The muscles in Sawyer’s jaw clench hard. It must be extremely annoying for him to have to constantly listen to drama-queen me. Even I’m annoyed. “Forget it,” I say. “What time is your game?”
Sawyer jerks the wheel, hard, throwing me into the gearshift. He pulls to the curb, jams the Jeep into Park. “Give it to me,” he says, holding out his hand.
“What?”
Sawyer digs into my backpack, pulls out the application. He’s out of the car and running before I have the chance to say anything. He stops at the mailbox on the corner and tosses the envelope in. Then he does a touchdown dance. People laugh as they walk by. A super cute well-dressed guy doing a sidewalk dance is funny. An unwashed homeless woman doing the same thing is threatening, because she might be high or mentally ill. He gets back in the car, holds up his hand for a high-five.
“Even if I get in...” I start to say.
Sawyer forces me to slap his hand. “Want another sip of my latte?”
I take a careful sip as he pulls back into traffic. “Huh.”
“What?”
“It’s cooler. It didn’t kill me. In fact, it tastes pretty good. I might develop a coffee addiction.”
“You’re from the Pacific Northwest, so it’s, like, your birthright. But trust me, only decaf after 1:00 p.m. or little caffeine soldiers will march inside your brain battling all night to keep you awake.”
A Foo Fighters song comes on the radio. They’re my favorite band. I sing along with Dave Grohl.
“So, Cushing suggested I get an apartment.”
I snort. “Yeah, right.” But when I look over at Sawyer and see his expression, a pang shoots through my chest. He’s not kidding.
“He says it’s about the money, about not living by his rules, but—”
“I can try to get the money back.”
Sawyer’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Lily, it’s not about the money.”
I fiddle with the radio stations until I find an SJ song. She sings, I like it slow, slow, slow... “If you think about it, this is kind of amazing,” I venture. “I mean, I’d give anything for my own place.” My voice is pitchy, which means I’m trying too hard, but I plow forward. “Sawyer, you’re being handed total freedom on a silver platter. You can get an apartment in the Pearl District, or Hawthorne, maybe? Both have super cool coffeehouses and great restaurants. You can have parties, stay up all night and play Swift Jones so loud the windows break.”
“He probably doesn’t really mean it,” Sawyer says.
“Well, I’d be there, like, all the time, watching Naked and Afraid marathons.”
Sawyer reaches for my hand.
“Um. Why are you holding my hand?”
He stares straight ahead. “It’s the coffee thing. I’m so proud.”
We head down the tree-lined entrance to Grable. Sawyer parks in the school lot, first row, because when you’re Sawyer Thompson the universe conspires to always have a prime parking space waiting.
Jonah is at the front entrance. He’s leaning against the brick wall, pretending to read something on his iPhone. I know he’s pretending because, unlike me, his glasses are so thick that they distort his brown eyes, and right now he’s not wearing them. Jonah is probably waiting until the last possible moment so he can run into his classroom just as the bell rings. For an hour he’ll be safe from the track team and the general cruelty of kids. Jonah’s day must be very long.
“What if I do get into USC?” I ask as Sawyer pulls open the school’s door.
“We’ll fight for it.” Sawyer looks over his shoulder. “Come on, Jonah, you can walk to class with me.”
Relief colors Jonah’s freckled face. “Dude,” he says. “Really? Thanks.” He scurries through the door behind us.
“Later,” I say to my friend and his freckled disciple for life.
A tall silhouette with a ponytail of thinning hair stands at the end of the hall. My father is pretending to read a poster, but I know he’s waiting there to make sure I showed up at school. I grab books from my locker and go the long way to chemistry so I don’t have to face him.
9
I manage to avoid my father all day. After the last bell, I escape out the back exit of my school just in case he’s waiting for me in the parking lot. When I get to the P-Times newsroom, Mr. Matthews is sitting on the desk beside Shannon’s eating jellybeans by the handful from a crystal bowl. He holds out the bowl. I take a blue one.
