“Who said anything about the pound?” Cecil said, and pointed at the shotgun propped in the corner.
So Goldie had to learn her place, which meant I had to teach Dee that she wasn’t a threat. I guess that’s how I learned my place, too, out there with the animals. Just a week in the paddock and Zee was nudging my back, checking my pockets for treats. And while Dee and I weren’t exactly friends, the ostrich stopped flapping her wings at me and making herself big every time I climbed the fence. She’d only charged me the once, when my back was turned.
That’s how I learned not to turn my back. On anything.
Cecil kept the pens cleaner than the house, on account of the ASPCA people doing unannounced drop-ins. It didn’t take long for me to figure out the animals were better company anyway; I’d learned not to turn my back on Cecil, either.
And how to haul manure and clean hooves. How to brush a coat and trim a mane. How much to feed each animal and where to catch the biggest fish out of the creek for the alligator. I shudder, remembering the flash of silver scales as a tail disappeared down her throat. I lean against Zee to absorb some of her warmth. She grunts deep in her throat and crunches on her carrots, the orange ends disappearing into her mouth, the green tops following behind.
Dee spots us and comes over, her bulk shifting from side to side. She stretches her neck out and pecks me, like a reminder that she’s here, and hungry, too.
“You’re ugly,” I tell her.
It’s hard to like an ostrich.
You can’t like or dislike an alligator; you just have to be careful around it. She keeps to herself in her little pond, and we turn off the electric fence to pop in and check that it’s decently stocked with fish . . . but only after being sure she’s well-fed with a few big ones from the stream first.
“Can’t trust her,” Cecil told me gruffly, the first time we walked into the alligator’s pen. It seems to be the basic rule around here.
But mostly Rue, Cecil warned me. It took me the longest to warm up to the orangutan. He called her the o-rang-o-tangy and said she’d tear my face off if I gave her the chance. I wasn’t allowed to go in her pen—a large, fenced-in open-air area with a single tree growing in it for her to swing in. There was a closed-in building attached, where she could go if it rained, or when the vet came for medical attention. But for the most part Rue stayed in her tree, eyes following me when I moved around the paddocks and cages.
I hadn’t liked it. Hadn’t liked the way she was almost human . . . but not quite. How sometimes she walked along beside me when I came near the cage. I’d felt stalked, hunted, until the one day she stretched an arm through the fencing and handed me something. I’d reached out automatically, palm up.
And Rue had put a piece of shit in my hand.
“What?” I’d looked down at it, shocked, then back up to see Rue giving me . . . well, giving me a shit-eating grin.
“You asshole!” I’d said—a word that Cecil dropped a lot around the cages—and done the only thing that seemed like the right reaction. I threw it at her.
She’d been thrilled, ducking her head and jumping into the tree to grab an apple from the stash she kept up there, throwing it at me the second I turned my back. It sailed through the square holes of the fence and I understood; we were playing a game.
I’d gathered a few things, some apples from the orchard, a tennis ball I usually tossed with Goldie, and a balled-up sock from the box of mismatches. Rue and I spent most of the afternoon throwing things at each other, which I guess is how you make friends with an orangutan.
She’s watching me now from her tree; I can see her eyeing me through the leaves. She’ll probably wait until I’m in throwing distance and peg me from afar. She’s gotten pretty good at judging what will fit through the fence holes and what won’t, and her aim is improving.
“All right, Zee,” I tell the zebra, giving her a last rub on the neck. “You’re good.”
Goldie slips through the paddock slats as I climb over, her dirty haunches bouncing as she runs in front of me. I really need to trim her up, give her a bath. Not that long ago she had monthly appointments with the groomer and would come home with a bow on top of her head, Mom and Dad telling her she was a good girl, a pretty girl. Dad would roll around on the ground with Goldie, then grab my leg and pull me into the pile, telling me I was a good girl, too, while I shrieked and reached for Mom, who would pretend I was invisible.
“What is that?” she’d say, cocking her head. “I think I hear my daughter . . . but I can’t see her. Weird.”
I squash the thought as soon as I have it, painful because it came true. Mom can’t see me now, neither can Dad, and I bet they can’t hear me, either. Felicity Turnado showed up at my house in her nightgown, crying, asking if she could spend the night, and after that everything changed. Goldie isn’t an indoor dog anymore, and she isn’t a clean dog anymore. Cecil doesn’t tell me that I’m a good girl, either, no matter how clean the pens are or how hard I work. That’s just the way it is.
The tennis ball hits me square in the forehead, and Goldie grabs it on the third bounce, running off with her head in the air. I rub the spot.
“Nice, Rue,” I tell her. I hold my hands up, empty. Goldie ran off with my only ammo. “You win.” She gives me a chirp and comes down, graceful and effortless, swinging easily through the power of her own strength. She drops in front of me, cocking her head when my phone goes off in my back pocket. There’s a question on her face—what is this new thing?
I’m as surprised as she is. Right after Mom and Dad disappeared there had been a lot of messages, kids from school asking if I was all right (I wasn’t) and if there was anything they could do (they couldn’t). But the messages had dwindled as time passed, and my new situation became old. I wasn’t news anymore. I was just poor now. I couldn’t do the movies or the mall without that awkward moment when someone else’s mom handed me a folded twenty, or spend the night without being encouraged to take a shower and scrub real good before bedtime.
I stopped taking the twenties, started refusing to scrub real good, and the pity invitations didn’t come anymore. The only person I hadn’t heard from in months was the person I wanted to talk to the most: Felicity. So when I pull the phone out of my back pocket and see that I’ve got a text from her, and that she wants me to come to her birthday party, I say the first thing that comes to mind, some more words that Cecil taught me.
“Holy shit.”
In her cage, Rue grins at me.
I am not glad I came to the party.
Cecil was not happy when I told him I wasn’t doing chores tonight, because it means he can’t get blackout drunk for another extra hour. I didn’t even think about asking him to drive me into town, and I would’ve walked the whole way if Ribbit’s mom hadn’t spotted me hiking down the road with my backpack and sleeping bag. I’d grabbed the bag after Cecil yelled at me that a girl who doesn’t pull her weight doesn’t need a bed to sleep in at night. I’ve been locked out for less, and slept in the stable more than once when Cecil was in a mood. If I can stay at Felicity’s, at least I won’t smell like an ostrich in the morning.
Aunt Lenore gave me a ride to Felicity’s house, a little line in between her eyebrows. She told me to have a good time when I got out of the car, Cecil’s old boots slapping against the Turnados’ paved walkway. Cecil took most of my stuff to Goodwill when I moved in with him, said he didn’t have the kind of room that Mom and Dad did and that I didn’t need most of that stuff anyway. What I needed was to learn not to be spoiled.