by Beth Vrabel
Tooter twirled around twice in the transport cage and lay down. He panted, his stupid goofy face almost smiling like he was going on an adventure. I didn’t realize I was crying until the tears dripped from my cheeks onto my neck. James moved closer to me, his shoulder brushing mine. When I looked at him, I gasped. His eyes were wide with fear, his face white. I was about to say, “Hey, take it easy! Look at Tooter, he’s fine!” but James wasn’t staring at Tooter with panic. He was watching Mom, waiting for her to crumble.
But Mom wasn’t crumbling. She was fierce. Mom kept arguing with the workers, promising that we’d keep the dog inside, that this was a big misunderstanding, that they should at least wait until her husband came home. The two workers just nodded and kept securing the locks on the cage. They lifted it and Tooter let out a loud toot.
The next morning, we were waiting at Sinkville Animal Rescue when the doors opened. Mom stood just behind me and James.
“You didn’t have to come, Mom.” James’s hair was loose over his forehead as always and Mom lightly pushed it back with her fingertips. James flinched like her touch was a flame. Mom’s fingers stilled and lowered limply.
I whapped James with my hip. What was he thinking? He nudged me back with his bony hip and gave me a “what?” look. But I could tell he felt bad, too. For some reason, it made me think of when Mom had said “we” yesterday when she was talking about my project. How it had made me angry for a second, the way she wanted to pick up right where she had been as if weeks of her being part zombie hadn’t happened.
Maybe that’s what James was feeling now. I tried to give him an I-get-it-but-you-got-to-give-her-a-chance look, but let’s face it. I’m not that talented facially. Blame the eyes, I guess. He looked totally confused. “Are you feeling sick?” he asked.
Mom whipped around to me. “Oh, honey!” She put her hand in mine. “I’m sure Tooter is fine.”
When the heavy doors pulled back, there stood Sarah. Behind me, James sucked in his breath. Sarah’s eyes locked with his, and I swear I could feel vibrations of energy between the two of them.
Mom could, too, because I felt the whoosh of her hair as her head whipped between them. “I—I . . .” her voice trailed off. “I can only deal with one thing at time,” she muttered.
“You’re just in time!” Sarah clapped her hands together.
“Is something wrong? Did something happen to Tooter?” But I knew even as I asked that the dumb dog was fine. Sarah wasn’t worried; she was super excited.
“I’m fine! We’re all fine! You won’t believe what we found today!” Sarah grabbed James by the arm and yanked him along the corridor. Mom and I glanced at each other and then trotted behind them.
When we reached the little room that Sarah had pulled James into, I still didn’t know what was going on. They stood with Dr. Ross around a little table, peering in at something locked in a small cage. “Can you believe it?” Sarah asked. “I mean, they’ve got to be super rare.”
“They are,” Dr. Ross agreed. “Especially rare to find one this old. Most of the time, they die in infancy.”
“Why? I mean, so what that it looks different.” James’s voice was strangely husky. He turned away from the cage. In two steps, he was at my side, turning me away from the table. “Let’s get Tooter,” he muttered.
But Sarah had turned toward Mom and me and I was close enough to see her wide eyes and the way the excitement on her face twisted into something else. I shimmied out of James’s grip and moved toward the cage.
Dr. Ross continued, “They’re not suited to living unprotected on their own. They can’t blend in for obvious reasons. Their appearance makes them an ideal target for predators, plus their compromised vision puts them at an incredible disadvantage. It’s amazing that it survived this long. These kinds of mutations almost never make it.”
By then, of course, I knew. Whatever was locked in this cage was an albino.
An albino squirrel.
Mom’s hands were steady on my shoulders. She squeezed gently. “It’s beautiful.”
Dr. Ross coughed slightly. “Yes, um. It is.” I wasn’t looking at him, just the squirrel, milky white and red-eyed, but I heard the doctor shift across the room. I felt his eyes on me, and I knew they were raking down from my paper white hair, my translucent skin, my darting eyes. “I didn’t mean to offend. And I’m sorry if I did.”
“No need to apologize,” Mom said. “Right, Alice?”
