Feather Brain (2 page)

Fishing in my jacket pocket for the money Mom had given me, I carried the wire and the bag of wooden
hearts to the front desk. I counted out five dollars and looked around while the clerk rang it up. A kid with shaggy blond hair was leaning against a pillar outside the store. I held my breath. Let it not be Kyle, I prayed, let it be anyone but Kyle! He turned; I groaned. It was Kyle.

He was the meanest boy in my class, maybe even in all of grade four, and he especially hated me. He'd hated me ever since I first came to the school last September. “Red curls?” he'd said, looking me over. “Hey, Lucas has girly curls.” Which is why I keep my hair short, too short to curl. But Kyle always finds something to bug me about.

I turned my back and hunched over the counter. There was no way I wanted him to know I was buying hearts! When the clerk handed me my bag, I took a deep breath and tried to look tough as I sauntered out of the store.

Kyle stepped right in front of me. He was taller and heavier than me, and he knew it. “Shopping in the craft store, Clarke? What a girl!”

I flushed and tried to stuff the bag into my pocket. I could feel the little wooden hearts sending out flashing messages:
Clarke bought wooden hearts. Clarke bought wooden hearts
.

I swear Kyle heard them. He reached for the bag. “What have you got in there?”

I pulled it back, close to my chest. He grabbed at it, tearing the bag.

I pushed him away. “Back off, Kyle. What I buy is none of your business.” I sounded tough, but I could feel my face becoming as red as my hair. Of course Kyle noticed.

He imitated me, in a high-pitched voice, “‘What I buy is none of your business.'”

I just turned and walked away, clutching my bag and thanking the Great Stegosaurus in the Sky that Kyle hadn't seen those wooden hearts.

I checked over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me and smacked straight into Mom. She caught me, and then checked to see what I'd been looking at.

“Is that a boy from school you were talking to? Why don't you invite him over? You should have friends over sometimes.”

“It's okay, Mom,” I said. “I see him at school all the time. I'd rather just work on my models at home.” In fact, Kyle was the reason I never invited anyone over. He was the reason I had no friends at all. No one dared to be friends with me, not with Kyle around.

But I really did like working on my models. As soon as I got home, I cleared off my table. I have a work table under my window, instead of a desk, for making models. Under the table are three plastic boxes full of dinosaur-making supplies. Finished models live all around my room, on the shelves and hanging from the ceiling. I also have dinosaur footprints on the floor and dinosaur posters on the walls.

The book said to start with a sketch. I searched through all my dinosaur books until I found a good side view of a stegosaurus skeleton, and I made a rough sketch from that. Then I pulled out the wire to start the frame.

I checked the book again. It said, “To make two hind legs and two arms, just make the same limb twice, except in mirror image. You don't want a dinosaur with two right hind legs, otherwise it will walk around in circles!” I laughed. If I could have a dinosaur that walked, I wouldn't mind if it walked in circles.

But I didn't laugh much after that. Working with wire is nasty. I had five scratches and two holes in my fingers by bedtime. And my dinosaur still kept falling on its nose.

I got up early Friday morning, threw on some clothes and worked until Mom made me come down for breakfast. At least she didn't complain when I gulped down my cereal and ran back to my room. By the time I had to leave for school, I finally had a frame I liked. I walked to school happy, even though I had to trudge through six inches of wet snow.

After school I pulled out a bag of colored foam bits and started padding the dinosaur. The legs were easy; I just imagined elephant legs. But the body was awful. I struggled to make it big enough without it looking like a fat lump.

I had to pad it a bit but not shape it totally, because I'd be adding papier-mâché. I didn't put any foam on the head. Stegosauruses had really small heads and tiny brains. I figured wire and papier-mâché would be enough for that.

When I was done, it looked like some lumpy multi-colored weirdness, not like a dinosaur at all. How could this possibly work?

Dad rented a video for Friday night so I wouldn't disappear into my bedroom right after dinner. Saturday after breakfast, Mom made me clean my room and do my homework. Then Dad insisted I help him shovel the walks, which took forever because the snow was so deep. We both groaned about spring in Calgary. At least the sun came out, and it was warm.

By afternoon, they were ready to leave me alone, and I got to work. I tore up strips of paper, filled a red plastic tub with water and set it on an old towel on the table. I pulled out a green plastic bowl and half filled it with water. Then I searched for my white glue.

While I was groping around in my plastic boxes, I spotted the dinosaur-making kit behind them. Should I use it? Why bother, I thought as I straightened up
with the glue in my hand. I opened the top and turned the glue bottle upside down over the bowl. The dinosaur kit was just junk. My hand tightened in anger, and a huge blob of glue oozed out and blorped into the water. I groaned. That was way too much. I stirred it in with a paint brush; it was definitely too thick.

I glared down at the kit. “It's all your fault,” I muttered. “Maybe I will use you, just to thin out my gloop.” I grabbed the box, yanked out all the packing paper and pulled the test tube out of the bag. I was going to dump it all in. Then I remembered the note said it could make one large or three small projects, so I slowed myself down and poured carefully. I was hoping it would do something interesting, like smoke or bubble, but all it did was drip. I poured one-third of the liquid into the bowl, stuffed the cork back into the test tube and stirred the potion into the watery glue. It was still too thick. I slowly added water until it was just the right consistency.

