by Pollen
But facts? I can do facts. Especially facts about frogs and toads and spiders and penguins. I even think I could do what the penguin woman is doing right now: stand up in front of a bunch of people and talk facts. As long as it’s just facts.
“Big deal,” Ram says, breaking my train of thought. “My dad does ninety on the motorway sometimes.”
“Then he should slow down,” Stu says seriously. Sometimes, it feels like Stu was born forty.
“Can anyone tell me where Humboldt penguins come from?” says the woman. About fifty hands go up. Another fifty people shout out answers. South Africa! Japan! Barnsley!
She walks over to a little girl who’s shorter than the fence. Her dad is holding her up so she can see.
The woman angles the megaphone so the girl can talk through it. But she gets shy and starts crying.
She moves the megaphone away, leans toward the girl, and whispers in her ear. And you can see the girl’s face light up. The transformation’s kind of amazing. One minute, this girl is bawling; the next, it’s like someone told her she can move into Disneyland, permanently.
And that’s the bit I couldn’t do. The touchy-feely bit. The bit where you have to tell someone it’s okay and make a joke, or whatever she just did.
I guess I should stick to my get-a-PhD-and-become-a-zoologist plan.
“Dimple here knows the right answer,” the zookeeper says, walking back out across the rocks. “Humboldt penguins are from South America. They live on the beach in Chile and Peru. I’m pretty jealous of them, to be honest!”
“Bet you knew that,” Evie whispers to me.
I did—well, the South America bit, anyway. But how do you say yes without sounding like a total know-it-all? I lower my head. I can feel my cheeks glowing neon.
See what I mean? As soon as it’s anything other than facts, I’m lost.
“Now, can anyone tell me what a Humboldt penguin’s favorite food is?”
Evie jabs me in the ribs. Which hurts a lot, when your ribs are the tiniest fraction of an inch below your skin.
“Put your hand up.”
I shake my head.
“C’mon, Max. I know you know the answer.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.
She puts her hand up and shouts, “We know!”
I turn on her and hiss, “What are you doing?” I grab her arm, pull it down. She instinctively pulls away from me and whacks it on the fence.
“Ow!” she shouts.
And her face drops.
Like she’s thinking, Wow.
Like she can see the psycho in my eyes.
Like she’s terrified of me.
“All right,” says the keeper. “A lot of enthusiasm from over there.” She points at us, takes a few steps in our direction. “What’s the answer, guys?”
I freeze. My limbs turn liquid. My stomach is churning like a washing machine. Everything slows down, and the baBOOM-baBOOM of my heartbeat drowns out the babble of the crowd.
It’s Ram who steps in. “Um, fish fingers?” Right after he says it, he glances at me and winks. I’m pretty sure no one else sees it.
And just like that, the tension breaks. Everyone’s laughing. The world returns to normal speed.
“Not quite,” says the zookeeper, with a patient smile. An I’ve-heard-that-one-approximately-376-times smile.
Evie turns to Ram. “Good one, dickhead. Packham totally knew the answer.”
“Herring,” I say under my breath. “Probably other stuff, too.”
“In the wild, these guys eat mostly anchovies, herring, and smelt,” the keeper says into her megaphone, like she’s my backup singer.
Evie jabs Ram in the ribs this time. “See?”
“Whatever,” Ram says.
“I think our friend simply wanted to be noticed,” Stu says, draping an arm around Ram’s shoulders. Ram, annoyed, shrugs it off. Evie and Stu burst out laughing.
We listen to the keeper for a while. She’s now explaining how penguins feed their young.
“Little penguins can’t chew their own food, so their mum and dad do it for them, then regurgitate the liquid.” About two hundred kids make an ewww noise at once. “It’s the penguin equivalent of baby food!”
Revelation: Talking about animal biology can make me feel faint, too, if it’s all about how animals throw up. I brace myself against the fence and try to tune her out.
