“Well, shoot,” Q said, breaking the silence. “I was about to tell you about the time I met Jimmy Buffett in Margaritaville, but that’s a no-go now. Doesn’t seem serious enough.” He drummed his fingers against the wheel. “OK, here’s one. You all know Teddy the dolphin? The team brought him in last week? Man, I’ve never seen an animal with injuries like that. Never. First couple of days, I didn’t even think he was going to make it. But he’s a fighter. He really is. And when he’s ready to return to the ocean, I want to be there on the shore, toasting him with a bottle of root beer. That’ll be my best day on Earth.”
I shook my fur in agreement; that would be a good day, indeed.
A few raindrops pattered the windshield as Q told Olive, “You’re up, kid.”
But Olive was lost in her thoughts – even after Stanley and I nudged her. Even after Q said you’re up again. All she did was stare out the window, watching the clouds flicker by.
Earth, by nature, is incredibly stormy. Tsunamis crash into cities. Tornados whip through cornfields. And walls of rain hit highways in rural Tennessee. Olive was still gazing out the window as the storm came, swiftly and suddenly. Our van began to swerve against burst after burst of wind. Water started pounding the roof, loud enough to make us jump. Part of me thought that it was fitting: I’d arrived on this planet with a flood, so why not leave with one?
Q voiced the other half of my thoughts. “Bad luck,” he said, speeding up the windshield wipers. “Bad luck. I’m trying, but I can barely see a thing.”
“Pull over,” Norma instructed. “This isn’t worth it. We’ll wait it out.”
“No!” Olive blurted, the first thing she’d said in an hour. Frantically, she consulted the map. “We need to keep the pace up, if we want to get there two mornings from now. It’s still seven hundred miles to Lincoln, Nebraska.”
“I’m sorry,” Q said. “I really am. But we’re not making good time in this rain, anyway. And if we get into an accident… That’ll lose the most time. Storms are funny things; they sweep in, sweep out. You’ll see. We’ll be back on the road quick.”
Except it didn’t happen quite that way.
At the next exit was a rest stop, and we waited there – first in the camper and then under a covered picnic table, watching the rain glisten and fall. Lightning arrived: big bursts that split the sky. Stanley wasn’t a great fan of lightning. Two flashes later, he was cowering beneath the table, fur popping on the back of his neck. I scooted next to him, offering company and commiseration. On my planet, I said with my eyes, there is no lightning.
And he said, Please, oh please, make it stop.
Little streams of water were seeping around us; I was flicking my paws, freeing them of droplets, when Norma asked, “You want something to drink while we wait? Thought I saw a vending machine just down the way.” Q requested lemonade, Olive asked for chocolate milk, so Norma wrenched up the hood of her coat, slipping behind a sheet of water. It didn’t take long before the storm consumed her completely.
Q drew a damp pack of cards from the pocket of his cargo pants. “You know, your grandma used to be a storm sailor. I’ve seen her go out when the waves were –” he whistled, pointing to the ceiling – “way up there.”
“Really?” Olive said.
“Why do you think she has that motorcycle?” Q asked, shuffling the deck. “Still has some daredevil in her. Now pick a card, any card.”
Olive selected a card from the bottom of the stack as I shook my fur. “I’m starting to get worried,” she said. “The GPS says we have to travel eleven hours and nine minutes today, and that doesn’t include bathroom breaks. Or snack breaks. Or storm breaks. Or Norma breaks. Do you think we could drive through the night? Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible with enough coffee,” Q said, placing the cards on the table. “I could ask Norma to drive some. Her night vision’s sharp as a bat’s. But she’ll ask why we’re rushing.”
Olive’s shoulders drooped. “Yeah, that would be bad. You really think that it would shock her, telling her about Leonard?”
Q shuffled the deck once more, Olive’s card somewhere in the middle. “My guess is yes. And I’d hate to risk it. Your grandmother’s the best friend I’ve ever had… Now, important question,” Q said, tugging a two of hearts from the deck. “Is this your card?”
