Masks

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  “Attention to what?” I ask.

  “To what you’re feeling, to the places where life is directing you. You have to find your inner spirit. That’s what I’ve tried to capture in that cat mask—the animal’s bold, wild inner spirit. It isn’t easy since it won’t even sit still for me. Sometimes I have to be very quiet and just watch it.”

  “I wonder what my mask would look like if it showed who I really am inside,” I say.

  “Fierce. Passionate,” Michaela replies without hesitating.

  Her description surprises me. I’m shy and sensible. At least, that’s how I’ve always been. What does she see in me that I can’t see?

  “That doesn’t seem true to you, does it?” Michaela says.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t think anyone really sees me that way.”

  “You may be the one who doesn’t see yourself like that,” she says. “Pay attention. I have a hunch that you’ll view things differently soon.”

  How does she know these things? Could she really be a witch?

  Again she answers my unasked question, at least the first one. “I know, because I’ve had shifts in my life, several times.” She snaps her fingers. “I know why I thought we’d met!” she says. “You stopped your bike outside my house last weekend. I saw you from my bedroom window.”

  “I have to tell you this,” I say, “because now it seems so ridiculous. My friends had the idea that you’re a witch. They almost had me believing it when you went into the bushes and the cat ran out. I actually was starting to wonder if you had taken the form of that stray cat! I hope you’re not offended.”

  “Offended? No! I’m delighted,” she says, smiling. “People have been claiming that witch women turned into cats ever since the time of the Greeks. I wish I could turn into a cat. It would be like being part of a great tradition.”

  “You don’t mind that we thought you were a witch?” I ask.

  “Witches get a bad rep,” she replies. “You know, historically, witches were simply female figures with power, followers of ancient goddesses of the earliest religions. As the world’s religions became more male-dominated, men turned these powerful females into evil spirits. Then they began picking on women who were healers and accusing them of being evil figures. Cats are so mysterious, they also became associated with the witches.”

  I want to hear more about the history of witches, but my mother has come into Michaela’s house and is calling. “Hello? Anyone here? Sunita?” I forgot she was planning to stop by tonight to meet Michaela. Mom always wants to meet my teachers.

  Michaela gets up. “Time to go.”

  Mom is impressed with Michaela and her masks. They talk about her art a few minutes and then we leave. “She’s a very talented woman,” my mother says as we drive home.

  “Nice, too,” I add. It’s funny to think that less than a half hour earlier, I was ready to tell her off for the way she treats her cat.

  It’s strange how often you find out you don’t have the whole story, and when you get the complete picture, it changes the way you think. “Mom?” I ask. “Do you ever wonder whether or not you’ve done the right thing?”

  She glances at me and laughs lightly. “All the time. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just wondering. What do you do about it?”

  “I try to learn as much as possible. It helps to know all the facts. Then I do the best I can. Is something on your mind?”

  My mind is so full of questions that I don’t know where to begin. “No,” I say, “nothing in particular.”

  After supper, I call Dr. Mac to find out if Mittens is doing any better. She says things about elevated levels in Mittens’ blood that I don’t understand. I know it isn’t good, though.

  I do my homework and try to read the novel we’ve been assigned. The book is OK, but my mind isn’t on it. I realize I’m very tired so I wash up, change into my pajamas, and crawl into bed.

  Exhausted as I am, I fall right asleep. I keep having weird dreams, though, and after a while I can’t sleep. The readout on my clock says it’s two-thirteen in the morning.

  In my dreams, the white rat with the bent whisker was speaking to me, but I don’t know what he was saying. Soon, he’s going to be killed. At least his death might help other animals. What if AVM could discover a better antibiotic for peritonitis? If a few rats died so my cat could live, wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t that be “just”? I don’t know.

  I replay the conversation I had with Michaela. “You’re having a shift,” she said. That feels right to me. Something inside me is changing. I can feel it. That’s all I know, though. I have no idea what will happen next, or how big a change this will turn out to be.

  Something is happening, that much is sure. I wish I could look into the future and see who I will turn out to be. I hope it’s someone I can respect.

  Chapter Ten

  I’m awake when the sun rises, so I get up and start getting dressed. I’ve made a decision that I think is a just one.

  I ride my bike over to AVM and arrive at about eight o’clock. Julie and John won’t be there until nine. That should give me plenty of time.

  “You’re here early,” the receptionist comments when I walk in with my school backpack slung over my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m early today,” I agree. I smile and try to look casual. If I seem nervous, she might suspect that I’m up to something.

  I get to the room where we usually work and jiggle the knob. Oh, no! Locked!

  One of the custodians is down the hall. I hurry over to him. “Could you let me into the room with the animals?” I ask.

  He begins to shake his head, but I take out the ID card Julie gave me. “I’m an intern. I need to feed the animals before school.”

  “Oh, all right,” he says, unclipping the large ring of keys from his belt. “That’s very dedicated of you.”

  “Yeah, well…” I reply. “Someone’s got to do it.”