My mind keeps whirring, though. I think about how much easier my life would be if throwing up was an ordinary part of life. Something you just did. Then I realize, Wait a minute. I’m actually, literally feeling jealous of a penguin. BECAUSE THEY GET TO THROW UP!
The feeding itself is great. The penguins huddle around the keeper, squawking impatiently at her. She throws fish into the water and they do big, looping dives, to catch the fish from below. It’s like Cirque du Soleil or something.
When it’s over, Ram sniffs the air. “That was cool. Better than the lion.”
“What next, birthday boy?” asks Evie.
Ram shrugs.
“We could go to the bat house,” I say quietly. Then I do an immediate or-whatever shrug. I can’t believe I actually expressed an opinion, just like that, without anyone asking me. “I mean, if you guys want.”
Ram raises an eyebrow. “Is it cool?” Ram treats cool like this absolute quality: Everything in the world is either cool or not cool. There’s no middle ground.
“I think so,” I answer.
He clicks his fingers, and points at me. “Packham, lead the way.”
I want to go to the bat house for two reasons:
Bats are awesome.
It’s basically pitch-black.
You go through an airlock, with sheets of plastic hanging down to stop the bats from getting out, and walk into a giant cave as high and wide as a football stadium, as dark as the woods on a new moon. There are bats everywhere: hanging from wires, circling the roof. You can see them when you look up, because there are little pinpricks of light, like stars I guess. But at eye level, you can’t really see anything.
Here’s the thing: I’m never not thinking about people looking at my body. Even when I’m just with my parents. Even when I’m totally alone. It starts with Ana asking a question, like,
Hey, remember that bottle of water you drank at lunchtime?
And it’s like a snowball at the top of a hill: Once it’s started, I can’t stop it. I can’t shut her up.
It makes your belly stick out. You look totally bloated—like Santa Claus. Someone’s probably looking at you, right now, and thinking, What a lard-ass.
That’s why hanging out in pitch-black caves seems like a pretty good idea. Maybe I should become a troglodyte.
“Cooooooool!” Evie says as we shuffle inside.
There’s a single walkway that loops through the cave. There are tons of people, but you can only see them when they are right in front of you. A slightly darker patch in the inky blackness.
“Yeah,” agrees Ram. “Turns out this was a pretty good idea, Packham. Though it does smell a bit.”
“You get used to it,” I tell him. Then play it back to myself. Oh God. Cringe cringe cringe. I managed to make it sound like I spend every weekend in a bat cave. Covered in bat poo.
“Um, if you say so.”
“Tell us about the bats, Packham,” says Evie.
I shrug, like, What do you want to know? Then I remember that no one can see me. “Um, there are two types of bats in here. The big ones up there are fruit bats, from Madagascar.”
“So they don’t drink your blood?” Ram asks. He sounds really disappointed.
“That’s vampire bats. And they don’t actually drink people’s blood, you know.”
“Lame,” Ram says. Then he shrieks. “Oh my God! I swear that one almost hit me.”
“They won’t hit you,” I tell him. “The little ones that are flying around are, um …” I can’t think of the name. I experience some internal turbulence
, like inside me there’s a pot of water with a lid on it, and as the water comes to the boil, it rattles away.
Two seconds later, Evie’s phone screen lights up her face. She looks like she’s about to tell a ghost story.
“Evie,” I hiss. “You can’t—”
“Seba’s bat?” she suggests. Before I can answer, her thumb twitches, and the screen flicks off, plunging us back into darkness.
“Right. Seba’s bat. Anyway, they echolocate. Even if it’s pitch-black, they know exactly where you are.”
“So it flew right past my ear for the kicks? Little bastard,” Ram grumbles.
“You mean they can see us?” Evie asks.
“Kind of,” I tell her. I’d never thought of it like that. I guess I’ve only made myself invisible to humans. But on reflection, I don’t really mind too much if bats think I’m fat.
“Hey,” Ram says. “Where’s Stu? Stu!”
