Because of the Rabbit

by Cynthia Lord

  The girls all laughed, but it was still hard for me to talk about grandparents. Especially with kids who still had theirs.

  “So does anyone have pets?” I asked.

  “I have a gray tiger cat,” said Akari.

  The girl with the pigtails laughed. “Tell Emma his name!”

  “I named him when I was little, Martha!” Akari protested, laughing.

  Elise. Akari. Martha. “What is it?” I took a bite of my sandwich to take the pickle taste away.

  Akari shrugged. “Ketchup.”

  The other girls were laughing, so it seemed okay to laugh, too. “That’s funny,” I said.

  Martha had a cat named Jake, and Iris didn’t have any pets. “My dad is allergic,” she said.

  “I have a dog named Bear,” Leah said. “He’s a black lab, but he thinks he’s a lapdog!”

  Leah had been nice to give me her pickles and she even had a dog! Nice + pet lover = perfect best friend possibility.

  “I have two dogs named Molly and Maggie,” I said, excited to finally find something fun that we both liked to talk about. “And we just got a rabbit named Lapi.”

  “Wow! I love rabbits!” Leah said. “I’ve always wanted one, but my parents think Bear would scare a rabbit.”

  “Lapi actually bosses our dogs around,” I said, grinning. “When he gets racing and hopping, it freaks them out.”

  “La Pee sounds like he has to go to the bathroom,” Iris said. “If you got another rabbit you could call him La Poop.”

  The girls all laughed. I smiled, like I found it funny, too. The name was special to me, though, and definitely not a joke. “It’s a family name,” I said, and then to change the subject, I added, “My dad and I found him.”

  “What do you mean you found him?” Akari asked.

  I took another tiny nibble of pickle. I was hoping my tongue would get numb to the taste, but it was just as awful as the first bite.

  “He was a stray,” I explained. “My dad’s a game warden and he got a call saying a rabbit was stuck in a lady’s fence. I went with him, and when we got there, it was a pet bunny, not a wild one.”

  “I would love to rescue animals!” Akari said. “How did you know the bunny was a pet?”

  “We only have New England cottontails and snowshoe hares in Maine,” I explained. “I knew just by looking that he wasn’t either of those. Lapi is honey colored with a brown nose.”

  This was going really well! I felt like I had finally broken through the friendship wall and was making progress.

  “You’re lucky he wasn’t a girl!” Akari said. “My friend got a pet rabbit and it had babies! So they had six rabbits instead of one!”

  I nodded, though it did sound like fun to have baby bunnies at our house. “My dad checked. He’s definitely a boy.”

  “Bunnies are cute, but they don’t do much,” Martha said. “They just sit and stare at you.”

  I didn’t think that at all. Of course, Lapi wasn’t like Molly and Maggie. They liked to play and would sit on the couch with us. “Lapi is a quiet kind of fun. But I love to watch him pull down his ears with his paws to groom them. And it’s so cute when he flops onto his side or races around the room.”

  And he liked me. I could tell every time he chinned me or rose up on his hind legs to see what I was doing or if I’d brought him a treat.

  “I’d like to meet Lapi,” Leah said. “Maybe I could come over sometime?”

  I was already planning to bring Lapi to school, but having Leah over to my house would be great, too! “Sure! And if you needed a ride, my mom could pick you up and bring you home.” Wait. Did that sound desperate? “I mean, if you wanted to.”

  “That would be fun,” Leah said. “Maybe my mom could call yours?”

  “I’ll give you our phone number!” We hadn’t made specific plans, but almost ! I popped the rest of the pickle in my mouth.

  “Our new neighbors lost a rabbit over the summer,” Iris announced. “I saw posters for it.”

  The pickle was so sour that I wanted to gag. I chewed fast to get rid of it.

  “There was even a reward of fifty dollars!” Iris added.

  I stopped chewing. Wait. What?

  “Did you try to find out who your bunny belonged to, Emma?” Martha tilted her head sympathetically. “Maybe it’s the same one.”

