Maybe everything was fine now, and the storm after Mom’s death had passed. The dust was settling. I sipped the glass of iced tea Samantha had poured for me. It was sweeter than the batches Mom used to make.
Things were good at home, but at school, things were still terrible for Jackie Friskey. Before we were friends, I had thought that Jackie’s life was perfect: she had boobs already and she had been the best public speaker at Beaver Elementary. But now I knew that her parents fought, and that her mom sometimes commented that Jackie was looking chubby. Jackie didn’t have any friends anymore, except for me, and everyone in school whispered things about her. The rumor had started after Jackie told her friend Stephanie that it burned when she peed, which I guess is a symptom of chlamydia, as well as a urinary tract infection. The words slut, whore, and ho-bag were graffitied on Jackie’s locker. I told the janitor so he could paint over it.
I invited Jackie over to my house after school, and she was so excited that she hugged me. She said on the bus ride home that she couldn’t wait to meet my new stepmother.
“She’s not my stepmother yet,” I said. “Not officially.”
“My parents are fighting all the time,” she said. “They’re going through with the divorce.”
“Maybe you’ll get a stepmother,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. I didn’t always know what to say when Jackie started talking about her parents. Her mom was alive.
When Jackie and I got off the bus at my house, Dad and Ernest were at work. Samantha was wearing yellow rubber gloves and cleaning our stove. She made us a quick batch of Pillsbury cookies, cutting up the cookie dough log. We did our homework at the table, and Jackie told Samantha about the STD rumor. Jackie described how I’d marched right over to her in the No Bully Zone, how I didn’t care what anyone thought. “She was my friend when I had no one,” she said. “She bought me a Yoo-hoo.”
“You go, Elvis,” Samantha said. “It’s important to stand up for others, and for yourself.”
“No one would ever mess with Elvis.”
“Why?”
I had the same question, but Samantha was the one to ask it.
“They think she’s a . . . they think she’s like her sister.”
I felt a weird kind of pride then.
“What do you mean, like her sister?” Samantha asked.
“They think she’s crazy. Everyone is surprised they let Lizzie out of the nut house.”
“Out of the what?”
I guess Dad hadn’t told Samantha everything yet. I shot Jackie a look.
“Nothing,” Jackie said. “Just another rumor.”
“So people are afraid of me? Since when?” I remembered when Aiden Masters called me retarded in fifth-grade chorus; he wasn’t scared of me then.
“I guess since you did drugs in school.”
“Drugs?” Samantha asked, shocked. I told her Jackie was just joking, that she had a weird sense of humor.
It all made sense now, why no one had bullied me or scribbled on my locker. I didn’t need the No Bully Zone anymore, not with a sister like mine, a reputation I hadn’t earned.
It was Friday afternoon. Dad had come home early from work, and he and Samantha were playing poker at the kitchen table. The parrot was sitting on Samantha’s shoulder, and I thought if Ernest could warm up to Samantha, then Lizzie could too. I sat down at the table with them.
It was then that Lizzie brought out a rabbit cake, one that was beautifully frosted, with dark brown raisin eyes and a big licorice smile.
“Who wants cake?” Lizzie asked. “I made it this morning.”
“I do,” I said, surprised that she said we could eat it. Maybe this cake could be the mark of a new beginning, of a new family. It wasn’t even dinnertime yet, only four in the afternoon, but Dad said it didn’t matter if we ruined our appetites.
Dad unlocked the knife drawer for Lizzie, and she pulled the biggest knife out, one of the pig-carving knives. When she sliced into the cake, I swear I saw the rabbit flinch in pain. I didn’t feel like cake anymore.
“Looks delicious,” Samantha said, taking a bite of the ear. She took six more bites before it happened. She grabbed her throat and made a choking sound, like she was dying for water. I pushed my glass toward her.
“Were there nuts in that?” Dad grabbed Lizzie by the wrist as she tried to escape from the table. “She’s allergic to nuts.” Dad was panicking.
“Marzipan,” Lizzie said. I could tell she’d meant to do it, but I didn’t think she knew how bad the reaction would be, because she was pretty shocked by what happened next.
