Naked Mole Rat Saves the World

by Karen Rivers

  Someone who was not even a little bit scared of Chandra, with her blue hair and Doc Martens and giant stretchers in her ears and her black lipstick.

  “What are you doing? You don’t even work here!”

  “Unofficial!” kit managed to say.

  “Give it back!”

  The naked mole rat was trying to escape. It was rubbery and cold and strange in kit’s hand, as though its skin was made from a too-big latex glove. It squirmed and scratched. Kit could feel its heart tapping fast against her palm and her own heart speeding up to match it.

  She could also hear Chandra yelling at her, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  She thought about the window washer who fell, how it must have felt for him, wiping his squeegee against the glass one second and in the next second seeing the window moving away from his hand and thinking, “Is the building falling?” before he realized that the thing that was falling was him.

  She thought about Clem falling, how maybe she thought, “Is the stage moving?”

  It’s exactly how kit felt, right then, like she was standing still and everything fell away from her:

  Chandra. The room of cages. Max, whining and whimpering. The fluorescent lights. The tile floor. The smell of ammonia.

  The naked mole rat opened its mouth wide. Kit could blurrily see its two huge front teeth. It looked like the naked mole rat smiled at her.

  Then it casually stretched, and sank its yellow teeth directly into the soft web of skin between her thumb and her fingers.

  Kit screamed.

  She tried to drop it, but it was attached. She waved her hand up and down frantically.

  “KIT!” Chandra yelled. “Put it down! Throw it in the cage!”

  “Help!” Kit didn’t want to hurt it, but it was sure hurting her.

  Then a bunch of things happened at the same time:

  Chandra grabbed kit’s hand and banged it hard against the table, so hard that kit could feel it, mysteriously, in her own head.

  “Ouch!”

  It was very confusing.

  It happened in slow motion.

  Chandra touched her birthmark. “You look strange. Oh man, I’m going to faint,” she said. And she did, sliding in slow motion onto the floor.

  “CHANDRA!” kit tried to yell, but her voice was gone for real now.

  Her ears were ringing.

  Her eyes felt stuck half-closed.

  Everything was so, so, so blurry.

  Time did a hiccup.

  Kit did a hiccup.

  She turned inside out and then right side in again, or at least, that was how it felt.

  Her body heaved.

  Everything spun.

  Everything stank.

  Then she was on the floor, too.

  She was really dizzy.

  She tried to blink, but her eyelids didn’t want to work. She could see light and a shape that she knew was Chandra. The shape wasn’t moving. “Wake up,” kit tried to say. But nothing came out.

  Chandra seemed really big.

  Then bigger.

  Then huge.

  Like an actual mountain.

  Kit’s blood felt like mud trying to swish through her spongy heart.

  The room was so dark and loud.

  Then she heard something that wasn’t coming from inside her gloppy, sticky brain, a clattering and a scratching and a thumping, all at once. It got closer and closer and smelled worse and worse and she knew that smell, because duh.

  That smell was dog drool.

  Only it wasn’t regular Max, it was giant Max.

  And even though kit’s eyes were all messed up without her glasses on, she could see teeth, and they looked really, really huge.

  This was the third time it happened, so kit knew what was happening, knew that even though this felt different, it was also the same.

  She was becoming the naked mole rat.

  It was happening again.

  The only difference was that now she knew for sure what she had become.

  Kit did the only thing she could do: run.

  She ran without thinking about where she was going. She ran right up the edge of the counter and over the top, past the giant shoe box, and up to the top of the computer screen.

  Doing a quick scan of the room, she registered two shapes. The shape that wasn’t moving was Chandra. And the shape that was moving was Max.

  She didn’t think because she couldn’t, not really, she simply did what her heart was telling her to do, and she started to run again, down off the counter, to the door, up the glass, out through the mail slot, running running running along the sidewalk around dead leaves and garbage and feet and pigeons and dogs and other rats, haired rats.

  She didn’t even know anything could run so fast as she was running. She ran like she was flying and maybe she was.

  Running like this felt like being part of the wind, part of the weather, part of everything in a way she never had been before.

  It was better than flying.

  Who needs wings? she thought.

  She ran up the steps of the salon and then up the side of the building and up the fire escape and in through the kitchen window that she always left open a crack.

  She ran to the bathroom, where the oils and herbs were lined up on a shelf.

  She ran up the wall to the shelf, knocking them all into the bathtub. She ran through the slippery mess of Truth and Bravery and Courage and Love and Good Fortune. Then, smelling like roses and cloves and cinnamon and rosemary and thyme and tea tree oil and sandalwood and sage and who-even-knew-what, she ran into her room, burrowed deep into the blankets, and made herself slow down.

  She didn’t really mean to, but she closed her eyes and instead of falling asleep it was more like she just stopped, like everything stopped. And that was okay, too, because sometimes everything is a lot to take in and stopping is all that you can do, at least temporarily.

  The next thing kit heard was her alarm clock beeping and her mom knocking on her door, saying, “Time to get up!” She stretched out her arms and they were just her regular arms. “I’m coming!” she called, and then the day started just like every other day, and she was kit again.