“Lily, do you know how many emails, tweets and letters we’ve gotten since your elephant contest?” Mr. Matthews asks.
“No.”
“Neither did I,” Mr. Matthews says, “until this morning, when the doofus we have collecting readers’ letters finally told me.” He holds up a crayon drawing of a big gray rock beside a little gray rock. “It’s from Kaylee, age eight, Mrs. Kendrick’s first-grade class.”
I squint. “What is it?”
“Raki and Swift Jones,” Mr. Matthews says. He hands me a thick folder. It’s stuffed with hundreds more drawings. “They’re not just from schools in Oregon,” he says. “Kids in Washington State, California, Kentucky, even tots in Maine, keep writing us.”
“How do they know about Raki?”
“Do you two ever talk?” Mr. Matthews asks, turning to Shannon.
“I told her a few weeks ago that her little article was picked up by the Associated Press,” Shannon says without looking at me.
“Please tell me that you know what the AP is?” Mr. Matthews asks.
I have a vague idea, but I wait for Shannon. No help there. “They dispense news stories?”
“The AP is a not-for-profit, independent cooperative of news organizations that finds, reports and distributes news to half the world’s population every day,” Mr. Matthews says. “The Pennington Times is a member, along with thousands of other US and international newspapers. Your elephant story was picked up by the AP national wire, so it’s been reprinted in other newspapers around the country, intriguing kiddies in every state of our great Union.”
“Why would they care about Raki and Swift Jones?” I ask.
Mr. Matthews shrugs. “Hell if I know. What matters to me is that we’ve collected over three thousand emails, letters and pictures. It impresses our board of directors. Anyway, Dr. Tinibu agreed to a more in-depth interview and to photos. Four hundred and fifty words.” He slides off the desk. It groans in thanks. “The interview is in an hour.”
Shannon turns back to her computer. “Go see Jack.”
“Who’s Jack?”
“The photographer for your article and your ride to the zoo. He’s in the break room.”
A scruffy guy in skinny jeans and a black T-shirt looks up from pouring himself a coffee when I walk into the break room. He’s cute in a hipster kind of way. I’ve taken a vow of celibacy for the next twelve years, but I can still look. “Jack?”
“Guilty.”
“I’m Lily. Ready?” We head into the gray Oregon afternoon and climb into Jack’s beat-up Volvo wagon. The car smells like stale french fries and wet wool. Jack grabs the offending pile of wrappers and workout clothes at my feet and tosses them into the back. “Where’d you go to college?” I ask on the drive to the zoo.
“Berkeley. Dual major. Creative writing and journalism. Are you going to college next year?”
“Probably Muni, but I’m also applying to USC. It’s a long shot.”
“If you want to get into USC’s journalism program, then fight for juicier stories,” Jack suggests. “Animal stuff is cute, but it’s not going to get you noticed.”
The rest of the drive goes by in silence, which is good because I need to think of some questions. By the time we pull into the zoo’s lot, I’m ready. Addie’s door is open when we get to her office, so I give the frame a little knock and she waves us in.
“Thanks
so much for the interview,” I say. “Jack is P-Times’ photographer.”
Jack shakes Addie’s hand. “Just ignore me,” he says.
“Why don’t we start the follow-up on the way to the elephant exhibit,” Addie suggests. “That way you can see the calf while we talk.” She grabs a rain shell from the back of her chair. We follow her into drizzle. “You’re both very lucky. The exhibit is closed to the public until Swift Jones is two months old.”
Jack looks interested, but I’ve already seen the calf. I pull out my list of questions. “Can you tell me more about the conservation center you worked for as a kid?”
“The Henry Shaw Wildlife Trust,” Addie says. “Their mission is to aid in the preservation and protection of all wildlife. They have an orphan project created to save the baby elephants left behind after poachers kill their mothers. There are similar orphan projects in Asia that also do this kind of work.”
