Naked Mole Rat Saves the World

by Karen Rivers

  “Who puts acid on a naked mole rat? When does that come up? What a world. Is there a lab somewhere where testers are dripping acid onto everything in the animal kingdom, just to see? I don’t even think I’d be surprised. Humans are monstrous.”

  Kit shrugged. Then she smiled. Then she started to laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  Kit’s eyes started to leak. She was crying. “I don’t know!” she managed to say.

  “You’re a weird kid,” Chandra said. “You’re a whole level of weird that is beyond weird. That’s what I like about you.”

  The doorbell chime sounded.

  Kit looked up. “Hey,” Jackson said. “Want to come with me to walk Max? Chandra said you could show me some stuff he can do.”

  Kit glared at Chandra.

  “What?” Chandra mouthed.

  Kit shook her head. She picked up her skates. She went over to the white plastic waiting room chair and started to untie her shoes.

  “Hurry up,” said Jackson. “He’s going to pull my arm right out of the socket.” Max strained at his leash.

  “Don’t let him pull like that,” kit said, standing up.

  “You two have fun now, ya hear?” said Chandra, knocking her rings on the counter. “But no funny business.”

  “Gross,” said kit.

  “Whatever you say,” said Chandra. She knocked her rings on the counter. Max barked. “Good boy.”

  “He always barks when someone knocks on the door,” Jackson explained.

  “I know,” said kit. “I know him.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  All over the sidewalk, leaves lay in clumps, flattened by the pouring rain. Max pulled Jackson from one tree to the next. He was wagging his stubby little tail the whole time.

  “He looks happy,” kit said.

  “Yeah, he’s great,” said Jackson. “So, like, not to be awkward or anything, but are we friends again?”

  “Why do you want to be friends with me? You have . . . ” She paused because she couldn’t remember their names. “The Ethans. Ethan and Ethan.”

  The wind showered them with more wet leaves. “You know the leaves aren’t really falling,” Jackson said. “The tree basically throws them off.”

  “Really?” Kit was glad that she had stopped at home and picked up her real jacket, the puffy one that looked like a stack of tires. She pulled it closer around herself and peeled a leaf off one of her sleeves.

  “Yeah, it’s called abscission,” Jackson said. “I’m very smart.”

  “I don’t think smart people tell people they are smart.” Then kit realized she still had the bag with the last cookie in her hand. She stopped rolling. “Hang on,” she said, spinning around. “I forgot something.” She skated fast back to the shelter and pulled open the door again. The ding-dong-ding-dong sound wasn’t quite so charming this time. “Already, that’s annoying,” said Chandra, reading her mind. She looked up from her e-reader. “Why are you back?”

  “I forgot that I brought you this.” Kit slid the bag across the counter to Chandra. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jackson splaying against the glass like a starfish. He stuck his whole tongue on it and crossed his eyes.

  “That kid is going to get botulism or something,” Chandra observed. “I love these cookies, thanks.”

  “It’s a ‘sorry’ cookie,” said kit.

  “Really? I thought they were just called chocolate chunkers or something.”

  “Nope, ‘sorry’ cookies. They are cookies you give to someone to say sorry.”

  “Well, that’s super weird.” Chandra shoved the whole cookie into her mouth. Crumbs fell onto her T-shirt. “Your friend is going to come right through the glass if you don’t get out there. He really is starving for attention. He’s needier than some of the dogs back there.” As if on cue, a dog in the back room stared howling. “Keep your pants on, Chum! I’m coming.”

  “So you forgive me?”

  “Sure. What for?”

  Kit shrugged. “Making you late for your movie?”

  Chandra raised her eyebrows. “I wasn’t late.”

  “Really?”

  The dog howled again.

  “That one might be our new office dog. She’s a sled dog. She took a serious wrong turn to end up here. I’m going to get her but you should really go before that one gets hurt. Or arrested.” Chandra pointed at the glass. Jackson had turned around. He was pressing his rear end against the window.

  “That is . . . not charming.”

  “He probably thinks it is,” said Chandra. “What is he, twelve? Thirteen? That’s some high quality teen boy humor right there.”

  Back outside, kit took the leash out of Jackson’s hand.

  “He’ll pull you right over! He’s strong. You’re on roller skates!”

  “It’s okay, I’ve got him.” Kit gave the leash a tug. “If you do this right when you first start walking, he gets that you’re in charge. Watch this.” She gave the leash a sharp upward tug and said, “SIT.”

  Max sat.

  “Good boy.” Kit watched Max’s doggy face spread into a smile. “He smiles when you say that to him,” she told Jackson.

  “Really?” Jackson’s freckles made the exact shape as the Big Dipper, across the center of his nose. She handed him the leash and Max stood up. “Try.”

  Jackson tugged the leash. “Sit?” he said.

  Max sat.

  “Good boy,” Jackson said to Max.

  “There. Now you’ve established that you’re the boss, but you should say it like you mean it so he trusts you. You aren’t asking him to sit. You’re telling him.” Kit took the leash back, even though she knew Max was Jackson’s now, and Max started trotting along beside her, not pulling at all. “Not that it wasn’t fun to watch him yanking your arm out.”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “Ha, takes one to know one.”