Samantha had rooted through her purse and was now holding an EpiPen in her hand. I knew what it was from recess two years ago, when I saw the nurse use one on a bee-allergy kid when he stepped on a yellow jacket. But I’d never seen anything like what Samantha did. She took off her jeans at the table and her face was growing redder, puffier by the second. She jammed the needle right into her thigh.
There was a knock on my door in the middle of the night. It was Dad, so I unlocked the door and let him in. Samantha was fine, Dad whispered, she had been released from the hospital and was out in the car. They were going to drive back to Birmingham tonight, where Samantha could catch the first flight out. Dad said he would be home by morning, before Lizzie would be up and out of bed. Samantha hadn’t gotten out of the truck to say good-bye, or even to collect her own suitcase, because Dad had told her not to. He didn’t want Lizzie to know that Samantha had been released. He wanted Lizzie to think that Samantha had to be kept at the hospital for a few days because her reaction to the nuts was so serious. “She has to learn that there are consequences for her actions,” Dad argued. “Play along, Elvis, please.”
So Dad took Samantha to the airport, and in the morning, he lied and told Lizzie that she was in the hospital; he claimed that the doctors said it was still touch and go. I played along, I guess, since I didn’t tell Lizzie what I knew, that Samantha was already boarding a flight to Texas. I found out later that she and Dad had broken up on the way to the airport, and it didn’t even sound like it was because of the allergy attack. “Fun while it lasted, but she was a little young for me,” Dad explained.
“I’m so sorry,” Lizzie wailed when Dad said Samantha was hooked up to a breathing machine. “I didn’t know she could die.” Lizzie reached for me, wanting a hug. I let her arms hang there.
41.
That night, a cop car showed up in our driveway at midnight, its lights flashing. It was the same cop who had brought Lizzie home before, back when she had beaten up Megan Sax.
“Sir,” Officer Rooney said, eyes down at his combat boots. “Your daughter broke into the zoo.”
“She what?” Dad asked, rubbing his eyes. “No, Elvis works there.”
“Your other daughter, Lizzie. She broke in using her sister’s ID badge. We have her in a holding cell.”
“No,” I said. “No, no, no, no. I am going to kill her.”
“Can you come down to the station with me, sir?” Officer Rooney asked. “I’ll need your help filing the report.”
“Please stop calling me sir, Mike. We went to high school together.”
Dad got his coat from the closet and went off with Officer Rooney in the cop car, the red-and-blue lights back on as if they hadn’t already caught the criminal. Mom’s Honda was gone again.
A few hours later, the phone rang. It was still dark out, but I hadn’t gone back to bed. I’d been waiting up for Dad to get back.
“They’re not releasing me yet, but they said I could make a two-minute call,” Lizzie said. “I wanted to explain.”
“Were you sleepwalking?” I asked. She’d driven the Honda, but some sleepwalkers drive in their sleep. Lizzie had never sleepwalked that far from our house before, but if she had been asleep, it wouldn’t have been her fault. She wouldn’t have done it to hurt me.
She sighed, and I knew she’d been awake.
“Go to hell,” I said, and hung up, long before the two m
inutes were up. I was going to lose my job at the zoo for this, I was pretty sure. We weren’t supposed to lend out our ZooTeen badges to anyone; the scan code on the back unlocked most of the cage doors. “I hate her,” I said to Boomer, and he cocked his head, trying to understand.
By lunchtime, everyone at Three Rivers was talking about the break-in. It had been on the news that morning, because one of the zebras had gotten out and was still wandering around town. “The people of Lee County are on strict instruction not to shoot this animal,” the newsperson said. Lizzie’s name hadn’t been released to the press, so no one knew it was all her fault.
“I heard the lion killed a zookeeper,” Suzanna Zebb said.
“I doubt it,” I told her. The lion was heavily sedated at night in order to treat the insomnia he had, which was caused by the drugs he was given for depression.
“Who asked you?” Suzanna scoffed.
“No one. No one asked me.”
