“When you are getting ready to undertake a great adventure, the Ordinary World knows somehow and clings to you” – Christopher Vogler

I hope you can understand why I am writing this. I am not making fun of you. I am just trying to write what I know.

This really is for you, Herald.

Chapter 1

We’re at the local library, my brother Keegan and me; not the three story college library with the hi-tech flat screened super computers and the mega fast time warping copy machines where you copy first and pay later, no—- we’re at the hole in the wall library where the senior citizens bring their grandkids to sit on the graham cracker incrusted circle rug and thumb through old copies of Where the Wild Things Are and Goodnight Moon. I tell my brother that he won’t find the book he’s looking for here, that he never finds the books he’s looking for here. I tell him, as we’re getting out of the car and marching up the steps, You’ll just end up having mom go buy your stupid book at the mall for a hundred bucks. I tell him, Keegan— you’re a college student, we should be at the college library. But this is the one he’s always gone to, ever since we were in diapers and Grammy and Pop-pop took us to check out books on dinosaurs and punch keys on the monochrome Mac 2-E’s. So here we are.

He’s taking a survey class on birds. He is supposed to go “birding” as he puts it. Birding. The goal is to identify as many birds as possible and then write summaries about each. He’s told me five times what the book is called. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds. He has the ISBN memorized too, which he is rattling off like a million times per second in a hushed voice as we traverse the three non-fiction isles. He says, Keep your eyes peeled. He says, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds. I say, I know, I know, I know. He says, Zero dash three nine four dash four one four one zero dash one. I ask him how that will help us find it if it isn’t even here. I look at him but he is still looking for the impossible book. His sea green eyes are twitchy for a few seconds; and my guess is that’s the side effect of purposely ignoring me.