NO ORDINARY OWL (18 page)

Spilled Secrets

L
ater, Vee sat on the velvet couch in the mansion’s living room, shock still evident on her face. “I didn’t have to make a fool of myself.”

Sunny fell out of the chair, clutching her sides with laughter. “Oh, Vee, if you could have seen your face.”

Vee groaned and fell over. The girls were awaiting Beverly bringing snacks. Byron had wandered off after telling them his two big bits of news.

“How would we know that Beake Man woke up this morning and decided the owls were ready to be tested and thought we should be there?” Esther wriggled on the largest ottoman she’d ever seen. It was bright red, with tassels on each corner. Siddy could use this for a bed. Happy. She felt happy, even with the corner-of-her-mind sadness that days were slipping away and soon she and her family would be moving. “So the chicken farmer came over and apologized. Huh.” No matter what happened with the mystery person in the woods, the Squad would see the owls launch. Together.

Aneta’s face was dreamy. “We are going to watch them launch.”

“Not necessarily.” Esther felt she had to be accurate. “Byron is going to let us watch him examine them and test them for flight and see if one or two of them can do it.”

Vee jumped in. “I wish we knew just
what
he apologized
for
. I still say he recognized that slingshot when he snatched it from Esther that day. Was he apologizing for yelling at Byron or the other stuff?”

Esther wanted to stay happy, at least for a bit. “Today, we’ll know if Bubo—” The words died in her throat.
Oh no
. From the frozen looks of the girls, she knew she couldn’t pretend she had said something else.

“You named one of the birds?” Sunny’s mouth hung open, eyes huge.

Aneta’s face was pale. “Oh, Esther, you did? Byron told us not to.”

Vee shook her head. “Can’t believe it.”

Great. Just great
. Everything had been going so well.

“I—uh—,” she began.

The next moment Sunny tackled her off the ottoman with cackles of laughter. “I named mine Socko!” she choked out.

Vee snuck a look at Aneta, who was pressing her mouth in and out. Vee sighed and said, “Oh, all right. Mine’s Cat, for those cat-ear tufty things on his head.”

“Legs.” Aneta’s voice was small, her blue eyes dancing. “Like he’s wearing fluffy pants.” Of the two owls the girls had rescued—and the one Esther had named—one was much smaller with more pronounced leg feathers. His ears tufted high like Vee’s kitten.

“Did we—” Vee straightened, a thought dawning in her expression.

“—all name the same bird?” Sunny finished.

They had.

That set them off again.

“Why did you name him Bubo?” Aneta stood by the fireplace now, stretching from side to side.

Esther explained that her Internet research had shown that the scientific name for a Great Horned Owl was
Bubo virginianus
.

More laughter.

“What?” Esther looked from girl to girl.

“That is so you!” Sunny crowed.

“To look that up!” Vee laughed a happy laugh.

“You are so smart,” Aneta marveled.

The hot prick of tears zinged Esther’s eyes. “I’m going to miss you guys.”

While the girls hooted with laughter in the living room, Byron had moved the two real hooters to an empty flight pen that held perches made out of logs to resemble branches and forks of trees. Outside the pen, the girls watched the two on the perch, feathers tight to their bodies. Esther knew, as did the girls, that this meant they were scared at the change. She wondered if she would walk with her arms tight by her sides the first day in her new school.
I know how you feel, Bubo and friend
.

The owl with all the names sidestepped away from the other and hiked up its wings. The girls gasped. In the six weeks since they’d found the two juvenile owls hissing and tucked in on themselves, each of them had grown significantly larger. The wingspan on Bubo was easily three feet. The other owl watched Bubo, twisting its neck around and nearly upside down, big yellow eyes inquisitive.

Esther laughed.

Byron came alongside her.

Glancing at him and the girls, Esther said, “I know they’re wild. I know they do creepy stuff like attack crows in their nests at night. I know they grab their prey with two thousand pounds of pressure with those talons, but sometimes they’re just
cute.”