Olive shook her head.
“How about this one?” Q asked.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Well, darn,” he said, half at the cards, half at the sky. The rain kept bolting down.
31
By the time we were back on the road, we’d lost two and a half hours, and Olive couldn’t stop jiggling her legs, or sitting on her hands, or pressing her forehead to the window, willing the van to move faster. Nervously, I watched her from my perch on the kitchen counter, a dishcloth draped over my back; it wasn’t nearly as cottony as my green beach towel, but I was making do under the circumstances. My fur was pitifully soaked.
Outside it was still misting. Norma rolled down several windows anyway, allowing in a foggy breeze. Between gas-station snacks and Stanley’s wet-dog scent, the van was beginning to smell stale. We said nothing to each other for over a hundred miles – just let the wind do the talking.
In Nebraska, we finally pulled into the campground well after midnight, the van chugging to a stop.
“Whew,” Q said, yanking up the parking brake.
“You said it,” Norma added, stretching her back.
And Olive whispered that she had a surprise for me, if I wasn’t too exhausted. She dug out her suitcase. Underneath a stack of books – the Whitman and the Wordsworth – there was a small, green tent. “I bought it at a used camping store online, so I’m not expecting great things, but it should fit us both.”
I like to think that my tail said it all – that Olive knew exactly how much this meant. It really was extraordinary, setting up camp in a lush bed of grass, not too far from a silver-topped lake. Inside the green fabric, I was a ranger. I was camping in the wilderness, the earth at my feet.
All that time, all that study.
And now, someone to share it with.
Olive brought out pillows, sleeping bags, and her laptop from the camper, and we settled in for the night, a flashlight between us.
“Eight hundred and ninety-two miles left,” she said to the tent ceiling, her words sifting through the dark. “And we have to drive that in a day. It’ll take us fourteen hours, at least. That’s if we don’t make any stops at all. We should’ve left earlier, Leonard. I should’ve figured everything out sooner. I’m so sorry.”
She was apologising to me? After all the good she’d done?
It occurred to me then: Olive could’ve had a regular cat. Maybe in an alternate universe, in another summer, that is what Olive found: an earthly cat, who’d curl up at the edge of her bed, day after day, year after year, until its fur grew thin and grey.
Instead, she got me. And I felt a bit ashamed, for not fulfilling that role. For bringing her on such a difficult journey.
“I really wanted you to be my cat,” she said, as if reading my mind, “and maybe a tiny part of me waited until the end of the month because I didn’t want you to leave. Sometimes I wish that I could stay – that we could stay – in Turtle Beach forever.”
I cocked my head at her. Turtle Beach, I understood; but I couldn’t fathom why she wanted me so badly. On the surface, dogs seemed like much more reliable pets. They were obedient and loyal. They brought in newspapers. They attacked intruders in a more convincing manner than cats.
I pawed at her, asking, Laptop, please?
She rolled over to open it.
These were some of my last chances to ask her anything – ask her everything and anything on my mind. My raincoat swished as I typed.
Best day on Earth. That is a question for you. I cannot press the question mark key.
“My best day?” she asked. “That’s… Well… Can I tell you something first?”
I nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about what Norma said all day, about my dad. I can’t stop thinking about it.” Absentmindedly, she unclipped and reclipped her daisy barrettes. “I really did want to like my mom’s boyfriend, Frank – to have someone else in my life. Not a dad, but someone like a dad. Someone in my corner. I mean, my mom’s been there. Before this summer, the longest we’d been apart was for two weeks, when I was at Science Explorers camp. You’d like her a lot, Leonard. But lately she’s always around Frank … and now he’s going to live with us? Permanently? In Florida?”
Her nostrils flared as she blew out a breath. “I don’t even know if he’ll let us put up the photos. Of my dad. We keep a few on the mantel, a few in the kitchen. My dad loved to cook.” She paused, hesitant. “Would you maybe want to see a picture?”