  “Want to race?”

  “I’m on skates! You’ll lose.”

  “Try me,” he said, and he took off running.

  “Go Max!” kit shouted, and they were off, tearing down the wet sidewalk, kit’s roller skate wheels kicking up a fine mist.

  Jackson stopped, doubled over, outside of Dal’s. “Stitch,” he gasped. “Stitch in my side!” If he hadn’t stopped, he would have won. He was way ahead of her.

  Kit tipped her skates forward so the brake stopped her. When she stopped, Max sat. “Good boy,” she told him. “You have to tell him that all the time. He’ll do anything if you tell him he’s good.”

  “What a sucker. He should hold out for treats.” Jackson was still hunched over. “This really hurts.”

  “I know a trick to make it stop hurting. It’s, like, magic.”

  Jackson laughed.

  “If you believe something will work, it works. That’s science. Don’t laugh.”

  “Okay, I’ll try it. What is your magic spell?” He used finger quotes around magic and spell. Kit really hated people who did that. She almost didn’t tell him, but then Max head-butted her leg.

  “Fine,” she said. “Promise you’ll really try and not make fun of it?”

  “I promise!”

  “So what you do is you think about your pain,” she said. She tried to sound calm like Samara.

  “I am thinking about it,” said Jackson. “It’s not like I can think about anything else.”

  “Okay, great. Now this is the magic part: All you do, is . . . It’s kind of simple. You just have to trust me.”

  “I trust you, okay?”

  “Now imagine the pain going away, like it’s leaking out of you. Picture it . . . like, literally.” The rain splashed into a puddle by their feet. “Imagine it filling up that puddle. And then in the space it leaves, imagine only warmth flowing in.” She looked at
him. His mouth twitched. “Close your eyes. Don’t laugh. Just try it like you really believe it will work.”

  She watched while he closed his eyes. It was pretty tempting to stomp in the puddle and have it splash all over him, but it wouldn’t have worked with her skates on anyway.

  “Hey!” he said, opening his eyes. “That worked!”

  “It did? Already? That’s amazing!”

  “I didn’t know you were a witch. Just don’t burn any pieces of paper with my name on them or anything.”

  Kit thought of all the paper she had ripped up with his name and how it hadn’t changed anything. She wasn’t allowed to use matches, so she couldn’t burn them. Maybe that would have worked better.

  “You already did, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t! I swear!”

  “Then why are you doing that thing with your face that you do when you’re lying?”

  “I solemnly swear on all that is magic that I never burned paper with your name on it. Do you believe me now?”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

  A man jogging ran around them. Then a woman on a bike chimed her bell. She was hunched over against the rain, her bright-yellow rain jacket ballooning up behind her. There was a cat in her basket. “BEEP BEEP!” she yelled, so they stepped aside. Max barked but he didn’t chase the bike.

  They both looked at Max. “Good boy,” they said.

  Jackson smiled. He grabbed Max’s leash. “I have to go. Thanks for doing this. And for . . . you know.”

  It was raining so hard that the sidewalk was running with little rivers and she couldn’t see very far in front of her. She started to slowly skate toward home. The cars would have a hard time seeing in this downpour, so she didn’t cross until there were a bunch of other people crossing at the same time. She didn’t want a car to hit her and to make all the stuff her mom was scared of come true.

  “Bye,” kit said, but Jackson was long gone.

  Clem

  Grandma was in the bedroom, folding piles of clothes. She was going to miss the talent show because she was going on a cruise with Grandpa. “How does this look?” she asked Clem, holding a white dress up to herself.

  “It looks like a wedding dress,” said Clem, truthfully. She was supposed to be helping but she didn’t know what “helping” really entailed. Mostly she was just watching Grandma try clothes on.

  “I wore blue at my first wedding,” said Grandma. “I wore yellow when I married Grandpa. Maybe it doesn’t look like a wedding dress to me because I never wore a white one.”

  “Do you have a picture?” Clem asked. She meant of Grandma’s wedding to Beau, but Grandma pointed at the big framed portrait of her and Grandpa on the wall by the bathroom door.

  “I meant a picture of the blue dress,” Clem said.

  “Oh, that one. In the box!” Grandma laughed, like it wasn’t sad that she didn’t have it on the wall, framed, like the yellow-dress wedding.

  “I’ll go look. That dress looks nice on you. It will look really good when you get a tan on the ship. Maybe you could remarry Grandpa.”

  “Ooooh, good idea!” said Grandma. “The captain can do it.”

  “Take pictures,” said Clem.

  “It’s stretchy!” her grandma called. “So I can eat all the food at the buffets!”

  Clem went into the living room to retrieve the box from the shelf. Jorge was lying on the floor. The TV was showing old footage of a tornado in Oklahoma City. It wasn’t even current news.

  Grandpa was asleep. He slept so loudly it seemed impossible he’d be able to sleep through the sound of himself sleeping. The snoring was deafening. He would probably sleep through most of the cruise, but Grandma didn’t seem to mind.

  “Are you asleep?” Clem nudged Jorge with her foot. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m resting my brain.” He was holding perfectly still, like when they played statues when they were kids. He barely even moved his lips.

