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THEN

Penn Deaton looked three years younger than thirteen With his thin ars, he was the tiniest out of the four of us, and always picked last during gy with the telescope his grandfather had given hi a ball around

I didn’t really get the whole bird thing and couldn’t pick out a northern bird to save my life, but I sat with him in the tree house nestled deep in the woods behind his house,over the edge One ofprecariously fro would probably end with ent care I was always surprised that Penn would couessed he was into birds more than he was scared

There were other things I could be doing instead of sitting here waiting for Penn to see whatever he wanted to see before we , for starters I loved doing that The feeling ofas my sneakers thuh school, I was going to join the cross county team and the track team

I could’ve already gone to Gavin’s house He wasn’t allowed out after school right now because he’d set off the bottle rockets he found in his parents’ garage last weekend He was still grounded for another billion years But he’d gotten a new game system that hadn’t been taken away from him and ere still allowed to visit Jensen was probably already over there, waiting on Penn and me He didn’t have the patience required to sit quietly in a tree house and watch for birds Jensen was always picked first in gya a ball around

None of our parents ever tried to keep the four of us apart, even if ere in major trouble Since eleether We were peas to each other’s pods, as h that was kind of a weird saying, but ere our own little group and ere best friends

Thingsthings were starting to change though, and I really didn’t understand why

Gavin didn’t like spending time in the tree house anymore and sometimes he blushed and acted weird Everyone wanted to be around Jensen at school, especially the girls

I bit down on my lip as my stomach tumbled like my flip-flop had

Myover the three of us I wasn’t growing at all Glancing down at hed I was the same as I was last year and the year before and the year before that Still incredibly flat chested Still mistaken for a boy if I had row boobs like the other girls in my class, whichother than the girl as oftenout with

Ugh

I don’t even knohy I cared if he woke up toirl It was stupid, I decided as I picked atto break ed, because neither had Penn, and even though with each passingharder and harder for him, he was still the same old Penn I sort of loved him more for that

“There!” Penn whispered excitedly “Right there, Ella”

I looked up, frowning and squinting toward the tree he was pointing at It took s with a splash of red across its breast

I shuddered as the bird hopped to the branch below it, shaking the leaves “I don’t like that kind”

Penn glanced down atthe silvery shaft near the eyepiece lens His dark brown eyes glimmered with excitement “Why? They’re beautiful”

“I don’t know” I pulledfurther into the tree, where it found a leafy hidey-hole I took off my one lonely flip-flop “It looks like its throat was slit and it bled all over itself”

His mouth dropped open “That’sthat’s sick”

I giggled “It’s true”

“Never looked at it that way Huh” He dipped his head back to the eyepiece and I sed a sigh We weren’t heading to Gavin’s anytime soon “They’re my favorite species”

I hadn’t forgotten that

Cardinals were Penn’s favorite

NOW