I did. I would. Before I could properly answer, though, she was reaching deep into the pocket of her overalls. I cannot tell you what that did to me, the realisation that she was keeping him with her, all this time. It was a small photo, easily cupped in her palm, and there he was: rounded ears, light brown skin, a gap-toothed smile. So much like Olive.
“I know people always say this in movies,” Olive whispered, “but the worst part is, I don’t even remember if I said goodbye. I don’t remember much about him at all.” She drew the sleeping bag tighter around her, and I readjusted myself, kneading the puffy fabric. “Leonard?”
I looked at her with a purr.
“When you leave, can you say goodbye?”
She said it so earnestly, so quietly, that it nearly stopped my heart.
“A real goodbye,” she continued, producing something else from her backpack. It was tiny, circular object: flat, possibly cardboard, and yellow. “I know you’re not dying or anything. It’s the opposite. But … still.” The corners of her mouth curled into wistful smile. “Sometimes I thought that if I had just one good friend – one really good friend – it would make all the difference. And then I met you. And it did.”
In that instant, I understood what was in her hands. A ranger badge. A handmade ranger badge, with my name printed in black ink.
“We were supposed to get something like this in Girl Scouts, to go across our sashes, but I never got that far. So … I wanted to make sure you had one.” Olive cleared her throat. “For bravery and resilience, and for excellent penguin communication, I award you the Yellowstone Badge.”
She pinned it on my raincoat.
My throat quivered.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she told me. “I know.”
32
We left the campground just before the crack of dawn. It was a long drive through the rest of Nebraska – nothing but rolling plains, dotted with the occasional tree. Everything was the colour of tumbleweeds, and gigantic sprinklers spread across the fields like wings. As I stuck my head out the window, I found myself missing the beach, missing the seagrass and the shore.
There wasn’t much time for stopping – the hive would collect me in less than twenty hours – but we ran low on gas in the middle of Nebraska, pulling into a station for a refuel. Norma tried to dawdle, perusing the gas station’s aisles in an incredibly slow manner, while Q filled up the tank. Olive, Stanley, and I were waiting on the kerb when we glimpsed something in the distance. Something moving.
“See it?” Olive asked.
Stanley a-woo-ed in response, and I shuddered my tail.
It was standing a hundred feet away, just beyond the camper. A deer with a white tail, her head dipping to chomp at a sprig of grass, her ears twitching in the late-June heat. For a second, her gaze fell on the three of us, and it felt like a sign: that I was so close to the wildlife of Yellowstone, so close to leaving all of this behind. Because I wanted to leave tomorrow morning. And I didn’t. The two were mixing in my mind – and continued to mix, as we played cards. As we listened to music. At the edge of Wyoming, clusters of trees trailed into forests. And I tried to hang on to each of these moments, these last moments, while I could.
Which brings us here.
That’s it now. I’ve told you everything. Perhaps I’ve left out some details, bits and pieces here and there; if so, please forgive me. I only have nine more hours on this planet.
“Very good,” Olive tells me, as I lick the kibble bowl clean, my tongue scraping the smooth bottom. And I look up at her, always at her – the centre of our story. I will miss the way Olive clacks her tongue when she’s thinking. And Norma’s terrible cooking, which I never quite learned how to chew. How is it possible, that I will remember how Q whistles when he cleans the aquarium tanks, but I won’t remember how it made me feel?
Outside are ghostly shapes, moonlit mountains. Earthly things. In my gut, I know – despite my adoration for this family, for these people – that I don’t belong here. I’m an immortal being in a mortal body. I am not cut out for this.
A sign flashes by: YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, 1 MILE. My heart somersaults. We’ve almost made it after all.
Olive reaches down to smooth the top of my head, where the fur swirls from white to black. For a second, she playfully lifts my paw up and down – hoping to distract me, maybe. Then she just holds it. Holds my hand.
I do not take it for granted, as humans so often do.
I close my eyes, letting myself feel.
