THE BIRD IN THE WOOD, PART 3

Nicole zoned out as Mr. Dooley droned on about conjugations and irregulars and blah blah blah. She normally enjoyed French class, but today her mind couldn't seem to focus. It hadn't been a bad day, per se, it just hadn't been a good day.

Nicole had always been one to fly under the radar for the most part. Yes, she was very smart, but she knew enough not to raise her hand for every single question. She knew how to get a teacher to like her, but also not to become the teacher's pet. She was an excellent basketball player, but not big-headed. Yes, she and her friend Brian had founded their school's chapter of the GSA (along with Dooley's sponsorship), but she wasn't in-your-face gay. Sure, she had dated a few girls casually, but she didn't make a big deal of it. She didn't make out with Sarah in the hallway. She didn't hate men. Hell, she carried a purse and wore a dress to junior prom. I'm the most closeted out-of-the-closet lesbian I know, she thought to herself. Everyone knew her but didn't know her. Nicole liked it that way. So why was she feeling so unsettled? Senioritis?

Maybe it had been her conversation with her mom that had started her day on the wrong foot. It hadn't needed to be an argument, just a simple signing of a permission slip for the basketball tournament trip. But her mother had gotten on one of her "death lurks in every hotel room corner" soapboxes and had lectured Nicole on lice and maids not changing sheets for fifteen minutes. And then she had gone down the "I don't need you unsupervised in a hotel room with girls," as if Nicole were planning an orgy in between non-stop ball games.

Finally, and reluctantly, her mom had signed the slip, but the whole ordeal left Nicole with a bitter taste in her mouth, souring what could have been a great time. She wished Dad were still home. He would have signed with a flourish and been happy to do so.

The bell rang, signaling the end of seventh period and the start of the pep rally. Nicole heaved a sigh as she packed up her French textbooks. She didn't want to go to the rally. Yeah, sure, it was for the basketball team, but now with Sarah gone, the excitement of bouncing balls around the court seemed dull.

"You're a million miles away, Haught," Mr. Dooley said. He was the only teacher who she'd let get away with last-naming her. She had a fondness for the guy. The first day of class he had flitted about the classroom in a purple polka-dotted bowtie, parlez-vous-ing all over the place, and Nicole's gaydar had pinged beyond belief.

She shrugged. "Sorry, sir," she said. "I'll do better tomorrow."

He nodded. "You hear anything from Sarah?" he asked after a moment.

Nicole shook her head. "No," she said dejectedly. "They don't let them have any contact with the outside world." She scoffed. "You know, sinners like me."

Mr. Dooley smiled. "Well, though the situation isn't good, we still can't fault her parents for trying to do right by their daughter."

"I guess not."

"And besides, reparative therapy isn't all bad."

Nicole looked at him in disbelief. "Seriously?"

He laughed quietly. "My parents sent me to such a place when I was young. That's where I met my first boyfriend."

Nicole smiled. "Thanks," she nodded. "For cheering me up." She headed for the door.

"See you at meeting on Thursday, yes?"

"Yes, sir," Nicole answered, and closed the door behind her.

After stopping by her locker, she slowly made her way to the library. Nicole was an exceptional student, and rarely skipped class. When she did, however, she spent her time in the back corner, sitting in one of the two comfy chairs, nose buried in a true crime novel. She could hardly be reprimanded for reading, now could she?

She gave Mrs. James, the ancient librarian, a cursory nod, then made her way to the isolated corner. She paused, surprised to find one of the chairs already occupied.

Laurie.

Nicole sighed. Startled, Laurie dropped People magazine in her lap, then recovered. "Oh, hi," she said.

"Hey. I was just going to read here during the rally, but I'll leave you alone." Nicole and Laurie weren't enemies, but they were hardly friends. She turned to leave. She could read at a table.

"No, wait," Laurie said. "It's okay. You can stay." Nicole hesitated. "Seriously," Laurie answered, so Nicole sat in the other chair.

She waited for Laurie to speak again, but she didn't. But she didn't turn her attention back to the magazine either. Finally, Nicole's curiosity got the best of her. "Why are you skipping the pep rally?" she asked. "Aren't you a cheerleader?"