No answer. I thought Stu was right behind us when we came in. Maybe he is, and he’s just screwing with us.
“Have you seen Stu?” Ram asks. I don’t know who he’s asking. It sounds like he’s a few yards behind us.
“Ain’t seen much since I came in here to be honest with you,” someone replies.
“Stu!” Ram shouts again, getting more distant. “Max, Evie, we’ll catch up with you guys.”
Which means it’s just me and Evie. The moment I think it, I can feel my cheeks turning beet red. Good job she can’t see me.
I was pretty surprised she even came. I figured she’d tell us she was busy at the last minute. Or she was washing her hair. But when Ram’s dad came and picked me up this morning, she was already in the car. (I asked her if she lived near Ram’s dad, in an attempt to be a normal human being who makes conversation. But she was super-weird about it. Kind of, she replied. Not really. I mean, closer than you, I guess? I’m not really sure. Ha-ha! Where are we again?)
As usual, she’s spent most of today glued to her phone. She’s taken a minimum of five pictures of every animal we’ve seen, and like a hundred of the penguins. She must have a wicked-big hard drive somewhere.
“This is pretty cool, you know, Max,” Evie tells me. She’s been calling me Packham all day. It feels important that she’s now calling me Max, but I’m not quite sure how.
I want to tell her I’m sorry, about before. I want to laugh it off, make some stupid joke about needing to be more chilled out like a penguin—anything. But I’m scared of drawing attention to it. If I bring it up, I’m just ruining another moment, aren’t I? And it’s not like Evie’s never been weird around me.
I wish I could describe how it feels. How the panic builds, like a wave crashing over me. How in my head I’m telling myself: This isn’t a big deal. No one cares. Even if you make a total fool of yourself, no one will remember. But at the same time, Ana’s screaming:
Everyone will look at you and laugh at you. Even if you can’t see them laughing, they’re being polite. The moment you turn your head …
And suddenly I’m freaking out. I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of the situation, to end the moment. My nerves prickle all over, and I can’t think.
I feel like a psycho. Maybe I am a psycho.
You can control most things that happen in your life, but you can’t control what goes on inside your head.
“There’s only one problem,” Evie continues.
“What?” I say. My heart goes from the Jaws theme all the way up to drum and bass. Right at that moment, a bat brushes past my head, moving the hairs on my temple without hitting me. Because I’m on edge, I jump out of my skin. For the second time in thirty seconds, being in a pitch-black room saves me from looking like a total idiot.
“It’s too dark to take a picture,” Evie says.
“Then don’t,” I reply, more bluntly than I mean to.
Nicely played, Max. Are you trying to make her hate you?
But I can’t help it: The whole let’s-take-loads-of-pictures-instead-of-looking-at-stuff thing bugs me. If you go to a reserve to look at birds, there are always these guys—it’s always guys—with massive zoom lenses, trying to get the perfect shot, fiddling with meters and cable releases and God knows what else, getting in your way, when all you want to do is look at birds.
“Wow. Chill out, Packham,” she says. I’m back to Packham again.
“Sorry. But how come you take so many pictures?”
I don’t see her cross her arms. But I can feel it. A little wall of tension shoots up between us. “To remember stuff.”
“That’s what your memory is for,” I say.
“Yeah, well, my memory’s pretty rubbish.”
“But, like, do you really need to remember everything? Is every single moment of your life important?”
“No,” she says slowly. It sounds like she’s really considering her response. “But that’s the thing with memories, isn’t it? You don’t know what’s important until later. Hey, I wonder where they’ve got to,” she says, and even I can read the subtext: Please change the subject.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“Do you think Stu chickened out?”
“Dunno,” I say. “Maybe, I guess?” I’m still thinking about the memory thing. How many memories from the past nine months would I actually want to save? Right now, I can’t think of any. At all.
“Wow, what’s got into you? You sound like someone stole your last Rolo all of a sudden. Ow!” she shrieks.