  I thank him, lock the door behind me, and toss my backpack by the door. The shades are drawn and the room is dark. Most of the animals are still curled up, asleep. Not bothering to turn on a light, I go to the rats’ tank. The five white rats are cuddled together, snoozing. I try to lift the tank, but it’s way too heavy.

  How can I do this? My eyes dart around the lab. There’s got to be a way.

  I remember my backpack lying by the door. That’s it! Grabbing the pack, I unzip it and unload the books, then return to the tank and take off the lid.

  My rat friend from the other day is the first to look up at me. I can tell it’s the same rat because one whisker is slightly bent. I scoop him up and give him a nuzzle with my nose. Then I set him down inside my pack. He stands up immediately and starts sniffing. He probably smells the lunch that was in there just a moment before. I put his four sleepy pals in the backpack with him and zip it up.

  Behind this lab is a supply room with a door that leads to an open, grassy field. The door is locked from the outside but not the inside. As long as I put a book in the doorway to hold the door open, I’ll be able to get back in.

  Out in the yard I lay the backpack down and unzip it. “There you go,” I say to the rats. “You’re free. Go!”

  I expect them to race out, but instead they stay inside the pack, sniffing. “What’s the matter with you guys?” I ask as I lift the pack and gently dump them out. “Get going!”

  They just look at me and hang around as though they have no desire to escape. Freeing these animals is the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life—and they won’t leave!

  My friend is the first to travel a little distance. The others scurry after him. “That’s it,” I encourage them. “Be free.” They travel a little farther, sniffing cautiously as they go.

  I am happy. Proud of myself, too. I wish I could have freed all those animals. I wonder if there’s still time. I could probably free the mice and maybe the hamster before nine o’clock.

  Turning back to the door, I’m suddenly face-to-face wi
th Julie. Her face is tight and serious.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she demands.

  I stand firm. “It’s the right thing to do. Those rats don’t deserve to die. The other animals, either.”

  “Those rats are very sick,” Julie says, “and now they’re going to die a much more terrible, drawn-out death, thanks to you.”

  “But…” I begin. “I…I…What will happen to them?”

  “Believe me, you don’t want to know,” she replies. “Their eyesight will begin to fail. They’ll become dehydrated and—”

  I hold up one hand to stop her. “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t want to know. I didn’t think about all that.”

  “In this kind of work, you can’t afford not to think,” Julie says. She steps past me, her eyes fixed on something I can’t see.

  I follow her gaze. One of the white rats is darting in and out of the tall grass. Picking up my pack, I head toward the rat. Julie reaches into her lab coat pocket and pulls out some pellets of food.

  It isn’t hard to catch the rats. They’re so tame, they like people and feel safe around them. Julie catches the first rat almost instantly, as soon as she extends her hand holding the food pellet. Soon we have the other four, too.

  We walk back into the lab without speaking and return the rats to their tank.

  “Listen, Sunita,” Julie says finally, “these animals are not anyone’s beloved pets. We didn’t kidnap them or buy them in a dark alley from someone who stole them. They were bred to be research animals.”

  “Even the cats?” I ask.

  “Even the cats. These animals are extremely expensive because they’re bred to be free of germs and disease. Some cost over a thousand dollars.”

  I don’t know what to say. My head is spinning with all sorts of different thoughts that won’t come together into a sensible sentence.

  “The research animals that die could help other animals to live,” she continues. “That might sound harsh, but those are the realities. I don’t feel one bit bad about the work I do here. A lot of people who love and depend on their pets benefit from our work, and, of course, the new medicines improve the lives of the animals themselves.”

  “But you made those rats sick,” I argue. “Don’t they suffer because they’re sick?”

  “We do all we can to ease their suffering, and we don’t keep them around for long once they’re sick. That’s why we were going to euthanize those rats this Friday—so they don’t get so ill that they’re in real, serious pain.”

  “Do all the research labs do that?” I ask.

  Julie throws her arms out to the side, obviously getting frustrated with me. “They’re supposed to!” she says. “Sunita, there are guidelines and laws for doing research with living creatures. Everything has to be approved before an experiment can even begin.”

  I look down at the white rats and at the other rodents. They all look so innocent, so in need of love and a home.

  “I hear what you’re saying, and what I did was wrong. Sorry,” I apologize. “I’m glad you’re able to do this work to help animals. But I can’t. It’s too hard for me to work with the animals knowing that they’re going to be killed.”

  Julie looks at me closely and nods. She doesn’t seem mad anymore. “I love this work so much, I forget sometimes that not everyone feels the same way,” she says. “It could be that research work involving animals just isn’t for you.”

  I collect my books and stick them in the backpack. “I probably won’t be coming back,” I say.

  “All right,” Julie agrees. “If that’s how you feel, it’s probably for the best.”

  I leave AVM quickly and bike to school. Homeroom is letting out just as I arrive. “Three lates and you’ll have a detention,” my homeroom teacher reminds me. “This is your second one. It’s not like you, Sunita.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m sorry,” is all I can think of to say. It’s not like me at all—yet somehow I don’t care. It’s not even like me not to care.

  But if I’m not like the old Sunita, who am I like—who replaces the old me?

  That’s the scary part.

  After school I head to Dr. Mac’s Place to visit Mittens. Brenna and I see each other in the hallway. She greets me with an angry grunt and keeps walking.

  Fine, if that’s how you’re going to act, I think, even though a big part of me wants us to be friends again.

  “Wait a minute, Brenna,” I say. “Something happened today, and I want to tell you about it.”

  She turns to face me. “What?”

  “I quit AVM after I let some lab rats go today. I couldn’t bear to let them be killed. I set them free.”

  A smile slowly forms on her face. “You did? Awesome! I can’t believe you had the nerve! I’m so proud of you.”

  I hold up my hand to stop her. “I did it partly because of the things you said to me. But I’m not proud of myself. I didn’t have the whole picture. Those rats were sick, and I didn’t realize that by freeing them, I would be causing them a painful death.”

  “I didn’t know those things, either,” Brenna admits. Then her face hardens. “But they wouldn’t be sick in the first place if labs like AVM didn’t exist!”

  I take a deep breath. “If labs like AVM didn’t exist, Brenna, there’d be no antibiotics to help cats like Mittens.”

  Brenna’s eyes soften. “I’m worried about Mittens, too. But I don’t believe that killing animals to save animals makes sense. There just has to be another way.”

  I sigh as I head in to see Mittens. I guess Brenna and I will never see eye to eye.

  Mittens is asleep in her cage. Dr. Mac comes up beside me. “She’s improving,” she says. “The new antibiotic has taken hold.”

  I nod, and tears spring to my eyes. They’re tears of happiness, tears of relief. But they’re also tears of some unexplainable sadness.

  At my final mask-making session, I still don’t know what kind of mask I want to wear. I leave the wire framework of my mask lying unfinished on the table. I would like some more time to talk to Michaela, but my mother is right on time to pick me up, so there’s no chance to talk.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I say to Mom as we drive home. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

  She glances at me with a worried expression on her face. “I don’t like the sound of that, Sunita,” she says. “What’s happened?”

  I tell her about how I freed the rats. “Oh, dear,” she says. “Sunita, how could you do such a thing? I suppose they fired you.”

  “No. Julie was pretty nice about it, really. And we got the rats back. But I can’t do that kind of work. It’s not for me. I quit.”

  My mother nods, keeping her eyes on the road.

  We’re both quiet until I ask, “Would you tell Daddy for me?”

  “We’ll do it together,” she says, which makes me feel a little better.

  At home we find my father in his study. He looks up with a smile, but his smile fades when he sees our concerned expressions. “What is it?” he asks.

  My mother and I sit in chairs by his desk. “Tell him, Sunita,” my mother says gently.

  By the time I’m near the end of my story, my face is wet with tears. “I only did it because I thought it was right,” I say. “But I see now that it wasn’t.”

  My father appears serious, but not that upset. “I’m proud that you followed your conscience,” he says. “But before you take a serious action like that, you must have all the facts. You can’t just jump in rashly, committing acts with serious consequences without considering all sides of the issue.”

  “I know that now,” I say.

  “Sunita has resigned from AVM,” my mother tells him.

  “Clearly this work is too stressful for her,” he says. “So, at least we’ve learned that much.”

  “Are you mad?” I ask.

  He comes out from behind his desk and strokes my head. “Perhaps a little disappointed. But it’s your life. And
these are the decisions you alone can make. No, I’m not mad. You’re growing up, Sunita.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After class the next day, I go to the clinic. “Mittens’ fever is back up a bit today,” Dr. Mac says as she tweezes a thorn from a puppy’s paw. “I just ran some blood tests on her. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning for the results.”

  My shoulders sag with disappointment. “I thought she was finally getting better.”

  “So did I. The tests should tell me what to do next,” she says. The dog in her lap squirms. “Hold him steady for me, please,” she requests.

  I do as she asks. It’s as if I never left the clinic.

  “Success,” Dr. Mac says happily as she holds up the thorn in her tweezers. She looks at me intently. “How’s your internship at AVM coming?” she asks.

  “It’s over,” I say, and I tell her about the white rats and how I had to go chase them down.

  “It’s hard to know what’s right sometimes,” she says, swabbing the pup’s paw with alcohol.

  Dr. Mac always seems so sure of herself. “Isn’t it clear to you?” I ask.

  “Not always,” she admits. “When I was a veterinary intern, I wasn’t prepared for the fact that I would have to put some people’s pets to sleep. Oh, in my mind I understood that this would happen, but I wasn’t prepared for the way I’d feel emotionally. Still…I had to help owners make informed choices about relieving their pets’ suffering or continuing on with treatment that had little hope of success.”

  “I guess that would be a hard choice,” I agree.

  “Very hard.”

  Then a frightening thought makes me cold all over. Did Dr. Mac just bring up the subject because she’s thinking about Mittens? It’s a question I can’t bring myself to ask her.

  On the night of the Halloween party at the Ambler Town Center, David comes by my house to pick me up. He’s dressed in his vampire costume. I’ve used fabric markers to draw a big jack-o’-lantern on an oversized orange sweatshirt. I’m not much in the mood for Halloween, but it’s worse sitting around doing nothing.