Flight of the Falconater
David Zalubowski
Here's me, Falcon Heene.
Dear diary,
I know I haven’t written in a few days, but there hasn’t been that much to report. Things have been pretty boring around here lately. School still sucks, my brothers are both still total dick-butts and—you guessed it—I still can’t stand being named Falcon. I mean, you would think making fun of me would get old with the kids at school but, no, everyday is like a goddamn Falcon smear campaign: Wedgie. Kick-to-the-balls. Locker door slamming. Me inside.
“Help, I’m stuck in this locker!”
“Who’s there?” from the custodian. “What’s your name, boy?”
“My name’s Falcon.”
“Your name’s what?”
Punch me in the dick a thousand times a day, why don’t you? I don’t know what my parents were thinking… Holy shit, my parents! I totally forgot, diary! You’re never going to believe what happened last week. I fake flew away in a balloon and everyone thought I was lost in the sky and the whole world watched, and I was this crazy cult icon, like, this symbol or something of everyone’s unspoken desire to just soar away from it all—except none of it actually happened. And now lil’ ol’ me, Falcon Heene, has become one of those fucked-up stories that, for some reason, always happens in Colorado, like that crazy bulldozer guy who leveled that town in the mountains.
So, remember how dad is, like, fucking nuts and only has a high-school education but considers himself a meteorologist or something even though he just drives too close to tornadoes all the time? And remember, too, how mom and dad are both media whores who met in acting school in Hollywood and made us go on Wife Swap and pitched a TV show about the family and everything to TLC? Well, turns out dad got tired of waiting for the cameras to show up, so he decided he would pretend that one of his sons had sneaked into that silver zeppelin weather thingy in the backyard and floated off into the sky. He figured the whole world would pay attention to us that way.
And you know what? It did! I didn’t think it would either, but it totally did! And guess which son got to pretend to be in the balloon: the Falconater.
The media swarmed our house and footage of dad’s crazy weather balloon got out everywhere. Suddenly I was like that girl who fell down the well in Texas, except not real and actually just hiding in the attic. People were even making T-shirts and stuff. And then later that night I came out of the attic, just like dad told me to, and the entire world was like, “What’s up with this kooky Heene family?” But then when that Wolf guy with the Santa Claus beard asked why I didn’t come out from the attic when I heard people calling my name, I said to my dad, “You said we did this for the show.”
Oopsies! Man, he’s probably so mad he’s not going to let me drive with him directly into the eyes of ridiculously dangerous hurricanes for, like, two seasons or something! Anyway, diary, once I slipped up about dad doing this as a publicity stunt, things got bad fast. People are calling it the hoax of the century and now the authorities are even talking about pressing charges against us. I know, total boner on my part, but on the bright side at least now the whole world is paying attention to us, right? Isn’t that what dad wanted in the first place? It may not be a reality show, but I’m sure there will be interviews and TV appearances and maybe a book deal or something, right?
Right as rain, diary. And now, because of dad and me, the whole world knows who the Heene family is. And that my first name is fucking Falcon.
