Please note: this was spontaneously posted while on a roadtrip. It will be properly formatted and edited when I have WiFi and a computer.

The late afternoon sun beat down through the canopy, and the warm, humid air was still and silent save for the rustling of foliage as small animals scurried and slithered along the ground, hidden from view. The looming trees, a mix of oak, maple, and birch, cast long shadows across the deep, green carpet of the forest floor, their spindly branches reaching out toward Ava as she made her way deeper into the woods, farther and farther away from the town that her parents said was her new home, although it certainly didn’t feel like it. Twigs scratched at her face and caught on her clothes, as though they didn’t want her there just as much as she didn’t want to be there.

The woods had always been Ava’s favorite place to be during the summer. She and Mandy had spent hours exploring the forest behind her house, disconnected from society until the sun crept below the horizon. Ava wished she could be there with Mandy now, in the treehouse her dad had built when she was young, instead of two hundred miles away in a strange woods and unfamiliar town.

A distant squawk disturbed the silence. Ava turned in the direction of the noise. It sounded again, and she started toward it, curious as to what could be making such a noise. She
pushed her way through the undergrowth, following the sound as it gradually grew louder and louder until she broke into a small clearing. In front of her stood a small wooden structure, not unlike her treehouse, built with weathered boards and a slatted roof. It was on the roof that she spotted the source of the noise. A lanky bird, slightly larger than a blackbird, with black feathers, a long tail, and a long beak, appeared to have its leg caught between two of the boards. The bird flapped its wings in an attempt to fly upwards, but its leg didn’t budge, and it continued to
squawk.

When the bird stared at Ava with an unsettling golden eye, several thoughts crossed her mind. She wanted to free the bird, but she was afraid that might do more harm than good. The bird was frightened, and she doubted it would react well to being handled. Still, she hated to see
it helplessly trapped. After a moment of hesitation, Ava turned around and trudged back the way she came. These things happen to wild animals all the time, don't they? She tried to convince herself. Surely the bird will be able to make it out on its own.

Ava found her bike on the edge of the woods and began peddling in the direction of downtown. She hadn’t spent much time there since she’d moved a week ago, but at this point,
anything sounded better than going home and listening to another one of her mother’s lectures about the importance of making new friends before the school year started, no matter how well-meaning she knew her mother was.

The downtown area was similar to that of where she used to live, but it felt immensely different without Mandy by her side. The streets had the same bustling activity, people coming and going in and out of shops and restaurants. Ava rode past a small, sandy beach where kids were building sandcastles and splashing each other with water. An elderly couple walked hand-in-hand down the sidewalk, stepping out of the way as a young boy barreled past them,
chasing his sister with a large insect in hand as she shrieked and laughed. Their parents were close behind, hurriedly apologizing to the couple as they raced after their children. A group of animated girls clustered in a circle, their voices rising above the din. Ava felt a twinge of jealousy, remembering how she and Mandy used to do the same with their friends. Storefronts were bursting with color, advertising new smoothie flavors and twenty-five percent off on all bathing suits. She passed a display of birdhouses and tiny bird figurines. It reminded her of the bird she’d found in the woods, but she pushed the thought back. She’d determined that leaving the bird alone was the best decision, and she was sticking to it.

Ava stopped in front of a small ice cream parlor on the corner of Second and Main Street. A vibrant sign in the window caught her eye:

DID YOU GET THE SCOOP?
NEW FLAVORS SURE TO MAKE YOU MELT!
JOIN US FOR OUR CREATE-YOUR-OWN
SUNDAE FUNDAY
ON SUNDAY, JUNE 19

Ava stepped through the doorway and immediately ran into one of the workers, a tall boy around her age with shaggy, brown hair and freckles scattered across his cheeks. He dropped a large sundae dish that was topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. The ice cream
smeared down the front of Ava’s shirt before landing on the floor.

“Shoot,” he exclaimed. “I’m so sorry.” He grabbed some napkins from a nearby table and shoved them into her hands, then bent to clean up the floor.

“Flynn, we’re going to need another Peppermint Hot Fudge!” he called. He turned again to Ava. “I’m so, so sorry. We’ll give you a free sundae.”

A girl with a fiery red braid and a striped apron appeared, placing a sundae on the counter. “What did I tell you about assaulting the customers, Jacob? It’s bad for business.” She fixed her intense blue eyes on Ava as Jacob grabbed the sundae off the counter and quickly
delivered it to a sunshine-colored table in the corner. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“I just moved here,” Ava responded, throwing away the napkins soaked with melted ice cream and taking a seat on one of the yellow stools at the sky blue-tile counter. The walls of the
shop were also covered in white-and-blue checkered tile, and a chalkboard behind the counter
listed the day’s flavors. The place had cleared out in the last few minutes, a stark contrast to the chaos that could be seen and heard through the shop’s open door.

Jacob ducked as the red-haired girl tried to smack the back of his head when he returned to the counter. “Way to make a great first impression, Jacob.”

Color rose to his cheeks as he attempted to apologize again, but Ava waved him off. “It’s all right.” She wrinkled her nose. “I just wish it wasn’t mint ice cream.”

