by Jess Keating
I shoved the feeling down and continued. “I’m really sorry,” I blurted. I nudged my camera bag under the bench nervously. I wanted to have a whole speech thought out, but the words were already streaming out of me like a waterfall.
“I didn’t want you to find out I was friends with Ashley right away because things were so weird between us that first night. You weren’t acting like yourself at all, and then things got worse and worse.” I thought about my visit with Liv in her hotel room, with Leilani on video chat. Liv hadn’t stood up for me at all. “But still. I’m sorry.”
A weight that had seemed strapped to my chest started to dissolve instantly. No matter what happened now, at least I had apologized.
Liv sniffed, nodding once. “It was pretty crummy of you,” she said. “I can’t believe you’re even friends with her,” she spat.
I cringed. “I didn’t want to hurt you. During the summer, Ashley and I got to hang out a lot at the marine exhibit. At first, yes, I thought she was out to sabotage me,” I admitted. “But she turned out to be a pretty cool person. And a great friend.” I thought about what she had said about us influencing each other for my documentary. Did Liv and I do the same?
“She helped get you here today, you know?” I added. “A lot has happened since you moved away. It’s been hard. She’s been one of the people who has actually helped me feel normal again.”
Liv’s lip started to curl. “I guess.”
“Come on,” I implored her. It wasn’t fair that Liv was angry at me when she wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest friend this past week. “You’re the one who’s been acting all weird ever since you got here, and every time you turn around, you’re texting with Leilani or—”
Liv interrupted me. “Leilani has nothing to do with this,” she said icily.
I scoffed. “Doesn’t she?! Ever since you got back, you’ve been like an entire different person! I wanted to keep things the same between us! I wanted to do something special to show you that you were still my best friend, no matter what. All this time I wanted to have you in a documentary about the people who influence me most in my life!” I was on a roll now, with heat building in my cheeks. There was so much I wanted to say to her.
“I tried so hard to show you that even though you were so stinking different, we could still be best friends! And yet, all you did every time we hung out was text with Leilani! You even asked her to video chat us that time! And then when she made fun of me, you laughed instead of standing up for me! What kind of a friend does that?! You couldn’t be more different!”
Liv’s jaw dropped. “I’m different?! Right!” she started, pointing her painted, navy-blue nail at me. “When I moved away, you were like, the complete opposite, Ana! You were shy. You were quiet. You were terrified of Ashley. And now I come back for a stupid visit and suddenly you’re not only besties with her, but you’re some star.” She made bunny quotes in the air and scrunched her nose like she was smelling something awful. “And you’re standing in front of crowds yakking about animals and in stupid commercials acting like someone I don’t even know! Oh, and let’s not forget the random people coming up and asking for your stupid autograph!”
I shook my head, desperate to fight back, but she kept on yelling.
She turned the full force of her glare onto me. “Don’t get me started about changing, Ana. You’ve changed more than I ever will! I’m just trying to keep up!”
My heart was pounding in my ears, but I couldn’t let her believe that was true. “Is that what this is about? You’re upset because I’m not some wallflower now, and I’ve changed sooo much?” I drew out the words sarcastically. “Your hair is purple! You used to be nice and now you’re so snarky, with your stupid dragon thing in your ear. The Liv I know wouldn’t laugh when someone made fun of me—she would tell them to shut up!” I struggled for the right words. “You’ve been changing for months!” I shouted.
Saying it out loud made me realize how true it was. You know how you sometimes don’t notice a plant growing because you see it every day? But then, if you go away for a while, you come back and it’s grown like three feet? That was what it seemed like with Liv. Her being away for so long made me realize how long she’d had to change in teensy, tiny ways. Then months later—boom—it seemed like she was instantly different. All this time, Liv had been slowly changing, away from me.
I didn’t care that a few zoo stragglers were milling in and out of the pavilion. I didn’t care that we probably looked like a couple of insane teenagers, fighting over some boy or something. All I cared about was that Liv got it.
“You come back with your purple hair and gigantic boots, and you’re texting Leilani all the time, and ‘Ohh, Leilani is so great, and blah, blah, blah,’” I imitated her. “You said you didn’t even want to come visit now because of some stupid audition! Then the minute something goes wrong between us, you take off! You’ve been home for over a week and we’ve hardly hung out. You left my thirteenth birthday party! I’m never going to turn thirteen again!”
Liv sniffed. “It wasn’t to hurt you. God! She was there when I was upset, okay?! More than I can say about you!” She wiped her eyes angrily with the sleeve of her black flannel jacket.
“Well, good for her,” I said.
“And the reason I text Leilani a lot is because she’s my friend!” she spat. “I didn’t get to move and be surrounded by a whole bunch of people I already knew! I had to make all new friends, and she was someone who was nice to me from the start! Don’t even get me started on school,” she huffed, wiping her eyes.
I had no idea what she was talking about. “You love school! You’re always going on and on about your drama classes and plays and being little miss social with Leilani! You tell me all the time!” I argued, throwing my hands up.