Byron rolled his eyes then narrowed them. He gestured to the larger, not-Bubo owl. “See how that right wing isn’t fully extended?”

The girls gathered closer.

“That’s not good. That means that the pulley extension inside him with the feet and the wings is compromised.”

“What is
compromised?”
Aneta asked.

Vee spoke up. “Messed up. Like when a spy’s cover is compromised, he’s in trouble.”

Aneta nodded.

A funny-odd-not-funny-ha-ha feeling began in Esther’s stomach. “Do you mean he can’t go free?”

Byron blew out a breath and looked at the four sad faces. “I told you this at the beginning. Remember? I did tell you.” He looked back at the house. “Where’s Beverly anyway?”

He had, in fact, told them.
“You never know if an injured wild bird will recover,”
he had said.
“Don’t name them or get attached to them,”
he had said,
“because they could die or you’ll be sad when they leave.”
Yep. He had told them all. By the looks on the Squaders’ faces, they remembered it all, and it didn’t matter. They felt bad that the not-Bubo wouldn’t be flying high and hooting at night. Bubo would be leaving. They hadn’t planned on that.

Just like her
. She’d expected he’d stay—be there when she came back to visit. She didn’t like this change.

“Yikes, I thought for sure it would be the—other one who would stay. He just didn’t seem to get the idea that he was supposed to be wild.” Sunny shoved her hands into her pockets. Esther noticed she’d almost given away her name for Bubo.

“So now the other owl has to be the one to go back to the wild,” Aneta spoke up.

“Not necessarily,” Esther pointed out. “Neither of them could.”

“No way!” Vee wasn’t having any of that. “That would mean we failed big-time.”

“If I might add something here,” Byron said, arms folded in his
listen-to-me
pose, “you have no control over this. The one who has to go will go. That is all there is to it.”

“How does Bu—the other one look?” Esther managed to ask. His words stung: The one who has to go will
go. Ouch, Lord
.

Byron eyed Bubo. Standing next to Byron, Esther felt Aneta’s hand slip into hers on the right. Turning her head, she smiled at her friend. Sunny stepped to Aneta’s side and linked elbows with her. Vee bumped Sunny’s shoulder with her own and raised her eyebrows like
I hope
.

Bubo was the one she’d been sure would stay. He’d been so awkward, not attempting to flap his wings and try them out, seemingly happy with a robotic arm feeding him. Even her slingshot food tossing hadn’t tempted him. She guessed he’d given up being wild. Or that he thought the Beakes’ refuge was good-enough wild.

“I checked him over this morning, before Beverly got me out on the crazy ‘errand.’ There’s nothing to suggest he can’t fly. If he doesn’t try here in the flight cage after I take out the other owl, we’ll try launching him tomorrow night.”

Tomorrow night. Would her last project with the Squad end with Bubo staying with the girls? Or would she watch him fly out of her life, like the girls?

Ouch, ouch, ouch
.

Her heart hurt.

Who Is
THAT
?

A
t Esther’s church the next morning during group prayer time, the girls prayed that Bubo would soar. Then, with arms locked around each other, they prayed Esther would soar like Bubo in her new town. Then they cried.

That evening, as soon as it grew dark, cars, SUVs, and a minivan pulled into Uncle Dave’s ranch, just up the road from the Beakes’. Esther had her face pressed against the window in the minivan to get her first glimpse of the girls. The oval of short grass made her grin. That grassy spot had been a fun part of one of their adventures.

Sunny, Esther, and Vee spilled from their vehicles, parents joining them after parking the vehicles in the gravel parking circle. “This will make Dave’s place even more special,” Aneta greeted them, running out the front door. “Mom and I came early for dinner. Tonight is the night!”

Ho, ho. What if Aneta’s mom and Sunny’s uncle Dave got married and she didn’t get to come? She was going to miss so much.

“Here’s hoping Cat flies.” Vee’s face was a mixture of trying to look happy and still worried at the same time.

