Naked Mole Rat Saves the World

by Karen Rivers

  kit

  “Two cookies, please,” said kit. She smiled at Jackson so she could telegraph to him that she had forgiven him. It felt good to be so magnanimous. The café smelled like some kind of pine-scented cleaner that made her nose feel clearer. She took a big breath in. “Actually, four cookies.”

  “Four cookies?” said Jackson.

  She stared at him and tried to concentrate on nice, forgiving thoughts. He was still the same person he had been when they used to be friends, only now he had spotty skin and braces and he was wearing glasses, which were orange and perfectly round, framing his light-brown eyes. His eyes looked almost amber. They were interesting looking. She didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed them before.

  “Do you want a drink with that? Hello? Kit?”

  “What? Oh, no. Thank you.”

  “You’re supposed to drink eight glasses of water a day.” He leaned toward her. “The water is free.” He pointed at the door of the café, where there was a bowl of water for people with dogs. Then he laughed.

  “That’s really not funny.” Kit tried to remind herself she was forgiving him. She also wanted to know why he was being so mean. He was the one who had done the thing to her! Not the other way around.

  “Why are you being like this?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. My therapist says it’s a defense thing.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s victim blaming. I don’t deserve to be treated the way you treat me. It’s mean. But I don’t want to talk about it, I’d just like the cookies.” She paused. “You have a therapist?”

  “I could give you a free soda. The thing is that four cookies with no drink is going to make you sick.” He leaned even closer to her.

  She could see the pores on his nose and a scattering of blackheads. She could feel herself blushing. The worst part about blushing when you have no hair is that your whole head can turn pink if it really gets going. She put her hand on her scalp, like that could stop the blush in its tracks.

  “Why are you going red?”

  “I’m not. Can I please just have the cookies?”

  The person behind her in line cleared their throat. Kit didn’t turn around, but she could feel their impatience coming off them in waves.

  “Enjoy your four cookies,” Jackson said. “Hydrate.” Then, for no apparent reason, he flexed his muscle. He had a pretty muscular arm. It was like a teenager’s arm and not like a noodley kid arm.

  “Stop showing off and help the customers,” his uncle said, coming up behind him. He put his arm around Jackson’s neck. “You can’t get good help these days.” He shook his head. “Nice to see you,” he said to kit. “You’re one of Jackson’s friends, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, to be polite.

  “See ya, kit, my friend,” Jackson said. “Enjoy your cookies and dehydration.”

  “You too,” she said. “I mean enjoy your . . . muscle.”

  “What can I get you?” he was saying to the next customer. She hoped he hadn’t heard her. “Enjoy your muscle?” Who said that? He would think he was making her nervous and that she liked him or something. She didn’t like him. She was just trying not to hate him, which was even more exhausting than liking him would have been.

  Kit took her bag of cookies and went outside.

  Change happens both quickly and slowly, she reminded herself. It was possible that Jackson could change and be less of a jerk even. He’d changed into one, he could change back. That didn’t seem impossible.

  And, anyway, maybe she was the one who was changing. Maybe turning into a naked mole rat was like puberty.

  Maybe it happened to everyone, they just didn’t talk about it.

  Maybe everyone turned into a different animal at various times, populating the city with a zoo full of inexplicable creatures who appeared and disappeared in a blink.

  Maybe Jackson transformed when he was panicky, too, and whatever he transformed into was something lousy, like a cockroach or a dung beetle.

  (She was lucky really. Naked mole rats were amazing and they didn’t hurt anyone or anything. She grinned.)

  Then, out of nowhere, she suddenly remembered something about Jackson’s uncle.

  She had been roller skating with Jorge in the park. This was last year. Clem was maybe still in the hospital. Jorge had been on his bike. He didn’t like roller skates. They had been out at the lake where the swans were and then the weather shifted and it got cold and misty. A fog made it hard to see, so they were going home. They had just rounded a bend on the paved trail when, rising up out of the mist, they saw a tiger.

  It wasn’t imaginary, it was real.

  The tiger was on a leash.

  The leash was being held by a man who was wearing a long, black overcoat.

  The man was Jackson’s uncle, kit was sure of it.

  “Whoa,” Jorge had said, at the same time as kit was saying, “Is that a tiger?”

  “Yes,” Jackson’s uncle had said, simply, as he passed in the fog.

  But now when kit remembers the scene, she can imagine the tiger looking back at them, a grin spreading across his face in a specifically stretchy-lipped Jackson-y way.

  “Not possible,” she said out loud.

  But she knew a lot of impossible things were possible. Coincidences and magic both could be true, even if it was unlikely.

  “What if?” she whispered.

  Why not?

  Magic was magic was magic, after all.

  Kit sat down at one of the outdoor tables. No one else was sitting out there. The summer that had seemed to hang on forever was suddenly downshifting into fall. There was a chill in the air. Kit shivered in her hoodie.

  Turning into a tiger would be amazing. He was lucky, if that was his thing. Not that she’d ever ask. How would she bring that up? “Hey, I know I’ve been mad at you for a year, but have you ever been a tiger?”

