Bat and the End of Everything

by Elana K. Arnold

  “Okay, Bat, I know,” said Jenny. “Your mom already told me and Grandma all that.”

  “Okay,” said Bat. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  Jenny picked up the carrier by its handle. Her grandmother was standing by the glass door that led outside. “You can come visit if you want, Bat,” Jenny said. “If you want to check on Babycakes.”

  “When?” asked Bat.

  Bat went to Jenny’s house on Sunday. It was supposed to be an Every-Other Weekend, but Dad was out of town for work, so Mom drove him. She brought her little doctor’s bag with her. “Might as well take a look at Babycakes, since we’re driving there anyway,” she said, and Bat felt his heart bursting with pride that his mom was doing a special vet visit just for Babycakes.

  It turned out that Jenny didn’t live very far away. Bat brought two carrots that he’d harvested from Thor’s Garden as a get-well-soon present for Babycakes. He left the tops on because rabbits like the greens as much as they like the carrots, and also because there are different vitamins in the greens.

  It was true that Jenny’s house had lots of animals—and lots of people—but it was also true that her house had a nice, friendly feeling, and that it didn’t smell like lots of animals and people lived there.

  Babycakes was in a big, deep bathtub in Jenny’s parents’ bathroom. It was a hot day, and the bathtub was the coolest place in the whole house. “She can’t jump out,” Jenny said. “The sides are too high and slippery. And we can close the door to the bathroom so that the dog can’t get in. Not that she wants to. She’s a scaredy-cat.”

  Bat thought it was funny to call a dog a scaredy-cat.

  “Our actual cat ignores Babycakes entirely,” Jenny said.

  Jenny had put Babycakes’s plastic hutch inside the bathtub, and she was asleep inside it. Bat wasn’t sure if they should wake her up, but Mom said it would be okay, and she lifted up the hutch and set it on the bathroom floor. Then she scooped Babycakes into her lap. She listened to her heart and lungs and looked in her eyes and ears and nose.

  And even though Bat wasn’t a vet, he could see that Babycakes was much better. Her little nose quivered and twitched with interest at everything Bat’s mom did, and she kicked her back legs and tried to escape when Mom shone the light into her eyes.

  Bat’s mom laughed and set Babycakes back into the bathtub. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m all done. She’s looking good, Jenny! You’re taking good care of her.”

  Jenny grinned.

  Bat’s mom went to have a cup of iced tea in the kitchen with Jenny’s grandmother, who was still taking care of Jenny and her brothers, and Bat and Jenny sat on the edge of the tub and broke the carrots into little pieces, taking turns feeding them to Babycakes.

  “That was scary,” Jenny said after a few minutes. “I’m so glad Babycakes is going to be all right.”

  “Me too,” said Bat, enjoying the soft tickling feeling of Babycakes’s whiskers against his palm.

  Babycakes finished the last bite of carrot and hopped around the bathtub, sniffing each corner as if she was hoping to find something more to eat.

  Then Jenny said, “So, how much longer do you get to keep that skunk, before you have to let him go?”

  The question ruined the good mood Bat had been in, watching Babycakes and enjoying how healthy she seemed. “I don’t want to talk about Thor,” he said.

  “You always want to talk about Thor,” Jenny answered.

  Bat didn’t say anything for a minute, but Jenny just waited. Finally, Bat said quietly, “I don’t want to talk about Thor going away.”

  “Oh,” said Jenny. “I understand.”

  The truth was that Bat’s mom had brought up this topic the night before, and Bat hadn’t wanted to talk about it then, either.

  “He’s nice and plump, and nights are warm now,” Mom had said. “Really, I think Thor is big enough to take care of himself anytime. Maybe we can give him another week or two just to make sure.”

  Bat hadn’t said anything to this. He had been sitting in a kitchen chair eating graham crackers, but when Mom had brought up the subject of Thor’s release, he lost his appetite, and his mouth even felt too dry to swallow the bite in his mouth that he’d already chewed up.

  He had wrapped his arms around himself and rocked a little, back and forth, and when his mom finished talking, he went to the bathroom and spit out the last bite of graham cracker and didn’t come out for a long time.