Sunny dashed from her parents and spun in a circle around the Squad. “You guys, this is it! I hope Socko takes off.”

“You mean Legs,” Aneta said with a straight face and then burst out laughing.

“Oh no. You must mean
Cat.”
Vee played along.

“You mean my good friend Bubo?” Esther’s voice joined in the merriment, but her heart wasn’t in it.

The Beakes’ truck turned off the county road. Kids and parents surged toward the side of the ranch house, which led to the back corral and then the meadow. Byron had decided that since Todd Hudson, the chicken farmer, had come over to apologize, he would reassure the farmer and launch the owl at Uncle Dave’s, a big enough distance from the chicken farm to effect a “new” neighborhood and hunting ground. To everyone’s surprise, Todd had asked if he could come. “I don’t want them around my chickens, but how often do you get to see an owl up close?” Byron had said yes.

Byron instructed them to stay away from the truck while he removed a dog kennel from the truck bed. He told the girls, “There’s no guarantee he will stay in this area. Tonight is the night to say good-bye, if you must.” Esther knew better than to ask to hold the owl now. Since she’d seen Bubo stretch his wings, she understood wild was wild, and she wasn’t nearly big enough.

The questions zipped back and forth inside her head. Did she want Bubo to remember he was wild and love the majesty of the starred night sky? Or did she want him to flap on Byron’s arm and go nowhere, so something would remain the same after she left?

“The one who has to go will go. That is all there is to it.”

Byron bent toward the latch. “Okay, everyone, stand here. I’ll go forward and remove him from the crate. Please, no sudden moves or shouting.”

Good thing Siddy wasn’t here.

“Wait a sec, Beake Man.”

Byron straightened and looked at the Squad.

Vee punched her arm in the air. “Squad bracelets up to the sky!”

Esther shot up her right arm and was joined by Aneta and Sunny. They didn’t say a word, and their smiles were a little crooked.

Vee nodded to Byron, and he unclasped the latch.

They held hands and kept their arms high, making sure not to twitch. That had to be hard for Sunny. Watching Byron and holding hands while her arm went numb, Esther saw a red dot several yards off to the right, where the forest came out and met the meadow. She blinked. She
couldn’t
have seen that.

With the owl hissing, Byron removed Bubo from the crate.

Esther nudged Vee and gestured with her head toward the red. Vee took one look and whipped her head back to Esther.
Trouble
, she mouthed at her. Esther nodded.

From their bossy fight that terrible night over whether to use the enhanced function on the night-vision goggles, both of them knew that whoever was wearing them had a better view of the group than they had of the person. But the person apparently didn’t know they could see the red light.

That red light also made those goggles easier to see Bubo
.

Bubo was out and up on Byron’s arm, flapping and stretching more with each powerful move. He was beautiful in his wildness.

And as clear a target as the stars were clear on this night.

Byron had asked them not to twitch or be loud. Maybe he would be mad. Maybe it might scare Bubo. Maybe Bubo would be too scared to fly. Maybe all that. But Esther was a S.A.V.E. Squader, and she had to
do
something. She darted in front of Byron and Bubo, screaming, “Watch out!” Byron’s face behind his mask morphed from surprise to incredulity. A burning sting hit the back of her neck, and she stumbled and fell, thinking it was strange she smelled lemon.

What had just happened?

She lay sprawled near Byron’s feet, gasping.

Everything then rushed in together. Vee yelling, “Beake Man, get Cat down! Esther’s been hit!” Aneta screamed, and Sunny ran up to her, calling her name.

Right as the rushing filled her ears, the lemon smell persisting with the sting spreading to each side of her shoulders, she raised her head and blinked. Bubo was looking down at her, round golden eyes reflected in the bright night.
“The one who has to go will go. That is all there is to it.”

He turned his head in that funny way of his and lifted off Byron’s arm, gaining higher and higher, stroking up to the stars.