"Maya?! How did you get all of these birds? There is like... like twenty of them! Maybe thirty!" I exclaimed.

"Well apparently they gave us twenty five birds for the price of two. Good deal right?" Maya calmly replied.

"SQAWK! Good deal, twenty five for price of two, good deal si!" Paco exclaimed. The other twenty five birds began to fly around the room landing on wooden planks that we set up as makeshift branches on the walls. Ay mi, Veinticinco aves?

"When is the land lord coming?" I asked.

"He should be here in ten minutes". Maya said.

"I'll go behind the stage and prepare Paco for the show, he is the star of the show and needs to be perfect!" Maggie exclaimed, and with that she took off with Paco to the backstage where I guess they would prepare. Suprisingly the other birds were behaving well.

"Wow Maya I'm impressed," I said "these birds aren't making a wreck, they aren't tearing down the curtains, knocking things over, destroying the stage lights or making a mess". And of course I just jinxed us. Oops. Suddenly the birds began to fly all at once and they began to shower the place in feathers and knock over some plants we set up. They flew into the window blinds and ripped them apart and tore the stage curtain. They were even pecking Theo!

"Hey, stop it!" Theo said half laughing and half annoyed. Then I heard Maggie scream and a parrot was trying to peck her. Suddenly Paco swooped in like a fighter plane and tackled the hostile parrot. It then evolved into an aerial dog fight between the two and they took off into the confusion.

Next thing I know I'm down on the ground next to Maya who I guess ran into me. "How much time do we have?" she asked.

I looked at my watch "Uh... five minutes-" "CINCO MINUTOS?!" Now Maya sprung into action mode.

"Okay, we need to catch all of these birds and-" The sound of a door opening cut Maya off. In stepped a tall man wearing a blazer with a black tie. "What the?" he exclaimed in confusion.

"I'm looking for a certain... Maya Santos... has anyone seen her? She told me there was a bird show and well... I wasn't expecting this". I shoved Maya off the stage towards the man. I then hopped off the stage myself and followed suit.

"Ah, hello Maya," the man said in a Deep voice. "Is everything under control? It seems tha-" Maya interjected and cut him off "Oh yes! Everything is quite all right. Just take a seat here and wait a minute". She then turned to me and whispered "Stall him."

"Stall him? How am I supposed to do that?" But Maya already took off to the backstage.

The man turned to me "So... who are you?".

"I'm Miguel Santos, Maya's sister. I apologize for the uh... mess". He nodded and continued to speak.

"Well this is partly why I banned pets in the apartment, they can cause a mess when not under control".

I spoke up, "Well uh, you see uh... pets can be fun for the whole family. Our Paco is such a nice parrot. He can even speak sentences!".

Suddenly the entire stage curtain crashed down to the floor and made a loud bang. Uh-oh... dios mio. How is Maya going to get out of this? Speaking of which Maggie and Theo stood on the stage still trying to catch the loose birds while Maya slowly trudged over here.

She sighed and spoke in a disappointed voice. "I'm uh, sorry for the mess. We were just trying to prove to you that Paco should be allowed to stay in our building. I just thought that a bird show would do this, except instead of getting two more birds we got twenty five more!" and with that Paco came crashing to the ground and tumbled up next to me. I picked him up and put him on my arm and held him up.

The man smiled "Well, I can see that you really do care about your pet bird. But I do believe I am having dinner with your family in two hours. Why don't you clean up here and get ready?" And with that he got up and left the room-if you could still call it a "room".

So for the next hour and a half we cleaned up the place and threw out all the trash and locked the extra birds up for transport back to where they came from. We were exhausted and Theo and Maggie went home while Maya, Paco and I went home to our apartment.

I opened the door and stumbled in falling on the relaxing cushioned couch. I then got up to allow Maya to fall on the couch and went to my room where I fell onto my bed. I was shot and was going to go to sleep but...

"Miguel!"

"Huh? What...?" I said tiredly. "Oh no! No, no, no, no, no. Listen Maya. We should just let Mama do all the talking. Look how it ended when we tried to work it out ourselves? It ended in disaster".

"Si, I suppose you're right Miguelito". I was releaved that Maya wasn't going to do any more scheming and planning.

"Now you should go get some rest. Dinner is going to be ready soon". I said. Maya left the room and I fell asleep for the few minutes I had to rest.

Authors Note: This is not the end of the story as you can probably see. There will at least be one last chapter focusing on the dinner experience but I would appreciate any feedback. Notably on the writing itself, like how it is structured. In the last chapter I kind of grouped all of my quotations together in chunky paragraphs but in this chapter I spaced them out in separate paragraphs. What is better? The spaced out versions?