  Now the same question had followed him into Jenny’s bathroom. Here, Bat didn’t have a mouthful of graham cracker, but he had that same feeling, of wanting to spit something out, of the discomfort that came with the thought of Thor being gone from his life.

  “Are you scared he won’t be able to take care of himself?” Jenny asked.

  Bat nodded, his throat too full to speak.

  “If I had to let my dog or my cat go, I’d miss them so much,” Jenny said.

  Bat nodded again. Even though he couldn’t make himself say the words, and even though it made him so sad to hear Jenny saying them, there was a relief to it, too, of hearing her talk about Bat’s worst fears.

  Bat and Jenny sat together on the edge of the cool, white bathtub.

  Babycakes hopped over, her little nose twitching hopefully.

  “We don’t have any more carrots,” Jenny told the bunny.

  But Babycakes stayed there anyway, close by, like she was glad for their company, even if they didn’t have anything else to give her.

  CHAPTER 17

  At the Pool

  Janie had been spending most of her days at the city pool. It had a low diving board and a high diving board. It had long, neat rows of lounge chairs. It had a snack bar that sold pizza and pretzels and bottled water. It had a boys’ locker room that had a drain in the middle of the floor. Janie said the girls’ locker room also had a drain in the middle of its floor.

  There was a little-kid pool that was shallow all the way across. In the big pool, three lap-swimming lanes were sectioned off with plastic floating ropes that you weren’t supposed to hang on. Those lanes were almost always taken by grown-ups, some of them very old, swimming seriously back and forth.

  Janie loved the city pool. Bat did not.

  It was crowded, and loud, and too bright. The concrete was rough and hot beneath Bat’s feet. The air was sharp with the smell of chlorine. And no animals were allowed.

  “It’s not so bad, is it, sport?” Dad asked. It was an Every-Other Weekend, and Dad had let Janie choose the Saturday activity.

  “Yes,” said Bat. “It is.”

  He was wearing sunglasses, which helped, and he and his dad both wore baseball caps, which helped too. Bat had a long-sleeved swim shirt on because he hated the feeling of sunscreen on his body.

  Dad found a couple of lounge chairs in the shade and spread out their towels. He lay back on one of them, closed his eyes, and said, “This is the life.”

  Bat tilted his lounge chair upright and sat. He felt hot and itchy inside the swim shirt.

  Janie emerged from the girls’ locker room and looked around. Bat waved until she saw him and watched as she walked across the concrete toward them.

  “Wow, it’s hot,” she said when she arrived at their spot. “Bat, do you want to go jump in the water with me?”

  “Not yet,” Bat answered.

  “Okay,” said Janie. Then she said, “Dad, you’re not expecting anyone else to meet us here, are you?”

  Dad laughed. “No, Janie,” he said. “Not today.” He opened his eyes.

  “Who would he be expecting?” Bat asked Janie.

  “His girlfriend,” Janie said, and her voice sounded funny.

  “Dad has a girlfriend?”

  “Yes, Bat,” said Janie, sounding exasperated, though Bat didn’t know why she’d expect him to know about a girlfriend. “Suzette. Remember? From the doughnut shop?”

  “Dad said she was a friend,” Bat said.

  “That’s what he said,” replied Ja
nie.

  Bat looked at Dad. So did Janie.

  “Well,” Dad said. But that was all he said.

  “See?” said Janie, and she turned and marched toward the pool.

  Dad stood up. “Wait,” he called after Janie. “Come back!”

  Janie stopped and stood, facing away from Bat and Dad, her arms crossed. Her whole body looked tense, and Bat could see how strong she’d gotten with all the swimming. Then she turned around and walked back.

  “Sit down,” Dad said, and he sat too. “Let’s have a talk.”

  Janie sat down on Bat’s lounge chair next to him. She wasn’t wet, so Bat didn’t complain.

  “First, I want to apologize,” Dad said, and that got Bat’s attention. Apologizing wasn’t something Dad did very often. “I shouldn’t have surprised you guys the way I did. I just really wanted you to meet my friend Suzette. I went about it the wrong way. I promise not to do that again.”

