Wild Bird

Shortly after Wren’s confessions about Meadow, she receives more letters from home. On the previous mail day, she got a letter from her father describing his own camping experiences as a child, and a letter each from Annabella and Mo, but nothing from her mother. This time, there is nothing from Mo or her father, but Annabella and her mother have both sent something. Wren knows she must write back if she is to advance to Elk; Mia and Shalayne have already advanced, and Hannah wants to join them.

Annabella’s letter is a printout of an e-card showing two sisters hugging. She claims she wants their relationship to get back to this and adds a note that the girl in the article is Meadow. Confused, Wren opens the typed envelope from her mother, which contains a printed news article with the headline, “Senior Assault Leads to Drug Bust” (221), and a picture of Nico in handcuffs.

The news article describes a drug bust in a fancy neighborhood, in which Nico and Meadow are arrested. Wren wonders if being at camp has saved her from being arrested as well, for if she were still at home, she might have been involved, too. However, she is more terrified about her mother’s handwritten line at the end of the article that reads, “We have accessed your text history” (223).

Hannah comes into the tent, and seeing Wren’s expression, reads the article. She is appalled to learn that Meadow was found in possession of heroin and attacked an old man while she was high. Wren remembers Hannah’s addiction and feels ashamed of the fact that while she herself never used the drug, she did deliver it for Nico and Biggy. A number of confessions spill out of Wren. She relates that a drunken Meadow once tried to suffocate her in her sleep in retaliation for gatekeeping Nico. She also admits that she fanned Meadow’s jealousy by making up stories of things she did with Nico, like getting high on heroin and breaking into houses to steal things. Wren remembers that she mostly texted these lies to Meadow, and by now, her parents have undoubtedly read these messages.

Wren tells Hannah how she cut up Annabella’s clothes and slashed her father’s tires. She also describes the damage she caused to her mother’s piano, which was passed down to her by Wren’s grandmother. The home of Wren’s grandmother in Europe was once occupied by Nazis, who played that piano while her family hid upstairs; it is now a matter of family pride that the piano survived to see better days. Wren confesses to carving a swastika onto the piano because she knew that doing so would hurt her mother more than anything else.

Holed up in her tent, Wren ruminates on the moment when her mother discovered the swastika. Her mother’s scream had resonated through the house, and her father had dragged Wren down from her room, where Wren had been drinking, to demand why she would do something like this. In retaliation, an intoxicated Wren had taken a baseball bat and smashed up whatever she could in the house, until her father finally tackled her and Wren passed out. She woke up with her hands tied behind her back in her room. She hobbled to the window to see her parents talking to the police. After the police officers left, she watched her parents sob their hearts out with their arms around each other. At the time, Wren had felt victorious, for her parents and sister all seemed scared of her in the days that followed. In retrospect, Wren recognizes that her parents had been crying as though they were grieving someone’s death.

Hannah tells Tara what Wren confessed, and Tara pleads with Wren to let her feelings out. However, a panicked and overwhelmed Wren is unable to do so and begs for something to help numb the feelings. Tara confers with the other counsellors, and Michelle informs Wren that she must go on a quest. Wren knows this means that she will be spending three days alone in the desert. As instructed, she packs everything except water and rations, which will be provided. Michelle leads Wren blindfolded to a spot in the desert where Mokov is waiting for her. He addresses Wren as “Wild Bird” and disappears into the brush, asking her to follow him.

Mokov doesn’t answer any of Wren’s questions about the length of the hike; instead, he urges her to “to choose a new direction for [her] heart” (237) to make her journey easier. They eventually stop at a canyon overlooking a river, and Mokov tells her a story about the Eagle, who has been the leader of the birds because of how high he can fly. One day, the Lark, Crow, and Hawk, who have been practicing their flight, challenge the Eagle. Each of the birds eventually drops of exhaustion as the Eagle continues to soar higher; however, when the Eagle finally tires, the Wren, which was hiding on Eagle’s shoulders, lifts up and flies higher. For a time, Wren is crowned leader, but the other birds soon tire of his boastfulness, with the Owl questioning who lifted the Wren to great heights to begin with. The Eagle is eventually reinstated as the leader of the birds.

Wren resents being told a story about her namesake’s boastfulness, and while Mokov asserts that she is not the Wren in the story, he suggests that it is wise for everyone to respect those who lift them up. He then leaves her alone, forecasting rain for the night and advising her to “[l]et [her] heart open up like the skies” (240).

Aware that complaining will not save her from the elements, Wren begins to look around. She plans to set up shelter first and then find firewood and organize her food. Scanning her surroundings, she realizes that there are notches in the canyon walls that could very well work as caves. She walks around looking for the right-sized cave, triumphantly clambering into one shortly after the rain starts.