  The same bunny? I swallowed the pickle as fast as I could. “We took Lapi to the shelter and the lady there checked on the computer about lost pets,” I said. “No one had reported him missing and she promised she’d call if someone did.”

  “I didn’t see any posters,” Leah said to Iris. “Where were they?”

  “On a few telephone poles,” Iris said. “You weren’t home much this summer.”

  “That’s true,” Leah said. “I went to see my cousins in Oregon, and then I went to camp.”

  “I’m sorry, Emma. But maybe you could get the reward?” Martha said.

  “It’s not him,” I replied firmly. It just couldn’t be. “The lady at the shelter said it looked like he’d been on his own a while. She said sometimes people let pet bunnies go thinking they’ll survive in the wild, even though they won’t. I’m sure that’s what happened.”

  “Are the posters still up?” Akari asked Iris.

  Iris shook her head. “It was a while ago that I saw them. My mom told me the family’s last name is Abbott, though. They moved into the big house at the end of Morton Street.”

  “The shelter lady said people call right away when they want their pets back.” I fought to keep the mildly interested look on my face, but inside my heart was speeding.

  “Iris said they’re new. Maybe they didn’t know there’s a shelter,” Akari said.

  “Iris, maybe you and I could walk over to their house and ask them?” Leah suggested.

  “No! Let me check with them,” I said quickly. “I bet my brother can find out their phone number for me. Or my dad could get it for me. That way, um, they can ask me questions.”

  I didn’t want to call, but I needed time to think. I took a pen and wrote on my napkin.

  Iris looked over at the words I’d written: Abbott. Morton Street.

  “Yup,” she said. “That’s it.”

  I couldn’t help thinking her words were truer than I wanted them to be.

  Yup.

  That’s it.

  Scared had been training in secret. She was miles ahead with Excited nowhere in sight.

  More than anything, I wished school were over and I could go to my room, close the door with Lapi, and never come out. It was so unfair. Lapi could’ve died if Dad and I hadn’t rescued him. And he loved me now.

  The girls kept talking as they ate their lunch, but I hid the rest of the pickles in the napkin. I didn’t even care about pretending I liked them anymore.

  How could this have happened? I’d pushed the worry that Lapi might belong to someone else far into the background. And the idea of coming home from school without Lapi there made me want to cry.

  Maybe the Abbotts hadn’t loved him very much. Maybe they’d been so mean to him that he ran away.

  And even if they had loved him, Iris said the posters were down. So they must’ve given up on finding him. Maybe they had a new rabbit by now.

  When lunch was finally over, I told Leah I’d catch up to them at recess and went into the girls’ bathroom near my classroom to pull myself together. There were other girls’ rooms in the school, but I just wanted something familiar even if it was a longer walk.

  I’d hoped to have the bathroom to myself, but there was another girl washing her hands. I picked a sink close to the door and didn’t look at her.

  I didn’t know what to do. I’d only agreed to give Lapi back if the shelter called. I never agreed to go looking for his owner.

  But a small, whiny, know-it-all voice inside me whispered, “But it’s not right to keep him if he doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Time for recess.”

  In the mirror, I saw Ja
ck in the doorway, waiting for me. All I wanted was a moment to myself to figure out what to do. But there was nowhere to be by yourself at school—not even in the bathroom!

  “Not now!” I snapped. “Can’t you see I’m in the girls’ room?”

  Hurt jumped into Jack’s eyes. At once, I knew I’d made a mistake. I hadn’t meant to yell. It just came out that way. As he turned and ran, all my worries exploded out of me. “Wait!”

  In the hallway, I saw Jack disappear into our classroom. We weren’t supposed to be in there at recess, but I didn’t care. Even if I got in trouble, nothing could be worse than how I felt already.

  When I stepped inside, the classroom looked empty. Jack wouldn’t climb out a window, would he? Then I saw his sneaker toe sticking out from under the big long table in front of “Ms. Hutton’s Fabulous Fifth Graders” bulletin board.

