Suzie’s House 168: A Rare Bird

She looked like a parrot with her hair streaked four different colors on top of blonde, including hot pink. It fluffed out all over the place because she was hanging upside down. Her foot had to be hurting from the rope tied around it. No wait. Was that a rope? Or a garden hose?

The scary part was the way she didn’t seem to notice how bad she had it, just hung there with her arms folded across her chest and a pissed look on her face.

“Need some help?” Ben went down the steps off the back porch before she answered. Gene kind of wished he’d done it first.

“Yeah, sure. If you don’t mind,” she said, like them rescuing her was no big deal.

“Um…” Lisa tried to talk, but was giggled too much. “Gene, this is Tracy. Tracy, Gene.”

“Who?” Tracy put her hands over her head so she could push up from the ground, not bothering to look at anyone.

Gene couldn’t blame her. It was more important to get her down than do the introduction thing. He grabbed the hose where it came over the top of the railing and pulled the slack from her hand stand thing so there was enough to untie the knot at his feet.

Ben stood next to her, looking kind of dweebie, like he didn’t know what to do with himself, heh, heh. Still, he got to be the one to catch her when Gene got the knot loose and eased her down. Not that she needed it.

“Hey, Lisa! Who is who?” Tracy called, bouncing to her feet right away, then staggering when the blood all drained out of her face.

“That’s Ben. I told you about him, right?”

“Oh yeah. The writer.” Tracy did a kind of quick wave thing.

Ben stood a little straighter and smiled.

“And this is Gene.” Lisa gestured toward him.

“Who? You never said anything about a Gene.”

“I didn’t? Are you sure?”

\Gene gave her a hard look. Was he really so unimportant to her?

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Tracy turned toward him and kind of leaned back to wave at him. He gave her a quick nod while stifling the urge to run down the stairs and grab her so she wouldn’t fall over. “Nice to meet you, Gene!” She started up the steps.

“Um.” Lisa looked totally like she had no idea what to do next. She even bit her lip. “So, um, Gene is pretty cool. We just rescued him from his father.”

“You what?” Tracy looked at each of them with this weird expression – her eyebrows up all surprised and her mouth all twisted. “Why’d he need to be rescued from his own father?”

“He beats me,” Gene said simply, and got the fun of seeing Tracy’s eyes bug out. That was cool.

“Oh.”

“When we got to the park, it looked like your dad was going to drag you off.” Ben came up the steps right behind Tracy. He leaned around her to talk.

“He was. He said my mom came back for me, but he was lying.” A year ago he would never have been able to say any of this to anyone, but it was different since he and Ben got to be friends.

Even now he felt a little weird saying it in front of this girl he didn’t know. But the counselor said he needed to be up front about things and not hide the things that were done to him. He could handle this. Even if it made him feel like his guts were half gone since he was so stupid about his mother and father he was actually going to bring a change of clothes and all. Maybe he’d said too much already.

“Wait. You mean to tell me that your father, who beats you, was about to kidnap you when you two stopped him?” Tracy pointed at Ben and Lisa.

“Um… well… yeah.”

“That is so cool!” She clapped her hands, a huge grin on her face.

Gene grinned. Parrot Girl was pretty smart. He got the feeling he was going to like her.

If you enjoy Suzie’s House and would like to see more, please leave a comment. Suzie’s House is powered by its readers.