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sickly. If Jared hadn’t spotted the little bald spot under the bird’s chin, he wouldn’t have been recognizable. The seagull had taken to living under a crevasse in the sidewalk. The entire turn of events disturbed Jared and on the way home his dad explained that since Fatso didn’t have any handouts during the restoration he had starved. This further disturbed Jared that Fatso could die so easily without help, so he decided on the next trip he’d bring three slices of bread to get his friend healthy again.
    Then one afternoon, his dad went down to the park for a company softball game by the lake. Jared’s mother was working late, so he had to stay at the sitter’s. That night his parents had an awful fight and his dad came in to say goodnight before leaving. Before he could even say a word, Jared asked about Fatso. His dad looked at him, blinking, as though he didn’t understand the question. He said he hadn’t looked for Fatso that day, but it sure seemed like his dad knew more, like there was something he wouldn’t tell Jared. That’s how adults were. They never thought kids could handle knowing everything.
    Especially when it came to their relationship. Even though they didn’t say so, Jared knew his parents were having big troubles. For this, he found himself more and more at the sitter’s house. Bella Boyd. The woman had to be on meth or crack or something speedy, but nobody could say she didn’t always put that hyperactive heart to good use. She was affordable and took Jared at the drop of a hat, never cared if he got sick, would never make him stay home. And he liked Bella. She was funny and had more energy than his two parents combined.
    Problem was… she was pretty liberal when it came to safety. Bella had no problem letting Jared stroll up to stray dogs and pet them—had no issue with him climbing the tallest trees in the neighborhood wearing shorts and sandals—or letting him explore the entire neighborhood while she drank Miller High Life in a lounge chair on the driveway, reading kissy books. Jared was nearly six years old, after all. All of Bella’s sons had done the same thing. One was in jail for grand theft auto and the other was a bouncer at a strip club in Vegas, but as she liked to mention, “they both made it quite safely to adulthood on my watch.”
    So the day Jared decided to go to the park and see for himself what had happened to Fatso, his sitter thought he was collecting tadpoles at the run-off channel up the street. Jared made up the tadpoles—he’d seen them on Sesame Street once, the letter “T” episode. He didn’t even know if tadpoles existed in California, but obviously Bella had no trouble buying into his plan. Her show, The View, was on, and that meant she got to pace the living room with a mug of coffee and cuss out the stupid things someone was bound to say.
    Jared knew the walk to the lake well, his parent’s apartment being only one block away. He missed having his dad with him today. Since his parents stopped loving each other, he had seen less and less of the man. His dad must have been angry at Jared, too, for some reason. Maybe it was because of whatever happened to Fatso? That seemed to be the moment his dad went away to live at his friend Carl’s place. His eyes had told something meaningful and sad the night he said goodbye and rather than ask what his mother had done to make him in so much pain, Jared had chickened out and asked about Fatso. Oh those eyes of his, they could have said many things, but Jared read them only as, how can you ask me about that bird right now?
    Which only made Jared want to know even more. What had become of his big, fat feathered friend? It would be the answer to so many of his questions. Armed with a single heel of Wonder Bread, he headed down the hill, past the sundried run-off channel where his imaginary tadpoles lived.
    He looked both ways like he was supposed to and hurried across the street. His eyes shot over to the