Free Feather Brain by Maureen Bush

walk?”
    Kyle laughed. “Bring him presents?”
    We grinned and then sighed.
    â€œWe need to destroy him,” Kyle said.
    â€œBut we’ve tried that, both of us.”
    â€œNo, 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?”
    â€œLike what?” I asked. “What dinosaur predators live around here?”
    â€œI 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?”
    â€œLike?”
    â€œClarke, 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.”
    â€œSo?” 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.
    â€œLike a hole in your backyard, filled with water? C’mon, use your imagination.”
    â€œA hole in the backyard? Yeah, we could dig one in the garden. Nothing’s planted yet.”
    â€œAnd ash?” Kyle prompted.
    â€œUh, ash—ash. Well, we don’t have a volcano,” I said.
    Kyle shook his head. “You idiot. You have a fireplace, don’t you?”
    â€œA 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.”
    â€œBut he’ll just climb out again,” I said.
    â€œNot if your mom is watching,” Kyle said, grinning. “If your mom is watching, he’ll just be a