By Rachel Furey
The day Jordie calls out sick, Skip says you have to be the albatross. It’s 11:50am on a Saturday morning. A pack of rascally eleven-year-olds will arrive at noon for a birthday party. Skip hands you the two parts of the costume right there by the shallow end of the old school pool he drained and remade into a ball pit. The pool tiles breathe cold air through your shoddy sneakers, and the balls in the pool twinkle dully under the crackling overhead lighting. The albatross’s torso is crafted from a pumpkin costume. She’s too symmetrical and round. In your hand, the costume’s heavier than expected. The feathers glued to the pumpkin tickle your palm.
The pumpkin albatross poofs to the tiled deck.
“Careful,” Skip says. He’s in his usual jeans and polo, a ballcap he keeps lifting to adjust his messy gray hair. “We can’t lose too many feathers.” Jordie once lost so many feathers one of the kids asked if she was dying.
He takes the bird’s head from your hands before you can drop it. It’s made from a football helmet with a traffic cone attached to form a beak. He lifts the helmet onto your head. The helmet sinks onto your scalp, pulses against your ears. Now you understand why Jordie always had her beak skimming down. You thought maybe it was good bird play—the albatross was always looking for fish. No, it’s the traffic cone. It pulls your head that way.
Though the outside of the outfit has been painted by one of Skip’s wife’s artist friends—been made to look more like an albatross than you would expect a pumpkin costume, football helmet, and traffic cone could—the orange inside of the traffic cone glares in your vision. It takes up enough space on the football helmet that you can barely see out to the pool tiles, the ball pit. The plastic smell of the cone sticks like gum in your throat. You suck in shallow breaths.
Skip settles the cloth flaps that hang from the helmet against your neck. The sensation to itch sprouts from every hair.
“I don’t have the tights,” you say, hoping this might save you. You’re not sure the words push their way out of the helmet. Jordie always wears bronze leggings to serve as bird legs. You’re in the standard khakis that are expected of you as the albatross assistant who helps Jordie to steer with limited vision, keeps kids from jumping on the albatross, calms the scared ones—a task you’re ill equipped for because you think it healthy to fear a bird several times its real size, and you generally fail at calming yourself.
“Doesn’t matter to the kids,” he says. He guides you stepping into the pumpkin body, which would be much easier if he hadn’t planted the helmet first. Your legs make it through the top and he lifts the pumpkin up, pulling your arms through the wing flaps. Your arms rest against the rotund body, its spherical shape held via aluminum wires running along the inside of the pumpkin. Your forearms scratch against feathers. You take one small step forward and make three realizations. 1. You will only be able to take tiny bird steps in the costume. 2. You can’t hug yourself due to the whole pumpkin and wing ordeal. 3. If there is an emergency, you will never escape the costume in time.
A sound escapes you. You want to believe it’s an albatross call, but you have no clue. You’re not even sure what you’re trying to say.
Skip lowers his voice, says, “Will you be okay in there?”
“Yes,” you say because Skip lets you stay half an hour after the kids leave, lets you sink into the ball pit and close your eyes. It’s the very best kind of hug—hollow plastic balls pushing at your limbs and torso in a consistent, even manner. You’re saving your paycheck to buy a small ball pit for your bedroom. There’s also the matter of you maybe loving Jordie, though you love her more when she’s in the costume, when she can’t talk as much and the two of you have to be close to navigate the tiled deck. It’s easier to understand her bird movements than her human ones.
Maybe Skip asked at all because he knows you’re probably autistic; your mom told him last summer when he first hired you. What he can’t possibly know is that tomorrow, after nearly a year wait, you’ll finally begin the official diagnosing process. Your therapist, your mom, and at least half the teachers have already decided, so you’re not sure why you have to suffer through the process. You’re not even sure which way you want it to go.
Skip smooths down some helmet feathers. Or at least that’s your guess when he pats your helmet. “Okay now. You’ll be an excellent albatross.”
“Hey, boss,” Louie calls from a corner you can’t find through the helmet. “Pizza’s here.” Louie mainly mans the table that’s over by the diving boards at the deep end, which has been outfitted with a huge trampoline. He mostly dishes out pizza slices and fills glasses of punch. No one will use the trampoline today. There’s an extra permission form and cost for that. The eleven-year-old gremlins will have to stick to the ball pit.
Skip leaves you to meet Louie at the table. You shuffle over to the wall so it can help hold you up. You clink the helmet back against it to give your beak and neck a rest.
“She’s going to be a lousy bird,” you hear Louie say.