Laurie raised her eyebrows. "I could ask the same of you!" she retorted. "Why are you missing the pep rally? Aren't you a star basketball player?"

She hadn't asked meanly, so Nicole smiled and held up her hands in mock surrender. "You got me," she answered. "I'm a truant." Then she answered seriously. "And it's really not the same without Sarah."

Laurie nodded. "I heard about that. At least, I mean, if the rumors are true."

Nicole shrugged. "Not sure what the rumors are, but yeah, my mom walked in on us…"

Laurie interrupted. "Were you, like, doing it?"

Nicole rolled her eyes. "Hardly." She smiled, not sure why she was confiding in someone who used to tease her mercilessly. Loneliness, perhaps. "Well, maybe if we hadn't been interrupted." She smiled and leaned back in the chair. "Anyhow, my mom freaked out."

"I thought she knew about you!" Laurie exclaimed. "I mean, we all do!"

Nicole shrugged. "I know, I thought so too. I mean, I guess I never outright told her. I mean, I knew I liked girls, the world knew I liked girls, I figured my own mother knew…" She trailed off. "Anyhow, she hit the roof and called Sarah's mom to tell her to stay away from me."

"And instead of just passing on the message, Sarah's mom sent her to gay therapy camp," Laurie finished. "I was hoping those rumors weren't true. That's so old-fashioned."

Nicole nodded. "Yep." She paused for a moment. "And you know what's so sad?" Laurie shook her head. "It wasn't even like she was my first love, or like I was going to marry her or anything. We were just casually dating. Really, she was just my best friend." Nicole smiled wryly. "I don't know why I'm telling you this," she said. "It's not like we talk anymore. Not since we were nine, anyway."

Laurie blushed. "Angelica and I were jealous of you," she confessed. Nicole looked confused. "Yep," Laurie continued. "We were jealous that all the guys liked you and let you play with them. We were jealous that you were good at sports and pretty and smart… so we just started being mean. And then we just … well… Here we are now."

"Huh." Nicole hadn't expected that, and wasn't sure how to respond. Instead, she said, "Okay, so enough about my life. Why are you skipping the rally?"

"Kind of the same as you," Laurie answered. "I caught Angelica making out with my boyfriend, so we're in a fight. I don't want to cheer with her."

Nicole chuckled. "It's a shame we have to go away in a few weekends for tournaments and spend all that time with people we don't really like."

Laurie nodded. Then she said, "This may be out of line," and a grin crept up on her face, "but wouldn't you like being at the rally right now? I mean, you like the ladies, right? Wouldn't you like to see the cheerleaders in action?"

Nicole laughed. "Yeah, whatever," she said. "They're cheering for the boys' team anyhow. And, unless there's a cute cheerleader giving me a private dance, I'll take a rain check."

The bell rang, signaling the end of the pep rally and the school day. The girls stood up. "I'll walk you to practice," Nicole said, "seeing as how we're going to the same place." She looked at Laurie and grinned devilishly. "But just as a friend."

Laurie laughed. "I would be honored."

Over the next few weeks, Nicole found herself glad to have re-found a friend in Laurie. Sure, Laurie wasn't Sarah, but she was someone. Laurie lived alone with her mom, who often worked late on caseloads, so Laurie began coming over to dinner a few nights a week. Nicole was a little envious of how welcoming her mother treated Laurie, yet treated Nicole as if she had the plague. When had that started? Her mom had never been warm and fuzzy, but when had the "Love, Mom" notes stopped having signatures? When did goodnight chats and hugs become a simple knock through a closed door? Was it when her brother went to college? When dad disappeared into the black holes of investigative journalism? Nicole wasn't sure.

Her mom was putting the house on the market in June, and had given Nicole the task of sorting through her dad's things in the garage. Nicole had been avoiding the task, and was glad when one afternoon Laurie assisted her with the task. Nicole boxed up his woodworking tools and wrapped up his pieces, while Laurie swept up chips and dust that had been lying dormant for years.

"You miss him?" she asked Nicole.

Nicole nodded. "All the time. But he was always telling me that investigative journalism was dead, so when he found another journalist with a photographer who chased mysteries in all these remote or odd locations, he went."

"That sounds pretty cool."

