Feather Brain Read online

  After I described it, Kyle just said, “You found it on your mom’s computer? You don’t have your own?”

  “No, I don’t have my own,” I said. “You act like I’m some kind of spoiled brat. But look around: no computer, no tv, no cd player.”

  Kyle looked around my room, his face still. My room was pretty clean for once: bed made, only a few clothes on the floor, shelves loaded with books, dinosaur models hanging around the room. He just shook his head and shrugged. Then he sat on my bed. “So you found a website. Big deal.”

  “Yeah, well, it turned out to be a really big deal.” I dug around until I found the test tube of liquid and the paper explaining how to use it.

  Kyle tipped the test tube back and forth; then he shook it. My fingers twitched, worried he’d break it. But he handed it back and read the paper. Then he started to laugh. “Oh, come on. You believed this!?”

  “No,” I snapped. “I didn’t believe it.” I started to look for Stegy, checking behind my boxes and then dropping to my hands and knees to search under the bed. I had to lie flat to reach him. I squirmed out with him in my right hand.

  “I just made a dinosaur, using that book I did a book report on. But I poured in a little of this stuff to see what would happen.”

  Kyle yawned. “Uh-huh?”

  “Well,” I said. “Stegy here, he, uh...” I stopped—this was really hard to say. “He, uh, he came to life.”

  “Sure, just like Frosty the Snowman,” Kyle said, laughing. But his laughter sounded a little forced.

  I grabbed his arm, pulled up his sleeve and then pushed up both of mine. “No,” I said, my voice full of anger, “not even a little like Frosty the Snowman!”

  That shut him up. He looked from my arms to his and then at Stegy. Slowly he pushed his sleeve down. “But he’s not moving.”

  “Yeah, that’s because you didn’t steal him,” I snapped. “I made him, so he’s only real for me. Unless someone steals him.”

  Kyle sat in silence. Then he cleared his throat. “So you made another?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Stegy’s so great, I wanted another one.”

  “He’s great?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “He’s a stegosaurus. They’re herbivores, so he’ll fight to protect himself, but he doesn’t attack or anything. He’s a really nice pet.”

  Kyle sat quietly, holding Stegy, turning him over and over. “And the other one?”

  “It’s a sinornithosaurus, a carnivore, a predator—and he’s ferocious.”

  Kyle rubbed his arms. “No kidding.” He picked up the paper and read it again. “‘Yours for life unless it is stolen.’ So that monster is alive for me instead of being a model like Stegy is...”

  “Well, Stegy’s alive for me...”

  “Yeah, but a model for me. That sin-no-nor-tho...”

  “I just call him the beast,” I said.

  Kyle nodded. “The beast is alive for me because I stole him from you?”

  I nodded.

  Kyle closed his eyes and leaned forward. “Dad always says what goes around comes around, and I never believed him. But this—” he yanked up both sleeves, staring at the maze of crisscrossing red lines, some still raw looking “—is all my fault? Just because you dropped him and I picked him up? I am such an idiot. What am I going to do now?”

  I turned away so he wouldn’t see my grin. If I let him think it was all his fault, he couldn’t be mad at me for setting him up! Yes!

  Kyle slumped further, head in his hands. “I deserve this! I stole it, and I deserve it—but I don’t know what to do!” He looked up at me with wild eyes. “My dad can’t see the beast alive—he’s getting really worried that something’s wrong with me. He’s even thinking about taking time off work to take me to a doctor. We can’t afford that!”

  “Why can’t your mom take you?”

  “My mom? She walked out when I was three! She doesn’t care what happens to us.”

  Guilt pressed down on me like a stegosaurus sitting on my chest. “Maybe...” I said, hesitantly.

  He looked up.

  “Maybe I could help,” I said.

  “You? Why would you help? I’ve only ever been awful to you, and I stole your dinosaur. Why would you want to help me?”

  So I did what was probably the second-stupidest thing I’ve ever done—the first being adding the potion to my sinornithosaurus papier-mâché goop. I confessed.

  “I set you up,” I said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “I wanted you to steal the beast so I could get rid of him. I wanted him to hurt you.”

