Read Online Zen and Xander Undone by Amy Kathleen Ryan - Free Book Online Page A

would—”
    â€œâ€”get me out of my comfort zone?” I finish the thought for him. My mom was always saying this. She was probably the only mother in America who
liked
it when her kids were uncomfortable.
    He doesn’t answer. He just smiles.
    Just then the front door slaps open, and Xander is standing on the porch wearing her thready cutoffs, holding three Popsicles. “Who wants root beer?” she asks, knowing Adam will take it.
    Soon all three of us are eating our Popsicles on the porch steps just like in the old days before Xander and Adam started fighting so much.
    â€œRemember that time we found the robin’s egg?” Xander says.
    Adam smiles. “Of course.”
    â€œDidn’t you want to kill it, Xander?” I point out helpfully.
    â€œI just wanted to see what was inside!”
    Even back then, when they were ten and I was eight, our personalities were fully formed. Xander was the scientist. She wanted to break the little blue egg open and look at the bird fetus inside. I thought we should leave it alone and let nature decide. But Adam wanted to save it. He did a whole lot of research on the Web, and he set up a light bulb over a shoebox full of grass clippings, and took hourly temperature readings, adjusting the distance of the bulb from the nest, gently turning the egg every few hours. We watched and waited. To pass the time we fought terrible battles about what to name it. Adam finally won, and we called it Beverly after his grandma. Xander told him it didn’t matter what its name was because it wasn’t possible the egg could have survived the fall from the nest, but he wouldn’t listen to her.
    A week after we found the egg, Adam called us in the middle of the night, his voice high-pitched and panicky. “Come over! It’s hatching!”
    We ran over in our slippers and nightgowns and watched as the little bird poked its way out of the egg, its tiny little beak cracking the shell a millimeter at a time. We were so still and watchful, I found it hard to breathe. When finally Beverly emerged, skinny and oily, we looked at one another like idiots. What now?
    Xander searched out some worms from Mom’s garden, and we minced them up with a razor blade. The baby ate them hungrily, but kept chirruping and squeaking. It didn’t seem happy.
    We tried everything. Eyedroppers full of water. Cut up grasshopper guts. Nothing seemed to work.
    Beverly’s chirping grew weaker and weaker, so the next morning Adam’s mom called the veterinarian, who called the local conservation office. Later that morning, a nice lady came by and took Beverly away. We felt like failures.
    We called every day for the rest of the summer, probably driving them crazy.
    Beverly survived. We even got to witness the day they let her go that autumn. Xander and I wore our Easter dresses from the year before. Adam wore a sweater and a tie. When Beverly flew away, Adam and I clapped, jumping up and down. Xander cried. That’s when she still had a sensitive bone in her body. I’m pretty sure it must have been her left ulna, which she broke later that year.
    â€œI wonder if Beverly is still alive,” Adam says as he tosses his Popsicle stick under the porch stairs where we always toss them. He looks at the maple tree in front of our house as if he expects to see her there.
    â€œThat was pretty amazing, actually. The way you hatched her,” Xander says quietly. She can’t bring herself to look at him, but this rare compliment from Xander is not lost on Adam. He turns to her, an emotion on his face that I’m not sure I understand. All I know is that he never looks at me that way.
    After a long silence, Xander lifts her eyes to Adam’s, and smiles, fidgeting. Then she bolts up from the porch steps. “You guys. It’s almost noon. Let’s go to the bridge!” She jogs off down Olivander Street, toward the rail yard, which we nicknamed Hades