It starts to rain harder, but Addie stops walking, so I keep taking notes. I try not to look at the animal exhibit behind her. The orangutans have both an indoor and outdoor enclosure. Outside, it’s a two-story-tall, chain-link-enclosed area half the size of a school gymnasium. There are some trees, suspended tire swings and rope walkways. I’ve seen the apes on sunny days, leaping, swinging and calling to each other. But right now, only one rain-bedraggled ape is outside. He’s hunched on the rope bridge, orange fur soaked through, head hanging low. I appreciate that zoos do their best for each animal, that they’re trying to educate and protect. But still, it’s pretty sad to see animals that should be free and wild forced to live in artificial exhibits to keep their species alive.
“The first orphan I saw was named Mbegu,” Addie continues. “He was found on the Masai Mara standing beside his dead mother. She’d been killed by a poacher’s poison spear. Her tusks had been sawed off, leaving gaping, bloody wounds. Mbegu was circling the body, using his tiny trunk to try to move his mother.”
“Can a baby elephant survive without his mother?” Jack asks.
“Of course he can,” I say. They both look at me. “Sorry. Go on.”
“Mbegu was only two months old when his mother was killed. He didn’t stand a chance of survival because the older females in his herd had not recently given birth so they had no milk to share.”
“A calf can drink milk from an elephant who isn’t her mom?” I ask.
“I’ve seen it work,” Addie says, “but there’s no guarantee.”
“But you said he was rescued.”
“Mbegu was flown to the Wildlife Trust, where a team of specialists waited. He hadn’t been without milk for long but was so traumatized from watching his mother die that he wouldn’t let our handlers come near. We tried to bottle-feed him but despite the love of handlers, tireless veterinarians and the comfort of the other orphan elephants in the stockade where he was kept, Mbegu continued to refuse the milk. He died a week later.”
“Why wouldn’t he drink?” I ask.
“In many ways elephant calves are more complex than humans,” Addie explains. “They can die of a broken heart.”
“But a lot of orphans do survive?”
Addie walks on. “Some orphan calves do survive, but the point of my story is that even with all the work conservationists do, saving the elephant from extinction is an uphill battle. Every win counts. Swift Jones’s birth is a huge win.”
“Aren’t elephant breeding programs in zoos controversial?” Jack asks.
“One elephant dies somewhere in the world every fifteen minutes,” Addie says. “Zoos like ours breed in the hopes that we can preserve a handful of elephants if conservation efforts fail and those in the wild become extinct.”
“Why do you love elephants so much?” It’s not one of my questions, but I want to steer Addie back to a topic that makes the crease between her brows disappear.
“Off the record because it’s both personal and not pertinent to your story?”
Jack and I both nod.
“I told Lily already that my father was a poacher. He was a very cruel man. He beat my mother almost daily. He beat his children, too. We had no power in the world. As a child, working at the Wildlife Trust, I learned that elephants form the perfect family.”
Addie pulls open the door to the elephant exhibit. We follow her inside. The air is warmer, thick with the miasma of sweet straw and the heavy musk of elephants. She leads us down the hallway.
“Back on the record,” Addie says. “A herd is led by the oldest elephant matriarch and consists of her sisters, daughters and their calves. The older female elephants help the younger ones when they give birth. The entire herd looks after the babies. They’re there for each other in every situation, and never overlook even the smallest member’s needs.”
“Where are the adult male elephants?” Jack asks.
“When the bulls reach adolescence they break away from the herd and travel with other males. They seek out a herd only when it’s time to mate—”
“Addie!” Steve runs down the hallway toward us. “I’ve been calling you.”
Addie pats her jacket pocket. “I forgot my radio. Sorry. What’s wrong?”
“Raki tried to crush her calf. If we don’t get SJ out of the enclosure, Raki may kill her.”
10
Steve and Addie take off down the hallway, leaving Jack and me alone. “Well. I guess the interview is over.”
Jack shakes his head. “We’re still on the job. Come on.”
Addie and Steve disappeared through the farthest doorway on the right. Jack heads that way but my feet are rooted in place. Jack’s right, this is my job. But Addie didn’t invite us and I don’t really want to see what’s happening.
