Free Amphibian by Carla Gunn Page A

worry. I said sometimes. He said he’d settle for that and told me to practice over the next week.
    I went to Bird’s house this afternoon and we played Ping-Pong down in his basement for a long while. Bird is good at Ping-Pong. I suck. Almost every time I hit the ball it flew up into the air and hit the ceiling. Then it would bounce down and hit the floor and roll away under the couch or toys or stuff and we’d have to search for it. I think we spent more time searching for the ball than playing. Once Bird’s dog, Ranger, grabbed it and Bird had to reach inside her mouth and pull it out. Some of Ranger’s drool got inside the ball and then for a while each time we hit it, drool flew out of it and all over the table.
    Bird says Ranger is actually a big pain in the butt and a lot of work because he and his brother have to take her for walks and pick up her poop. Sometimes when Bird is walking on the street and a car comes, Ranger pushes him and knocks him over onto the sidewalk. I don’t think I would mind that so much and sure wish I had a companion dog. But Mom says Fiddledee is enough for now and that Fiddledee likely wouldn’t like sharing my attention with someone. When I grow up, though, I’m going to have lots of companion animals – at least six or seven.
    A female dog like Ranger is called a bitch. Once Bird said
bitch
because he thought it was a bad word. When I told him what a bitch really is, he was a little mad at me because I took all the fun out of saying that word. But then he started calling people who made him mad a female dog. He’d say things like, ‘Get out of here, you female dog.’ He asked me if the male dog was called
bastard
. He was hoping it was because then he could say, ‘Get out of here, you male dog,’ and that would be funny too. But I told him that
dog
actually means a male dog and that the species is hound.
    While Bird and I were looking for the Ping-Pong ball, we could hear Bird’s mother and father having a fight upstairs. At least it sounded like a fight to me. I couldn’t tell what they were saying but it was as loud as the fight my parents had just before my dad moved to his own apartment.
    I mentioned it to Bird. I said, ‘Um, Bird, your parents sound like they’re having a fight.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Bird.
    â€˜Doesn’t it worry you?’
    Bird just looked at me like I was crazy and shrugged. ‘Nah, it’s probably about my brother. My mother yells at him and my dad says she should just leave him alone because he’s going through “The Change,” like growing hair all over his body and stuff. I think he’s turning into a werewolf.’
    I didn’t say anything else because I don’t want to worry Bird. But I sure hope he doesn’t become one of ‘those kids.’ Then he would be like me. One day he could have a whole family and thenext day half of one. One day he could have a father who was home 80 percent of the year who took him to swimming lessons and played chess with him and ate supper with him and read books with him and talked with him about lots of stuff, and then the next day he could have a father who’s only around 20 percent of the year and who he mostly only talks to on the phone or on email. And it could happen in the blink of an eye, just like that.
    I think it’s a good thing I didn’t tell Bird that. There’s no point worrying him about it, I guess, because it’s not like he’ll be able to stop it from happening or anything. So I’ll just be worried for both of us.
    Today I saw Dr. Barrett again – twice in one week. He asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about and when I said no, he said, ‘Today, Phin, we are going to talk more about facts.’
    Oh great, here we go again, I thought but didn’t say.
    â€˜Do you know what
propaganda
means, Phin?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well,