“Are you okay?” Jackie asked at lunch. “You look terrible.”
Jackie took me into the bathroom and braided my hair for me. She listened as I told her about my sister stealing my ID badge. I didn’t think all the media attention would be good for the zoo.
“What about your sister?” Jackie asked. “Is she going to go to jail?”
“I hope so,” I said.
“You don’t mean that.”
But Jackie didn’t understand. She was an only child, no siblings, and the worst things that had ever happened to her were her parents’ divorce and a silly rumor about a sexually transmitted disease.
When the bus dropped me off, the house was empty except for the dog, so I guessed Lizzie hadn’t been released yet. I was pouring myself a bowl of cereal when the phone rang again. It wasn’t Lizzie this time. It was my ZooTeen supervisor.
“Everyone deserves a second chance,” Pamela said.
“Thank you,” I exhaled. “Thank you so much.”
“That was your second chance,” she reminded me. I’d forgotten I’d ever been suspended from the zoo. Dr. Rotherwood and I had put that behind us. I pleaded and pleaded, but Pamela said it was too late.
“Your sister broke the Big Gulp slushie machine,” Pamela said. “She opened many of the cages. We found the runaway zebra, thankfully, and he’s unharmed.”
“Which zebra was it?” I asked. Bartleby was my favorite.
“I don’t know,” Pamela said. “I can’t tell them apart. Elvis, I hate to ask you this, but were you there? The night watchman said there might have been another girl, but he wasn’t sure.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t me. Honest.” I knew the zoo didn’t have security cameras, except in the gift shop, so they’d never catch the other girl. I thought of Vanessa, supposed to be down in New Orleans. I couldn’t believe Vanessa would betray me like this, even if she was Lizzie’s best friend; she knew how much the zoo meant to me. For a second, I thought about giving Pamela her name.
“I didn’t think you would do that,” Pamela said. “That’s what I told the police.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
Just after eight o’clock, Lizzie came home, released from jail. Her holding period had ended. She walked in with Dad and her lawyer, a fat man named Allan from Dad’s bowling league. He wore a bow tie and suspenders.
I dove for Lizzie, my fingernails ready like claws. Dad got in my way fast and scooped me into his huge arms. I’d forgotten how strong Dad was; maybe he’d gotten that way from dragging around carpets all day.
“Elvis,” Dad said, because I was still thrashing in his tree-trunk arms. “Calm down. Now is not the time.”
“Elvis,” Lizzie said, calmly. “I wasn’t sleepwalking, but I had a good reason. If you’ll just let me tell you.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up, I don’t care,” I said, and Dad tightened his arms around me. “I hope you fall down the stairs and break all your teeth.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say to a sleepwalker,” Dad scolded.
“She’s a sleepwalker?” Allan the lawyer interrupted. “Frank, why didn’t you say so?”
Allan excitedly explained about the sleepwalking defense; several people had used it to get off murder charges. The idea was, sleepwalkers cannot act with intent, cannot consider what they are about to do before they do it. Lizzie hadn’t intended to eat all those raw eggs in her sleep, she’d just done it. It was only when she was awake that she was really bad, that she really tried to hurt people.
In 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks killed his mother-in-law, and his father-in-law only barely survived the attack. In his sleep, Parks drove fifteen miles to the house, where he beat his in-laws with a tire iron and then stabbed his mother-in-law with a kitchen knife. Then he drove himself to the police station, and he woke up there. Parks had a family history of parasomnias, came from a long line of sleepwalkers.
“I’ve read about him,” Lizzie said. Where had she read about it? I wondered. And why? Was it the same place she’d read that drowning is peaceful? Why did Lizzie know things that I didn’t?
“Mr. Parks was let off scot-free,” Allan said. “How well is Lizzie’s sleepwalking condition documented?”
“We’ve got doctors’ records,” Dad said, finally letting go of me. “And she went to a mental hospital for it. My wife was a sleepwalker too, Allan, remember? That’s how Eva drowned.”