  But she also was the naked mole rat.

  And naked mole rats were superheroes, the man at the zoo had said so, and suddenly kit knew he was right. A thing didn’t have to look powerful to be powerful. Neither did a person.

  “Why don’t you call me your little naked mole rat anymore?” kit asked her mom, as she hugged her goodbye.

  Her mom kissed her head. “I guess when I really thought about it, it didn’t sound like a compliment.”

  “It isn’t,” kit agreed. “But it also sort of is. Naked mole rats are cool.”

  Her mom smiled. “You know who is cool?”

  “Who?”

  “You are.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “And you smell good.” Kit’s mom pressed her nose against kit’s scalp. “What is that smell today?”

  “Everything,” kit said. “I smell like everything.”

  Clem

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Clem. It was hard for her to talk because she was balancing on her hands. Her face was turning purple. She couldn’t blow enough air into her words so it came out more like, “Doughwhattodosmore.” Her hands were clamped around Jorge’s feet, which stank, which is part of the reason why it was hard to take a deep breath. He was standing on his hands, too. Her own feet were almost, but not quite, the same level as the living room light that was already hanging sideways from last time she accidentally kicked it. She bent her knees a little bit and then flipped off Jorge’s feet onto the thick carpet with a muffled thud. She was sweating. When she landed, the pain shot through her left side like a bullet.


  Jorge didn’t answer. He must be mad, she thought.

  So she didn’t say the second thing she wanted to say, which was that, for the talent show, she didn’t want to do an act with him at all.

  She wanted to sing.

  By herself.

  It was a new thing for her to want and when she thought about it, the glass lump in her throat shivered. Having a good secret did that. It felt like the best thing that had happened to her since before the accident, but she also felt like maybe she shouldn’t be happy, at least not anything more than fifty percent. She didn’t know how to stop being fifty percent dark.

  Clem bent at the waist. Her body knew what to do, even if she didn’t like doing it. And even if it hurt.

  “Huh?” said Jorge. He rolled into an easy somersault and lay flat.

  “Huh what?” Clem stretched her arms behind her back until her bones made a satisfying crackling sound. Her head was itchy with sweat.

  “Huh what did you say before? I didn’t hear you.” Jorge was scratching his head vigorously and energetically with both hands, like a dog going after a flea. “You said something.”

  “I can’t remember what I said,” Clem lied. Repeating it felt impossible.

  She looked at the couch, which was squishy and covered in yellow velvet. It was so tempting to climb onto it and to curl up and sleep. It was piled high with cushions. No one ever really sat on it. They weren’t exactly a couch family. They were an always-moving family. Her parents had a frenetic energy, all the time, like if they stopped moving, they would drop dead, like sharks.

  “Did you know that sharks drown if they stop swimming?”

  “That’s not true,” said Jorge. “They just basically faint.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t try to sound deep.”

  “I’m not. Why are you being mean? You’re the nice one, remember?” She hadn’t been trying to sound like anything. She was already deep. Deep enough.

  “I don’t have to be nice all the time. I’m a person, you know. I can be in a bad mood.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “What’s with you today? I thought you wanted to do this.”

  “I do.”

  “So, we’re doing it, okay? Happy?”

  He shrugged.

  She opened her mouth to say, “I actually don’t want to do it, Jorge.” She thought maybe she’d say, “I’m sorry.” But nothing came out.

  She wondered what Beau would have said if she had gone to him and said, “I want to do something different from everyone else. I want to do something new.”

  She had a feeling he would say, “You do you, grandgirl!” Or “YOLO!”

  He seemed like a YOLO kind of person.

  What other kind of person would run off and join a cult? He believed in utopia! Probably also unicorns! It was no coincidence that the words were similar.

  Clem walked over and lay down on the couch.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Lying on the couch,” she said.

  She’d sat on the couch when they first got it and her mom had burst out laughing. “Why are you sitting?” she’d said, as though sitting on a couch was the strangest thing in the world. What was it for if not sitting? Clem had felt embarrassed and lazy, even though she knew her mom didn’t mean for it to sound that way. Still, even after she got hurt, she made herself keep moving all the time. If she stopped moving, even when she was in the hospital, she’d hear her mom’s voice saying, “Why are you sitting?”

  “Do you ever think about just never doing this anymore?” Jorge asked, suddenly. “Do you ever want to just stop?”

  “What do you mean?” Clem asked, even though she’d been thinking the exact same thing. She moved to the ground and did the splits. She used to be able to do them easily but now her hip sang with pain, like someone playing a bad note on a violin. “Give up all this?”

  “We don’t have to do it,” Jorge said, quietly. “We can not do it.”

  “No, we can’t not. It’s what we do. Mom and Dad would be really disappointed.”

  “Mom and Dad don’t do it anymore.”

  “They’re just busy.”

  “Duh, no, they’re old and it hurts now. It hurts you, too.”

  “Does not.” She didn’t know why she was lying. He was saying exactly what she wanted. She wanted to stop.