“What happened to it?” I asked instead of answering Mom.
“Well, he fell.” Dr. Ross leaned down on his elbows so our eyes were level though he was on the other side of the cage. “That’s our best guess, anyway. The resident who called found him under a tree, apparently stunned.”
“Squirrels can fall out of trees?” James asked. “Aren’t they, like, tree ninjas, jumping all over the place?”
Dr. Ross nodded, but his eyes stayed locked on mine. “This squirrel doesn’t have pigment in his eyes. He can’t see as well and the sunshine likely hurts him since he has no protection from the glare. It leads to falls.”
“Is he . . .” Mom left the rest of the question unspoken but I knew what she was asking. So did Dr. Ross.
“Yes, he’s going to be fine. Nothing broken. I think he was just stunned. Didn’t even put up a fight when I brought him here.”
The squirrel was shaking in his cage, curled up in a corner. When I ran my finger along a bar of the enclosure, he squealed.
“I’m sorry!” I whispered to him. “Why didn’t you let him go?” I have to admit, I was a little surprised at how angry my voice sounded. I didn’t even realize I was mad until I had said it, but suddenly I was seething. So what if the squirrel fell? I’m sure that kind of stuff happens all the time. Why not just let him scamper off with his little squirrel friends?
Dr. Ross didn’t answer for a long minute. When he did, he sounded so gentle that I had to look at him. His brown eyes stared steadily into mine and I knew he was going to tell me the truth. “It’s a miracle he made it as long as he did. This is the safest place for him. We can learn about him and, at the same time, keep him safe.
“But you’re not here about the squirrel, I presume.” Dr. Ross stood up. “You’re here to check on Tooter.”
Tooter was in a large enclosure, his tail thumping like it does when he’s happy. James and Sarah talked to him through the bars. When Mom, Dr. Ross, and I approached, he rolled onto his back. Kind of like, “Hey, while you’re here, I could use a belly rub.”
Behind me, Dr. Ross was telling Mom about quarantine. How it’s a way to ensure that animals aren’t aggressive or showing other signs of rabies. That it’s standard procedure when there is a complaint about an attack.
James snorted.
“I understand there is some disagreement about whether this was an attack at all.” Dr. Ross glanced at Sarah who nodded back to him.
“He peed on Sandi McAllister and she totally deserved it.” I crossed my arms and glared up at the doctor, daring him to disagree.
But he didn’t. He smiled. “I’ve met Elizabeth McAllister and Sandi,” he said. “Tooter sure knows how to pick his targets.”
“Tooter’s foot came down on the girl’s leg,” Mom said, sounding annoyed. “It’s been a while since we’ve had him groomed, so his claws are a little long, but I can’t imagine the so-called injury is all that serious.”
Dr. Ross nodded but didn’t say anything. I guess Tooter did look a little shaggy, now that Mom had mentioned it.
“The point is, I don’t see why we can’t monitor him at home,” Mom continued.
“I don’t either,” Dr. Ross said. “In fact, I was going to suggest it. We might catch some flak about it from the McAllisters, but it’s pretty typical to give owners that option. We just need to be able to swing by and check on him at least once a day.”
“Yes!” I flung into Dr. Ross’s arms, which he apparently didn’t expect because he tumbled backward, catching himself before we both fell.
“I take it that’s the course you’d like to go with,” he said as he straightened himself and me.
“Yes, I believe so,” Mom laughed.
Mom and Dr. Ross talked about the quarantine rules and completed paperwork while James followed Sarah around the room, making sure the center’s snakes, frogs, and turtles had enough water, the right temperature in their enclosures, and a snack or two. Most of them were formerly pets, Sarah explained. People didn’t realize turtles would be around for fifty years when they bought them, so they’d drop them off at the center when they were tired of them. People hated stocking the freezer with dead rats for snakes. The frogs weren’t native to the area and so had to be kept at the rescue permanently.