  Next to Bat, Janie’s shoulders softened. “I like surprises,” she said. “Just not that surprise.”

  “I get it,” Dad said. “And I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”

  “Yes,” said Janie, but she didn’t sound sure about it.

  “How about you, Bat?”

  “I wasn’t mad at you,” he answered.

  Dad smiled. “Okay, sport,” he said.

  “But is Suzette your girlfriend or your friend?” Bat asked.

  Dad adjusted his baseball cap lower over his eyes. It took him a little while to answer. “She’s somewhere in between,” he said finally. “More than a friend, but not really a girlfriend. Maybe she’ll be my girlfriend eventually.”

  “What changes a friend into a girlfriend?” Bat asked. “Is it kissing?”

  Now Dad looked uncomfortable. He took off his hat and squeezed it, put it on again. “Sometimes,” he said.

  Bat imagined his dad kissing Suzette, but it was hard for him to picture because he couldn’t really remember what she looked like. He hadn’t paid very good attention when he’d met her at the doughnut shop, because he’d been worried about Janie’s headache. Next time they met, he promised himself, he’d pay better attention.

  “I like our bike rides and going to the doughnut shop together,” Bat said. “It’s one of the best parts about Every-Other Weekends.”

  “Yeah,” said Janie, and she smiled at Bat, a big, wide smile. “Me too. It’s like our tradition. Just the three of us.”

  “Just the three of us,” Dad said, and he nodded. “Okay. I’ll remember that. Deal?” he said, and he offered his hand to Janie.

  “Deal,” she said, smiling at Dad now in that same open way, and they shook hands.

  “Deal,” said Bat, and he shook Dad’s hand, and then Janie’s hand, which made everyone laugh.

  “Okay,” Dad said again, and this time when he said it, it felt like they were starting over, in a good way. “How about we all go for a dip in the pool? What do you say?”

  “Okay,” Janie said, standing up.

  “No face splashing,” Bat said.

  “No face splashing,” promised Janie and Dad together.

  CHAPTER 18

  Photo Shoot

  The following Friday was the hottest day of the summer. Inspired by Jenny and Babycakes, Bat put Thor in the bathtub. The skunk stretched out long, his belly pressing into the cool white enamel. He was the size of a small cat.

  Janie and Bat sat on the cool tile floor, watching Thor and eating Popsicles. Janie’s was grape; Bat’s was orange.

  When she’d taken the last bite of her Popsicle, Janie dropped the stick into the bathtub for Thor to sniff. It startled him a little, and he puffed up his tail.

  “Careful,” Bat warned. “You’ve got to move slowly.”

  Janie sat very still, and after a moment, Thor stretched out his twitchy nose to smell the stick, then lick it. His tail depuffed.

  “I didn’t mean to startle him,” Janie said.

  “Skunks are nearsighted,” Bat told her. “He probably didn’t notice the stick until it was right up next to him.”

  Thor lost interest with the Popsicle stick and wandered over to the bathtub drain. He poked at it with his nose for a minute, then plopped down and rolled over onto his back. Slowly, Bat reached his hand into the bathtub and scratched his belly.

  “He’s awfully tame,” Janie said. “He reminds me of a cat.”

  “People think that skunks just go around spraying,” Bat told her, “but actually they only spray when they are really scared, and they always warn you first.”

  Now Thor was stretching his arms up over his head so that Bat could scratch his furry little armpits.

  “That’s adorable,” Janie said. “Hang on. Just a second.”

  She slid away from the edge of the bathtub and stood up slowly so as not to startle Thor. Bat could hear her walking down the hall to her room and then coming right back. She had her camera.

  Bat stopped scratching Thor so that Janie could get a good picture of him, but she said, “No, scratch him some more! It makes him stretch out all cute and funny.”

  Bat obliged, and Thor arched his back in pleasure. Janie took a picture, then showed it to Bat. There was Thor, captured forever in his adorable pose, stretched out, with Bat’s hand on his belly.

  Then Janie said, “I have an idea. Let’s do a photo shoot!”

  “With Thor?” asked Bat.

  “Yes,” Janie answered.

  “I don’t know if he’d like that,” Bat said.

