Surviving Minimized: A Novel

by Andrea White

  The animal looked more like a Halloween demon than Okar. Froth foamed from its mouth, and its dark eyes sought out Zert’s. Something stretched between the animal’s neck and a thick wooden stake in the ground. It was a black wire.

  Zert’s father used to kill rats too. But although his father had lots of faults, he wasn’t a rat torturer.

  Zert bashed a pebble against the stake. After a few hard knocks, the stake toppled over.

  The rat stared into his eyes for a long second. Then, it shook its large head and stumbled off into the weeds with the wire still circling its neck.

  Voices approached, and he ducked into a nearby thicket.

  “What the …?” he heard Don G. say.

  He peeked out from behind a cluster of ferns.

  Don G. was staring at the hole in the ground where the stake had been. He wore a necklace of wire around his neck in addition to the rat teeth necklace he always wore.

  Millicent’s father emerged from a wall of weeds and joined him. Artica Chang was as tall as three bottle caps standing on their sides. He had a hooked nose and crinkly eyes. The hair on his head was sprinkled with white, unlike his jet-black mustache. Like Don G. and most of the adults, he wore a pair of pants of a hundred pockets, but his purple vest was cut from the same soft, fuzzy cloth as the shirt Millicent wore. Zert tried to remember where he had seen this fabric in the BIG world and decided that he had seen it in church.

  “What happened?” Artica Chang asked.

  “I don’t know,” Don G. said. “I’ve never see a rat pull out a stake before.”

  Artica Chang knelt next to the hole. “The wood must have been rotten.”

  “Maybe,” Don G. said. He cupped his hand above his eyes and stared into the bushes, as if looking for the culprit.

  A leaf tickled Zert’s nose, and he sneezed. He took a deep breath and slid out from the bushes. He tried to look as innocent as a caterpillar.

  “Mr. Chang,” Zert said quickly. “I’ve caught a beetle, and Millicent told me that you’d help me build a corral.”

  Don G. glared at him. “If I find out you let that rat go …”

  “What are you talking about, Don G.?” Artica interrupted.

  “Did you know that boy threatened my daughter with a knife?” Don G. said, scowling.

  “But …,” Zert started to defend himself. Then, he thought about what Millicent had told him. Don G. had lost children in the Nuclear Mistake. He didn’t blame the man for being furious with anyone who threatened his daughter. He’d never be able to listen to Zert’s side of the story.

  “I heard that tale,” Artica said. “But Millicent said Zert didn’t even know he had the knife in his hand.”

  Zert nodded. “It’s true.”

  “Say whatever you want, Artica,” Don G. said, his voice rising. “But the new boy is never going to make it here.” He stomped off.

  Artica Chang turned and gazed patiently at Zert.

  Zert remembered why he had come. His beetle needed a place to sleep tonight. He explained the situation to Artica. “I’d really appreciate your help,” he said.

  “I tell you what,” Artica said, smiling. “Let me pick up some webbing, and I’ll meet you by the school in an hour.”

  The slope was so tightly grassed over that it seemed to be painted green, except for the brown trail that zigzagged from PeopleColor Schoolhouse to the banks of the trickle.

  Artica Chang hiked toward Zert, carrying a bundle on each shoulder as the sun played hide-and-go-seek behind some gray clouds.

  Zert waited next to a homemade cart constructed from a can and four spools. The class’s deformed Statue of Liberty lay on its side inside the cart, ready for a volunteer to haul it to Ellis Log.

  “Let’s go be bug cowboys,” Artica Chang called out when he drew near.

  Zert smiled. If he could trap enough bugs, he wouldn’t have to get along with the other kids. And his dad could forget about trying to make boots. He and his father could just leave. Insects roamed in every corner of this giant park. He could hunt them and enlarge his herd. But first, he would need to learn how to take care of them.

  “My dad has already started building our corral,” Zert told Artica as they set off together on the trail up the slope to the caves. They had chosen a clearing just a pebble’s throw away from their hut as the site to grow their herd.

  “Millicent told me that you have hundreds of hoppers and crickets each spring. How do you keep that many penned?”

  “Our spiderweb netting is strong,” Artica said.