It all seemed sad to me, these abandoned critters. I let James and Sarah move on while I watched the frogs and turtles, wondering if they missed their owners. Or were they glad they had moved here, where they were being taken care of and studied? A dark blue frog stared at me from the back of his aquarium. I watched a turtle stretch out his neck, nab a piece of shredded lettuce, and let his neck droop back as he nibbled. When I glanced back at the blue frog, it was in the middle of his cage, still staring at me. I moved toward the opposite side, where a snake twirled around a twig in his cage. I wondered if the frog liked living next door to something that likely wanted to eat him. When I turned back to the frog, I gasped. It was right up against the glass.
I probably could’ve continued the staring contest with the blue frog all day but Sarah’s laughter broke my concentration. “Are you sure that’s safe?” James asked. And that was all the invitation I needed to get closer. There was Sarah with about six fuzzy, long-tailed, and white-faced creatures scampering all up her shoulders and chest.
“Are those mini monkeys?” I asked.
Sarah laughed again, grabbing one of the furry lumps from the edge of her shoulder and placing it on her chest. “They’re baby opossums. The mom was killed by a car but the babies survived. They’re like kangaroos, carrying their babies in a pouch for a few weeks. Dr. Ross has been taking care of them, getting them ready to live on their own.”
“They are so creepy,” James said, extending a finger toward one of the babies. It bared its mini dagger teeth and hissed. Believe me, if I had been Sarah, there would’ve been opossum babies flung all over the place after that. But she just laughed, plucking the babies off and putting them back in the cage.
They moved on to feed some animals in the next room. I stayed by the baby opossums. Poor things. There they were, feeling safe as could be in their mama’s pouch when bam! The accident happened and everything changed.
For some reason, it made me think of that poor scared squirrel.
James and Sarah didn’t notice me leave the room. Dr. Ross and Mom were still talking in his office. Tooter didn’t even look up as I passed his enclosure.
The squirrel stayed huddled in the corner of his cage, his red eyes watching me unblinkingly. I linked my fingers in the bars, and he squeaked. It was a high-pitched whistling sound. I thought at first it was a warning, but when I lifted the barred part of the cage to fit my hand underneath it, he didn’t move away from my fingers. In fact, he crouched down toward me, his nose sniffing the air. I stretched farther into the cage, so the part with the bars was sort of resting on my shoulder. I knew Dr. Ross would probably be mad; it’d be pretty easy for the squirrel to dart past me and be loose in the office, but I just had a feeling that it wouldn’t do that. We were kindred spirits.
“Don’t worry, little guy,” I whispered. “I bet you’re tougher than you look.”
And the squirrel was beautiful. His tail was full and fluffy, like a pulled apart cotton ball. Maybe some people would think the red eyes were creepy. But those people were wrong, because they weren’t creepy. They were just different. Like rubies instead of boring brown spots.
“I bet they’re going to name you something stupid because of your fur. Something like Snowball or Marshmallow.” The idea made me mad. “Not me. I’m going to call you Chuck. It’s a strong, don’t-mess-with-me name.”
Without even thinking about it, I ran my finger down Chuck’s back. He was silkier than I thought he’d be, like someone who used too much conditioner and didn’t rinse it all out. He didn’t move away from my finger, letting me run it down his back again and again. I didn’t even realize it, but I was talking to him, too.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “No one thought I could do anything on my own, either. But I found a friend. Then I found more people I liked. I made a home here, by myself. Some people still think I can’t do it. They think I need to go to a special school. But I know better, just like you know better. I’m going to finish my essay, even if Sandi’s idea is better and even if Kerica can’t help and even if I’ve only been here a couple months. I’m going to finish and maybe even win, and then everyone will know that I’m fine, fine, fine. And Mom will keep getting stronger. And James won’t be so scared. And Dad will come home more. And it’ll all be because of me, because of what I did.” My eyes blurred for some stupid reason and I blinked them dry again. “That’s what you need to do, too. Okay? You just need to find a friend. And then you need to make a home here.”
“Alice?”
I whipped my head around and there they all were—Sarah, James, Mom, and Dr. Ross. How much had they heard? I guess I panicked a little because my fingers flexed and I sort of knocked Chuck.
He made this loud whistle sound and then bam!
Chuck’s horrible rodent teeth of pain latched onto my finger! Oh, the betrayal!