You’ve hated Louie months before now, figure Skip hired him because he’s a high school heartthrob that brings in middle-schoolers too naïve to recognize his cruelty. Louie really isn’t that good at pouring punch, spills all the time. You know because when you’re not on albatross assistance duty, you’re the one mopping up spills. Louie gets paid to talk, and maybe that’s fair because you’re not much good at talking.
“Well.” Suddenly Louie’s beside you. “I’m on albatross duty today.”
You resist the urge to say: female-female pairs are common in albatrosses.
He squeezes your hand too tightly. “Get away from the wall. You’ll ruin the costume. Besides, you look like a dying bird.”
“Maybe,” you say. “Albatrosses commonly die from eating too much plastic.” The words sputter through the helmet.
“So you do talk. You can shut your trap though cuz the kids are coming.” He hurries to the door.
The door clinks open and kids pour in. You hear them more than see them. You tilt your head back to try to find the rectangle windows near the ceiling. But you can’t stretch your beak-cone back far enough to see them. You feel too far from the sun, the lake. As an albatross, you really shouldn’t be landlocked in Missouri, but the bird wasn’t chosen for this city or even the kids. Skip’s wife used to teach science here back when this place was a school. She made research trips in the summer to study albatrosses. She passed from cancer two years ago.
The music pounds on and now you’re grateful for your cone-head, the helmet that helps block the sound. Presents plunk onto the table next to the pizza. Louie takes you by the wing and leads you over to the table, pulling you faster than you ever directed Jordie to go. You let her operate at her own speed, close enough to redirect her body if she misstepped, but never dragging her by the wing.
You flap as if this might convince Louie to let go.
He squeezes more tightly. Then, when you’re in front of the presents table—you can tell by the bright line of wrapping you see through the small line of sight—he lets go.
The chicken dance song sputters on. It doesn’t matter that you’re an albatross. You have to dance. Jordie hated it too, though she made it look a lot easier than it feels now inside this pumpkin. Your neck already aches, and your arms are a lot shorter than Jordie’s. It’s all you can do to get them around the pumpkin so they can clap.
Louie breaks out into a laugh. The kids follow. Eleven-year-olds are the worst because they’re old enough to know how to be mean, but not smart enough to do it subtly. You’re fifteen and pretty darn good at missing subtle meanness. It’s a survival strategy of sorts—better to be oblivious. When you first started working here, all you could think about was that time years ago you jumped into this very shallow end back when it was filled with water instead of balls. Your swimsuit was too old, too thin. You really cannonballed. Popped an entire strap, emerged bare-chested. The boys drew pictures of you for the rest of that year.
It’s your second summer working here and in this iteration of the pool, you’ve managed to escape relatively unscathed. Once a kid wrote fuck you in magic marker on your khakis. And you’ve been pinched many times; you chalk that up to fear of the albatross. But you’ve never been inside the albatross before. It’s hot, dank. You wonder if Skip’s had the oxygen levels tested in here, wonder if the inside of an albatross beak is really this orange, if the kids even know the bird is an albatross.
“You sure are a fat chicken,” one of them says.
“I’m an albatross,” you shout through the helmet.
Louie roars into a laugh while shoving a slice of pizza into his mouth.
“Obese chicken!”
The kids roar. You can only see smudges of them. Their voices seem high-pitched like mostly girls, but at that age, could be boys, too. You keep your arms pumping. The song’s coming to an end. You spin a little, trying to determine how many adults are around (you count Skip but not Louie). Sometimes parents stay because they’re helicopter parents or just don’t trust Skip. Skip has a clean record—no major incidents in nearly two years—but when you buy a wing of an old school—the very same school your now dead wife worked at—and turn it into a play zone when you should be retired, people tend to think you have an issue with moving on. You’ve heard parents whisper lots of things about Skip: stuck, in limbo, lost in grief.
Doesn’t seem like any parents stuck around today, which may mean Skip is your only hope if something goes wrong. After the chicken dance, party goers get pictures with the albatross. That means you stand in front of the huge poster of albatrosses in flight—a picture Skip’s wife, Ms. Marty, took on one of her trips. It’s your favorite visual in the whole place, and it makes you miss Ms. Marty each time you glance at it. She let you color in her classroom during recess when everything got too loud. She taught you how to draw an albatross in a series of shapes so it didn’t seem that hard at all.
You can’t really see the other albatrosses through the helmet, but you slide a hand against the smooth poster to remember they’re there. Louie organizes the kids into a line to take pictures on his phone that will get emailed out later. Of course, some have their own phones they want him to take pictures with. You respect the shy kids, the ones that hug their middle while standing a good couple feet from you. You also respect the ones that are too cool for the albatross—the ones that strike their own pose like you aren’t there at all. It’s not too bad standing there by the poster; you even close your eyes for a few beats, try to pretend you’re an albatross sailing over the ocean. They can go years without touching land.