  “I remember,” he said softly. That day he’d gotten trapped in one of Artica’s spare corrals seemed so long ago now. Yet they had been in Paradise for less than two weeks.

  “Of course, we lose a few sometimes,” Artica was saying. “But in six months, you wouldn’t believe how many insects we have here.” He shook his head. “Our crickets and hoppers are even more plentiful than the buffalo were when the first BIG settlers arrived in the west.”

  “Where do you find the webs?” Zert ask him.

  “We have a spider farm,” Artica said.

  Whoa! Zert pictured a line of spiders with chairs underneath them and farmers milking them for silk.

  “Someday,” Artica said, “this whole valley will be full of insect ranches. We’re developing the most varied and sophisticated techniques for growing and harvesting insects that the world has ever known.”

  “What do I feed my beetle, Artica? How often do I water him? What’s that squeaky sound they make? And when do they mate?” Questions started tumbling out of Zert’s mouth.

  “Hold on!” Artica Chang said, smiling. “One at a time.”

  But they had already reached the dead end in the trail.

  Zert heard the sound of chopping as they approached the cave.

  “Dad, it’s us,” Zert called.

  “I’ve got a good start on our corral,” his father called back.

  The beetle stood in the middle of a clearing, tethered to a stake while his father chopped wood. The plan was to build the corral around him.

  Artica crossed the clearing. “Your beetle’s huge,” he said. “Where did you find it?”

  “On the way home from school,” Zert said.

  “Zert roped it and brought it here,” his father said.

  Zert walked up to the beetle and petted its shiny wings. His own reflection shone back at him. His brown hair had grown shaggy, and his face looked darker than it had when he had arrived.

  “When I was growing up in Antarctica, we had fat stock shows. This one would win a blue ribbon,” Artica said.

  “I guessed that’s where you got your nickname,” Jack said. He had tied a bandana around his forehead to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes.

  “Antarctica was the last frontier.” Artica chuckled. “Until now.”

  Jack stood up straighter. Oh no. He was about to launch into one of his stories about the Antarctica Wars.

  “Will I be able to find any crickets or grasshoppers this late in the year?” Zert interrupted.

  “Not likely,” Artica shook his head. “You’ll have to look to roaches to fill out your herd.”

  Zert grimaced.

  His father cracked his knuckles. He had to be thinking about all the years when roaches were the most disgusting of all bugs.

  Zert was about to remind his father of the crummiest motel on Flade Street, where all the drug dealers hung out. It was called “Roach Motel.” But Artica interrupted.

  “I know. I know,” he said, pulling on his mustache. “It’s strange. Like you, I used to hate roaches. Now I grow them. My wife has at least fifty roach recipes.” He shrugged. “We laugh about it all the time.”

  Millicent skidded into the clearing on sandals tied to her feet with bark. She stopped so fast that a bag labeled “fleas” tumbled out of her front pocket.

  “How’d you find us?” Artica asked.

  “Heard your voices,” Millicent said.

  “Well,”
Artica said, “let’s get started, Jack. Where are your twigs?”

  “Over here.” His father pointed at a pile of wood.

  “We’ll be finished in no time.” Artica started whistling. “And then, Zert, you and I can have a little talk about micro-ranching.”

  Millicent dragged a twig to the corner where Zert’s father had dug a hole.

  Zert set the twig upright while Millicent shoveled dirt around it. It was his first insect corral and his best moment in Paradise so far.

  “Home, home on the range,” Artica sang.

  “Where the deer and the antel—” Zert started to sing along, but stopped.

  “Where the roach and the caterpillar play,” Artica and Millicent crooned.

  A bug rancher. There were worse things to be. Maybe.

  30

  BEING BAD AT STUFF IS HARD

  Saturday afternoon, Zert stepped up to a peg in the ground with his bow while the whole village of Paradise watched from the sidelines.

  His father wouldn’t let him sit out of the Rosie rodeo. “Don’t let them think you’re a quitter,” he’d told Zert.

  The archery target was a piece of a BIG blue T-shirt stuffed with pine needles. Only part of the original slogan was visible. It read: “HONK IF.”