“What?”
“A bat just flew into me.”
“Really? I mean, they know exactly where you are …”
“Max, listen to me,” Evie says. “One of the little shits hit me. Maybe he’s got a broken radar or maybe he’s stupid or nasty or something. I don’t know.”
“Okay,” I say, laughing.
“You don’t believe me!”
“I do,” I say. But my voice is kind of high-pitched. Even I can tell it’s probably not very convincing. “Maybe I’d believe you if you had a photo.”
“It’s not funny!” she says. And then something hits me, too, square on the shoulder: Evie’s fist. Considering she can’t see a thing, it’s a pretty good hit.
“Hey, one just flew into me, too,” I say.
“Oh, you smartass. You think you’re sooo funny! Ow! That was another one! Right, that’s it. Get me out of here immediately, Packham.”
I flinch when she grabs my hand, but it’s cool, because she just thinks it’s bat-related. Not oh-my-God-Evie-is-holding-my-hand-related.
It’s warm. And soft. And, um, kind of clammy.
But I don’t mind one bit.
*Zoology-fact klaxon: I have no idea which, because penguins don’t show sexual dimorphism, which is a fancy way of saying males and females look the same. Actually, male Humboldts are slightly bigger, but that doesn’t really help you tell them apart: It could just be a big female or a small male or whatever.
Bonus zoology-fact klaxon: The reason penguins don’t show sexual dimorphism is that they mate for life, so there’s not much competition for mates. No one needs to show off. It’s like when I married your mum and started wearing socks and sandals again—that’s how Dad explained it to me.
May 9
Dear Ana,
SHE HELD MY HAND. Voluntarily. Because she wanted to. She reached out and grabbed it, just like that.
Naturally, you started freaking me out immediately.
—Can she feel how bony it is?
—She’s doing it out of pity.
—Or maybe she’s scared, because you took her to a freaking BAT CAVE, like some psycho murderer.
Cheers, Ana.
But she didn’t let go. Even when we came out of the cave and into the light, and she could see exactly where she was going and there were no bats flying into her or nearly into her. She did drop it when we saw Ram and Stu, though. Dropped it like it was hot coal. That didn’t make me feel great.
Now there are about a million questions bouncing around my head:
—Can she tell I’m ill? Like, she calls me skinny all the time, jokes about it—but does she realize I’m vital-organs-may-go-on-strike-at-any-moment skinny?
—If she doesn’t, how will she react? What if, like, she wants to go swimming or something, and she sees me with my top off—sees my skeleton ribs, and the big dark triangles above my collar bones? Will she want to stick around then—or will she drop me like she dropped my hand?
Here’s the thing, Ana: I kind of need you to get lost for a bit now. I need to show Evie I can be normal, just for a little bit. So how about a deal? How about I stick to my regular diet, and you don’t make me freak out about every little thing? How about I stay in control, and you stay in control, and we see how that goes? Is that too much to ask?
15
I’m playing Zelda when Mum comes in. Stu’s way ahead of me, despite the fact he’s always at football practice, so I’m trying to catch up. It’s almost dinnertime, and tonight, it’s one of my favorites: quiche. People think anorexics don’t like food, but they’re wrong. I can 100 percent guarantee you that I like food more than you do. I love food. That’s why I think about it for sixteen hours a day.
“What’s this?” Mum says, holding up my notebook.
My stomach lurches, like I’ve gone over a speed bump at a hundred miles an hour. “It’s nothing,” I murmur. I can feel my cheeks burning. There may be no iron left in my blood, but I can still blush.
“Sweetheart,” Mum says, in that I’m-going-to-give-you-the-chance-to-be-straight-with-me voice that parents use all the time.
“Honestly, it’s nothing. It’s not what you think,” I say.
She thinks it’s my food diary. She thinks I’m still secretly recording everything I eat, so I can make sure the numbers keep going down, down, down, a little lower every day. I guess I am still doing that—but only in my head.