1. Tweety
The door creaks open. I stand on tiptoes and, grasping the door knob, peer down the basement staircase
from the top step. Daylight pierces through the small rectangular windows tucked into the corners where
the walls meet the ceiling. All is quiet. The echo of the wings of a bird flapping against the bars of a cage
breaks the silence, sounding like a stick scraping against a long iron fence.
“C’mon, let’s go down before your mom gets back,” says Fraze, looking over my shoulder. I turn
around and look up at him. He smiles. Fraze’s in the same class as my older sister. My mom babysits him
after school until his father gets home from work.
“That boy’s as naughty as they come,” she always says when she closes the door behind him, after
Fraze’s dad has picked him up.
We walk down the squeaky basement steps. The beams of sunlight coming through the
windows reveal floating dust particles that drift down like falling snow. On one side of the room, a
sectional sofa faces an old TV. An orange plastic rifle lies beside a Nintendo console on the floor. My pops
and I hunt virtual ducks some nights after watching the Toronto Raptors play. They usually lose, but I like
seeing Pops get excited when they almost win a game.
A giant wooden desk stands opposite the sofa. Several leather briefcases sit underneath the desk.
Family portraits line the walls. Fraze and I walk to the desk and look up. Suspended from the ceiling,
hangs the bird cage.
Tweety, a white cockatoo, stares down at us. Fraze rolls out a grey office chair. He climbs up on it and
the chair tips back, almost throwing him off like a riled-up bull. After stretching out his arms and catching
his balance, he reaches up to the cage. His fingertips fall about an inch short. He lowers himself into the
chair and lets his legs dangle.
“Hmmmm,” he says, looking up at Tweety.
Fraze grabs the edge of the desk and pushes off, propelling himself into a slow rotation. As the chair
spins, his eyes move from object to object. When the chair finally stops turning, he spots a dictionary—and
not your average dictionary. Thousands upon thousands of pages rest between the hard covers, with about
a foot between them, and at least a billion words.
Fraze stands up and makes his way to the dictionary. He is as strong as some of the big kids on the
playground. He wiggles the book out of its spot from an upper shelf. The dictionary falls onto the desk,
landing on its back with a loud thud. Loose papers fly in the air, gliding here and there and to the ground.
“Help me lift it,” he says.
I walk over to the desk.
“One, two, three,” we say and hoist the dictionary onto the chair. The book must weigh at least a
thousand pounds, but it gives Fraze the extra height he needs. He climbs up the
dictionary-chair ladder and grabs the base of the cage with both hands, pushes it up and unhooks it from
the ceiling.
“Got it.”

2. Tweety clings to the topmost corner of the cage and flaps her wings fast. Fraze bends down and
passes the cage to me. I look inside. Tweety jumps onto a wooden perch and nibbles on the tip of my
finger. She stops and looks up at me, blinks, and then nibbles again.
“Are you sure she’ll like it?” I ask.
“Of course she will. My bird loves it,” Fraze replies, a long smile spreading across his face. “They like
it more than flying.”
I place the cage on the floor. We sit down beside it and cross our legs. Fraze looks around again.
“We need something to put her in.” His eyes again scan the room. He glances at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“What if she gets hurt?”
“Quit being a girl,” Fraze says.
“I’m not a girl!”
“We’ll use that in the corner.” Fraze points to a tall blue vase with painted red flowers. He stands up
and walks over to the vase, picks it up, and sits back down beside me and the bird cage. He pulls out the
plastic flowers in the vase and tosses them into the air. They scatter to the floor.
Tweety shuffles from side to side on her wooden perch, and bobs her head high and low with rhythm.
Fraze unlatches the cage door, slides it open, and places his hand inside. Tweety’s wings flap rapidly
against the bars and the familiar sound echoes again. Fraze wraps his hand around her back and pins her
wings down. The yellow and white feathers on Tweety’s head stand up. She makes a noise like an alarm
clock mixed with a squeaky box spring, a sound I’ve never heard her make before.
“I don’t know,” I tell Fraze.
“Quit being a girl,” Fraze says again. “I’m older than you. Just trust me. Tweety is trapped in a cage
all day. If you were a bird stuck in a cage, wouldn’t you want to be free and have fun?”
“I guess so.”
Fraze shoves Tweety into the vase.
“Quick, grab the lid from that ice cream box over there,” he shouts.
I run and grab the empty ice cream box. Fraze snatches the lid. He removes his left hand from the
opening of the vase, and with his right hand, swiftly covers the vessel with the lid,
muffling the noises Tweety makes. Fraze hands me the vase. I take hold of it, making sure to keep the lid
firmly in place. I turn the vase sideways, and shift it back and forth.
“C’mon, shake it like I how I told you to before,” he says.
I shake harder. I hear Tweety thump against the sides of the vase.
“The harder you shake it, the more fun she’ll have. It’s like a roller coaster ride for birds,” Fraze says.
I shake the vase as hard as I can, until I pant.
I stop, and listen. Water drips from the faucet in the basement kitchen. “She’s so quiet now,” I say.
“We should probably put her back into the cage before we get into trouble.”
I remove the lid. Tweety doesn’t come out.
I lift the vase and look inside. It’s too dark to see anything. I put my hand inside the vase and feel
something wet. I pull out my hand and see blood. I drop the vase. Tweety tumbles out. She doesn’t look
like Tweety anymore. She completely still. I stare at her. She doesn’t stare back.
I lean over her. “Tweety, wake up.”
Tweety lies there, surrounded by the plastic flowers.