"Yeah, he's done articles on church miracles, haunted houses, missing children… the works. Some are neat, but some are sad. He uncovered a child porn ring in this remote region of Nunavut. They were using babies."

"God." Laurie winced. "That's awful." She bent over and stretched so the broom could reach under the workbench. It hit something as she pushed it back. "Hey, what's this?" she questioned, moving under the table. She pulled out a bank box with Nicole's name on it.

Nicole took it and opened the lid. Without looking too carefully, she saw her baby book, a few school pictures, a couple notebooks, along with various other trinkets – a matchbox car, a ticket stub…

"You want to go through it?" Laurie asked.

Nicole both did and didn't. "No," she answered. "Not yet."

The night before the basketball championships, held in Toronto, Nicole was on the phone with Laurie, making plans. There were two buses leaving at 5:00 am, and they would all be staying at the Toronto Days Inn West. It was right by a large high school, and basketball games would alternate through Saturday and Sunday to find the Ontario championship boys and girls teams. Despite the popularity of the event, it was mostly for large schools, with a few invites to rural high schools that didn't get many opportunities to play city teams.

Nicole was complaining about the early leave time, but the first game was at nine. She was going pick up Laurie and head to school at the ass-crack of dawn.

"I could stay over if it would be easier," Laurie offered.

Nicole turned to look at her mom, who was putting away groceries. Her heels clicked across the linoleum. "Mom, can Laurie stay over?" she asked.

Here mom stuck her head out of the refrigerator. "She most certainly may not," she replied. "I don't mind her here for suppers, but not overnight. You know what happened the last time someone was in your bedroom."

Nicole rolled her eyes. She went out of her way to be kind to others, and not sarcastic – after all, she had read that sarcasm was a protest of the weak – but all nice resolve failed when it came to her mother. She turned and said into the phone, "My mom says no. She's afraid we'll be doing it."

"What? I am straight!" Laurie yelled so loud that her mother could hear across the kitchen, and Nicole had to wonder how true that statement actually was. Normally people who protested their straightness with such vehemence were anything but.

"Apparently, she's straight," Nicole informed her mother unnecessarily.

"How will I know that you are being appropriate?" her mother questioned, putting cereal into the pantry a little louder than usual.

"Why don't you press your ear to my door and listen for moans of passion?" Nicole commented, and she probably shouldn't have, guessing from the glare in her mom's eyes. She turned back to the phone. "Okay, no can do," she said. "Supposedly, I'm able to charm a girl right out of her heteronormative lifestyle." Nicole saw her mother raise her eyes to the ceiling and mouth Dear God, my life. "You could sleep on the couch I guess," Nicole continued, "but then I think my mom would sew me into my sheets. You know like they did in colonial times to keep the gents from attacking their ladies in the middle of the night."

Laurie laughed and said she'd be by at 4:30. After saying goodbye, Nicole turned to meet her mother's disappointing gaze.

"It's all my fault," her mother said.

"What is?"

"That you are the way you are."

Nicole thought she was hearing wrong. "What? Why I am the way I am? There's nothing wrong with me! I get good grades, I'm going to college in the fall…"

"Yes, but, you know…"

"Mom, we are not having this conversation again."

Her mom sighed and sat heavily in a dining room chair. "If I had done things differently, perhaps…" She thought for a moment, then continued quietly. "Your father always let you be a free spirit, but I should have reigned you in. I let you make mud pies. I let you play Cops and Robbers with your brother instead of enrolling you in ballet."

"I hate ballet." But Nicole knew that wasn't the point.

"I should have controlled things more. For a better outcome."

Nicole looked seriously at her mom. "Mom," she said, "making me behave as someone I wasn't would have turned me into someone I'm not."

Then her mother turned her head and looked out the window. "But maybe you would have turned out… better," she said to the checkered curtains.

Nicole thought for a moment, then realized something. My mother doesn't like me, she thought. She might love me because she has to, but she doesn't like me. And there's nothing I can do about it.

Normally, the realization that a parent doesn't like their own child could really traumatize someone, but Nicole felt beautifully free. She owed nothing to her mom now. It wouldn't matter. Grades, humor, relationships, kindness… they wouldn't change a thing. And that was fine. Nicole could go to school without worry of who would care for her mother, she could pursue her dreams without fear of disappointment.