She’s taught me so many things on this planet: the names of marsh plants, like duckweed and cinnamon fern, black gum and arrowwood. She’s taught me that there is something lovely about curling up on the porch, in a warm patch of sun, the marsh grass gently fluttering. All it takes, she’s taught me, is one good friend.
In the front of the camper, Q is cruising through the park’s southern gate, fingers tapping the wheel.
Norma is cleaning mud off her boots, massaging Stanley’s shoulder blades.
And soon, Olive is asking me a question. “I don’t really get how it works,” she whispers. “I mean, how do you like – whoosh? Get back into space? Travel up there?”
Away from Norma’s view, Olive reopens the laptop, screen glowing in the dim light. The camper is swerving slightly; it’s difficult to type, but I manage the words: I must go into the geyser.
“I’m sorry,” Olive says. “What?”
You must help fling me into the geyser, I clarify. It is a hot spring named Old Faithful, which boils and erupts in a tall shoot of water. This will catapult me into the air. My species will collect me from there, counteracting the Earth’s gravitational pull. Olive is still staring at me, eyes wild, so I add: I thought I had mentioned this.
“Oh my god,” she says. “No, you didn’t. How are we going to—”
That’s when the tyre bursts, fifteen miles from Upper Geyser Basin. It’s an oddly melodic noise: the dugga-dugga-dugga of metal on tarmac, sparks flying in fiery arcs, scattering across the road. The camper veers violently to the left.
“Everything’s fine!” Q says, trying to control the situation. His hands tightly grip the wheel. “Just a flat! We’ll pull over and have it fixed in no time.”
He sounds genuinely hopeful, and this eases my fear. Fifteen miles to Old Faithful is easy; we could walk there if we need to. What else could go wrong?
The camper slows, edging to the side of the road, which is muddy from last night’s rain.
“Why don’t you take Leonard for a short walk, let him stretch his legs?” Q asks Olive, as Norma grabs a tyre iron from the back. “I promise, this really isn’t a biggie. I know it’s after midnight and we’re all exhausted, but I’ve changed many a tyre in my life.”
I can help, I try to tell him, pawing at my raincoat. In Yellowstone, I should be able to perform some of my duties as a ranger – assisting this family in distress; yet I’d like to help without damaging my raincoat, if possible. It’s been pristine for my whole time on Earth, no mud or rips or tears.
“Are you too warm?” Olive says, noticing my pawing. She peels the raincoat off my back and holds it in her arms, leaving me w
ith just a harness. Stanley’s on a leash as well, sniffing the grass beside Norma, his wet nose twitching against a tapestry of scent.
When his gaze tilts up again, he tells me, The birds.
Yes, I know, I reply, because he’s been saying this for ages. Since I first met him.
The birds! he repeats, emphasising his words with a yelp.
I don’t truly understand the depth of Stanley’s obsession with birds. Sometimes, his paws twitch in sleep, and I wonder if he’s chasing them. He’s a reserved sort of dog, with a calm character. But whenever he glimpses a bird, everything about him perks: his tail, the fur of his spine, the soft fold of his ears.
Which is exactly what is happening now.
“What is it, boy?” Norma says, handing Q the tyre iron.
Stanley tugs at his leash, following a scent into the nearest bush. All I can see is the fluff of his back legs, the swish of his tail. His muffled bark rings through the branches. No, not there, he finally says, extracting himself from the bush. There! Bird!
Based on his reaction, I expect to hear the thunderous flapping of wings. My ears swivel, whiskers flattening. I hear nothing. But something in me still ticks awake: some evolutionary response, buried within my earthly body.
I crane my neck to the sky.
Above me – etched in moonlight – is an enormous owl.
Olive had told me about the owls of Wyoming, which feed on small animals and perhaps the occasional house pet. I’m instantly mesmerised by the sharpness of its beak, the length of its claws, how it’s screeching and swooping – circling around me. I don’t even have my raincoat for protection: no slick layer of fabric between those talons and my fur.
The bird lets out a sharp cry.
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