  Honk if you’re living a thumb-sized nightmare.

  The string from the bow cut into his fingers. If only it was a zoink toggle instead. Then, he might have a chance to hit a bull’s-eye. He might even have a chance to hit the target.

  He hitched up his baggy pants and recalibrated his aim. As he got ready to release, he heard his father whisper from behind him, “You can do it, Zert. You can do anything.”

  Even as he fired, his fingertips told him that the arrow was going to miss the target. The arrow whizzed past “HONK IF” and lodged in the dirt with a thud. Before his father could say anything encouraging, Zert lowered his bow and hurried away.

  He spotted Millicent’s dark, straight hair in the crowd. When he slipped in beside her, she smiled at him. The ends of her mouth crinkled, and her eyes lit up. Her smile would win her friends in the BIG world. It was a smile that said she knew him and liked him anyway. “Don’t worry,” she said softly. “We’ve been doing this all our lives.” If he’d lived here all his life, he still wouldn’t be able to shoot like these kids. Millicent had missed the bull’s-eye by only a minnow’s scale.

  When he didn’t respond, she added, “You’ve only just been here for two weeks.” All of the Rosies had dressed up for the rodeo, and Millicent’s pink T-shirt was decorated with bits and pieces of pebbles that glinted in the sun.

  “Good job, son.” His father had found him and clapped him on the back.

  “Sure, Dad,” Zert mumbled. He’d never been athletic. But here, he felt downright uncoordinated. He was a loser, as John and Beth had said.

  “I’m going back to work,” his father said. He wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat, like many of the Rosies—he didn’t own one—but he had worn a rat-skin belt in honor of rodeo day. “My boots are really getting good.”

  “See you,” Zert said. His father was obsessed with finishing those boots. He had stuck around only to support Zert’s rodeo efforts. A lot of good that did.

  Wearing blue-jean shorts and a blue T-shirt, Beth stepped up to the line next. She wore a Rosie version of a cowboy hat on her head and had pulled her messy hair back with a furry ribbon. In one motion, she put the arrow in place and stood taller as she drew back the bowstring. It twanged, and the arrow hissed as it raced toward the target.

  Thud. A bull’s-eye.

  Millicent cheered along with the rest of the crowd. Zert gave a few claps.

  Dawn Nelson approached the start peg to compete next. From the neck up, she could have been any ten-year-old girl anywhere. But her cowboy hat fashioned from moss and her blue cotton overalls with bulging pockets were unique to Rosieland. She took a pair of fur gloves out of one of them and slipped them on.

  Dawn didn’t hit a bulls-eye, but thud, she hit the target, right in the middle of the “IF.”

  Fifteen minutes later, it was clear that Zert was the only kid whose arrow had missed the target entirely.

  Artica grabbed Beth’s hand and raised it upward. His cowboy shirt looked as if it had previously been a garbage bag. He had drawn white circles on the black plastic where buttons should be. “We have a winner in Archery!” he shouted. “For the eighth year in a row, Beth Gibson.” Beth leaned forward. When she straightened up, another silver medallion hung from her neck. This one said, “Grand Champion.” Beth beamed at the crowd.

  Zert had come in ninth in Fire Starting and last in the Doodlebug Roping Contest. He wasn’t able to get off the ground in the Aspen Tree Race. Even Holly, Dawn, and the other little kids … er … and even littler kids … had earned more points than he had.

  But the Rosie rodeo didn’t matter. Not really. His beetle was thriving on the chopped-up plants he fed it and with water from the trickle. He’d learn as much as he could about bug ranching. Then, he’d escape with his dad and never have to see Beth Gibson or her dad again.

  “Our next event, the Catch-a-Greased-Roach Contest, is about to begin,” Casey shouted. Her pigtails fell down over a long-sleeved shirt with real, not painted-on, buttons. As Zert was trying to figure out what kind of insects the buttons were made out of, he heard a scream. “Aahh!” Casey’s mouth hung open as she pointed toward a tattered forest of thistles, ragweed, and grass.

  Zert looked where she had aimed her finger. For an instant, a rat stared right at him. A necklace of skin circled the rat’s neck where the wire had cut through the fur.

