Velveteen (4 page)

Through my tears, I continued to beg her not to tell on me.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Cassie, I really don’t. And please stop crying. It’s not going to work on me, young lady.”

“Wh–what are you g–g–going to do with the bat?”

She told me to stay inside the house, but of course I watched from between the railing posts on the porch as she used the shovel to pick its mangled body up and drop it into a little plastic bag which used to hold Ben Nicholas’s treats, which she’d dumped out on the lawn. Blood was leaking from its crushed head, from its ears and its tiny nostrils. One of its gray eyes was swollen open and its tiny wing had been broken.

After she washed her hands, Miss Ronica packed us all up — Ben Nicholas and Shinji included — and drove us in her tiny, noisy, smelly gas car to the nearest animal hospital.

“They’ll test it for diseases,” she told me on the way there. “I’ll bet you anything it was sick. Why else would it just be lying there on the ground in the middle of the day?”

She made me stay in the car in the hot sun with the windows down so I wouldn’t fry my brains. I didn’t argue, just held Ben Nicholas on my lap and petted him while he panted and Shinji stood on the seat and looked out the window and sniffed the air every time someone passed by us with some kind of animal, like a cat or dog or turtle. He didn’t bark even once, not even when the parrot went by and made me jump when it squawked, “
Hello!
”

When Miss Ronica got back into the car, she whispered, “I hope and pray to God it wasn’t sick.” Then she started it up and backed it out of the parking spot.

“Where are we going?”

“Home.”

“When will we know?”

She was quiet for a moment, her eyes glancing up at me in the mirror, then back down to the road. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking just by looking at her eyes. Finally, she said, “They told me a day or two for the results. Your parents could probably run the test in their own lab and know within an hour.”

“No! Please!”

“I won’t tell them, Cassie. Not yet.” Her face softened. “Look, I know things have been really rough on you these past few weeks with, you know, stuff. And your folks splitting up like that is just messed up. Anyway, I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it is for all of you. Especially you. But having said that, you have to try harder, Cassie. The last thing they need right now is something else to stress them out — especially your mom.”

She exhaled noisily. “But if that bat was sick, then you know I have no choice but to tell them. God, I should anyway. I could lose my job for keeping it a secret.”

“You won’t,” I said confidently.

She slapped the steering wheel, making me jump. “Why I let you talk me into keeping it a secret—”

“You promised!”

“First of all, I didn’t promise. Second of all, you should be worrying more about the shots than what your parents might do to you.”

My heart fluttered in alarm. “What shots?”

“In your stomach.”

I could sense her anger returning, and I couldn’t understand why she’d be mad about that. She wasn’t the one who’d been bitten; she wasn’t the one who’d have to get any shots.

“
Big
ones with big needles,” she continued. “And they hurt like hell, too, Cass. But you’d have to get them soon, before you start getting sick. Once you start getting sick—”

“I don’t want shots!”

“If you don’t, Cassie, you could die. I’m serious, girlfriend. Even if you do get the shots, but you wait too long, they won’t work. There’s no cure for rabies. You know that, don’t you? Once you start getting sick, it’s too late.”

A part of me knew she was just pretending to be mean because she was scared for me and angry that I didn’t obey her. I didn’t doubt anything she said, but I did resent the way she said it. It wasn’t fair that she was trying to frighten me.

“Oh, and Cassie,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror again, “I don’t care if you tell your parents I used bad words, because right now I am so pissed off that you didn’t listen to me.”

It was like she was daring me.

“I won’t tell.”

“Yeah, well . . . .” She raised her hands from the steering wheel and shook them at the sides of her head. “Maybe I’ll tell them anyway.”

But I knew we’d crossed some sort of line. I knew she’d keep her word and not say anything. She wouldn’t snitch on me as long as I didn’t snitch on her.

How many times I’ve wondered since then:
What if she had told them right away?
Would anything have happened differently? Would Ben Nicholas have

died

gotten sick?

Would I have?

“Cassie, please,” Daddy told me that evening, after he and Mama got home from work. “I’ve asked you before not to carry that rabbit around by the neck. You’re choking him. You’re going to get scratched if you’re not careful.”

“He’s stinky. He smells bad.”

“Well, then maybe you need to clean its cage.”

“No, Daddy, I just cleaned it. His breath smells bad.”

Daddy bent down until he was nose-to-nose with Ben Nicholas and took a long, deep breath. Then his eyes went wide. “You’re right. He smells terrible! Just like the bottom of a lawnmower.”

“Daddy!”

He laughed. “Maybe he’s eating too much grass.”

“No he’s not!”

“Well, that’s what he smells like, freshly cut grass.”

“No, it smells—”

soupy

“—stinky.”

“He smells stinky?”

“And he’s not acting right, either. I think he might be sick.”

“The only thing that animal is suffering from is lack of exercise. I swear its feet never touch the ground.”

“But I love him, Daddy.”

“And you give it way too many treats. It’s getting fat. Maybe you shouldn’t feed it so many.”

“I don’t give him too many,” I insisted.

“They’re not good for him. And they’re not cheap, either.”

“Rame, leave her alone.”

Daddy’s coffee cup banged a little too loudly on the table, making Ben Nicholas jump in my arms. He let out a raspy squeak and kicked with his hind feet. His claws scratched the inside of my elbow.