  Kyle sat very still, his mouth hanging open. Then, slowly, he closed it and said in a low tight voice, “You sicced that thing on me?” He stood and curled his hands into fists. “You made him? That monster? And then—you set me up so I would steal him, to get rid of him?”

  I stood and nodded very, very slowly.

  “You skunk,” he shouted as he plunged his fist into my face. Pain exploded in my nose.

  “You weasel,” he bellowed as he drove his fist into my stomach. I doubled over, gasping.

  “You miserable son-of-a-ooomph!”

  This time, he doubled over. I stood back, my fist aching, surprised I’d been able to hit him that hard.

  Suddenly he was on top of me, hammering punches down on my chest and stomach. I fought back, discovering I could throw a punch almost as well as he could, although it was easier after we rolled over and I was on top. For a little while.

  We rolled and grunted and punched each other until finally we just stopped, exhausted. Kyle lay beside me, panting. My nose was bleeding and Kyle’s left eye was swelling shut. He dabbed a cut on his lip with his sleeve; then he sat up, glowering at me.

  I rolled over and found some tissue to sop up the blood dripping from my nose. “So, do you want to do something about that dinosaur or just keep fighting?” I asked. Of course it sounded more like “Do you vant to do sumtig about dat dinodaur?” but Kyle got the point.

  He sat up, and even though he still looked really, really mad, he nodded.

  “When I made him, I didn’t know what he would do,” I said. “I tried to get rid of him, but nothing worked. I threw him out, and I left him at the zoo. But he kept coming back.”

  “I know,” said Kyle. “I tried to get rid of him too. But you gave him to me!”

  “Ah, no, I just dropped him, and you stole him. You didn’t have to take him.”

  “You knew I would!”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said.

  We stared at each other, both angry. I don’t know about Kyle, but I was ashamed too.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Monster from the Lagoon

  “So what do we do?” Kyle asked.

  “Huh?”

  “What do we do? You said you’d help me—but what do we do?”

  He didn’t want to beat up on me anymore? I stood, groaning.

  “Maybe we could get someone else to steal it,” Kyle said.

  “But who would we inflict him on?” I asked, rubbing one sore spot after another. “Who do we hate that much?”

  “There are lots of people I hate,” Kyle muttered.

  I yanked up both his sleeves again, showing off the mazes of red lines. “Enough to do this to them?”

  Kyle just shrugged, but he didn’t suggest any victims.

  I looked at Kyle, sitting on my bedroom floor. It was almost like having a friend over. “Maybe we could be nice to him,” I said.

  Kyle grunted. “How could we possibly be nice to that thing?” he asked. “Bake him a cake?”

  I smiled. “Take him for a walk?”

  Kyle laughed. “Bring him presents?”

  We grinned and then sighed.

  “We need to destroy him,” Kyle said.

  “But we’ve tried that, both of us.”

  “No, we’ve tried to get rid of him, and he always comes back. But I haven’t tried to actually break him. Have you?”

  I shook my head. Then I sat imagining
what we might do to him. If he was just a model, we could smash him with a hammer or drop him off a building or leave him on the road to be run over. But could I do any of those things when he was alive? I shuddered. “I don’t know if I could do that,” I said. “It seems really gross.”

  Kyle frowned at me like I was chicken. Then he sighed. “Okay, what if we found a normal dinosaur way for him to die?”

  “Like what?” I asked. “What dinosaur predators live around here?”

  “I don’t know! Maybe we could toss him into the lion cage at the zoo.”

  I tried to imagine that, but then I remembered what it looked like when the beast ate a chunk of meat. “No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

  Kyle groaned. “So what if we find another way dinosaurs died?”

  “Like?”

  “Clarke, you have a whole room full of books about dinosaurs. One of them must talk about how dinosaurs die!”

  I grinned, a little sheepish. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

  Kyle grunted, and together we walked over to my bookshelf.

  Kyle seemed hesitant to dive into them, so I handed him a few and grabbed a couple more for myself. We sat on the floor, surrounded by piles of books. The only listings for death were about predators and the mass extinction of dinosaurs. We had to flip right through each book to find anything about other ways dinosaurs died.

  We’d read out loud a bit that might be useful, shrug if it wasn’t and keep looking. On and on and on. The piles of books got taller and taller, and we slumped lower and lower.

