Free Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt Page A

around his face. "How did the problem with the feathers go?"
    "I think I solved it, but it took a few tries."
    "That's how it should be," he said. "Let's see." He took a couple of steps toward me and reached
    out his hand.
    And that's when I knew that something was wrong. He should have asked me to spread the paper
    across the glass so we could compare what I did with what Audubon did. But he was reaching out his
    hand.
    So I handed him the paper and then walked over to the glass case and looked inside.
    The Arctic Tern was gone.
    "Mr. Swieteck," Mr. Powell said.
    I looked at him.
    "They're Large-Billed Puffins," he said.
    I looked down into the case. Whatever they were, these birds were chumps. Fat-bodied and thick-
    legged and looking about as dumb as any birds could possibly be and still remember to breathe. One
    looked like he had just fallen into the water and was doing everything he could to keep his face from
    getting wet. The one on land stood there watching like a jerk, as if he didn't even care that the other
    one was bobbing up and down, trying not to drown. Probably he was too stupid to care. Or maybe he
    had a twisted criminal mind and that's why he didn't care.
    "I know," said Mr. Powell. "They look a little bit different than the Arctic Tern."
    A little bit different? A little bit different? I don't know. You take away the sleek white feathers of
    the tern and put on stubby dark ones. You take away the pointed wings and stick on dumb oval wings.
    Then you take away the long neck and throw in a body like an old football, and stick a stupid yellow
    cup over the stupid bird's face instead of the pointed beak, and I guess a puffin looks a little bit
    different than a tern.
    Mr. Powell walked over to the case and looked down at the puffins. "It was about time to change
    the page anyway." He shook his head and coughed lightly. "I thought I'd show you some elements of
    texture since you're already getting into it. Let's take a look at what you did with the feathers first."
    "You didn't just change the page," I said.
    He looked at me. "No," he said. "I didn't."
    He spread my page over the stupid Large-Billed Puffins. He pointed to the left wing. "I see you
    figured out the problem pretty quickly."
    "You can't draw in every feather," I said. "They start to look like nothing but a bunch of lines next to
    each other."
    His hand moved over to the bottom rows on the right wing. "Tell me what you did here."
    "I drew just a few lines to show how the feathers curve in."
    "And that," Mr. Powell said, nodding, "is what an artist does. "You're right: you can't draw in every
    feather. But you can draw in the patterning of the feathers so I can see how they are shaped and how
    they lie on the bird's body. When you draw in the pattern, your viewer's eye will fill in the rest. Now,
    look at this."
    He took an eraser out of his pocket and rubbed out one of the lines for the tern's body. "Draw in
    these feathers like you've done the others."
    "I don't have a line to show where they stop."
    "That's right," he said. "So you'll have to suggest it."
    So I drew, while the Large-Billed Puffins bobbed in the water below me like the chumps they
    were. And by the time I was done, Mr. Powell had erased all the lines, and my tern's feathers were
    plunging against the air like all get-out.
    Mr. Powell asked if he could keep my drawing.
    You know how that feels?
    A few nights before Washington Irving Junior High School was doomed to start, Spicer's Deli on
    Main Street, Marysville, got broken into. It happened sometime after ten o'clock. And in case you
    were wondering, my jerk brother was home then, and for the rest of the night.
    And if you were wondering, you weren't the only one.
    Mr. Spicer was wondering too.
    And so were the policemen he sent to find my brother.
    They came the next day when my mother and I were washing up the dishes after breakfast. They
    were mostly polite—probably because my father was out somewhere with Ernie Eco and he