“Jackpot,” Allan said. “We’re golden. We’ll say she drove to the zoo in her sleep, that she didn’t wake up until she was in the cop car. She doesn’t remember a thing.”
“But she wasn’t sleepwalking,” I said. “She was awake.”
“We’re the only ones who know that,” Allan said. “And we’re not going to repeat it. Your sister is charged with breaking and entering, and she has to go to juvenile court. This is serious stuff, okay?”
“Elvis?” Dad asked, when I said nothing.
Lizzie could get away with anything, and that made me furious. I spat at Lizzie, but I missed her, my spit landing on the blue-and-gold Oriental, the most expensive carpet in the house.
“Go to your room, young lady,” Dad said.
“Who?” Lizzie and I both asked at the same time.
Dad needed to give Allan a ride back to jail, since Allan had left his car in the parking lot of the police station. After Dad left, I took Boomer outside and I stood on the porch while Boomer sniffed around the yard, marking his territory. I leaned against the chest freezer. It looked like a big white coffin, an expensive one. “The little sister freezer,” Lizzie had called it, and I missed Samantha for a moment, the way she’d worried about me. Everyone was always worried about Lizzie instead.
Some of the rabbit cakes were housed in the chest freezer, the last fifty cakes of the world record collection. These were the cakes I had helped bake. They were made in a rush, the final sprint, the finish line in sight. They were made from Betty Crocker boxed mixes, the vanilla flavor; we’d bought out the whole aisle at the Stop ’n’ Save.
I opened the top of the freezer and lifted out a naked yellow rabbit, number 993. I picked it up like a baby and carried it out into the front yard, where I set it on the ground. The rabbit didn’t move. I nudged it with my boot, half expecting the whiskers to twitch.
When it didn’t get up and hop away, I stepped on its face. I left a footprint in the cake, and I felt a surge of happiness. I stepped on the cake again, and again and again and again until I was jumping up and down. When the rabbit was completely flattened, I took another out of the chest freezer. I smashed it on top of the first, and went back to the freezer for another cake, then another and another. I was surprised at how easily the frozen cakes broke apart; they didn’t freeze solid like ice. I took a frosted cake up to the second floor and dropped it out the window.
I hated my sister. I hated Lizzie for being the spitting image of Mom. I hated her for almost killing Samantha, for breaking into the zoo and making me lose my job, for running away for months and leaving me behind. I hated t
hat she thought Soda could understand her better than I could, and for being so pathetic after he broke up with her. I hated my Dad too, for lying to Lizzie about how bad Samantha’s allergic reaction was, and for allowing my sister to homeschool herself, for letting her stay home and do nothing but bake. I hated the rabbit cakes for making me think I was crazy.
While I stomped the last cake from the freezer, I looked up and saw Lizzie in her bedroom window, her forehead pressed against the glass. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought her face was wrinkled up in tears. I stuck my tongue out at her, but she only turned away from the window, retreating into the darkness of her room.
Dad’s truck pulled up; his jaw dropped open a little when he saw I was sitting in a pile of devastated rabbit cake in the front yard. Boomer was licking the ground, his fur matted with clumps of frosting.
“We’re bad dogs,” I growled, scooping a fistful of cake off the ground. “We’re rabbit eaters.”
Dad walked by me without a word. Even Ernest didn’t say anything. Boomer rolled over onto his back, paws straight up in the air, an eager apology for what we had done.
42.
That night, I took Boomer out again. It was late, two in the morning; his old dog bladder couldn’t always hold through the night, so sometimes he woke me up to go out, even though I know he was ashamed. Boomer was snuffling through the grass, when suddenly, his head snapped up, like he’d heard a car in the driveway. He barked once, sharply, and I looked up to see Lizzie balancing on the roof of our house, walking along the apex, teetering at every step. I dropped Boomer’s leash and I started to run.
Mom had shown us how to climb to the top of the roof; we had gone up there during meteor showers. You had to climb from the top of the truck to the garage roof, and from there you could get onto the top of the house, if you were brave enough. It was too hard to climb anything with my back brace on, so I ripped it open and left it in the driveway.
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