  Zert nodded at the rat before its tail whipped the air, and the animal disappeared into the quaking vegetation. He wouldn’t swear that they were friends or anything, but that rat had gazed at him as if he knew that Zert had been the guy who had saved his life.

  Cleama Gibson, Bear Nelson, and Harriet Chang rushed up to Mary Kay Casey. “What’s wrong?” “What did you see?” “Are you all right?”

  “A rat!” Casey said, her face drained of color, as if she’d come face-to-face with the fiend on that show World’s Scariest Faces. “It was over there, staring at all of us,” she said in a shaky voice.

  Millicent clutched Zert’s arm. “That must have been some rat. Casey doesn’t usually get upset.”

  The thistles were still wobbling where the rat had escaped.

  “How big was it?” “How close was it?” “Do you want to sit down?” the women asked Casey in panicked voices.

  Don G. and Beth had already picked up their bows. The father-daughter team was headed off-trail into the wilderness to chase their quarry.

  Millicent and John walked up. Millicent took his arm. With her pebble-decorated shirt and his mossy cowboy hat, they made quite a pair. John had on a cowboy vest of polka-dotted cotton that Zert guessed was once men’s underwear.

  “Don’t be scared,” Millicent said.

  John gazed at him, and for once, Zert was surprised to see concern in John’s eyes. “My father and sister will find that animal.”

  Rats weren’t dangerous to humans. Even small humans. He was sure of that. One-thousand-percent sure. But the way John and Millicent were looking at him made his stomach ache. “I used to have a rat as a pet,” Zert told them.

  Millicent mouthed the word no.

  “Yeah,” Zert bragged, his voice growing louder. “Okar lived in a cage with a house and a fire pole. I played with him every day.”

  John gawked at him. “We have this game.” He glanced at Millicent. “It’s called Rat Attack.”

  “John,” Millicent said, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. “No. Not that.”

  John grinned, showing his buck teeth. “Someone keeps the fire going. The rats come out and investigate the smoke. Then we yell ‘Rat Attack’ and shoot the rat.” He smirked. “You should come play with us.”

  “I don’t want to hunt rats.” Zert turned his back on them. He wanted to go home. Since h
e couldn’t go back to Flade Street, the cave would have to do.

  “Zert, wait,” Millicent said.

  “Aww,” John said, “if he wants to doodle out, let him.”

  “The next game is really fun. The winner is crowned as ‘Roach Cowboy,’” Millicent called after him.

  “We let the biggest loser in the rodeo win the title. It’s usually a little kid, but this year …” John’s voice trailed off.

  Zert pushed past a low-hanging vine. He set off in a jog down the snail trail in the direction of the Hat. The rock formation looked so much like a hat that it could have been a man-made statue.

  The statue of a roach in front of his father’s shop had worn a red cowboy hat, which had cast a shadow over the lower half of its face.

  The roach cowboy’s lips had been twisted into a mysterious smile, as if the statue knew a secret, and it was terrible.

  31

  A DOUBLE DOG DARE

  Zert set his bow by the door of the hut.

  “How was the Catch-a-Greased-Roach Contest?” his father asked without looking up from his workbench.

  “Didn’t go.” Zert joined him at the red-and-silver table, originally a Vita juice can, that his father had bartered for a piece of rat hide.

  “Why didn’t you stay for the game?” his father asked.

  “Didn’t want to,” Zert said. Before his father could scold him, he added, “On the way home, I trapped a roach.” It was a baby, and it had made an awful hiss as he had roped him.

  His father looked up from a pair of gray boots that he was working on. “Did you put him in the corral?”

  “Yeah,” Zert said. “Dad, those boots look better.” No one would ever want to wear them, but at least they looked like boots now rather than melted chocolate chip cookies.

  His father beamed. “The problem was the string. I doubled it, and it works much better.”

  “That’s great, Dad. Are those mine?”

  “You bet!” His father met his gaze. “The sun’s still out. Why don’t you go outside and play with the other kids?”

  “I’ll just stay here,” Zert said. But when he looked around the small space, he realized that there was nothing to do except play a rousing game of tic-tac-toe on the dirt floor. Against himself.