Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature

by Robin Brande

  “Why only two weeks?”

  Casey mumbled past his food. “Owners like to take them at eight weeks.”

  Already I was missing my little Christmas.

  Casey gulped down some milk and went on. “So I thought we'd start today, making a chart with all of their relevant information—height, weight, personality score—”

  “What's that?”

  Casey waited until he'd swallowed another massive bite. By the way, his mother does make killer lasagna. We were eating it like a pack of wild dogs.

  “It's this test to see how bold they are, which of them like being handled, which don't—that sort of thing. I have some things to add to it, of course. For instance, I've noticed Lily is a real music lover, whereas Red would rather hear two pans banging together. I thought we'd start with a baseline today, then observe any changes over the next two weeks. It should be fascinating. So what do you think? Game?”

  I nodded and chewed. “So you really think Ms. Shepherd will like this?”

  “Definitely. She's more of a cat person, but I think she'll appreciate the spirit of what we're doing. You know, the whole evolution thing.”

  I confess I didn't really get what he meant. Casey must have seen that on my face.

  “You know,” he clarified, “the sociobiological aspects of pack living, the whole natural selection and breeding for advantage—that sort of thing.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn't really understand, but I was sure Casey had it all figured out.

  “Ms. Shepherd's going to love it,” he continued. “You saw with our potato analysis how much she appreciates people going off the grid. That's why my sister's project won. She and Josh were really out there. Oh, look, here's Abbey.”

  A large black Lab came shuffling into the living room, her feet dragging, head hanging low.

  “Poor girl,” Casey said. “She's so exhausted. Those pups are on her night and day. Come here, Ab.” The dog picked up her pace and approached Casey for a nice ear scratch.

  “How come she wasn't in the garage with the puppies?”

  “We try to give her breaks. She comes in here and sleeps on my bed when she wants to get away.”

  Abbey glanced outside to where her puppies were playing on the grass. She ambled over to the sliding glass door and waited patiently.

  “Sure you want to go out, girl?” Casey set his plate on the coffee table and went to open the door. “Watch,” he told me. “They'll be on her like piranhas.”

  Sure enough, the minute the door opened, from all over the yard twelve little black heads shot up, and immediately the puppies swarmed toward their mother.

  “Poor Ab,” Casey said. “She's got to be so sore.”

  She trotted ahead of her crew for a while, puppies yip-ping excitedly behind her. Finally one of them caught up with her, and the jig was up. He clamped on to her hind leg and wouldn't let go.

  “That's Bear,” Casey said. “Master of the takedown. Although Pink's pretty good at it, too. Look at her—she's such a bruiser.”

  The stout little puppy with a pink collar had taken hold of the other hind leg.

  Abbey gave up on escape and lay on her side in the grass while twelve sets of sharp teeth descended on her. Bear and Pink in particular went at it with gusto.

  Casey banged on the glass door. “Hey!” His mother looked up and waved. Casey pointed to the mass of suckling puppies. “Get him off her!” He turned to me. “I swear Bear is going to rip off one of her teats from the roots someday. No finesse.” He banged again, but his mother misunderstood and simply smiled and waved again.

  “So, your mom works at home?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She has an office in back.” Casey watched the carnage in the backyard for a few more moments, then sighed and returned to the couch. He promptly polished off the rest of his lasagna. “We'll have to wait a little while now for them to finish eating. They're going to be really sleepy. But at least we can get the weighing and measuring done today and establish a baseline.”

  “Okay, sure.” It sounded like he had it all planned out, which was fine with me. I'd be happy just to record whatever he told me, like I did with the potato thing. I'm better as an assistant scientist anyway.

  But it was not to be.

  “You should think of whatever experiments you want to do,” Casey said. “We have a whole two weeks.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don't know, whatever pack dynamics you think might be interesting. Or individual personality and physiological differences.” He shrugged. “Anything you want.”

  I didn't even know what I wanted. No, that's not true—I did know. I just wanted to hang out at the Connors’ house with Casey and the puppies and eat lasagna and pizza and never have to go home again. Was that too much to ask?

  Casey picked up his empty plate and headed toward the kitchen. “Want another piece? Or we've got ice cream.”

  “No thanks.” It wasn't at all like hanging out with Teresa. She's always pretending to be on a diet, even though she's as skinny as a pencil. If this is how boys eat all the time, I could get used to hanging out with them.

  With Casey out of the room for a minute, I seized the opportunity to sneak over and study the pictures on the mantel again. Now that I knew his father was dead, I wanted a better look.

  But before I could do much spying, the front door slammed open and in burst the solution to at least one of my problems, although I didn't know it right away.

  “C? Get out here, you little rat! I'm gonna kill you!”

  Nineteen

  “Hello, sister dear.”

  “Don't sister dear me, you brat. I hate your living guts. Why didn't you tell me?”

  She was huge—six foot at least—and other than that looked exactly like Casey except her curly black hair went all the way to her waist. She wore wire-rimmed glasses, camo pants, black sports sandals (which showed off her bright red toenails), and a black T-shirt that said United States of Lies.

  And right behind her—I'm not kidding—in walked the giant. The one who brings Ms. Shepherd her Starbucks— that guy. It was surreal.

