Flight Of The Puffin

Jack Galenos is outside playing basketball with one of the younger kids at his 17-student school in Vermont. The boy reminds Jack of his brother, Alex, who died when he fell from a ladder. Jack recalls how Alex loved glitter and always tracked it everywhere. A woman drives up to the school wearing a suit and high heels, and Jack instantly knows that she isn’t from in town. Jack’s teacher, Mr. Sasko, introduces her as Ms. Duxbury, who works for the state education board.

Mr. Sasko describes Jack as a model student and asks him to give Ms. Duxbury a tour of the two-room school. Jack shows her the playground, classrooms, and bathrooms, and she makes notes and seems to question everything. Afterward, Jack overhears her telling Mr. Sasko that the school’s state funding is at risk if they can’t meet standards, but Jack feels like his school is just fine as it is. Jack loves school, and it became a source of solace after his brother’s death. To help comfort Jack, the other students all sang his favorite song.

Vincent sits on the floor at his school, trying to teach himself geometry and drawing triangles. Vincent loves math and triangles, and he sees triangles in everything. He even thinks of the student body as a triangle, with three groups based on popularity, but he doesn’t feel like he fits into any of them. A boy named Cal comes up to Vincent and bothers him about his T-shirt (which is an old baseball shirt) and then throws him into a locker, where he’s stuck until a teacher walks by. Vincent thinks of his hero, Katherine Johnson, and how math was like a superpower that helped her achieve great things. He wonders how he can use math to do the same.

Vincent lives with his mom in a small apartment, and because she’s artistic, they often don’t see eye to eye. She buys him a T-shirt that depicts a sloth riding a motorcycle, and Vincent knows that other students would tease him if he wore it to school. Instead, he picks out a shirt that he wore to a Katherine Johnson book event: a white button-up with a puffin on it. Vincent feels like the shirt perfectly represents his desire to meet only his own expectations and not feel the need to be what others want him to be.

T writes their letters in free verse poetry form, and the first describes having to sleep on the “wet concrete” (32), being unsafe, and having only their dog to trust.

Jack wakes up early to go hunting with his uncle Sid; his dad normally joins them but is out of town working, as he often is these days. Jack says goodbye to his mother, who is starting her garden for the year, and gets in the truck with his uncle. Jack tells his uncle about Ms. Duxbury, and Uncle Sid reminds Jack that he knows his town and his life best. Jack recalls the first time he helped Uncle Sid catch a buck. The sight of a whole dead animal disturbed Alex, who was five at the time, and he didn’t want to eat it. Their father made Alex sit at the table anyway, and after that, Alex often stayed in his room at dinnertime, drawing pictures of animals. When Jack and his uncle get to the forest and prepare for Jack’s first chance to shoot a turkey, he thinks of Alex and suddenly can’t pull the trigger. His uncle shoots the turkey instead.

Libby is dreaming about paint when she’s awoken by Rex, who came over to get some clothes early in the morning. Libby’s parents both come in to greet him, ignoring the fact that she’s half awake. When the topic of her quitting softball comes up, Rex lectures her because he was the one who taught her how to catch. Libby resents him for making her feel guilty about quitting. After her family leaves the room, Libby looks at her sunrise drawing to cheer herself up. She walks to school and stops outside the art store to admire the paper flowers in the window. She then sees a bush filled with flowers. Most of them are open, but some are closed, and she wonders if her life would be easier if she were more closed off.

Vincent’s mom sees him in the puffin shirt, which he has outgrown, and questions his choice, but Vincent declares that he likes it. He tells his mother about how fast puffins fly and explains that they spend most of the year in the harsh north Atlantic. At school, Cal and his buddies call Vincent “Girl” throughout the day, and Vincent tries to ignore them but can’t help wondering why they chose that particular word. In art class, Vincent paints a blue sky and thinks about putting a puffin in its center, but when he tries, the result disappoints him. When Vincent gets home that night, he cries and wonders why it has to be so difficult to be him.

Jack spends his lunch hours helping out with the younger kids in his class and especially connects with one named Joey. He overhears the two teachers talking about how the loss of state funding could lead to closure of the school. Jack thinks about how much of his life centers around his school and how he always planned to finish eighth grade there. He decides that he must find a way to keep the school’s funding.

Libby must paint over her sunrise, and classmates gawk at her all day. She has an in-school suspension, so she isn’t allowed to be in class. At the end of the day, she walks behind Danielle, who tells Libby’s old friend that Libby and her dad are both bullies. Libby fights the urge to get angry and starts walking home. Along the way, she walks past a dentist’s office where a boy is outside, crying and pleading not to go in. Libby watches as his mother grabs him and pulls him inside, and she feels like she knows exactly what he’s experiencing. Libby decides to leave her sunrise card in a bush for the boy to find and adds the message, “You are not alone!” (53). She hopes that the boy will see it on his way out and goes home feeling happier than before.

T sometimes finds the experience of hunger freeing because it feels like being weightless, but most of the time, it’s an all-consuming thought.