The redhead looked Ava dead in the eye. “Watch what you say. In the fifties, when this place first opened, our town had a serial killer named Robert Schlepp. He was on the loose for almost a decade, and rumor has it, after he was gone, future generations continued in his footsteps. They say his favorite flavor of ice cream was our peppermint, and that his descendants will come after anyone who says something bad about it.”

Ava paused, not sure what to make of the girl’s words, until Jacob said, “Don’t listen to Flynn. She’s just upset because she makes the peppermint, and it’s her favorite flavor.” He
ducked as Flynn threw a pen at him. Ava took in the scene with a hint of amusement on her face.

“You got a name, new girl?” Flynn asked.

“Ava Grackle.”

“Nice to meet you, Ava. I’m Flynn Pierce, and the devil’s spawn over there is Jacob Hawthorne, though I’m sure you’ve gathered as much.” Flynn grabbed an ice cream scooper and
a sundae dish. “Now, about that sundae Jacob owes you. Since you obviously have a distaste for
peppermint, which flavor would you like?”

“I like vanilla,” Ava replied. She and Mandy used to take weekly trips to the ice cream parlor during the summer, where they would both order vanilla cones.

“Vanilla? Really?” Flynn complained. “That’s no fun at all. Have you ever tried peanut butter? What about orange creamsicle? That one’s almost as good as the peppermint.”

Ava looked skeptically at the sundae Flynn placed in front of her. It had at least four different flavors of ice cream and a myriad of obscure toppings, including…were those wasabi peas?

“Go on, try it,” Flynn encouraged. “I promise it tastes better than it looks.”

“Trust her. Flynn has a habit of experimenting, but she hasn’t had one bad combination yet,” Jacob assured her.

Ava hesitantly took a bite and was immediately hit with a combination of flavors. It was sweet, salty, tangy, and spicy, but somehow the flavors all blended nicely. It was not what Ava
imagined when she thought of an ice cream sundae, but it wasn’t at all bad.

“See? I told you,” Flynn said. “You have a rare opportunity for a fresh start. You can move on from your sad days of eating plain vanilla and completely reinvent yourself. Preferably into someone with more interesting tastes.”

“Okay, okay, enough vanilla slander. I’m not making fun of you for your favorite ice cream flavor, am I?” Ava pointed out as another customer entered the shop.

“You’re lucky you just missed our afternoon rush,” Flynn said to Ava. “I was about to murder the next person who ordered a turtle sundae. They’re given at least a dozen different flavors to choose from, and they still choose that. Why are people so vanilla? Whose idea was it to even have a Sundae Funday?”

“It was your idea,” Jacob reminded her as he finished up with the customer.

“Right,” Flynn said, clearing away Ava’s empty sundae dish. “Don’t I have the best ideas?”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far,” Jacob said.

“Hush, you, or I’ll have to report you for dropping a sundae for the third time this week,” Flynn threatened. Jacob turned red and looked down at the floor, mumbling something under his breath.

“I can hear you,” Flynn called.

“No, you can’t,” Ava teased.

“Shh,” Flynn said. “He doesn’t know that.”

Ava laughed, for the first time in a week, and it felt so good that she had a smile on her face the whole way home.

The house was empty when Ava arrived. She poured herself a glass of water and changed her shirt, then checked her phone to find an incoming call from Mandy.

Ava started when she realized she’d hardly thought about Mandy at all when she was in the ice cream parlor. That’s new, she thought as she answered her phone.

“Hey,” Mandy’s voice came over the phone, and she immediately started filling Ava in oneverything that had happened in the past few days since she’d left. It had been upwards of 90
degrees consistently, and Mandy said she was practically living at the beach. Her younger sisters had started horseback riding lessons, and her mother’s homemade candle business was finally starting to take off. Apparently, piña colada and coconut scented candles were in high demand this time of year. Ava listened intently until Mandy asked, “So, what about you? How’re you doing?”

“I’m surviving,” Ava replied. She hadn’t done much besides unpack, so she didn’t have anything to tell Mandy about.

Mandy sighed on the other end of the line. “You need to do more than just survive, Ava. I know my best friend, and she would not be satisfied with that.”

“I know,” Ava replied. “I’m just not sure what to do without you.” They’d been friends for as long as she could remember. She’d never needed anyone else.

“I have an idea,” Mandy said. “Go out and live your life. You’re going to need something to tell me about next time we talk. And yeah, it sucks that you had to move away, but that’s not
an excuse. Make some new friends so we have someone cool to hang out with when I come to visit.”

Ava considered Mandy’s words. They reminded her of something Flynn had said earlier: You have a fresh start. You can reinvent yourself. She’d brushed it off as the teasing comment it was, but maybe there was some truth to it. This was her opportunity to learn who she was on her
own. No one here knew her; she could be whoever she wanted to be, and it was foolish to waste it because she was wishing for what could have been.

The bird she’d found earlier that morning rose to the forefront of Ava’s mind. She’d left the bird stuck in the roof of that fort, trapped and vulnerable to predators. The memory of its gaze haunted her. It had been pleading with her to set it free, but she’d been too afraid of what would happen to try and let it go. Now, she decided, she had to at least make sure it was safe.

