My name is Birdie Mae Hayes. I'm eight years old, and I have lived in Rainbow, Alabama, all my life. Rainbow is a small town, I guess. It feels big to me, but Mama says it's small. And since there are only two grocery stores and one movie theater, I guess she's right.

I wouldn't know any different if I hadn't been to Birmingham. I went with Mama and Grandma Ray last summer. I couldn't believe it The Life and Times of Birdie Mae Hayes when I saw all those tall buildings and cars and people everywhere. I might have seen more of it, but Grandma Ray was in the backseat with me with her feet propped up on my legs.

All I wanted to do was hang my head out the window to see and smell everything in the city, but Grandma Ray kept saying, "Birdie Mae, look at my feet; look at the size of those things!" Mama had to take Grandma Ray to the doctor to have some big bumps called "bunions" taken off her feet. I don't know why Grandma Ray wanted me to look at them. Mama says when people get older they sometimes like to talk about everything that's wrong with them. All I know is, the second I saw all those big buildings and the cars and people hurrying around, I thought I might want to live there one day.

My best friend in the whole world is Sally Rose Hope, and we have been best friends since we were born. We were born in the same hospital just three hours apart. We would have the same birthday, but I was born right before midnight on December 1 and Sally was born three hours later on December 2. Sally lives five houses down from me, and we see each other every day. Well, almost every day, except for when one of us is sick or something. One time Sally ate a pickle when she was over at my house and got sick, and I didn't see her for two whole days. Except it wasn't a pickle ... exactly.

It was a rotten, shriveled-up cucumber that had been lying in the garden for a few weeks. I was wondering when Mama started planting pickles in the garden.

We spent all day together on the last day of summer break. We wanted to make that day last as long as possible. Even though we were excited to be third-graders, we were also a little sad that summer was over.

That last day of summer, we were in the park sitting in our usual swings and talking about how much we didn't want summer to be over and how we were both a little nervous about starting third grade.

The park is our favorite place to be. Our neighborhood is called Foxwood. At the very end of our street, at the top of big grassy hill, is our neighborhood park. On one side of the hill you can look down and see all the houses in the neighborhood. On the other side of the hill is a giant paper mill. At night, when it's all lit up, it looks like a big city. Sometimes Sally and I pretend it really is and pick out which building we want to live in. Then we take turns thinking up what we want to be when we grow up. Sally can't decide between having a lemonade stand and driving an ice cream truck. I don't blame her, because those are both really good choices. Sometimes we decide that I'll do one and she'll do the other. But what I really want to do is ride on the back of one of those really big garbage trucks and jump off and on at each stop like the garbage men do. I don't know if I'll be able to do that and drive an ice cream truck, but I guess I can try.

So there we were at the park on the hill, just minding our own business, talking about how much fun it would be to put a frog in Sally's brother Darrel's bed, when out of nowhere flew a rock that hit me right in the side of the head. "Owwwwwww!" I turned around to see Sally's big brother, Darrel, sitting on his bike like he didn't do anything.

He looked at Sally and yelled, "Supper's ready, and Mama said to come home right now!" I don't know why he thought he had to yell like that. We were only ten feet away from him, and we could hear just fine. But before we could say a word, he was already at the bottom of the hill, standing up on the seat of his bike yelling, "Woo hoo!" like a crazy person.