  I crawled under the table with him. Jack’s face was buried in his arms across his knees.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I just needed to be alone for a minute.”

  Jack didn’t lift his head.

  We sat in silence, just the sound of the clock ticking and the muffled voices of kids going outside. All morning I’d wished the clock would go faster, but now I didn’t want those hands to move at all. In fact, I wished I could go back to the night before school started. Before I realized how hard it was all going to be. Back when Lapi was just mine. And anything seemed possible.

  But I guess “anything” includes bad things, too.

  “Something horrible happened at lunch,” I said quietly. “But no matter how awful I feel, it wasn’t right that I took it out on you.”

  “It wasn’t right,” Jack echoed into his arms.

  I felt ashamed that I had yelled at him and hurt his feelings. Jack had sat with me when I didn’t have anyone. He’d voted for my idea against Iris. I’d told him things I hadn’t told anyone else, including one of Pépère’s stories.

  And I’d rolled my eyes and yelled at him. So what if Jack wasn’t exactly like everyone else? I wasn’t, either.

  If Pépère were here, I knew what story he’d tell me. It’d always been one of my favorites, but I understood it in a new way today.

  “Can I tell you a story?” I asked. “It’s about the day Monsieur Lapin tried to be like Madame Sittelle, the nuthatch.”

  “Why?” Jack asked into his arms. “A nuthatch is a bird.”

  I wasn’t sure if the “why” part went with “Can I tell you a story?” or with Monsieur Lapin wanting to be a nuthatch, but I answered the last one. “Because nuthatches can climb up and down tree trunks and peck out tasty bugs.”

  Jack lifted his head. “Rabbits are herbivores.”

  I nodded. “True, but Monsieur Lapin has rabbit magic, remember? Anything is possible.”

  “Yes,” Jack said slowly, not sounding completely convinced.

  I kept going anyway. “So it happened once that Monsieur Lapin decided that he’d climb a tree and get some tasty bugs to show off to Madame Sittelle that he could do anything she could.”

  “Nuthatches can go down a tree trunk headfirst,” Jack said. “Only a few birds can do that.”

  “Really? That’s another reason for Monsieur Lapin to be jealous!” I replied. “So he tried to climb the tree, but rabbit claws aren’t made for climbing bark and he got scared halfway up. And when he tried to climb down headfirst, he fell to the ground.”

  I’d added that in just for Jack.

  “Did he get a concussion?” Jack asked.

  “No, he was only embarrassed, not hurt,” I said. “And then Madame Sittelle said, ‘Silly Monsieur Lapin. You’ll never be a nuthatch. You are a rabbit.’ Then she flew up into the trees and climbed down the tree trunk headfirst with food to share with him. They ate it together as friends. So it was.” I looked at Jack. “That’s one of my favorite stories. I think it means that a real friend will like you for you. And even if you aren’t exactly alike about everything, that’s okay.” I gave a small shrug. “It gives you something to need from each other. Sometimes I have to be—”

  “Emma Nuthatch,” Jack said.

  I smiled the first real smile since lunch. That wasn’t what I was planning to say, but it worked.

  “And you are Jack Rabbit,” I replied.

  We stayed under the table so long that my legs ached and I heard the kids coming in from recess. I couldn’t move, though. Not yet. I felt safe under there and when I crawled out, that safe feeling would be over.

  I’d have to deal with the napkin in my pocket.

  “The horrible thing that happened at lunch was about Lapi,” I said quietly. “Someone lost a rabbit, and maybe it’s him.”

  Jack stared at me. “Maybe it’s him?”

  I nodded, tears filling my eyes. “I’m scared to find out if Lapi belongs to that other family. I have to call them and I don’t know what to say.”

  Jack crawled out from under the table. Where was he going? Didn’t he hear what I said?

  Now I was all alone.

  Then I heard Jack ripping pages from his notebook. “What are you doing?” I asked, coming out from under the table.

  “Cue cards,” he replied.

  Jack handed me a pencil. As I wrote, my hand shook so hard it didn’t even look like my handwriting.

