Wild Bird by Wendelin Van Draanen

Author:Wendelin Van Draanen [Van Draanen, Wendelin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Published: 2017-09-04T18:30:00+00:00

It feels like we’ve been hiking with the tarp stretcher for at least four hours, but when I look at the sun and divide up the sky again, I calculate that it’s only been about two.

Two sweaty, miserable, dusty hours across the desert.

We’ve traded sides and high-low positions a couple of times to relieve aching hands and arms. My bandanna’s now wrapped around my stretcher handle to keep the hot spots that were raging at me from turning into actual blisters. I’ve been quiet and mad while the other Coyotes have been talking. They chitchat about school, complain about haters, joke about guys. And Mia and Shalayne bust out hip-hop lyrics like their tongues are tap-dancing.

I march on, head down. What is wrong with them? Don’t they know we’re prisoners? That we’re just a chain gang, being forced to lug a ridiculous pile of junk through the desert?

“Terrain” seems to be Dvorka’s favorite word today. She’s called back stuff about rocky terrain, mountain terrain, rugged terrain, and desert terrain….I’m sick to death of it. So now when she pipes up about the floral terrain, I grumble, “The only trr-ain I want to hear about is one that’ll give me a ride out of here.”

Mia—who’s working the back end of the tarp stretcher with me—hears and tosses me a grin. “Choo-choo.”

And then suddenly we’re logjammed, with Hannah and Shalayne stopping dead in their tracks. I snap, “What the—” but then I see the carpet of yellow flowers ahead. It’s the size of a football field. I blink, sure it’s a mirage.

“Springtime in the desert,” Michelle says behind us. “There’s nothing like it.”

I look at her. “But…?”

She laughs. “A little rain goes a long way when the land is parched.” She nudges her head up, telling us to keep moving. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much for what’s dormant to bloom.”

She says this carefully. Like she’s putting words on one of those justice scales, balancing them. And in the back of my mind, I get that I’m supposed to feel the weight of what she’s saying, but I ignore it. What I need is the lift I’m getting from seeing this field of bright, beautiful flowers.

Next to me, Mia seems to be feeling it too. “Wow,” she says under her breath.

“You haven’t seen this before?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “This is a first.”

As we move closer, I ask, “We’re walking through it?”

“We’re heading for that canyon over there,” Dvorka calls from up front.

And that’s when I actually look around. I’ve been so busy looking down, being lost in my own head, hating on Dvorka for being so chirpy about terrain, that I haven’t noticed much but the ache in my arms and the sweat, sticking dirty shirt to hot skin, beneath my pack. But now I see that, even without the flowers, things are different. There’s a rise of smooth sandstone on the left, another on the right, and the walls have wavy stripes of oranges and whites that remind me of saltwater taffy.

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