Free Moonbird Boy by Abigail Padgett

her husband Hank hadn't wanted to get. She'd spent months talking him into it. Every morning when the kids were off at school she climbed on the thing and walked until the sweat ran down the middle of her back and the little dial said she'd used up two hundred calories, then two-fifty, then three. Every day she tried to burn ten extra calories. It was hard, but already she'd dropped five pounds. At fifty-eight, Gussie Quinn was trying not to look like Mrs. Butterworth. "No, you can call me Aunt Gussie like the others, or you can call me Mrs. Quinn," she told the boy. Always best to let them know the ground rules right away.
    "My name's Bird," he answered, distracted by a car pulling into the parking lot outside. "It's for a muffin bird." Then he'd dashed across the small waiting room, grabbed a magazine from an end table and tried to wrap it around his leg. When it wouldn't stay he let it fall to the floor and locked his knee, dragging the leg as if it were in a cast. The social worker's request that he pick up the magazine brought no response.
    "We're not sure how he's reacting to the death of his father," she told Gussie quietly. "It only happened yesterday. An investigator's tracking down the family today. You probably won't have him for long."
    But it already seemed long. Bird had emptied her car's glove compartment while she was on the freeway and couldn't stop to control him. Then when they got home he'd run into the house and grabbed a picture of Hank in his navy uniform off the mantel, propped it on a stool at the kitchen counter, and dropped to his knees in apparent fascination at a plastic placemat under the dog's water dish. Rising, he bumped the stool and the picture fell, breaking the glass. As Gussie hurried to sweep up the shards, he jerked the sliding screen door off its track as he barreled onto the patio and tripped over the sleeping Labrador her son and daughter-in-law had left while they took a three-day trip to Mexico. In the fall over the dog he scraped an elbow on the cement, but didn't cry like most kids. He just let her clean and bandage the scrape, squirming restlessly under her ministrations. Already the bandage was dangling loose from one remaining strip of adhesive tape as he ran back and forth outside.
    Gussie looked at the clock as she made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for his lunch. Only noon. But it felt like the end of a long day. Startled by a ring from the yellow wall phone, she dropped the knife on her foot. It didn't hurt, but left a smear of grape jelly on the white canvas of her brand-new Keds sneaker. Later she'd tell Hank that was when she made the decision. Just then, when she saw that sticky purple stain. The decision that Bird Wagman was just too much to handle.
    "Yes, come on by, Ms. Bradley," she told the CPS social worker on the phone. "And, um, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to return Bird to the receiving home. This placement just isn't going to work out."
    By two o'clock Bo could feel the sun's glare in the bones of her wrists, her jaw, even her spine. A heavy, bitter whiteness humming and aching. She'd taken Bird back to the receiving home and watched him go straight to the playground where he twisted the swing chains together as she talked with the placement worker.
    "Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?" the woman repeated thoughtfully after Bo suggested a possible reason for Bird's incessant movement and distractibility. "You can ask the court to order a medical evaluation at the detention hearing, but I thought this was just an emergency placement until you find the family, not a real court case. There probably won't be a detention hearing. We won't have him long enough to get a diagnosis, and besides, he's traumatized from his father's death and probably just acting out. We've got some foster parents who're willing to take troubled kids. I'll find a better placement, but the sooner you find the family the better it'll be for everybody."
    Bo stood in