  Then Kyle sat up straight as a book himself and said, his voice strangely intense, “Listen to this.” He turned back to the book in his lap and read, struggling over the big words. “‘No matter how cunning and vicious, all creatures are in constant danger from the forces of nature. The volcanoes far to the west were constantly erupting. Along with ash, they sometimes brought poisonous gas. Creatures were killed by the thousands. Many, such as the Sinornithosaurus skeleton that was recently discovered, fell or were blown into the lakes, where a blanket of fine ash covered them and preserved their remains for 120 million years.”

  “So?” I said, puzzled and a bit annoyed. “Where are we going to find a volcano in Calgary?”

  Kyle shook his head. “We don’t need a volcano. We need ash. Ash and maybe a lake.”

  I didn’t get it. “Okay, so where do we find a lake? And ash?”

  Kyle sighed. “Clarke, you’re thinking dinosaur size. But we have a dinosaur model. So we only need a modelsized lake.”

  I shrugged.

  “Like a hole in your backyard, filled with water? C’mon, use your imagination.”

  “A hole in the backyard? Yeah, we could dig one in the garden. Nothing’s planted yet.”

  “And ash?” Kyle prompted.

  “Uh, ash—ash. Well, we don’t have a volcano,” I said.

  Kyle shook his head. “You idiot. You have a fireplace, don’t you?”

  “A fireplace?” I was feeling more and more stupid. And then, finally, I got it. “A fireplace! Of course! We’ll clean out the fireplace to collect the ash, then dig a hole in the garden and fill it with water.” I ran out of steam. “Then what?”

  Kyle laughed. “Then we put the beast in it.”

  “But he’ll just climb out again,” I said.

  “Not if your mom is watching,” Kyle said, grinning. “If your mom is watching, he’ll just be a model. We can put a model in a puddle, can’t we?” He frowned. “Not too wussy for that, are you?”

  “No,” I said, feeling sheepish again. “No, this sounds fun.”

  We decided to do it after school the next day. Kyle hadn’t the faintest idea how to catch the beast, so I said I’d come over and help him trap it. Then we’d bring him to my house. I checked with Mom; she was thrilled. I could hear her humming as she started supper, and I knew she was thinking Lucas has a friend, Lucas has a friend.

  Kyle lived a few blocks the other way from school, in a duplex on a busy street. A huge spruce tree filled most of the yard, shading the front window. The cement steps up to the front door were cracked and stained, and the turquoise paint on the house was peeling. Kyle pulled a key out of his backpack and unlocked the front door. I hadn’t told Mom that Kyle had his own key and that his dad wouldn’t be home.

  The house was untidy. Not dirty, exactly, but old and worn and rumpled. A jumble of blankets had been pushed to one end of the flowered velvet sofa in their living room. On a table by the sofa was a framed photo of a smiling woman with curly red hair and blue eyes like Kyle’s.

  “Your mom?” I guessed.

  “Yeah,” Kyle said. His jaw tightened. “She lives in Vancouver.”

  He pushed past me into the kitchen, and I followed. The kitchen was old and dingy, with dark wooden cupboards and a fridge the color of mustard. Breakfast dishes were piled in the sink.

  Kyle leaned into the fridge and emerged with a handful of raw ground beef he dropped into a bowl. “No problem getting raw burger for the beast. Dad never notices if I take some before I cook dinner.”

  “You cook dinner?” I asked, stunned. I didn’t know anyone in grade four who could cook.

  “Yeah,” he said while he scrubbed his hands. “I’m the king of Hamburger Helper. Dad doesn’t get home until after six, and he’s dirty from work so he showers. And he’s tired. If I waited for him to cook dinner, I’d starve. I’m good at Kraft dinner too, but the beast doesn’t like it.”

  I stared at him, openmouthed.

  He just shrugged and led me down the hall. He stopped in front of a closed door. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Uh, is he loose in your room?” I asked, suddenly nervous.

  “Of course he is,” he said. “Where else would he be?”

  “I kept him in my closet,” I said, puzzled he hadn’t figured that out.

  Kyle frowned. “So that’s why you aren’t as scratched! My closet doors are broken. The landlord won’t fix anything, and he won’t pay for supplies either.”