She could leave without regret.

That night, Nicole looked through her dad's box. Her box. She laughed at the small mementoes, each bringing back small memories. She found a notebook in which her dad had written "Observations" about Nicole and possible "Conclusions." She read over some things, starting at her birth, smiling.

"Observations: Red wrinkly skin, blotchy face, most beautiful baby. Fuzzy head. Conclusion: A red head?"

"Observations: Loves her brother, sets the table without asking, walks the neighbor girl to school. Conclusion: Kind."

"Observations: Says she might date a woman. Conclusion: She'll play softball."

Nicole laughed aloud at her dad's humor. "Wrong on that one, Dad," she said to the book. "But not entirely."

She flipped through the rest of her father's conclusions, and then, as she was just about to close the notebook, she caught a letter on the last page.

"Dear Nicole," it read, "I hope you find this sometime soon. I could have left it on your dresser, but you always did like a surprise letter." She remembered loving finding sticky note messages in her lunch box in elementary school.

Nicole looked at the date at the top of the page. Three years ago.

"I hope you can forgive me for leaving. Please know that it really is to pursue my career. It's not because I'm leaving your mother or that I don't love or care about you. It's simply because this is my calling. I hope you can understand that, and I have sincere hopes that when you know what you want to do with your life, and where you want to go, and who you want to love, that you will follow those dreams with relentless pursuit.

"Know that I am extremely proud of you and all you have become. I cherished our times when you were younger (before you had a busy social life!) in which you would bare your soul to me while pummeling the punching bag. Rehashing bad moments from school might have been the worst moments of your day, but believe me, they were the best of mine. I miss those times with you. Even know, as I pen this at my workbench, I hear the imaginary thump of the bag and lilt of your voice, even though I know you are out with friends.

"As a writer, I never favored brevity, so I will do my best not to ramble on. I close in telling you that if you are not dating someone, I'm sure you will be soon, and I don't want you to settle for just anyone. Many years ago, you gave me a list of qualities you would look for in a woman: smart, likes scary movies and animals, kind, and pretty (though the last was not a requirement). I encourage you to use this as somewhat of a vetting list. I do hope that you are as happy in your future relationship as I am with your mother. And when you find someone you really care about, don't give her up without a fight.

"Please write me at my PO Box. I'm sorry I can't be more detailed in my first location, but it is for safety reasons that I cannot be more specific. I will always write back.

"Love, Dad."

Nicole smiled as she closed the letter. She would write her dad, she decided. She'd invite him to her graduation. It was a slim chance he'd make it, but she could ask nonetheless. She would write to him about the basketball team, becoming friends again with Laurie, the fear of college.

Nicole felt tired, and set the notebook back in the box. The last thing she noticed was a small package. She unwrapped it to see a roughly carved small bird. She smiled at the memory of making it, how it hadn't taken her as long as she had anticipated. Her dad had helped her insert a hook and string it on a leather cord. It had only taken her three afternoons, and when finished, she had taken it to school in search of the small little girl in the unicorn costume. But she hadn't known the girl's name and no one else had either. The secretary finally figured it out, but informed Nicole the girl had moved with no forwarding address. Nicole had been devastated. She wasn't sure why she felt the girl had needed the bird, it was just a hunch. But when she had seen the small little unicorn practically crying in the hallway, she had known without a doubt that she, Nicole, was the one who needed to help her. It was if a voice in her head told her that by taking this small child's hand, her life would be irrevocably changed.

And yet, that little voice must have been in her imagination, as her life hadn't changed after a simple trip to the office, and the girl had vanished anyhow.

Despite the memory, Nicole was proud of the little bird, child-like yes, but it was simple and sweet. And it reminded her of her dad. She decided she'd wear it herself as somewhat of a talisman. As she balled up the bird's wrapping, she saw a quick scribble from her dad.

"Your best carving," he had scrawled. "Remember the sculpture story? And in case you didn't know, you, Nicole, are the bird in the wood. Now go and save the world!"

Nicole flattened the paper and put it in her nightstand. She put the bird beside her alarm clock and turned out her bedside lamp.

"I'll try, Dad, I'll try," she said, and she rolled on her side, falling into sleep.