Then, a kid hugs you—well, your pumpkin body. It’s actually a marvelous hug because you can’t feel the hug—no limbs touching your torso—but you feel the echo of it in your pumpkin suit. It’s almost as good as the ball pit but not quite because the ball pit takes the full of you in. The next kid squeezes your wing, which isn’t as good because your wing is your arm. You rumble a bird grumble, and the kid lets go.
Louie corrals the kids back over to the pizza table, which means it’s time for your break while they open presents. No one’s going to focus on the albatross when presents are at hand. You wonder if you should call Jordie. Check in on her. You only have her number for work purposes, but this feels work-related. Maybe she could give you tips on your closing number: the albatross’s dive into the ball pit. This is how the albatross’s role ends at all the parties. Doesn’t matter that the bird loses more feathers every time. The birthday kid gets to help push the bird in, or at least it’s carefully orchestrated to look that way. It’s the albatross assistant’s most important moment. The albatross must enter at the correct angle to avoid twisting an ankle or worse. You’re pretty sure Louie won’t give a shit. Maybe Jordie can make a quick enough recovery to help you out for five minutes?
You push through the door, pop off the helmet, the pumpkin suit. The heat and humidity sear outside, but it’s still a relief to be out of the suit. You settle the suit on the sidewalk and drop onto the wooden bench Skip had engraved with his wife’s name. It’s where Jordie sits on each of her breaks. You pull your phone out. Remind yourself the break’s only ten minutes. Not enough time to perfect a text to Jordie. You write: Hope you feel better soon! Then realize, there’s no question—nothing to prompt a response. I’m the albatross. Any tips on the dive?
A pickup truck shrieks by, music blaring. It’s almost enough to make you drop your phone. It raises your line of vision. You’re staring across the road at the Dairy Queen, heat rising from the blacktop in waves. You think you see Jordie but figure it must be a mirage. You stare harder and she solidifies: she’s there with a couple other girls you think you recognize from school. She’s wearing cargos—the very best kind of shorts because they allow you to be prepared for anything—and a tank top the color of seafoam. She’s beautiful. She reaches into her pocket, hands the cashier cash. You try to figure out what kind of sick she is, the sort of illnesses your mom let you eat ice cream during. Strep throat? Though she shouldn’t be out spreading it to friends. You only have so much time before your break ends, before she gets her ice cream and starts eating, so you stand and shout across the road, “Jorrdie!”
She turns, one quick swoop, like a bird changing direction in flight. Her eyes go wide and then, just as gracefully as before, she swoop-turns back to her friends. Maybe you’re so disheveled by the albatross costume she doesn’t recognize you, so you shout again, louder this time: “Jordie!” This time, one of her friends looks. Jordie pulls them right back, pulls them into a small circle like the huddle you couldn’t join in gym class because it was bodies too close. You know now she’s heard, and it’s a sting that makes it feel like that wooden bench is splintering underneath you. You remember the night Mom emerged from her bedroom, where she’d built a tall stack of autism books checked out from the library. She came to you in your bedroom, sat on the edge of your bed, where you were almost asleep, dreaming of a ball pit. She cradled one of your feet because she knew you could stand that much, said, “I think I’ve figured it out. I think we’ll get you some real help.” You wanted to ask what she meant by help—did she mean it for her or you? You’re still not sure.
“Lily.” It’s Skip, his head poked through the door. “Are you ready for your water landing?” His eyes are wide and bright in the sun. You want to ask why this part of the show means so much to him. Sure, the kids laugh and scramble into the ball pit to join the albatross. Once, Jordie lost her helmet. It was a crew of boys that day, and the birthday boy bragged he’d decapitated an albatross. But why does it bring Skip joy to see such an artfully made costume plunge into plastic balls that are spewing microplastics? You once gathered the courage to suggest wooden balls—you play the wood block in band and have a real appreciation for its sound—and he asked which company sold those. Turns out, no one. So the albatross has to dive into the plastic killing real members of its species.
You haven’t moved from the bench. Jordie got some kind of sundae, which means really she’s not sick at all. You point toward her thinking Skip might notice. But he’s already picking up the costume pieces. Jordie knows she left you with Louie, must know how wrong this could all go. You get up before Skip can plunk on the helmet; you step into the pumpkin body first. Then the helmet. Sweat bubbles in places it shouldn’t. You quickly push back through the door, following that narrow line of sight. You dream of the moment your shift ends and you’ll pull a Brandi Chastain, ridding yourself of the polo that bites at your neck and biking home in your sports bra. Armpits breathing fresh air.