  She lay back on the carpet and stared up at the light fixture. The glass was amber and the lightbulb glowed like a golden orb. It was really pretty. She’d never noticed how nice it was before.

  “We can do something different for the talent show.” Jorge cleared his throat. “You should sing.”

  “No,” Clem said. She didn’t know why she said that.

  “You’re a really good singer, Clem.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know how to sing. I’ve never had lessons or anything.”

  He sat down next to her. “Are you crazy? I heard you. You know how to sing.”

  “What would you do if I sang?”

  “I could stuff myself through the top of a tennis racket.”

  “Like an octopus escaping from a fishing boat!” she said, mimicking their dad’s voice.

  “Escape artist!” he said, and laughed their dad’s laugh. Then he stood up and bowed so deeply, his head touched the ground.

  They both laughed.

  “I don’t think I could do it.” She didn’t look at him. Staring at the light was starting to make a sunspot in her vision. She blinked.

  “Duh, of course you could.” He sounded like it was no big deal. He didn’t sound like he thought it was weird at all.

  Clem felt something loosen in her chest. It felt like it was opening, like a lock or handcuffs. She nudged him. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “It’s good if we do different stuff sometimes.”

  Later, up in her room, Clem got out her laptop and opened the school website. There was a talent show registration button, and she clicked it. “Clementine Garcia,” she typed. “Singing.” Then she clicked submit. Her heart felt light and strange, like a prop of something that’s heavy in real life, but when you pick it up, you realize it’s made of foam, that it’s light as air.

  She took a screenshot of her filled-out form. Maybe I’ll send the screenshot to kit, she thought. She wanted kit to understand that something had changed, that she wasn’t quite so mad or sad or whatever it was now, that maybe everything would be okay after all. Then she didn’t do it. She wanted to, she just didn’t.

  kit

  “Clem,” kit said out loud. She was practicing. “So, hey, the thing is that sometimes when I get super panicky, I turn into a naked mole rat. You were right about it, after all! So I forgive you! Even though you couldn’t have known it was true! Ha ha!”

  The “ha ha” felt forced and awkward, so she tried it again, without that part.

  Then again.

  And again.

  The empty apartment bounced her words around. The plants seemed to be laughing at her, or maybe rolling their eyes.

  “You’re just going through a phase,” she told them, then she made a face at herself in the mirror. She went downstairs to the salon to use the computer. It was Saturday, so she didn’t have to go to school and spend all day trying to avoid Clem and Jorge again.

  “You’re up!” her mom said. She was sweeping the floor. The cut hair always made kit feel sad, like maybe it didn’t understand how it came to be on the floor or where its owner went.

  “I slept in,” said kit. “I was tired.”

  Her mom kissed the top of kit’s head, her hair swooping down and tickling kit’s scalp like lemon-scented feathers. “Oh, good news!” She smiled at kit. “I didn’t show you this yesterday!” She walked across to the front desk of the salon, her heels clicking, and came back. She was holding an envelope. Kit’s he
art dropped. Was it from Jackson? Did her mom know?

  “What is it?”

  “It turns out now that the song is getting played again, I’m getting royalties!” She opened the envelope and kit’s eyes landed on the number. “It’s being played a lot.”

  “Holy cow,” kit said.

  “I know!” Her mom did a spin, her dress twirling around her legs. She was wearing her shoes with the red soles, the high ones, that were impossible for kit to walk in. They were her going out shoes. Her fancy shoes. The shoes from her old life. “We have to celebrate!”

  “We could go to Disneyland!” Kit knew she was shouting and she also remembered what Samara had said up on the roof, but this didn’t count. It couldn’t count. It was a lot of money. It was more than enough.

  Kit’s mom’s expression changed and kit could see right away that she was wrong, that it didn’t matter how much money it was, that Samara had been right.

  “Or you could just pay off the guy at the color place,” kit mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Mom,” kit said, quickly. “Let’s go out for dinner tonight. Can we go to Dal’s?”

  “Oh!” Her mom pushed her hair behind her ears. She cleared her throat. “Tell you what, why don’t you get us some takeout? I’d love Dal’s. That sounds like perfect celebration food and just the right way to start spending some of this check.”

  “Let’s go there.” Kit knew she was pushing, but she couldn’t stop herself. “It’s not the same to eat it at home.”

  “Kit,” said her mom. She picked up the dustpan full of hair clippings off the floor. “I can’t.”

  Kit made herself take a deep breath. “Why not, Mom?”

  “I’m too busy,” her mom said. “I have clients all day and then I have to do paperwork. I’m sorry, not tonight.”

  “But we don’t go any night. We haven’t been for . . . ” Kit squinted, trying to remember how long it had been. “Since last winter, Mom.”

  “Kit,” her mom said. “Don’t.” Her voice was sharp. “Please stop.”

  “Can we at least eat it on the roof then?”

  “Kit.”

  Kit shrugged. “Forget it. It’s fine, Mom. I’ll pick it up. But right now, I have to use the computer.”