  Casey leaned against the kitchen doorway and continued nonchalantly stuffing his face.

  “Start talking,” his sister demanded, “or Josh is gonna beat you to a bloody pulp.”

  Josh the Giant seemed as unimpressed by that news as Casey. “Any more?” he asked, nodding at Casey's plate.

  Casey jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The giant ambled past him into the kitchen.

  “Lab partner,” Casey said, in case I hadn't figured out who Josh was, which I hadn't. Obviously in their year Ms. Shepherd assigned partners by height.

  “Want some?” Casey asked his sister.

  “Don't change the subject,” she snapped.

  “Which is?” Casey asked calmly.

  “Which is the fact that I have to hear about this from Josh this morning, rather than from you, you maggot-headed ingrate. Why didn't you tell me? Half your class in revolt and you don't tell me? The creationists come to town and you don't think you'd better get me that information right away? What, are we not related anymore? Did I steal your inheritance or something?”

  “Be nice,” Casey answered, clearly enjoying his sister's outrage.

  “Nice?” she shouted. “You're lucky I don't pummel you, you little worm. Start talking. I want names, profiles, affiliations—everything you know and everything you're gonna find out for me, because now you owe me, you traitor. The school board meeting's tonight, and I need to come prepared.”

  Casey pointed his fork across the room. “Actually, Mena knows them a lot better than I do. Ask her.”

  NO. I widened my eyes at Casey and shook my head, but it was too late. His giant sister rounded on me.

  And she smiled—I swear—this big, friendly smile like the one their mother had given me earlier. And it's like her whole personality changed right before my eyes. If I hadn't been so afraid of her, I would have loved that smile. Instead it was like
staring into the teeth of a shark.

  “You're Mena? The lab partner?” She looked me over. “How entirely excellent.” She strode toward me, hand outstretched. I shrank against the fireplace.

  “Fear not,” Casey told me. “Tranquilizer guns at the ready.”

  “Ignore the moron,” Kayla said cheerfully. “So nice to meet you.” She gripped my hand like I was made of metal. “So, you know these lunatics, huh? Unbelievable what society is turning out these days. But they picked the wrong teacher to mess with. I want all the dirt you have. Let's cut ‘em off at the legs.”

  “But I'm not—”

  “Go with ‘no comment,’ “ Casey advised. “Then run for the door while I distract her.”

  Kayla pressed on. “So, they're friends of yours?”

  I snorted. “No.”

  “Okay, enemies?”

  I wasn't so quick to answer that time. Kayla guessed the truth.

  “Great,” she confirmed. “Enemies. So how do you know them?”

  “Well, not exactly enemies,” I lied. “Just … not friends anymore.”

  Kayla was diplomatic. “Right. No longer friends. And how did you say you know them?” She loomed over me, outwardly friendly but huge. I had no choice but to answer.

  “Um … from church.”

  “Which church?”

  “Paradise Christian.” I glanced at Casey. He gave me an encouraging shrug.

  Josh returned to the living room, plate piled high with both lasagna and pizza. He settled onto the couch to watch Kayla and me like we were on TV.

  “If you go to the same church,” Kayla asked, “why aren't you part of the protest?”

  Good question—I had to give her that. “Um, because … I sort of got kicked out.”

  Both Casey and his sister lifted just their left eyebrows, like they'd rehearsed it.

  “Interesting,” Kayla said, her voice all silky. She draped her arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “Mena, my love, I think you're my girl.”

  That semi-freaked me out. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh no,” Casey objected. “She's here for our project.”

  “Tough,” Kayla answered. “This is more important.”

  “What is?” I asked. I really had no idea what was going on.

  “She wants you to write for the paper,” Casey said. “K's the editor.”

  “Editor in chief,” Kayla corrected, “and you don't have to write it, you just have to be my source.”

  Casey said, “We don't have time—”

  “If you had done even your minimal duty as a brother,” Kayla answered, “by telling me on Friday, when this all went down—or even Saturday or Sunday, you little twit— I might not be so under the gun. As it is, I'm on deadline, and this has to make the front page.”

  “Too bad,” Casey said. “We have work to do.”

  Kayla linked her arm in mine. “Girl talk,” she told her brother. “We'll be right back.”

  “Five minutes!” Casey shouted after her. “I'm timing!”

  Kayla dragged me out to the hallway. “Hate to break it to you, friend, but my little brother has a huge crush on you.”

  “What?”

  “So ignore anything he says—he's just besotted.”

  Before I could process any of that—and believe me, I wanted to—Kayla forged on. “Look, Mena, this is huge— HUGE. This is our own Scopes Monkey Trial, right on our doorstep.”

  “Our what?”

  “It's going on all over the country. Republicans and their Christian taskmasters infiltrating school boards one by one, trying to make sure no one ever hears that there was a man called Darwin or there's such a thing as evolution. They're ripping those sections out of science textbooks and firing teachers who dare speak the word. Can you believe it? Morons. Total rubbish.”

  If it had been Casey, he would have said that last part with a British accent.

  “It's their way of infecting the populace and marginalizing dissent. They want to resurrect theocracy. And they're doing it school by school, book by book, child by child, pretending no one's going to notice and no one's going to stop them.”

  Kayla poked me on the chest. “But not this school, buddy boy. Not on my watch. And you, Mena my friend, are the key to it all.”

  Her finger felt like an ice pick. “Why me?”

  “Because you used to be part of that whole … group thug mentality.” She smiled. “And now you're not.”

  “It's not like I left,” I reminded her. “They kicked me out.”

  “All the better. You're my perfect whistle-blower.”

  “I'm not—”

  “Time's up!” Casey yelled from the living room. “Go play with your own friends now.”

  “So what's it going to be?” Kayla asked me. “You in, you out?”

  Before I could answer, she held up her hand. “Wait, I guess I should ask first. You don't agree with what they're doing, do you? The whole chair-turning-around thing?”

  “No,” I answered truthfully, but I didn't say it was because I thought they were being disrespectful to Ms. Shepherd.

  “And you don't agree we should return to the days of Copernicus, when men of science were jailed and even killed for telling the truth?”

  “Of course not—”

  “And you do realize the earth is billions of years old— not just ten thousand or whatever they're saying Genesis works out to be, right? Because there are fossil records and proof—Ms. Shepherd went over that, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess—”

  “Okay,” said Kayla, satisfied that we were on the same side. “So you'll do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Tell me everything. Be my source.”

  “No, I don't think that would be—”

  “Just the background,” Kayla said. “I'll take it from there. I just need to know everything you know—who these people are, why they're doing it, who put them up to it, what they're planning next.”

  “I don't know what they're planning next. I don't know anything.”

  But as I was saying it, my mind flashed on Pastor Wells. Of course I knew what he was up to. And even though I hadn't been at that meeting at his house last Wednesday night, I could perfectly picture what had happened. I'd been at a meeting just like it back at the start of junior high.

  Maybe this was my chance. To do something. To stop them before they could ruin someone else's life. And if it was Ms. Shepherd I could save, then all the better.

  But before I got to that and gave Kayla any of the information she might want, there was this other matter, more pressing. It had been in the back of my mind all afternoon. Maybe it was the fact that Kayla was asking me to defy my parents once again—because make no mistake, joining forces with Kayla against Pastor Wells and my old youth group would not bring joy to my parents’ hearts— that made me bargain now.

  “I need a favor,” I said. The idea had been stewing in me since the first time I heard Casey call his sister “K.” I'm no genius, but sometimes I do have moments of inspiration.

  Kayla straightened back up. Until then I hadn't noticed she was bent over and right in my face. “Of course. Once you say you're on the team.”

  “I'm on the team,” I answered, my stomach knotting, wondering if this was the last short step to hell. “Within limits.”

  “No limits,” Kayla said. “Now, what's the favor?”

  “I need a ride home tonight. And I need you to pretend you're Casey.”

  Twenty

  By the time Kayla was through grilling me (and Casey was through coming into her room every five minutes to complain about it), I had only forty-five minutes to devote to the puppies. But we still managed to weigh and measure them, and I got to smell twelve doses of puppy breath, which has to be one of the sweetest scents on earth.

  I wasn't quite sure how the whole Kayla/Casey thing was going to work. My plan was still pretty vague. As I helped Kayla search for her car keys, I started to develop my strategy.
r />   “I'm just going to call you K, all right?”

  “I'll try to remember that. Josh?” she shouted toward the living room. “Are you sure you don't have them?”

  “Never touched them.”

  Kayla dumped out her denim purse onto her unmade bed and sifted through the debris. Her whole room was as disorganized as her purse was. Clothes on the floor and draped over furniture, books on every surface, her computer desk piled with printouts and newspapers and Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report and something called Adbusters. Not a teen or fashion mag to be found.

  She had posters all over the place, telling me to vote and question authority and swish and swallow when I can't brush. (“I like the little tooth guy,” Kayla explained. “Kind of reminds me of Josh.”)

  My mother would never in a hundred million years let me keep my bedroom like that. She'd call in the guys in the decontamination suits.

  Casey's room was pretty orderly, but it had its quirks, too. He wasn't kidding about hanging the jackalope from the ceiling. There were all sorts of things hanging from there—a model of the galaxy; three different kinds of Star Trek ships; a Nimbus 2000 broom (Casey had to explain that was from Harry Potter); and a handmade mobile featuring army men, disembodied Barbie heads, and plastic figures of Yoda and Obi-Wan.

  “You know who they are, right?”

  I assured him I did. I may not know every piece of pop trivia, but it's not like I live in a cave.

  Everything hanging from the ceiling came down so low, I almost felt like I should walk hunched over.

  “It's to keep K out,” Casey explained. “No head clearance.”

  I felt kind of bad about some of the name-calling and bickering I'd seen between the two of them earlier. On the other hand, it didn't seem to bother Casey at all. In fact, he had looked amused.

  “Do you … like your sister?”

  “Love her to death. Why?”

  “Um … before, it was kind of … dramatic.”

  “K likes to get up a good head of steam. Better to just let it play out.”

  After weighing and measuring the pups out in the garage, we came back to Casey's room and made up our chart.