Wendelin Van Draanen - Flipped

It’s not really necessary to look over the Bakers’ fence. You can see almost as well looking through it. But Garrett kept sticking his head up, so I figured I should too, although in the back of my mind I was aware that Garrett didn’t have to live in this neighborhood — I did.

The backyard was a mess. Big surprise. The bushes were out of control, there was some kind of hodgepodge wood-and-wire coop off to one side, and the yard wasn’t grass, it was highly fertilized dirt.

Garrett was the first to notice their dog, sacked out on the patio between two sorry-looking folding chairs. He points at him and says, “You think he’s going to give us trouble?”

“We’re not going to be here long enough to get in trouble! Where are those stupid chickens?”

“Probably in the coop,” he says, then picks up a rock and throws it at the mess of plywood and chicken wire.

At first all we hear is a bunch of feathers flapping, but then one of the birds comes fluttering out. Not very far, but enough so we can see it’s got feathers and rubbery red stuff.

“So?” I ask him. “Is that a rooster?”

He shrugs. “Looks like a chicken to me.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugs again. “Just does.”

We watch it scratching at the dirt for a minute, and then I ask, “What’s a hen, anyway?”

“A hen?”

“Yeah. You got roosters, you got chickens, and then there’s hens. What’s a hen?”

“It’s one of those,” he says, pointing into the Bakers’ backyard.

“Then what’s a chicken?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. “What are you talking about?”

“Chickens! What’s a chicken?”

He takes a step back from me and says, “Brycie boy, you are losin’ it. That’s a chicken!” He stoops down to pick up another rock, and he’s just about to let it fly when the sliding-glass door to the back patio opens up and Juli steps outside.

We both duck. And as we’re checking her out through the fence, I say, “When did she get home?”

Garrett grumbles, “While you were losing it about chickens.” Then he whispers, “But hey, this’ll work great. She’s got a basket, right? She’s probably coming out to collect eggs.”

First she had to get all mushy with that mangy mutt of hers. She got down and nuzzled and ruffled and patted and hugged, telling him what a good boy he was. And when she finally let him go back to sleep, she had to stop and coo at the bird Garrett had scared out, and then she started singing. Singing. At the top of her lungs, she goes, “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outsi-ye-yide, I’ve got the month of May. I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talkin’ ’bout my little gir-ur-rls… ” She looks inside the coop and coos, “Hello, Flo! Good afternoon, Bonnie! Come on out, punkin!”

The coop wasn’t big enough for her to walk in. It was more like a mini lean-to shack that even her dog would have trouble crawling in. Does that stop Juli Baker? No. She gets down on her hands and knees and dives right in. Chickens come squawking and flapping out, and pretty soon the yard’s full of birds, and all we can see of Juli is her poop-covered shoes.

That’s not all we can hear, though. She’s warbling inside that coop, going, “I don’t need money, no fortune or faaa-ya-yame. I got all the riches, baby, anyone can claim. Well, I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way? My girls. Talkin’ ’bout my little gir-ur-rls, my girls… ”

At this point I wasn’t checking the chickens out for rubbery red stuff or feathers. I was looking at the bottom of Juli Baker’s feet, wondering how in the world a person could be so happy tunneling through a dilapidated chicken coop with poop stuck all over her shoes.

Garrett got me back on track. “They’re all chickens,” he says. “Look at ’em.”

I quit checking out Juli’s shoes and started checking out birds. The first thing I did was count them. One-two-three-four-five-six. All accounted for. After all, how could anyone forget she’d hatched six? It was the all-time school record — everyone in the county had heard about that.

But I was not really sure how to ask Garrett about what he had said. Yeah, they were all chickens, but what did that mean? I sure didn’t want him coming down on me again, but it still didn’t make sense. Finally I asked him, “You mean there’s no rooster?”

“Correctomundo.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugged. “Roosters strut.”

“Strut.”

“That’s right. And look — none of them have long feathers. Or very much of that rubbery red stuff.” He nodded. “Yeah. They’re definitely all chickens.”

That night my father got right to the point. “So, son, mission accomplished?” he asked as he stabbed into a mountain of fettuccine and whirled his fork around.

I attacked my noodles too and gave him a smile. “Uhhuh,” I said as I sat up tall to deliver the news. “They’re all chickens.”

The turning of his fork came to a grinding halt. “And… ?”

I could tell something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I tried to keep the smile plastered on my face as I said, “And what?”

He rested his fork and stared at me. “Is that what she said? ‘They’re all chickens’?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

“Then exactly what did she say?”

“Uh… she didn’t exactly say anything.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I went over there and took a look for myself.” I tried very hard to sound like this was a major accomplishment, but he wasn’t buying.

“You didn’t ask her?”

“I didn’t have to. Garrett knows a lot about chickens, and we went over there and found out for ourselves.”

Lynetta came back from rinsing the Romano sauce off her seven and a half noodles, then reached for the salt and scowled at me, saying, “You’re the chicken.”

“Lynetta!” my mother said. “Be nice.”

Lynetta stopped shaking the salt. “Mother, he spied. You get it? He went over there and looked over the fence. Are you saying you’re okay with that?”

My mom turned to me. “Bryce? Is that true?”

Everyone was staring at me now, and I felt like I had to save face. “What’s the big deal? You told me to find out about her chickens, and I found out about her chickens!”

“Brawk-brawk-brawk!” my sister whispered.

My father still wasn’t eating. “And what you found out,” he said, like he was measuring every word, “was that they’re all… chickens.”

“Right.”

He sighed, then took that bite of noodles and chewed it for the longest time.

It felt like I was sinking fast, but I couldn’t figure out why. So I tried to bail out with, “And you guys can go ahead and eat those eggs, but there’s no way I’m going to touch them, so don’t even ask.”

My mother’s looking back and forth from my dad to me while she eats her salad, and I can tell she’s waiting for him to address my adventure as a neighborhood operative. But since he’s not saying anything, she clears her throat and says, “Why’s that?”

“Because there’s… well, there’s… I don’t know how to say this nicely.”

“Just say it,” my father snaps.

“Well, there’s, you know, excrement everywhere.”

“Oh, gross!” my sister says, throwing down her fork.

“You mean chicken droppings?” my mother asks.

“Yeah. There’s not even a lawn. It’s all dirt and, uh, you know, chicken turds. The chickens walk in it and peck through it and… ”

“Oh, gross!” Lynetta wails.