Skip guides you by your pumpkin. The birthday girl must be the one in the leopard tights and Barbie shirt. Even through your slit of vision, she’s smiling wide, rubbing pizza-greased fingers together. You don’t understand how this could be exciting. At eleven, you begged off birthday parties, begged off arcades, asked if you could rent out the ball pit alone. You would have found the albatross a scientifically inaccurate monstrosity.
Skip hands you off to Louie, who laughs or grunts—it’s hard to decipher. “I’ve been wanting to see you plunge,” he says. Skip takes his seat in the lifeguard chair with the flotation ring. He never does anything with the ring. It’s just something to hold. He must get the best view there, up in that seat. Jordie once said Skip must be really messed up, like watching the albatross dive every day was some kind of twisted reliving of his wife’s death. You’ve heard parents whisper about it, too—the same parents who keep bringing their kids back.
Louie pulls you right to the edge. Plastic balls bob in your line of vision. You smell the pizza hands of the girl beside you. You remember the cannonball in gym class that ended with a bare chest. You remember the way Ms. Marty gently rocked you in the rocking chair in the back of her room after. She kept the lights off all afternoon for you. The pool lights don’t turn off, or Skip won’t turn them off. You’re working with a narrow line of vision anyway.
Louie pulls the kid close. She’s short, which is good for you. She can barely reach the fattest part of your pumpkin body. Louie starts rattling off directions, but you don’t want this drawn out long. You shuffle toward the edge of the pool. You and Skip lock eye-beak contact for a second. You hug your wings to your pumpkin body. Cannonball into the balls. You sail for longer than seems possible—maybe it’s all the air in your pumpkin suit. The birthday kid shrieks with an emotion you can’t name. Then your pumpkin body skims, skids across the balls. It’s a beautiful sensation—your body a sphere rolling against smaller spheres. Only round surfaces, like the circles Ms. Marty used to draw an albatross. Even your helmet gets in on the action. You’re looking up at the lights like you’re backstroking. There’s one line of light and the rest orange cone like a sunrise. It occurs to you that maybe Skip isn’t watching his wife dive over and over.
He’s continuing to bring her in for a landing.
For a second, maybe two, it’s just the sound of your body rolling over the balls. Your limbs loose, calm. You want to ask Jordie tomorrow if she feels like she’s backstroking when she goes in. If the lights are too bright. You want to tell her it takes albatrosses years to learn their mating dances. You think, just maybe.
The slam of child bodies jumping in rolls your pumpkin. Feathers spill loose. Frenzied limbs pump. Balls bounce off your pumpkin, off your helmet, which is worse, the sound amplified. Vibrations stir in every inch of you. You try not to flinch. For months after Mom called about testing, you tried not to flinch, as if this would make her call off the appointment.
Louie roars into laughter. It makes the kids giggle. One of them climbs your pumpkin body. Your helmet plunges under, balls filling your line of vision. You forget to breathe. Worry about microplastics clogging your lungs. You’re an albatross with a belly full of plastic.
“Albatross under!” Louie shouts.
It gives you the energy to kick your legs down and your head up, your traffic cone beak piercing the surface, your wings sifting balls. Your line of vision’s back. Skip’s standing; he’s tossing you the flotation ring. It sails. You lose it in the bright overhead lighting, catch only a glimpse of it before it lands miraculously near you. One of the kids elbows you in the helmet. Your bird head smashes the balls. Still, you reach for the flotation ring. Your fingers find it. Hold on.
Then you’re sailing again, your pumpkin body bobbing in the balls—shedding feathers as you drift past the kids. Skip’s stronger than you ever guessed, pulls you in quickly. You let out a honk that you know doesn’t sound much like an albatross, but the kids can’t tell the difference and it loosens something in your chest. You’re backstroking again. You know when you arrive home, when you tell Mom this story, she’ll never believe you. Think it’s a story you invented. She’ll believe the rigid pile of books in her room. She’ll take her notes to the assessment today to this person who knows nothing about you. And you—you will have to keep the shedding feathers of your story afloat.
Rachel Furey is a neurodivergent writer and Associate Professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Her work has appeared in journals such as Sou’wester, Nimrod International Journal, and Baltimore Review. She’s a winner of The Briar Cliff Review’s Creative Nonfiction contest, Hunger Mountain’s Katherine Paterson Prize, and Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize.