by Kathryn Hoff
I almost gagged. Paula worked at the ECA? Wore a white suit and locked sick people away? And she never told me?
The man snorted. “You call that a job? A regional zoo, for God’s sake. Shoveling excrement and feeding puppy chow to gorillas. Surely you want to do something more meaningful than that.”
“Preserving species in danger of extinction,” Paula answered quietly. “Helping ordinary people understand the need to conserve them, even now.”
“Nonsense. Humans are in danger of extinction. You’re an accomplished scientist who did cutting-edge work. Now more than ever, we need your help to complete it. We’re racing against time. Strain six is peaking and we need to finish before…”
“Did Mendez send you? I already told him, I can’t return.”
“Mendez doesn’t know I’m here. The truth is,” he dropped his voice low. “Mendez is dying.”
Paula’s breath caught. “What happened?”
“Don’t worry—it’s not from anything at the lab. It’s not even Eclipse, although God knows we’ve lost plenty of scientists to that. It’s plain, ordinary prostate cancer. Mendez is disappointed—fancies himself on the verge of a breakthrough and he’s succumbing to something ‘appallingly ordinary.’ It might even be curable, if all our medical resources weren’t diverted.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“You understand what a gap that will leave in our research? Why it’s so important that you come back?”
“I can’t. I have Jackie to look after. You’ll have to find someone else.”
“Nonsense. There are teen homes for her sort.”
My sort? I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from cussing.
“I can’t, Avery. I won’t.”
“Paula, I’m not being callous. For all I know you’re fond of the creature. But I’m desperate. There have been…incidents. I need someone in the lab I can trust. There’s no one else left who understands the phage structure like you do, and I don’t have time to train someone new. With your help, Mendez and I could end the threat of Eclipse forever. Isn’t that worth some sacrifice? Ask yourself, what would you do to stop Eclipse? How far would you go?”
“Not as far as you, Avery.”
He gave a disgusted snort. “And how many lives will your principles cost? Think about it, that’s all I ask.”
At supper, Paula tried to talk about the animals, but my responses were just grunts.
She’d lied to me. Or at least, not told the truth. She knew how I hated the Eclipse Control Agency: the white suits who took my family away and lied to me about them, the ones who locked me away in the red zone and poked and pricked at me while I was too sick and weak to stop them, the ones who sent me to an orphan home without a single familiar toy or picture of my family. How could Paula have hidden from me that she’d worked for the ECA?
And how could she hide that they were trying to get her to go back?
Paula put her fork down. “Talk to me. I know you were listening.”
All my anger came bubbling up. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you worked for the ECA?”
“Some things that happened before I met you are private. You have things you keep private too.”
My glare told her what I thought of that.
She picked her fork up and pushed some peas around. “Fair enough—not telling a lie isn’t the same as being honest. If there’s something you want to know, ask.”
“For starters, what did you do there?”
“Biology. Genetic research. Dr. Leo Mendez was my advisor at the university. When wave two hit, the ECA asked him to head up a new research unit, and he recruited me to work with him.”
“In a red zone?” I didn’t like the picture in my mind of Paula wearing a white suit and helmet and talking with the robot voice.
“I didn’t work with patients. I did research in the lab.”
That made me feel a little better. Maybe it wasn’t too different from the lab work she did at the zoo.
“Why’d you quit?”
“I had some…professional disagreements with Mendez and Avery.” She carefully squashed each individual pea against her plate. “Maybe we would have worked through it, but I got sick in wave four. When I recovered enough to go back to work, I wanted to make a new start, you know? Do something different. The zoo offered me a job running the pathology lab.” She smiled at the memory. “It saved my life, I think.”
“What do you mean? Were you still sick?”
It was so quiet, I could hear the footsteps of people walking on the street four floors below.
“I was depressed. Very, very depressed. We worked so hard at the ECA, but we didn’t find a cure. So many people I knew had died…it felt wrong, somehow, to still be alive. But the zoo needed a biologist who could run the path lab. I couldn’t stop people all over the world from dying, but maybe I could help save some animals from extinction. At the time, that seemed to be the most important thing I could do.”
I could understand that. Working at the zoo had saved me, too, from teen home. From feeling worthless.
I took my plate to the sink. “You’re gonna go back there, aren’t you? Quit the zoo and go work for Eclipse Control.”
“You heard me tell Avery no.”
“He said you should think about it. And maybe you should, you know?” I scrubbed the plate, harder than it really needed. “Zeke can find somebody else for the path lab. And if that guy…”
“Dr. Quinn. Avery Quinn.”
“If Dr. Quinn thinks you can help find a cure, then you should go, right? Then maybe kids like that boy at the zoo wouldn’t get sick.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that.
That night, I lay awake in my cubby for a long time, worrying about what Paula might do.
My cubby was a bed in the living room with a tall bookcase for a wall. In the bookcase was everything I owned: a stuffed orangutan from the zoo shop that Paula gave me when I first came to live with her. A stack of shirts and khakis. A box of undies and socks. The old tablet I used for schoolwork, recovered from some Eclipsed family and refurbished by the ECA after international quarantines made it impossible to import new electronics. A book about primates Paula had lent me. A big old dictionary that must have been from the Civil War, it was so beat up.
Paula’s most recent gift to me was an almost-new paperback thesaurus from an ECA thrift shop. She’d handed it to me a week ago.
“This is for you,” she’d said. “You say ‘stupid’ too much. It makes you sound mean-spirited and limited in your vocabulary. Find some better words to use. I’ll pay you five dollars if you go a month without calling anything or anyone stupid.”
I’d been trying hard to earn that five bucks, but now it seemed like a, well, stupid thing to do.
Quinn had called Paula an accomplished scientist.
I leafed through the thesaurus. Accomplished: expert, masterly, talented, gifted.
That was true of Paula. At the zoo, she figured out what was wrong with the animals. Microscopes and test tubes of blood and pee and crap, and from all that, she could look at a slide and say, “Look, Jackie, the anteater’s pregnant,” or “The tiger has a cough, but this will cure it.” That was the sort of skill I needed if I was going to grow up to be more than another jobless soul on the street, haunting doorways and wishing for some meaning in my life.
And if Paula was an expert scientist, then Quinn was right: it made total sense that she should go back to Eclipse Control to help save lives. He’d asked Paula, “How far would you go to stop Eclipse?” Pretty far, was my guess. Stopping Eclipse was a lot more important than working at a zoo. A lot more important than fostering a sixteen-year-old cage cleaner.
But what would happen to me? No one else at the zoo was likely to sponsor me. Maybe I could find another job for teen pay—peanuts, just enough to encourage kids to get a job instead of hanging around the streets. Or maybe I should concentrate on schoolwork to be sure I had a diploma before I
aged out of orphan support. As long as I could be with Paula, it wouldn’t be so bad.
Except it would mean no more playing peekaboo with Henry Orangutan, no more chopping veggies for the gibbons, no more training sessions with Jayjay Chimp.
No more working with the animals, the only thing that made me happy, that made me feel useful, since my family was Eclipsed.
Depressed: sad, gloomy, dejected, downhearted, desolate.
CHAPTER 3
Monkey girl
The next morning, nothing went right. I was too tired to get up like usual, and Paula was all bothered about being late to work. Why should I care? She probably wouldn’t be working there much longer anyway.
On the bus, I complained. “I’m tired of getting up early and working in a stinky monkey house.”
“Fine,” Paula said. “Go to the study center, then. You’re behind in history.”
When we got to the zoo, I dawdled on the way to the zoo’s study center and, when Mr. Lee’s back was turned, I filched a bag of chips from his snack stand. Then I snuck over to the sea lions and ate the whole bag before anybody else was around.
That just made me feel worse.
When I got to the study center, I sat by the window with Amy, a new kid who’d just been fostered by one of the cafeteria workers. She was little and shy and scared of everybody, just the type to get picked on. She was scared of me, too, so I didn’t try to talk to her. I just sat like a grumpy wall between her and the rowdy kids. After a while, she stopped peeping at me and relaxed.
Paula was right about my being behind in history. For a week, I’d been trying to get through the lesson on World War I, but nothing seemed to sink in and I couldn’t pass the test to move on to another unit. It was like school quicksand—I was stuck in the World War I trenches and would never get out. Why should I care about people who died more than a hundred years ago, anyway? There were too many dead people.
“Move over,” Ronnie said. “I want to sit by the window.”
I’d been so lost in the history lesson, I hadn’t seen Ronnie looming over little Amy.
“Leave her alone,” I said. “She was here first.” I hated bullies. Ronnie wasn’t even an orphan. His mom worked in the admin office and he was fifteen and big for his age.
“Shut up, monkey girl. I’m not talking to you.”
Amy started to gather up her stuff. “That’s all right,” she squeaked. “I can move.”
“She was here first.” I stood up to show Ronnie I was almost as big as him.
“You can move too,” he said. “Like to the other side of the room. You smell like monkey poop.” Which was witless, since I hadn’t even been in the primate house that morning.
Then he pushed me.
Jerk. I pushed him back, hard enough that he went ass-first to the floor in front of everybody in the study center.
“Settle down!” the proctor called, but she was across the room and neither of us paid any attention.
Ronnie picked himself up, straightening his surgical mask. “Stupid girl,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
Mean spirited, I thought. Limited vocabulary. He needs a thesaurus.
He came close, hunching his shoulders like Jayjay Chimp on a bad day. Maybe he expected me to back down, but I was strong from shoveling monkey poop and I’d probably been in more fights in my first teen-home year than a non-orphan like Ronnie had been in his whole life.
“Show me, then,” I said.
The jerk swung on me, a wide haymaker that bounced off my shoulder and hit me in the cheek. So I gave him a couple of good ones right in the face and knocked his stupid mask off.
I kept my fists high, ready for him to hit back and then I would really show him. I would pound him into the floor the way I’d been pounded when I first went to teen home.
But Ronnie didn’t hit back. His nose started bleeding and he just stood there with a stupid expression on his face, saying, “You hit me!” over and over.
And Amy started crying and the stupid proctor bustled over, yelling at me. Even when I said Ronnie started it, she sent me out and called Paula and said I couldn’t come to the stupid study center anymore.
Like I would care.
Paula said we should go home, even though it was early. On the bus, we both stayed quiet. I just sat there, miserable.
I knew what was coming: I’m very disappointed. I expect better from you. I’d heard that lecture a lot at teen home. As if making you feel like a worm would make you act better.
Damn my stupid temper. Paula would probably send me back to teen home that very night. She’d keep the Mid-Atlantic Zoo Staff sweatshirts, and the thesaurus, and the primate book she’d lent me, and the stuffed orangutan, and send me back. Sorry, this one’s too much trouble. She just didn’t work out.
Maybe she’d choose some other kid to foster, some kid who didn’t get into fights.
Or maybe Paula would just forget about fostering a kid and go straight to the ECA and Dr. Toothpaste-Smile Quinn. Maybe she’d be happier there without having to worry about someone like me.
All the way home, all the way up the elevator, all the way to the apartment door, I steeled myself. Ready to be told to pack my socks and undies and go back to teen home.
But Paula didn’t do that. Instead, once we were in the door, she put her stuff down and grabbed me and hugged me and didn’t let go.
“I’m not going to leave you,” she said. “Not even when you’re in trouble. I called Dr. Mendez and told him the ECA can find somebody else. I’m your family now, and I’m not going to let you go.”
And I blubbered like a stupid five-year-old.
Paula made supper while I washed my face and got my snuffles under control. Even then, she waited until I’d eaten a couple of bowls of soup and two slices of bread before asking me what happened. And she listened, really listened while I told her about Ronnie the jerk.
She smiled and shook her head. “You know, you’re so good with the animals in the primate house. What would you do if the chimp or the gibbons misbehaved?”
“Ignore them.”
“Good answer. Suppose they were frightened?”
“Back down. Show them I’m not a threat.”
“And how do you know when one’s about to become aggressive?”
“Staring, standing up straight, hunching their shoulders, showing their teeth.”
“Right on all counts. Has it occurred to you, honey, that people are primates? You’d be surprised how many situations you can handle just by keeping your head and remembering your basic primate behavior.”
I thumped my glass down. “So I should let an ass like Ronnie push a little kid around?”
Paula leaned forward, eyes riveted on mine, brow furrowed in anger.
Startled, I dropped my eyes and tried to make myself small.
Paula relaxed and smiled. “See? Eye contact, confrontational posture, aggressive expression. Enough to make a bully back down in many circumstances. With no hitting required.”
My jaw dropped. “Did you just…gorilla me?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Wow. Yeah.” To be honest, she’d intimidated the hell out of me without a word.
“To be used only in appropriate circumstances.” She drummed on the table with her fingers, like she was trying to decide something. “Unfortunately, this little incident comes at a bad time.”
“A bad time for what?”
“You’re sixteen now,” she said. “You have to start thinking about your future.”
I froze, my spoon halfway to my mouth. “I like working with the animals.”
“The zoo can only pay you teen wages. They won’t be able to do that after you turn eighteen.”
I’d been trying not to think about that. Eclipse had killed even more adults than children. The world was full of rootless young people, no families to count on, no education except the canned online lessons, and not enough factories and businesses were open to provide jobs for low-sk
illed, inexperienced, teen home graduates.
“But you’re doing well on your math and science courses,” Paula said. “After I talked to Mendez today, I called the zoo administrator. I asked if you could start helping me out in the pathology lab two days a week. A little lab experience might teach you some skills, help you get a job as a lab assistant when you’re older.”
I nodded, my heart beating a little faster. If the only thing I learned at the zoo was how to shovel crap, I could be stuck shoveling crap all my life. But to work in a lab like Paula did, to do something meaningful—that would be a life to look forward to.
“What did she say?”
“She said she’d consider it. But after your little fight today…”
Crap. My stupid temper.
“I won’t fight anymore,” I promised.
“You’d better not. Now, what about tomorrow? What do you think you should do?”
I knew the answer to that. “Apologize, shut up, and do my schoolwork.”
She cracked a smile. “Sounds good. And please, from now on, find a way to deal with your feelings that doesn’t involve punching someone in the face.”
So, the next morning I was back at the zoo, shoveling excrement and feeding puppy chow to gorillas, like that guy Quinn had said. Except it was monkey chow and orangutans, and I was pretty darn happy about it.
After the morning cage-clean, I went back to the study center and apologized to Ronnie for hitting him, even though he’d hit me first, and the proctor made us shake hands. I made eye contact with him while I did, to make him think twice about taking me on again.
It worked: he looked at the floor, shuffled his feet, and mumbled, “S’alright.” Submissive behavior. Then the proctor let me stay to do my schoolwork, as long as I sat in the front near her desk and minded my manners.
I had a reason to work hard now, a future to look forward to. Maybe soon I’d be working next to Paula with the microscopes and test tubes, learning how to diagnose a sick porcupine or telling a zookeeper what the iguana needed.
I even passed the World War I test to get to the next unit in history. To celebrate, I took a little detour into the Cold War section to see the picture of the other Jacqueline Kennedy. There she was, smiling and graceful in a flamingo-pink jacket and skirt, white gloves, and a little round hat, beautiful and elegant and happy just before someone shot her husband in the head and spattered his brains all over her.