“You’re right. Thank you,” Ava told Mandy. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.” Ava hung up and sped out the door, hurriedly peddling her bike back to the woods.

○○○

Ava heard the bird before she saw it. It was still cawing, just as loudly and insistently. Ava noticed another bird perched in a nearby birch tree. The bird in the roof would squawk, a
sound like a rusty gate, and the one in the tree would answer, sounding equally as distressed. In the evening light, Ava could now see that the birds weren’t black; they were startlingly beautiful with blue, iridescent feathers covering their heads and glossy, bronze bodies. Ava watched as the bird became so desperate that it used its beak to try to remove its leg. This sight spurred Ava into action.

“Stay right there,” Ava told the bird as she entered the wooden structure in search of something to assist her. Immediately after the words left her mouth, Ava realized how foolish they were. Where else would the bird go?

She emerged with a pair of worn leather gloves, but when she tried to grab the bird, it screeched even louder, flapping its wings in a panic. Ava cursed under her breath, trying to hold down the bird’s wings without injuring it further.

“Stop moving. Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?” she hissed through her teeth. But of course it couldn’t.

The noise coming from the bird in the tree grew louder with each second she was near the trapped bird, which wasn’t helping either.

Finally, she was able to grab hold of the bird, carefully sliding it towards her until it was free of the roof. The bird gradually quieted as she cradled it in her hands. The fear visibly drained out of the bird’s body as Ava soothed it, either realizing she wasn’t a threat or finally giving up. Ava didn’t know which.

Ava then turned her attention to the bird’s leg, the sight of which made her stomach turn. Its leg had become separated at the knee joint, hanging on only by the tendons, the skin and
muscle stripped away. Panic rose into her throat. She didn’t know what to do next. This is all my fault, she thought. I shouldn’t have left it here. I should have come back earlier. I should’ve—

“I wouldn’t have thought your hobbies involved mutilating wild animals, Ava. What are you doing to that bird to make it sound like that?” a familiar voice said, interrupting her racing thoughts.

“Flynn,” Ava breathed. She felt a weight lift off her chest at the fact that she wasn’t alone with the injured bird. “What are you doing here?”

“I live just past those trees. I heard some birds making a lot of noise when I got home, and…” Flynn caught sight of the bird’s leg. “You know, I wasn’t serious about the mutilation.
What happened there?”

“It was stuck in the roof, and it almost ripped off its leg trying to get out, and now…” And now what? There’s no way the bird will survive if we let it go like this. Its leg will weigh it down so it won’t be able to fly, and it’ll get infected, and the bird will die… A sudden clarity came to Ava’s mind. The bird will certainly die if it keeps its leg.

“And now we have to remove its leg,” Ava said, “to give it the best chance at survival.” She paused. “But I don’t have any way to remove it.”

Flynn nodded. “I’m on it,” she replied, disappearing into the trees.

She reappeared a minute later, pocket knife in hand. “My brother uses this for wood carving, but it should do the trick.”

Ava knelt, the bird tight in her grasp, Flynn crouched beside her and carefully pulled the bird’s leg taught. When she pressed the blade to the bird’s tissue, it resumed its panicked squawking, the bird in the tree joining in, creating a cacophony of deafening shrieks. Flynn pulled back, looking at Ava in question.

“I’ve got it,” Ava assured her. “Just do it quickly.”

Flynn looked down again, and within a few seconds, she deliberately cut through the remaining tendons holding together the bird’s leg. The bird thrashed in Ava’s grip, and as soon as Flynn was finished, she let the bird go. It took off into the sky, the bird in the tree close behind it. The bird's leg lay in the dirt, a lonely talisman of transformation.

“I feel like we should bury it,” Ava said, “in honor of the bird or something.”

“We could make it into a necklace,” Flynn suggested. She chuckled at Ava’s horrified expression. “I’m just kidding. I agree. It’ll show respect to the bird, in case, you know, it dies.”

So the two girls dug a shallow grave in the shadow of the birch tree. The setting sun filtered through the trees, bathing the ground in a soft light. The wooden fort was aflame, the golden dusk burning away any trace of the bird’s struggle. In the distance, the calls of the grackles could be heard, farther and farther away until the only sound penetrating the silence of
the woods was the chirping of crickets and the buzzing of cicadas.

Flynn turned to Ava. “The theater is having its weekly Famous Movies Throughout History special tonight. Ironically, they’re showing The Birds. Wanna go?”

Ava couldn’t help but smile. She certainly had something to tell Mandy about. “Why not?”

And with that, Ava led the way into town, rejoining society as the last traces of color in the sky gave way to dark wisps of night.

I moved around a lot as a child, so Ava's thoughts and feelings mirror my own. But the only part that was really based on true events was the part about the bird; I really did find a bird (stuck in the roof of the wood shed in our backyard) that tried to tear its own leg off. My dad took care of it when he got home from work. This was about 3 1/2 years ago.

Rereading this several months after I wrote it, half the stuff I wrote makes me cringe. Including the title. If anyone has any title suggestions, please let me know.

Who was your favorite character?