“Aaaahhh!” I jerked my finger back but Chuck didn’t let go! His jaws stayed locked around my finger even as I yanked my arm backward, sending the top of the cage clattering to the floor.
“Aaaahh!” I screamed louder but all Mom, Dr. Ross, James, and Sarah did was stare as I whipped my hand—Chuck attached—in front of me.
“AAAAAHHHHH!” What could I do? I’m not sure why spinning around in a circle seemed like a good idea, but it did. It totally did. So I spun, maybe like three times, still screaming. Still with a rodent attached to my finger.
Suddenly the others launched toward me. Mom grabbed my arms, stopping me midtwirl. That’s when Chuck’s vise grip on my finger loosened and he flew across the room.
“Gotcha!” Dr. Ross said. He actually caught that stupid squirrel in the air! I heard him latch shut the cage door. “It’s all right everyone! I’ve got him!”
“IT’S ALL RIGHT?!” I held up my hand in the air. Blood poured out of the bite marks on both sides of my finger, running down my arm and across Mom’s hands. “I was bit by a squirrel. I’m never going to be all right!”
“Calm down, Alice.” Mom twisted my hand in hers and studied the bite mark. “It looks pretty deep.”
“Calm down!” I repeated.
“You’re lucky he was still a little stunned,” Sarah said, moving closer toward me. “He could’ve bit the tip of your finger right off.”
“Lucky!” What was wrong with these people?
Here’s the good news: No one has ever gotten rabies from a squirrel.
At least, that’s what Dr. Ross said. “And Alice sort of provoked it, you know?” he added.
Whatever.
Mom, of course, called the game warden, the Department of Public Health, the pediatrician, and everyone else she could think of to confirm this. All of them said I didn’t need rabies shots. I did, however, need a tetanus shot, which was literally a pain in the rump.
Here’s the bad news: When you go to an urgent care center with a squirrel bite, the nurses will have a very hard time not laughing at you. In fact, they might just laugh right in your face as they clean the bite. “It’s just, this is our first squirrel bite.”
No kidding.
Good news: I didn’t need stitches.
Bad news: My pointer finger was wrapped up like a football.
“It’s okay,” Mom said, patting my head. “I’ll help you type your essay.”
“I don’t care about the stupid essay.”
“Yes, you do.” Mom kissed the top of my head.
Bad news: Mr. Hamlin was also in urgent care. He had fallen off the dock, twisting his ankle. Mom spotted him sitting in the waiting room with Sarah as we were leaving.
“Are you okay, Mr. Hamlin?” I rushed toward him.
He stared at me a second while Mom introduced me and herself to Susan, Sarah’s mom and Mr. Hamlin’s daughter-in-law. Mr. Hamlin was still staring at me like he didn’t know who I was. It had only been two days since I had seen him. Then, suddenly, his eyes widened and he muttered, “Gnome Girl.”
“Did you knock your head?” I asked him.
“Nah, just a little twist in the ankle. What brought you here?”
Good news: Hearing the squirrel story made him laugh, even though his ankle hurt.
“Don’t worry, Gnome Girl. Lots of people get bit by squirrels.”
“Did one ever bite you?”
“Course not.”
I was slunk down into the cushions of the couch, Tooter curled on my lap. That was another piece of good news, I guess. Tooter was home. Dr. Ross said he wanted to stop by the next day to check on us and talk about his observation, and Mom said he was waiving the boarding fee because of the whole bite thing.
Bad thing: Squirrel bites hurt. A lot. Maybe they’d hurt a little less if the people around me weren’t such jerks about it.
When Dad came home that night, he was worse than the nurses, coughing chuckles into his napkin throughout dinner. “So, um, you spun in circles? And it—”
“Chuck,” I muttered, trying to stab a lima bean with my fork using my left hand.
“Chuck,” Dad corrected, “held on.” He shook his head and turned to Mom. “And you didn’t take a picture?”
“I know!” my mom, the traitor, said. She laughed into her napkin.
“Don’t sweat it, Alice,” James said, his mouth twitching. “Maybe you’ll be like Spider-Man after he was bit. Maybe you’ll get, like, super squirrelly powers.”