  “It’ll be fun! And we’ll be careful not to make him nervous,” Janie said.

  Bat looked at Thor, who was scratching at his ear with a back foot. The skunk was getting so big. Very soon, Bat knew, Mom would say it was time to let him go into the wild. It would be nice to have more pictures. “Okay,” he said. “But we’re not dressing him up in doll clothes or anything. That would be disrespectful.”

  Janie laughed. “Sometimes you say the funniest things, Bat.”

  Bat hadn’t said it to be funny. “I’m serious,” he said.

  “I know,” Janie said. “That’s what makes it even funnier.”

  They decided that the best place to do the photo shoot would be in the kitchen.

  “It has the best light,” Janie said, “and lots of space.”

  Bat brought his beanbag chair into the kitchen, and Janie draped it with a blue-and-white checked tablecloth, making a nice little nest. Then Bat set Thor in it.

  “Okay,” Janie said, “you make him sit still, and I’ll take the pictures.”

  “Thor isn’t really the kind of animal you can make do anything,” Bat warned.

  “Just try,” Janie said, so Bat tried. He tried cooing Thor’s name, soft and high, the way Thor liked to hear it. He tried waving his hands around behind Janie’s head to get Thor’s attention. He tried playing soothing music on the little radio that Mom kept next to the sink.

  But Thor just kept snuffing around, scooting out of the beanbag chair and poking his way into the corners of the kitchen.

  Janie kept taking pictures anyway, action shots of Thor maneuvering between chair legs and nudging around the trash can.

  Then she said, “Let’s get a few with the two of you together,” so Bat gently picked Thor up and cradled him in his arms. Thor’s black whiskers twitched eagerly toward Bat’s face, and Bat leaned down to kiss his head.

  Janie snapped a picture.

  “Maybe sit with him in the beanbag,” Janie suggested.

  Bat sat down and crossed his legs, and then put Thor up on his shoulder the way he’d been doing lately. Thor crawled familiarly around the back of Bat’s neck and flopped down like a collar. Bat turned his face toward Thor, and Thor stretched his nose toward Bat.

  “Oh, that’s adorable,” Janie said, and she snapped another picture.

  CHAPTER 19

  Mail Day

  Dear Bat,

  Hello from Canada!

  I hope you are having a good summer. I am having lots of fun! My cousin
Robert lives near a lake, and we walk there every day to swim. The water is freezing! There is a floating dock way out far, and yesterday I swam all the way there without a kickboard for the first time. Robert is a really good swimmer. He can make it all the way across the lake, without a kickboard! And he’s really tall. He’s on his school’s basketball team!

  I met this kid named Marlo and I told him about you and Thor and he told me that his neighbor once tamed a little bird that fell out of a nest and he kept it all winter and then let it go the next spring, and the bird comes back every year now to visit! Maybe after you release Thor, he will come back to visit you too.

  How is Thor? Is he getting big? I’ll be home in ten days. I hope I’ll get to see him again before you have to let him go.

  What have you been doing this summer? Have you seen Babycakes at all? I wonder how she likes Jenny’s house.

  I hope you write back soon!

  Your friend,

  Israel

  Bat sat at the kitchen table, and Thor was at his feet, nibbling at a little salad that Bat had made him for a snack.

  Janie looked over from whatever she was doing on her computer and smiled at Thor eating his salad. She snapped a quick picture of the skunk and then went back to her work.

  Bat had read the letter from Israel three times, and each time he finished it, he refolded it, tucked it back into its envelope, and admired the colorful stamps and the way his name and address looked printed in Israel’s blocky handwriting: “BAT, 9 Plum Lane.”

  It was the first letter Bat had ever gotten in the mail. He’d gotten birthday cards from his family, and last summer before school started, Mr. Grayson had sent a welcome letter to all the kids who would be in his class. But this was different.

  This was a letter from a friend.

  Bat was happy that Israel had sent him a letter all the way from Canada. But he noticed that Israel didn’t say anything about missing home. And he talked a lot about his cousin Robert. Maybe Israel was having such a good time that he would never want to come home. Maybe he was having such a good time that Robert would be his best friend now instead of Bat.