  Naked mole rats are way more heroic than tigers, they just don’t get the same kind of press, she reminded herself. They were quietly heroic. They didn’t have to be enormous and scary to get attention.

  The tigers at the zoo had a whole enclosure called Tiger Mountain. There were big glass windows you could look through. Back in 2012, some guy jumped in somehow and one of the tigers had eaten his foot right off. Jackson couldn’t be a tiger. He was not beautiful and he was not monstrous, just kind of dumb and hopeless about understanding other people’s feelings.

  But he had wrecked her life.

  A tiger would do that.

  Then it would pad away on its giant feet and take a nap.

  The wind gusted and crinkled the paper on the bag of cookies. A few drops of rain splattered against the sidewalk, then a few more. She knew she should run across the street and give the cookies to Clem and Jorge but she didn’t move. Three guys on bikes wearing skin-tight fluorescent outfits zoomed past.

  “Go!” she instructed herself.

  The door of the café opened and Jackson came out.

  “I’m on my break.” He was holding two hot chocolates. “I thought you might want one. Hydration!”

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s cold out here.”

  “Why aren’t you eating your cookies?”

  “They’re for my friends.”

  “So why are you sitting out here, freezing, and not taking cookies to your friends?”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. He slurped his hot chocolate and then smacked his lips together

  “Can I ask you something?” She took a sip, too, but the hot chocolate was too hot and it burned her mouth.

  “What? I’m good at finding out answers. As you know,” he said, meaningfully.

  “I don’t want you to find out answers. You should maybe wait until someone asks you a question.” She liked that. It sounded exactly li
ke what she meant, unlike a lot of the other things that came out of her mouth. She blew on her hot chocolate and a spiral of steam rose toward the sky. “I want to know why you say mean stuff, about me being a dog or . . . ” She shrugged. “Why you say so much mean stuff at all.”

  He stared at her. “I already told you, my therapist says—”

  “I didn’t ask you to find my father,” she interrupted. “I didn’t know him or even want to know him. So why did you do that? I didn’t ask you to do that. I didn’t want to know that. I liked thinking that my dad was the Night Sky. I was happy. I didn’t want my father to be John Alexander Findley. I didn’t want to know he was dead.”

  Jackson leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head, like he was relaxing, but she could see that his jaw was going up and down like he was chewing invisible gum or like he was upset and trying not to cry. “Sorry,” he said. His voice cracked and then he swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “My dad left.”

  Kit thought about how Clem’s mom always said, “Hurt people hurt people.”

  She sort of got it, but she also didn’t: Jackson lost his dad, so it was important to him that she lose her dad, too. Fine. But it was flat-out cruel, too. She didn’t know what to do if he cried. Her hot chocolate was still too hot but she took a big gulp. She wasn’t sure how to get it and be mad about it at the exact same time.

  Neither of them said anything and the silence got bigger and more awkward. A few heavy drops of rain splatted on the table in a disappointed way. “You got tall,” she said, finally.

  He smiled. “I guess.”

  The door of the café opened and Jackson’s uncle leaned out. “I don’t pay you to sit around with your friends all day!”

  “You don’t actually pay me,” said Jackson.

  His uncle laughed. “Well, I give you a roof over your head.”

  “Yeah,” said Jackson.

  “Five minutes, Jackson.”

  “You live with him?” kit asked, when Jackson’s uncle went back inside.

  “Yeah, my dad left us and my mom sometimes is away at work so Uncle Jim lets me stay with him so I don’t have to stay with my stepdad. He’s, like, too busy with work, he says.” He leaned onto his elbows on the table. “I kind of hate him.”

  “Oh.” A lot had happened in Jackson’s life that kit didn’t know about. Somehow, in her imagination, he’d just been sitting across the street in his ugly apartment building, concocting plans to ruin other people’s lives.

  “Yeah, I mean, Dad just left. He didn’t even say why, not really. Mom says he met someone else. He sends me an email every Sunday but it never says where he is or what he’s doing. It’s like he wants me to tell him all about how great my life is without being like, ‘Oh, also, sorry I left and turned your life upside down!’”

  “That’s terrible,” she said. “It’s really terrible.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Thanks for the hot chocolate.”

  “It was free, anyway.”

  “Do you know anything about tigers?”

  His hand froze, his cup halfway to his mouth. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, anything.”

  “Their pee smells like popcorn,” he said. “Buttery popcorn.”

  His eyes met hers.

  “Gross,” she said.

  Kit pulled open the door of One Buck Chuck. Jorge was sitting behind the counter, leaning on his elbow, sketching something. He looked up when she came in.

  “Why were you sitting with Jackson? I thought you hated him. Are you friends again?”

  “I brought you a cookie,” said kit. “It’s a ‘sorry’ cookie, basically.”

  “Thanks!” Jorge reached into the bag. “These cookies are the best. I forgive you. But what are you sorry for?”

  Kit shrugged. “Things have been weird. I’m trying to un-weird-ify them.”

  “I don’t think that’s a word, but okay.” He got off the stool and shook her free hand. “Consider it un-weird.”

  “Un-weird,” she repeated. “But I think it got weird again when you shook my hand.”

