maybe her father had an excuse He was a pilot and flew all the time Her little porthole wasn’t much compared to the big cockpit windows he usually looked through A dinging sound announced that somebody was going to come on the pa Skye knew who she wanted it to be Good afternoon this is your captain Skye smiled Her father gave her hand a little squeeze We will be starting our descent into Costa Rica I hope you have all enjoyed your flight It’s a beautiful day and we have a perfect Skye above Skye laughed out loud Your mother is talking about you again her father said Although I’m sure you’re not completely perfect especially when it comes to cleaning your room I cleaned it before we left Skye said Her closet on the other hand was a different thing completely 3
Skye’s mother like her father was a pilot It was on a flight that her parents had first met It was also on a flight that they had gotten engaged They had flown around the world together And that’s why they knew that when they had a baby they would name her Skye Flying had been part of Skye’s life since before she could remember She traveled with her parents often Everybody assumed that because both of her parents were pilots her name was Skye and she loved to fly she would someday become a pilot too Skye thought being a pilot would be great but what she really wanted to be when she grew up was a bird Of course she knew that she couldn’t ever really be a bird She’d learned that the hard way when she was five and jumped off the roof of their garage She had flapped her wings as hard as she could Not only did she not lift off she didn’t even slow down At least not until she hit the ground Her mother told her she was lucky she hadn’t broken 4
a leg and made her promise that she wouldn’t do it again Since she couldn’t become a bird Skye surrounded herself with them instead Her room was filled with pictures of birds Her bedspread was covered in birds She had books about birds She had little stuffed animal birds Her family hung bird feeders outside the kitchen window She had a tree house in the backyard that she called her nest Sitting up there she would sometimes be surrounded by birds that perched on the branches Best of all she had two canaries Zig and Zag who lived in a big cage in the corner of her room Zig and Zag loved to sing and would often wake her up in the morning with their melodies When she closed the door to her room they were allowed to fly all around She liked to pretend that she too was a canary She loved having them as pets but sometimes she felt bad that Zig and Zag weren’t free to fly wherever they liked 5