  Clem got the basket of photos from the bookshelf. She tipped them over on the floor and started looking for one of Grandma in a blue dress. When she found it, it didn’t look like a wedding dress at all, it looked like it was made from old jeans, all sewn together. She looked like a commercial for “Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific.” That was the actual name of an actual shampoo from the 1970s. Mom had found some at the Brooklyn Flea once and bought it for Grandma, because it used to be her favorite.

  Clem glanced over at Jorge. He was still staring straight up, not looking at her. She slipped the photo into her pocket.

  She didn’t know why she did it.

  Maybe she was a klepto, but just specifically for photos of her dead grandfather.

  Maybe she was cuckoo bananas, just like him.

  Or maybe, she thought, she just really liked the dress. She grinned. She had an idea. A great idea.

  She went and got her backpack. She dug around in it until she found the fork that she carried with her and then she tiptoed over and rested it on Grandpa’s forehead. She took a photo to post on her Pictasnap. “Let sleeping forks lie,” she captioned it.

  Grandma came out. “Why does Grandpa have a fork on his face? Do you want me to walk you to the station?”

  “Grandma, it is literally ten steps from the door of your building,” said Jorge.

  “We’ve got this,” Clem assured her, grabbing the fork.

  Grandma hugged them tight. “Stop growing up so fast! You’re making me feel like I’m shrinking!”

  “You are shrinking,” said Jorge. “Old people shrink. It’s to do with the fluid in your spinal cord drying up.”

  Grandma made a face. “I’m only sixty-eight!”

  “Wellllll,” said Jorge. Then, “Just kidding, Grandma. You don’t look a day over fifty.”

  Clem rolled her eyes. “Love you, Grandma.” She hugged her, properly this time, breathing in the sweet, lilac-y scent of her perfume. “You’re my favorite old lady. I’m sorry you can’t come to the talent show, but I’ll get the video for you.”

  “Technology is amazing,” said Grandma. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” said Clem.

  “What for?” asked Grandma.

  “You’ll see,” said Clem. “It will be in the video.”

  At home, Clem and Jorge studied the photograph carefully. Grandma’s dress was strapless. The sun was shining from behind her so that she looked like she was glowing. Their grandfather was wearing jeans and no shirt. It was a lot of denim.

  “Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?” asked Jorge.

  “It was the 1970s! They were hippies.”

  “Still, he could have worn a shirt.”

  “Never mind his outfit, do you think we can make the dress?”

  Jorge looked at her. “We can try.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I mean it, thank you.”

  “I know you mean it. You said thank you and I said you’re welcome. Why is this getting weird?”

  “Is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  The twins stared at each other. “Are you seriously mad?” Clem asked. “I thought we were sort of kidding around.”

  Jorge shrugged. “I sometimes don’t know if we are or if we aren’t. You’ve been kind of . . . bananas.”

  “That’s a stupid word.”

  “See what I mean? Like you get serious all of a sudden and then I can’t tell what you want me to be, like if you just want to fight or if I’m supposed to laugh and it’s sort of getting tiresome.”

  “Tiresome? For real? Gee, I’m sorry that my year of being mostly in pain has been so terrible for you.”

  “Whatever, Clem.”

  “Whatever? Why are you whatevering me? You are the one who dropped me.” She watche
d him flinch when her words landed. “Some days, everything hurts. Did you know that? Every part of me hurts. So I’m sorry if I’m in a bad mood! Ever! But I’m not even in a bad mood anymore, so now I’m not allowed to be happy?”

  “But you sneezed.” He looked stunned. “You let go.”

  It was the first time Jorge had mentioned the sneeze.

  It was the first time that Jorge actually said, out loud, in different words, but still: “It was your own fault.”

  Clem took a sharp breath in, which hurt, and clenched her fists. She opened her mouth to say something, but she didn’t know what, so she closed it again and looked out the window instead. She felt terrible.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then she asked the question that had been giving her headaches for the whole year. “Do you think if they knew they would take back the money?”

  Jorge stared at her. “What?”

  “The money they paid us so that we wouldn’t sue them. If I tell the truth, will they take it back?”

  Jorge touched his face. “No,” he said, like he was the authority on the subject. “They won’t. They can’t.”

  “Dad really loves the store.”

  “He does. And anyway, if you hadn’t sneezed, maybe we would have won. We can’t know. And you sneezed because of the dog, which wasn’t your fault really. The people should have kept the dogs separately. The show should have.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t look like that, they aren’t going to take it back.”

  “I’m not looking like anything. I’m fine.”

  “Okay.”

  He looked like he was going to hug her. If he had, she would for sure have used her fists. But instead he reached into his bag and pulled out his sketchbook and his pen.

  He started to draw.

  She peeked over at what he was drawing. It was the dress.

  “Pickle,” she said.

  “Don’t be a turtle,” he said. “Whatever that means.”

  On the morning of the talent show, Clem woke up with a really bad headache.

  When her head hurt this badly, she had to move slowly, like she was moving through a swamp. The air felt thick and soupy and like it wasn’t going into her lungs properly at all.