  “Doesn’t the beast attack you in the night? He did me, the first night.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Kyle, rubbing the deep scratch down the side of his face. “That’s why I’ve been sleeping on the sofa.”

  I remembered the pile of blankets. “Maybe we could put the blankets over our heads,” I said, “for protection. And we should wear leather gloves.”

  Kyle looked at me like I was nuts. “Who has leather gloves? Dad has work gloves, but he needs them. I’m not allowed to touch his tools. If he doesn’t have what he needs when he needs it, he can’t do his job, he doesn’t get paid and we don’t eat. So I don’t touch his tools. But we could use the blankets.”

  We draped ourselves in blankets and stood at the door again, looking like Jedi knights who’d just crawled out of bed.

  Kyle opened the door, and we stepped into the room.

  The beast leapt at us, screeching. I jumped back, but he clawed his way up my blanket. I kicked through the blanket and he flew off, banging against the edge of Kyle’s bed. While he lay on the floor, stunned, Kyle knelt beside him and waved the raw meat near his nose.

  “Don’t give it to him,” I said. “Put it in the bag, so he’ll crawl in on his own.”

  “Grab the bag, would you?” he asked. “I tossed it into the closet.”

  I rooted around in his closet, through piles of worn-out runners and old jeans. Finally I spotted the bag and grabbed it from a dark corner. It smelled even worse than when I’d had it; I gagged and hoped Mom never saw or smelled it.

  The beast was growling over the bowl of meat. I snapped, “I told you not to feed him.”

  Kyle looked up at me with scared eyes. “If I hadn’t fed him, he’d have attacked again.”

  I sighed and knelt beside the beast. “Help me with the bag,” I said.

  Kyle and I spread open the bag. Then I slid it right beside the beast. I slipped my hand under the bowl. The beast growled and shook his head at me, bits of raw mea
t flying from his mouth. Then he turned back to his food.

  Slowly, I slid the bag under the bowl and set the bowl down inside. The beast was too focused on eating to notice; he just followed the food straight into the bag.

  Carefully, Kyle and I drew up the bag around the beast. He didn’t realize what was happening until we were pulling the top closed. Then, with a shriek, he struggled to get out, clawing at our hands as we tugged the bag shut. By the time we’d tied it, Kyle was bleeding and I had a new gouge across the palm of my hand.

  But the beast was in the bag, and we were ready to bury it.

  Kyle and I washed quickly. Then I grabbed my backpack and Kyle grabbed the beast’s bag, and we walked over to my house.

  We didn’t talk much. We were too focused on the job to do anything but walk and think.

  As soon as we got off Kyle’s street, the neighborhood became nicer: not much traffic, lots of trees, well-kept houses instead of run-down duplexes. The houses were small but freshly painted, with raked and mown lawns.

  My house looked really nice after Kyle’s. It even smelled nicer here, fresh and green.

  Mom was working in the front garden. I asked her if we could dig in the vegetable garden in the backyard.

  “You want to dig the garden for me?” she said, smiling. “Oh, yeah. Any time! Well, any time before I’ve planted it. After that it’s off-limits.”

  I grinned. “No problem. We just want to dig today.”

  I grabbed a shovel and we set to work. The soil was dug every year, so it didn’t take long to start a hole. But the soil got harder the deeper we dug. Soon we were turning up chunks of pale gray clay, sticky and dense. But we kept digging, taking turns when we got tired, until we had a hole half as deep as the shovel.

  Mom brought out a plate of double chocolate cookies and two glasses of milk. “You guys are working so hard, I thought you might need a snack.” We ate the cookies almost as fast as the beast had eaten his meat. Then we got back to work.

  I dragged over the garden hose. When the hole was filled with water, we went in search of ash.

  Our fireplace has a tiny door on the outside of the chimney for cleaning out the ash. I got the little shovel from beside the fireplace and a plastic bag, and Kyle and I shoveled out a winter’s worth of gray ash and black coals. Kyle held the bag while I shoveled. Each time I dropped a shovelful of ash into the bag, it rose up in a white cloud, coating Kyle’s hands and leaving him choking. I finally learned to slide it off the shovel really slowly, and Kyle learned to hold the bag close to the little door and far from his face. Pretty soon we had a bag full of ash and a clean fireplace.