“You coming?” Jack calls.
I take a step toward the exit. Whatever is going on doesn’t involve me. There is no way witnessing Raki kick the shit out of her daughter fits into my Twelve-Year Plan.
A plaintive cry that sounds almost human echoes down the hall and suddenly I’m running beside Jack.
We stop on either side of the slightly ajar outer barred door and peek our heads around it. Raki and Swift Jones are in the same enclosure where the calf was born. Raki’s ears flap like they’re on overdrive. She trumpets so loudly that it hurts. Swift Jones stands in the center of the room. Blood dribbles down her front leg from a cut on her chest. Her miniature trunk swings side to side. She calls out to her mother, high-pitched, forlorn. Steve, several staff members and Addie stand inside the smaller cage in the far right corner.
“I darted her over ten minutes ago,” Steve says. “Since then she’s been pacing, not attacking, but every time we try to run in and grab the calf, she charges us. She’s too fast to risk it. We’ll have to wait for the sedative to kick in.”
“What’d you use?”
“One cc of Etorphine. Enough for a standing sedation.”
Addie grips the cage’s bars. “Yesterday Raki was the perfect mother. What changed?”
I’m in a hospital room, my forehead stitched, bandaged, eyes closed against the room’s bright overhead light.
“What changed?” the policeman asks.
“I don’t know,” Daddy says. “Violet has always been a great mother.”
“There were posters, scribbled messages on the walls of your apartment.”
“My wife is an artist.”
The policeman clears his throat. “Did you know she’d gone off her medications?”
“No,” Daddy lies.
I wonder why my daddy isn’t telling the policeman that Mommy no longer speaks to us with her own words. She’s stopped showering. They scream at each other every day then cry. Mommy refuses to cook because Mrs. Berg, an old lady who lives down the hall, is poisoning our food.
“Are you taking notes?” Jack whispers.
I nod. Scribble on my pad. But I don’t need notes. Traum
atic situations burn their details into my brain.
“We both know that elephants who breed in captivity sometimes reject their calves,” Steve says. “We’ll work through it. But first we need to make sure SJ is safe.”
Beside me Jack’s camera clicks. I flinch. It feels wrong to document this private moment between mother and daughter. With an earsplitting trumpet, Raki charges her calf and head-butts her in the torso so hard that Swift Jones flies several feet through the air, hits the ground, rolls. Raki kicks her repeatedly, her body flipping down the length of the room until she’s ten feet from us. The calf is motionless, her eyes closed.
Raki runs to the other side of the pen then turns and stamps the ground, winding up for a full speed attack. Every nerve in my body fires... I don’t remember running into the enclosure. But I’m looking up at Raki, who is less than fifty feet away. Behind me I hear Swift Jones whimpering. The sound peels the skin from my bones. In the distance someone calls my name...
“T. Lily, stop crying,” Mommy says.
On the street below, people point up at us. “But I can’t fly.”
Mommy squares her shoulders. “‘You just think lovely wonderful thoughts...and they lift you up in the air.’”
Raki trumpets. Her eyes roll in their sockets. They’re too bright. Fireworks. She stomps the floor, bellows, then charges me. The ground trembles, or maybe it’s me. She’s about to crush me...and then she stops. Literally stops, less than ten feet away. She’s still standing but swaying, legs splayed wide, trunk dangling, eyes glazed. I swallow hard, tasting only my own sour spit.
Addie shakes my shoulders so hard that my head snaps back and forth. “What the hell were you thinking?” she shouts. Spittle dots my face. “You could’ve been killed!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Swifty wobbles to her feet. She’s not dead. There’s only one cut on her body. The calf looks up at Raki. She makes a sad, bleating sound. Steve kneels by her then runs his hands over her body like he can’t believe she’s alive either. “Get the calf and that girl out of here so I can reverse the sedation before Raki falls,” he says, then approaches Raki with a small syringe. The massive elephant doesn’t even register that he’s there; that any of us are there.
When Elephants Fly Page 6