“See, honey? I told you you’re choking him.”

“You scared him!”

“
Cassie!
” Mama yelled. “Not so loud. Please. Why don’t you take him in the back room?”

I tried to adjust him, but he kept struggling, so I let him down to the floor. He hopped over to the corner of the cabinets, his claws clacking on the tiles, and there he sat wiggling his nose at us like he was angry.

“We should take him in to the vet this weekend to get his nails clipped and his teeth filed down,” Daddy said. “They’re getting long.”

“No!”

Both Mama and Daddy looked up in surprise.

I didn’t want anyone going near the animal hospital. Not until we absolutely had to. “Can’t you do it here?”

“
I’m
not filing down those vampire teeth.”

“Ramon! Cass, dear, we’ve got a lot going on right now, honey. Okay?”

“Like what?”

Mama and Daddy exchanged glances. I hated that they could pass secret messages with their looks. I hated being left out.

Finally, Daddy shook his head at her. I wasn’t sure if he was giving up or if they were going to start fighting again, and I almost hoped they actually would fight so they’d stop thinking about maybe taking Ben Nicholas to the animal doctor. It’s certainly not where I had intended the conversation to lead when I first mentioned him smelling and acting funny.

I went back over and picked him up again, intent on taking him out to his cage. “He doesn’t need his teeth filed,” I declared.

Mama came over and gave me a hug. “All right, honey. We’re sorry. Stop crying. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Her face suddenly twisted, and I wondered if she noticed the strange smell coming off of Ben Nicholas. But as she leaned us both away from her face, a look of concern in her eyes, I realized it wasn’t Ben Nicholas she was worried about, it was me. “Are you feeling okay, honey?” She placed her hand against my forehead and kept it there for a moment. “Your face is hot. Maybe I better stay home from work tomorrow.”

Even from across the kitchen I could sense my father’s irritation and waited for him to tell Mama to stop babying me. The bitter smoldering smell of it rolled toward us, but Mama pretended not to notice.

I told her I was okay but avoided looking in her eyes. I actually did feel fine, but it still felt like lying. Plus, I hated the way she just totally ignored Ben Nicholas just now. When she didn’t let me go, I pushed her away, suddenly afraid that she’d notice him and change her mind about sending him to the animal hospital.

“You don’t have to stay home from work tomorrow,” I added.

She held on a moment longer before standing up and going over to the fridge. She stood there for a few seconds without taking anything out, just staring at it with glistening eyes. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, her voice tight and sounding far away. “Go get washed up.”

“First things first,” Daddy said, getting up to set the table. “Go put Ben Nicholas away in his cage first.”

The terrible smell coming from my bed the next morning almost made me upchuck. It was the same smell as from Ben Nicholas yesterday, only a lot badder. But Ben Nicholas hadn’t been in bed with me last night; I’d left him in his cage after dinner. And I knew it wasn’t Shinji who smelled, because it stayed after Daddy got him up to go potty outside. It was me.

When I went out to check on Ben Nicholas after breakfast, I almost stopped. I wanted to run back into the house before I got halfway there. I didn’t want to see what I was afraid I’d find. But when I got to his cage, I saw that he was awake. He hopped over to me — maybe not as quickly as he usually did, but at least he wasn’t dead. I opened his door and scooped him up and the smell came off of him like the smell from a newly tarred driveway on a hot day. I knew then that it was serious, that something was terribly wrong with him, which meant something was wrong with me, too. I knew I’d have

rabies

to let my parents know. Even if it meant getting into trouble for not listening to Miss Ronica yesterday when I got bit. I didn’t want shots — for either of us — but I wanted even less to die like Remy did. I didn’t want to make Mama and Daddy sadder.

I tried to get their attention by knocking quietly on their bedroom door, but they were too busy yelling at each other about someone from work who wasn’t going to be there. Daddy was saying Mama would have to do his job, which made her even angrier because she had talked about staying home with me today, something I didn’t want then because she’d start asking about the animal hospital again. But now I changed my mind.

I knew better than to interrupt them when they were like this, so I went out to my swings to wait for them to finish. That’s when I noticed the blood around Ben Nicholas’s back foot. It was old and dried, and it was proof enough for me about how he’d gotten sick. He’d gotten bitten just like me. Of course, my own heel started throbbing something terrible all of a sudden.

With my heart beating a thousand million miles a second, I took Ben Nicholas inside to show Daddy. The house was quiet by then, so I knew they’d stopped arguing.

“It’s a torn claw, Cassie,” he told me, barely glancing down at us from the mirror where he was putting on his tie. He took a step away from us, clearly not wanting to touch — or be touched by — Ben Nicholas. He didn’t want to get his white shirt dirty. “I told you we should get them clipped. It’s okay, honey. He’ll survive. Just leave him alone and it’ll heal on its own.”

“But, Daddy—”

“If it’s not better when I get home tonight, we’ll take him to see the doctor, okay? See? It’s already stopped bleeding. Tomorrow, I promise. Or this weekend, honey. I can’t do it right now. I’m already going to be late.”

I tried to tell him that it didn’t look like the blood was coming from his claw. I wanted to say it looked like

a bat bite

something else. But all my words came out in a jumble. He hurried past me, muttering to himself about his car keys being lost.