Disclaimer: I don't even own the title!
"But why are they all in pens? Why can't they walk around freely like you and me?"
"Mark, sweetie, I just told you," his mother answered. "If they walked around here, they might hurt a visitor."
"No, I mean, why aren't they at their home?"
"This is their home."
He shook his head. At six years old, he was already beginning to notice the cruel politics at the zoo. He gave one last look at the penned-in camel. The large, brown creature looked back at him with big, hopeful eyes. To Mark, it seemed the gentle creature was agreeing with him, he didn't want to be caged in either. As a large pie fell from behind the camel, it almost smiled before stepping forward and lying down. Mark crinkled his nose. Maybe not.
"Let's go, honey," Mrs. Cohen tugged on his hand, which was tightly gripping hers. The other was wrapped around the red string of the balloon he asked for upon arriving.
Mark followed his mother into a small building that housed the lions and tigers. There were some other children banging on the banging on the glass while and pressing their noses against it and making faces. He stood back, watching the lions fight and growl at a distance.
"Seen enough of the big cats, Mark?" Mrs. Cohen gave his hand a gentle squeeze.
"How come Lukas isn't this big?" Mark asked, referring to their pet cat at home.
"Well, Lukas is a house cat, lions are wild cats," Mrs. Cohen explained.
"But Lukas would be a wild cat if we weren't holding him captive in the house," Mark argued.
"No, Lukas is a domestic cat. If he didn't live with us or another loving family, he wouldn't survive in the wild."
"But these cats are wild; they can survive in the wild. Why did the zookeepers take them away from home?"
"Sometimes they're better off here," she replied. "The zoo is a lot safer for them."
"Do you think they miss their mommies?" Mark asked. "If someone took me away from you and put me in a cage, I would miss you."
She smiled down at him. "I wouldn't let them take you away from me."
"Good," he replied, still pitying the lions trapped inside the confines of glass walls.
"What do you say we go over to the aviary?" She pulled him away from the lions. "The birds are so pretty."
"Okay," he replied, tagging along after his mother.
When they reached the aviary, large plexi-glass containers of colorful birds surrounded them. The room was alive with chirping and cawing. Mark, still holding tight to his balloon, rested his hands on the bar in front of the container.
"I'm going to see the talking parrot right over there," Mrs. Cohen said. "Can you stay here and not wander off?"
Mark nodded, watching his mother walk two feet away to the zookeeper holding a babbling parrot.
Focusing his ice blue eyes on the container, he caught sight of something else. Next to it was a medium-sized cage with a single, bright yellow canary inside. Although it was flapping its wings, it could barely get itself off the perch in the center of the cage. He cautiously lifted his hand from the bar and gave the canary a small wave.
"Sad, isn't it?" A voice caught him off-guard.
"Huh?" Mark looked up to see an African-American boy a little older than he was standing next to him, looking at the same bird.
"The bird, it can't fly. I said it's sad."
"Oh. Yeah," Mark replied. "I think this entire place is sad. Sad for the animals."
The other boy nodded. "I hate zoos."
"This is my first time to a zoo," Mark admitted. "Hopefully last."
The other boy laughed. "I'm only here because it's my younger sister's birthday and she wanted to come here."
Mark nodded. "I'm Mark," he said, ignoring every rule his mother ever gave him about talking to strangers. This boy seemed harmless, so he didn't think telling him is name would matter.
"I'm Tommy," he said. His eyes wandered back to the caged animal. Sighing, he said, "What's the point of having wings if you can't fly? If you're going to spend the rest of your life in a cage?"
Mark nodded. "Like the lions. They're so big, but they can't run around like they could if they were at their real home."
"It's philosophy, Mark."
"Huh?" He gave the older boy a confused look.
"I'm good with numbers," he started his explanation, "like math and stuff. I'm only in sixth grade, but I take algebra with the eighth graders. No matter how often they change the combination, I can always open my parents' safe. I never take anything; I just like playing around with the dials and stuff. They know that, and I guess that's why they change it, to give me something to do. I can get into my sister's diary too."
"I can add and subtract three digit numbers," Mark said, trying to make himself sound a little intelligent.
Tommy laughed. "I like math too. Wouldn't it be stupid if I didn't use that to my advantage in life? I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I want something to do with math and numbers. You know?"
Mark nodded. "Numbers are your wings."
"Exactly," Collins replied with a smile. "Watch this." He winked at the little boy and leaned over the bar. With a quick flick of his fingers, the cage door opened and the yellow canary fluttered out.
Screams of surprise and shouts of frazzled zookeepers rang out through the aviary as visitors darted out of the way of the flustered bird and the zookeepers tried to capture it. The keepers realized their attempts were in vain, as the bright yellow bird fluttered out into the world.
Mark, now seventeen, sat in the dining room of his house, the final forms necessary to assure his place at Brown University sitting on his lap. The form was almost complete. Name, date of birth, social security number, and every other personal fact a college would care to know about a student was written in the appropriate boxes.
He stared pensively at the paper. Only one box remained blank. Intended major. His father had been pushing pre-med since Mark started high school in advanced math and science classes. Mark didn't want to be a doctor. He wasn't very good with people, especially complaining people, and he was barely able to remain conscious during pig dissection during ninth grade honors biology.
He looked up at the ceiling, back to the paper on his lap, towards the table, at his old, beat up camera… The camera he got for his tenth birthday, the camera that he had not left home without since age ten, the camera that earned him compliments from every relative who watched his home movies.
Out of nowhere, an old memory came back to him. He remembered that day when he was six years old and talking to that boy at the zoo.
"What's the point of having wings if you can't fly? If you're going to spend the rest of your life in a cage?"
Mark knew he was decent with a camera, good at catching people in the right moments. He loved his camera; he loved what he did with his camera.
His eyes fluttered back and forth from the pre-med box to the arts box. He knew he had to choose his prison wisely. Why spend the rest of his life in the confines of a hospital saving people when he would rather be out in the world, capturing the present, freezing time.
The camera was Mark's wings, and he was ready to fly.
-fin