  Hello. My name is Emma and I found a rabbit.

  That night after supper, I went to Owen’s room. “Can you help me with something? I need to find out someone’s phone number, and they haven’t lived here very long.”

  He looked up from his homework. “Can’t you just ask them?”

  I shook my head. Please don’t ask me any more questions.

  “Okay. Well, if they have a landline, we can probably look it up online.”

  For once, I was glad for the miserable cell phone service in the mountains. Most people still had landlines at home because they were more predictable.

  As Owen opened his laptop, I pulled the napkin out of my pocket. “All I have is a last name and the street they live on.” I tried to act normal, though my insides were exploding into sharp pieces. “They moved here over the summer.”

  Owen looked at the napkin. “What’s this about, Em?”

  I swallowed hard. “Um, it’s just that something came up at school. I need to ask someone a question.”

  It was pretty clear that I wasn’t telling him everything. But telling the truth isn’t always as simple as in Two Truths and a Lie. Sometimes the whole truth is just too much to say at once.

  “I might even be able to find out a first name for you,” Owen said. “No guarantees, though.”

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “If you get me the phone number, I’ll take it from there.”

  While Owen searched online, I looked around me. His room had changed, but he still had a Lego boat we built together on his shelf. It made me happy to see it there, like maybe he still cared about it.

  I wished I had thought to show it to Jack. He probably would have liked it, even if it wasn’t as impressive as his dinosaur skeleton. Maybe I could invite him over again? But if I did, what would that mean? Working on an assignment together was one thing, but hanging out was another, and school seemed to have a lot of social rules that I didn’t know.

  Owen wrote a phone number at the bottom of the napkin. “Try this one, Em. If it’s not right, come back and I’ll keep looking.”

  “Thanks.” I started to go, but I paused in the doorway. “Owen?”

  He looked up from his textbook.

  “Why do you keep that old Lego boat?” I blurted out the question fast, before I could change my mind.

  “The Lego boat?” He looked up at his shelf. “I don’t know. I just like it. We worked hard on it. And I like to remember us putting it together. It was fun, remember?”

  I nodded. “You aren’t afraid your friends would make fun of you if they saw it?”

  He shrugged. “A little teasing would be okay. But a real friend would see that it mattered to me.�
�

  I sighed. “That kind of friend is hard to find.”

  “Yes, and you have to be that kind of friend back,” Owen said. “It works both ways. So you also have to be the friend you want to have.”

  I opened my mouth to say, “I have been!” but then I sucked my bottom lip. Had I really?

  Owen grinned. “Hey, Em. This might sound silly, but let’s make another big Lego project together after soccer’s done and things aren’t so busy.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Part of me doubted it would ever happen. After soccer there would probably be something else. But even so, knowing that he wanted to do something with me filled that empty space inside me.

  I wished I could tell him the real reason for the phone number. But if I told him, I would have to call.

  And I wasn’t ready.

  Back in my room, I told myself it was too late. Maybe the family had little kids who were in bed.

  I’d have more time on the weekend.

  I should practice my reveals first. I needed to get my props together.

  But deep inside, I knew timing wasn’t the problem. Every time I looked at Lapi hopping around my feet, chinning everything in sight, I didn’t want to call.

  I’d rescued Lapi, but now I needed him to rescue me. I needed him to be there when I got home from school. I needed him to love me best. And I needed to believe that Pépère had sent him to me to bring me rabbit magic.

  Or maybe that was just wishing.

  Maybe there was no rabbit magic. Maybe Lapi was just someone else’s stray pet and I was just a weird girl that no one wanted for her best friend.

  I put the slip of paper with the name and address with the cue cards at the very back of my assignment notebook.

  And then I closed it tight.

  Let me introduce you to my friend Emma! Emma likes to go kayaking! Emma once climbed Mount Katahdin! Emma has a pet—parakeet!

  In my room, watching Jack describe me on the video, even my truths didn’t feel completely like me. But as Leah had said, this was just a little project and I didn’t have to make this such a big deal.