All afternoon I dipped newspaper strips in the watery glue and carefully wrapped them around my model. Soon I had sticky water dripping off my elbows, paper bits stuck to the back of my hands, and an itchy nose I didn't dare scratch. I rubbed it on my sleeve and kept working.

Once I'd finished the first layer, I cut slits in the wet papier-mâché. I wasn't sure if I should do it right away or when the paper was dry, but if I waited and was wrong, I couldn't go back. I cut the slits with scissors and set in the wooden hearts, upside down so only the pointy part stuck out. My dinosaur books couldn't agree on whether the plates pointed straight up or if they alternated, pointing up to the left and then up to the right, all down the spine, so I picked alternating because I thought it would look good. Then I set the dinosaur on the windowsill to dry.

It wasn't ready for another layer of papier-mâché until Sunday morning. I did a second, thinner coat and left it in the sun to dry while Mom, Dad and I went tobogganing.

We walked down to Confederation Park, all layered up in ski jackets and pants and boots, not because it was cold, but because the snow was melting and we knew we'd get soaked. Dad picked a north-facing slope because the snow was already gone in patches on the sunny side of the park.

We had an awesome time, whipping down the hill. The snow was really fast because it was so wet. When we hit the bottom, water sprayed all around us. Then we got cold—the wind had a bite to it, and it cut through
our wet clothes right to the skin. We didn't care. This was probably our last chance before spring really took hold, and we didn't want to waste it.

Until Kyle arrived. He roared down the hill, not caring who was below him, blasting past us with a whoop. I tugged my toque down over my hair, hoping he wouldn't recognize me. But Mom's long red braid was bouncing against her back. He seemed to hate red hair. What if he recognized hers?

“Let's go,” I said as we slowed at the bottom. I wanted to be walking away before Kyle headed back up the hill. “I'm wet, and I can't wait for some hot chocolate.”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other, surprised at such a sudden change. Then they shrugged and smiled at me.

“Sure, hon, whatever you want,” Mom said.

Dad chased me while Mom pulled the toboggan behind us. I dashed up the hill out of the park, glancing over my shoulder. Kyle was trudging up the slope, looking down. He hadn't seen me!

We came home soaked, red-cheeked and happy. After changing into dry clothes and warming up with mugs of Dad's special hot chocolate, I went upstairs to add one more layer of papier-mâché. I shaped the head,
creating eyebrows and a nose, and then I thickened the legs at the knees.

When I was done, I set it out to dry while I worked on my homework. As soon as I got
Make-a-Saurus
, I knew I had to use it for my book report. The kids in my class liked dinosaurs; I figured they'd love this report. And Kyle couldn't stop it, not with our teacher there.

On Monday I wore my dark green dinosaur T-shirt, the one with a picture of a dinosaur skeleton in the middle and
Paleontologist in Training
written underneath. And I brought
Make-a-Saurus
and my almost-finished stegosaurus. On the way to school I named him Stegy.

I'd wanted to bring a finished model, but it turned out bringing a partially done one was a better way to explain the book. The whole class seemed interested, even Kyle, except he tried to hide it. I could tell everyone liked it by the silence, and by their eyes—intent on me, my T-shirt, the book and Stegy. But when it was time for questions, Kyle crossed his arms and glowered, and suddenly everyone was looking down.

My teacher, Miss Dubois, said, “What? No questions? I thought you guys would be bursting with them after such an interesting book report.”

Kyle shot rays of hate out of his eyes at me. Everyone else kept their eyes glued to their desks. So Miss Dubois asked a couple of questions; then I sat down.

I was so mad. I could tell by the glances from the kids around me that they were really interested in Stegy. I sat and stroked his back. I carefully packed him in my backpack at recess so no one could take a look while I wasn't there. If they didn't have the guts to disobey Kyle, I wasn't going to let them touch Stegy.

After school, Kyle stood on the steps, glowering at anyone who glanced my way. Stegy and I walked home alone.

I went right back to work on Stegy when I got home. He'd be great, and no one at school would ever see him again!

I cut four large teeth from the comb for spikes on the tail, putting my anger into every cut. I hate Kyle—
snip
. I hate Kyle—
snip
. When I picked up Stegy I calmed down; I wasn't angry with him. I used a big needle to poke holes for the spikes and glued the spikes into place. Using the tip of my scissors, I dug out larger holes in his mouth and glued in bits of gravel for teeth. Then I glued on some googly eyes, the kind that rattle when you shake them.

I got the jar of poppy seeds Mom said was in the back of the fridge and used a paintbrush to coat Stegy in glue. Carefully, I sprinkled poppy seeds onto the wet glue, but I should have worked on one section at a time. The glue dried too fast, and I had to put on more glue near places poppy seeds were already sticking. Soon I had poppy seeds in my glue and glue in the poppy seeds. I guess the extras weren't going back in the fridge! Eventually, Stegy was all gray from little seeds, and I could soak my brush and hands to clean up while the glue dried.

After supper I dug out my paint, four paintbrushes of different sizes, a cup for water and a roll of paper towels. I flipped through my books until I found a colored stegosaurus painting I really liked and set to work.

I started by painting most of the body green. While the paint dried, I worked on my spelling list. Then I used beige paint, mostly along the spine, with some trickling down between the back plates. I let it dry another hour while I finished a page of math and had a shower. Just before bed I pulled out the red paint. I painted red edges on the back plates and red stripes on the white spikes. I added a little red around the mouth and below the eyes and set him to dry overnight.