Free Birdie by M.C. Carr

who hates this small town and turns her nose down at me when I fit into it a little too well. I’m annoyed because this stranger is intriguing me and I keep getting waft of who she is, but it’s fleeting. It’s not enough.
    “Well, fuck the closet. The sheriff must have a whole house of skeletons if he was hiding a black daughter,” Bryce declares.
    “Niece,” Clay corrects.
    “Whatever. Still.”
    I’m about to interject. Defend her. Change the subject. I don’t know yet as my mouth is opening to speak but I’ll ever know because in that moment a blue gray Corolla pulls into the edge of the parking lot and I close my mouth again, my eyes watching it roll slowly into a corner space and finally park. I scramble to pick up my books and backpack.
    “I have a shift at the diner,” I say, hopping down the bleacher stairs. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
    But I don’t head for my car. Not yet anyway. I stride across the parking lot to the blue gray Corolla, double checking for my dad’s Beamer even though I know he left hours ago.
    “Hey, Stephen,” I say into the open passenger window when I reach the car.
    The man sitting in the driver’s seat doesn’t look a thing like me. He has red tints in his sandy hair as opposed to my blonde and he has freckles which are now just starting to lighten making him look several years younger than his true age of twenty-eight. He grins at me. His eyes are clear and alert and crinkle around the edges at me when he smiles.
    “Hey, little bro!” he exclaims. “Want to go shoot some pool?”
    I glance at his hand resting on the gear shift. Steady, not shaking or tapping. A small sigh of relief escapes me. My oldest brother is clean. For the moment anyway.
    “Does Dad know you’re in town?” I ask. Stupid question. Like Stephen would ever drop by the house to say hi.
    He knits his eyebrows together and throws his head back a little in a You kidding me? gesture that answers my question.
    “I gotta work,” I say. “Until nine. How long are you around?”
    “Ashley kicked me out,” Stephen says with a snort and my heart plummets. That means he’s using. Or he cheated. I hope he cheated. “I’m crashing at Marco’s for a few days while I sort things out.”
    “Ok, well, call me later at the diner. If you’re free when I’m about to get off, I’ll swing by.”
    “Sounds good, W!”
    He burns his back tires in a show of immaturity before peeling out of the parking lot.
     
     
     
                 

Birdie
     
    I’m surprised it takes me almost a week to realize Diner Guy is Royalty King Wesley at Shenoah High, married to Rachel Tessman, Royalty Queen. That’s how often my nose is in a book between classes or my music is turned up or I’m soaking in the scenery, oblivious to the students around me. If it weren’t for Lacey sticking her face in my field of vision every so often, I could probably make it through the school year without genuinely speaking to a soul.
    “You’re so weird, it’s awesome,” she says with a full grin, tossing me a back pocket Baby Ruth at lunch. I learned quickly this chocolate consumption was a daily occurrence and she started bringing me one too.
    “A friend who actually eats!” she had squealed when I asked for a bite one afternoon. “Halle-fucking-lujah.”
    “What makes me weird today?” I ask before sinking my teeth into the chocolate bar.
    “For starters, you sound like a nasally freak and you have a trail of snot coming out of your nose.”
    “I have a cold,” I respond, wiping at my nose with a napkin. Saturday’s walk home from work included sheets of rain the sky had been promising all afternoon. I trudged through thirty minutes of it before one of Tim’s coworkers, an officer with a young face and a young name to match – Petey – saw me and drove me the rest of the way to the trailer park.
    “And secondly, you’ve been staring at Wesley Lott this entire lunch period. Not a word about him