  “I don’t know why I did that!” He took a bite of the cookie.

  “Is Clem here?”

  Jorge tilted his head. “She’s in the back. Balloon duty.”

  Kit made a face. “She hates the balloons.”

  “I know, but I have to finish this.” Jorge pointed at his drawing tablet.

  “What are you drawing?” Kit stood on tiptoes to look.

  “It’s for the talent show. It’s my act.” He turned the screen around so she could see it. It was a picture of a tennis racket. The tennis racket had an octopus crawling through it. “Is it too weird? I’m going to do a contortion thing.”

  “The talent show? Aren’t you doing . . . ” Kit made a gesture that was supposed to mean “acrobatics” but just looked like she was doing a chicken dance.

  “What are you doing?” Jackson laughed.

  “Nothing! I mean, what you usually do.”

  “Nope, not this year. We can’t. Because of Clem.”

  “I don’t know why I thought you would.”

  “I think a lot of people think that but we’re not.”

  “Contortionist octopus, I like it.” Kit didn’t want him to ask her what she was doing for her act because she still didn’t know. “I’m going to give this to Clem.”

  “Just to be clear, it’s okay to be friends with Jackson?”

  Kit shrugged. “I was mad at him, but I guess I’m not anymore.”

  Kit made her way between the tall shelves to the back room. She could see Clem, leaning back in her dad’s big official Store Owner chair, her feet up on the desk. Mr. G. called it his throne. “King of One Buck Chuck!” he’d declared.

  “Hi.” Kit plopped herself down on the “visitor” chair, which was actually an inflated unicorn pool float. It squeaked. “I didn’t fart. It was the unicorn. I have a riddle. Want to hear it?” She knew she was talking too fast, but she was nervous. “What did the unicorn call her dad?”

  Clem shrugged.

  “Popcorn!” Kit laughed. “Ba dum cha. Do you get it? Unicorn? Popcorn?”

  Clem didn’t smile.

  “Why can’t a T-rex clap?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because he’s already extinct.”

  Clem shook her head. “Kit,” she said. “Those are lame.”

  “I know. But Samara gave them to me. She thought they’d be a good act. For the talent show.”

  “You’re doing jokes? Okay. Pretend I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s okay, I don’t want to do them. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Maybe I won’t do anything. What are you going to do?”

  Clem shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I do know, but it’s a surprise.”

  “I brought you a cookie.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s an apology cookie.”

  “But I’m the one who is a terrible person. I’m the one who said the thing I said. The mean stupid thing.” Clem’s eyes welled up.

  Kit thought if she started to cry, it would look like her eyes were melting. “I know.”

  “I don’t know what’s been wrong with me.”

  “It’s a phase,” said kit.

  Clem raised her eyebrows. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe Mercury is in retrograde,” kit offered. “Mercury makes everything weird. So it’s a phase plus Mercury. That can wreak havoc.”

  “How long are phases? How long does Mercury retrograde for? What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Kit put her feet up on the desk. “Samara has a T-shirt that says Back Off, Mercury Is in Retrograde.”

  “Don’t be a turtle.” Clem sat up and reached i
nto the bag. “These cookies are so good. Thanks. Want some?”

  Kit shook her head and Clem put the cookie down and put another balloon on the nozzle and filled it up. “Tie this,” she told kit, so kit took the twirling ribbon and tied it on to the balloon.

  Things felt better, and sometimes better was close enough to being good enough for now.

  kit

  Kit pushed open the door of the animal shelter and the bell rang in an upbeat series of chimes. “You fixed it!”

  She closed the door and opened it again just to make sure.

  When she walked in though, Chandra barely looked up.

  “Hi,” kit said.

  “Look,” said Chandra. “Before you say anything and get all hysterical and jump off a bridge or something—and we aren’t in China, so no one will save you—that kid came back with his mom and they adopted Max. Max really liked him and I trust his judgement. Plus, that kid might be your sworn enemy or whatever, but he seemed like a nice kid. He has bad anxiety, his mom said. Actually, I almost couldn’t get her to shut up. I know more about their whole miserable story than I should, believe me.”

  Kit sat down on one of the waiting room chairs. She was trying to decide how she felt.

  “Hello? Are you going to say something?”

  “I’m glad Max isn’t dead,” kit said, finally. She stood up and went behind the counter.

  “You’re not supposed to—”

  “I know! Unofficial!”

  “Oh, and guess what? I called the Bronx Zoo about that weird rat-thing.”

  “The naked mole rat?” Kit tried to keep her voice from squeaking.

  “Yeah, that thing. Apparently one of their zookeeper’s friends or roommates or something went bananas for some reason and kidnapped it and then it escaped. Who would kidnap a naked mole rat?”

  “I guess it was easier to catch than, say, a tiger?”

  “That’s valid. Actually, it sounds like a good story line for a sitcom.” She took out a piece of paper and started to write something.

  “Are you writing a sitcom?”

  “No, my grocery list.”

  “Oh. Anyway, naked mole rats are really cool. You know they can’t get cancer? AND their skin is amazing. You can put acid on it and it won’t burn.”