Wren shelters for a while in the cave but begins to feel uneasy, thinking about all the rainwater she could be catching. She sets out her billypot to catch some water and discovers that none of her food rations can be consumed without heating. Realizing that she needs to collect firewood before the rain drenches all the wood, she puts on her poncho and steps out, collecting a fair amount of still-dry dead branches and kindling. As Wren waits out the rain in the cave, her thoughts drift to her parents. In a bid to avoid thinking about them, Wren keeps herself busy and goes out into the rain again, setting up her tarp and tent after all.

Wren remembers a day hike on which John showed the Grizzlies some pictographs painted by Indigenous Americans on a cave wall; the pictographs dated back to 7000 BC. Wren wonders what story she would draw on the wall of the cave she is currently inhabiting. The rain stops, and Wren rushes to move everything into the tent, set up a fire, and cook herself a meal. As she eats her pasta, she reflects on how much food her family consumed and wasted back home, and how she is now used to subsisting on the bare essentials. She also remembers Mokov's story and Tara’s encouragement to let her feelings out but angrily pushes these thoughts away.

Wren wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night to find that it is snowing. Thrilled, she plays in the fresh snow for a while before settling back into her sleeping bag, excited to tell Mo about it. However, this thought brings back memories of home and of the damage she caused to her mother’s piano. She falls asleep enumerating a litany of reasons that led to her actions, but she still feels horrible when she wakes up. The fire is dead, and Wren remembers Michelle telling her that if she can start a fire in the wild, she can start a fire inside herself; however, despite the number of fires Wren has started, she feels like the one inside her is going out. She is seized by the sudden urge to apologize to her parents.

Wren finally pens a 14-page letter to her parents, beginning with a promise to tell them the truth and asking them to listen. She writes about everything, from her feelings of loneliness and isolation following the move to how she befriended Meadow; she also confesses the misdeeds they indulged in and the work she did for Nico. Wren ends her letter with an apology for what she did to the piano.

As Wren gathers more firewood, she realizes that her good friendship with Hannah has caused her to reject Meadow as a friend, and she no longer harbors any romantic feelings toward Nico. Hannah has showed her what friendship truly means, and Hannah’s descriptions of the intensity of her addiction have made Wren recoil from the thought of Nico and the things she did for him. She realizes that she also needs to write a letter to Annabella. Wren’s letter to Annabella begins with anger but moves to descriptions of how hurt she felt at Annabella’s perceived abandonment. After pouring out “three years of hate and hurt and heartache” (262) onto paper, Wren finally sobs her heart out.

Wren goes for a walk to clear her head and finds coyote scat. The dung is fresh and close to her tent, so she gathers things to arm herself against the coyote: a pinyon branch which she fashions into a club, a pile of rocks, and more firewood to create a bonfire.

Wren makes vegetable soup and wraps a potato in foil to bake in the coals, then wanders out again. From the sun, she calculates that it is almost seven o’clock in the evening. She realizes that she has spent an entire day surviving the wild and has engaged with her own feelings. If she were back home, she would be on her phone at this time of day; now, however, she hasn’t even thought about her phone in weeks. As she walks back to her tent, she contemplates the kind of person she wants to be.

As Wren eats her baked potato, she reflects on how she has never thought about who she wants to be. She knows that she is more than just a daughter or a sister, and she doesn’t want to be a mini-Annabella, as she once hoped, or an angry version of herself. Wren finishes her meal and packs away the foil, planning a breakfast of pancakes for the next morning. Suddenly, she realizes that the happiness she was chasing with every drink, high, or defiant act, has found her in the moment that she realized herself to be capable of surviving in the wild. She feels “unstoppable” and decides that this is who she wants to be.

By firelight, Wren writes a long list titled “Who I Want to Be” (273), ignoring all the questioning voices in her head. By the time she finishes, it is nighttime. She looks up and marvels at the beauty of the starlit sky and crescent moon. Wren adds to her list that she’d like to be someone her brother is not afraid of, as well as someone who remembers to look up, remembering the stars even in the daytime.

Wren pens one last apology note to Mo and creates a detailed, illustrated version of her desert adventure. She finally crawls into her sleeping bag and dreams about being trapped in a car with Nico and Biggy. She wakes up with a start and realizes that two coyotes are right outside her tent. Suddenly emboldened, Wren yells and charges them with the club, pelting them with stones until they retreat into the night. She then stays up until dawn, keeping the fire burning, then makes breakfast and savors each bite.

As Wren cleans up and packs her things, she finds a small, gray-and-white feather. She doesn’t know which bird left it behind, but she decides to braid it into her hair and finally claims and accepts her name. After packing, she heads to the cave and uses a piece of charcoal to make a series of pictographs on the wall: “a cloud with rain, then fire, the moon and stars, a coyote, and a picture of [herself] with [a] club” (280). She ends with the sun rising over a rock, and a bird inside a heart.