated sugar.

On Saturday when I asked about the birds, Leo told me he only knew as much as I knew. I said, Don’t be stupid, you’re so much smarter than me. Everyone says so. He made a sound like he was sucking on his teeth, but he smiled and thanked me. Patted my head like a father would to his son and messed up my hair.

When I got home, my mother asked how my day was. I asked her, also, about the birds. She told me not to think about such things, that if I was so curious to go to the library and pick up a book. I told her that wasn’t the point. The people I love were supposed to have all the answers. And she said, That’s never how it works, in which she was telling me to grow up.

She kept reminding me about the growth spurt I’d had that December that turned all my pants into capris. She handed me a bag of clothes from the back of her closet that smelled like an old perfume of hers. The pants were too long and the shirts too tight, so I put the bag in the back of my closet. My face looked puffy at the cheeks and square at the jaw. My mother gave me a book about it. I didn’t read it, but I started hugging her goodnight. She checked me for temperature the second time.

Winter broke overnight like a fever and that morning we all skipped school to run around the lake. I smeared sunscreen across my nose like face paint, mostly because the smell was nice. Like coconut and sidewalk chalk. I sat on a towel reading a textbook while Sarah practiced cartwheels. She asked me what the point of skipping school was if I was still doing homework. She landed in my lap, and I pushed her off. I missed Leo, who would either a) read the text aloud in a funny voice or b) challenge me to a race to get me unfocused. Leo stopped coming around when the temperatures got high, and he’d only come out at night. Claimed he was allergic to the sun like any good boy who lives on a lake. Pointed to his freckles and the inside of his forearms. The color of milk.

Even when he’d come out at night, he was reserved. Said he got sad in the spring. It would be cold again, I’d tell him. Fake spring, we called it. Nothing to consider but a blessing, a good way to spend a Saturday. Still, Leo kept to himself and spent a lot of time moping around. Even Johnny hadn’t heard from him. I wanted him to come over, even just to pat my head and ask me about my day. He was skipping school left and right, but nobody thought anything of it. We were doing it too. Everyone knew this was just Leo’s thing. He was so good at disappearing. Like a bird, in that way.

When I asked him about this, he wouldn’t tell me because I was only his third best friend.

The blackbirds returned first. Then, the geese. The sparrows greeted them kindly.