The Broken Wing

Here is a story. As you read, ask what you would do.

Fiction, founded on truth. The people in this story are imagined; the choice they face is real.

Ruby’s grandfather carved birds. He sat on his back step with a pocketknife and a block of pine. By supper there would be a wren, small enough to hide in your fist, with a tail that tipped up like it was about to sing. He gave Ruby one on her ninth birthday. It lived on her windowsill and never went anywhere.

Then her friend Sam had to give a talk about birds at school. “Could I borrow the wren?” he asked. “Just for one day. I’ll be so careful. I promise.”

Ruby almost said no. But Sam was her friend, and he looked so hopeful, so she wrapped the wren in a sock and put it in his hand.

He gave it back two days later in a paper bag. “Thanks,” he said, and walked off fast.

That night Ruby unwrapped the sock. The left wing had snapped clean off. Someone had glued it back on, crooked, with a hard yellow line of glue across the feathers her grandfather had cut one by one.

She cried into her pillow so her mom would not hear.

The next morning Sam was waiting by her locker. His face was red. “I dropped it on the bus,” he said. “I tried to fix it. I should have told you. I’m really sorry, Ruby.”

Ruby didn’t say anything. She just walked to class.

At lunch her friend Tess leaned across the table. “Everybody should know what he did,” Tess said. “Don’t sit with him. Make him pay for it. He owes you.”