Liv rolled her eyes, scoffing. She seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, hunching over and holding her arms across her chest. “You know what, Ana? I don’t need to sit here and listen to how sad you are that I’ve changed. You think you know everything about me and don’t even care to know who I am now. I get that you’re busy being this new Ana, being a celebrity and BFFs with Ashley,” she said. “But this new Ana? I don’t want to be friends with her.”
My jaw dropped.
Had she seriously just said that?
My mouth stopped working, and it seemed like the angry thoughts in my head skidded to a halt. Every cell in my body seemed to sit up in shock.
For a moment, the silence took over. It seemed like the two of us might sit there forever, growing old and gray like people do in those time-lapse movies. Our hair could get stringy and white, and our skin could wrinkle up until we looked like two old prunes or those shrunken witchy heads that Daz had in his bedroom made from dehydrated apples.
Then she reached down, picked up her backpack, swung it over her shoulder in one swift move, and walked away.
She walked away.
My best friend in the whole world didn’t want to be friends with me.
I turned to follow her, but something stopped me. I felt like if I stepped a foot away from that bench, that would make it all true. I would sit on that bench for days if it meant that I’d have my old friend back.
But she was already gone.
And judging by how angry she was, I had a feeling she’d been gone for a long time too.
Chapter 19
The badger is fossorial, which means it is adapted for digging and life underground. They often find prey by digging up their burrows.
—Animal Wisdom
If I had it my way, I would definitely want to disappear in a hole right now, badger style.
Sometimes bad things happen, and no matter how much you try to bury yourself with your blanket, the world isn’t going to go away. At least that’s what Mom said. The next day, I had my next session at Safe Haven.
Wrapping my scarf around my
neck, I tucked the ends into my coveralls and followed Kate deep into the woods where the cages were. It was hard to believe so little time had passed since my last visit to Safe Haven, especially since so much had happened. Best friendship meltdowns. Broken bones. And I was even a real teenager now.
Instead of feeling psyched and happy to be here, I felt like crawling in a hole and hibernating until springtime. Maybe bears had it all figured out. I had spent the night half starting text messages to Liv, only to end up deleting them. And she hadn’t sent me any either.
“Ready to see your friend?” Kate asked, a glint of excitement in her eyes. She zipped up a thick, fleecy vest over her usual coveralls.
My spirits lifted a teensy notch. I was dying to see the fox that Mom had saved since my first day, but Kate had said earlier it would be best to wait for him to recover awhile longer. “Can I?” I asked. “I know Mom said that you were strict about people hanging around the animals unless it was absolutely necessary.”
She nodded. “I’d say you earned your stripes—or should I say spots?—the last time you were here. I need to do a quick check on your fox today before the release. You can join in. We’ll feed the squirrels while we’re back there. You take the bucket of pellets and the water, and I’ll grab the fruit.”
Struggling with my cast, I used my fingertips to tug a mitten onto my good hand. I had figured school would be difficult to navigate with a cast, but I had totally underestimated how hard it would be to volunteer at the wildlife center with a bum hand. Already I felt like I was holding her up. Hoisting the food bucket up to my elbow, I rolled my eyes.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to her as she waited for me to tug my other mitten over my bulky cast. “This thing doesn’t do anything but get in the way.” I gritted my teeth to hide my annoyance.
“Not a problem,” she said, eyeing me carefully. “You’re doing fine. I’m sorry that you got hurt on your birthday. Your mother called to let me know,” she explained when I gave her a questioning look.
“The doctor said I had to keep it on for six weeks,” I grumped. Following her down the path behind the clinic farther into the woods, I kicked a pebble with my boot. I felt a small blip of satisfaction when it ricocheted off a tree trunk with a sharp thwack.
When we reached the squirrel cages, I set the bucket of chow on the ground and began counting pellets. The cages were built deep in the woods, so the injured squirrels would be as close to nature as possible while they healed. The cages were bigger than I expected, taller than I was. Every day, Kate and the other volunteers made sure they had fresh water, new branches from nearby trees so they didn’t get bored, and a handful of food.
“Each squirrel gets three pellets, right?” I asked, yanking off my mitten to count.
She nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “Cage A has four squirrels, B has three, and C has another four. So that’s…” She trailed off, letting me do the math.
“Thirty-three pellets total.” I scrunched up my nose.
Grinning, she gave me a thumbs-up, then went back to sticking a trail of fresh grapes through the bars onto the wooden struts. “Told you that you wouldn’t need to take notes for everything.” She winked. “The chow can be stuck in through the cages with the rest of the fruit, but you’ll need to open the door to give them fresh water and stick in some new branches. I’ll man the door so nobody escapes before they’re ready.”
I took a deep breath. The last thing I wanted right now was an escapee on my watch. Grabbing the strap of the heavy canteen, I slung it over my shoulder and started to unlock the latch of the door. Peeking in, I tried to locate each of the squirrels so they couldn’t surprise me and escape. Their beady black eyes watched me intently, skittering close to where Kate had placed the grapes.
“Nobody freak out now,” I begged them, stepping in as fast as I could. My cast got caught on the door as I tried to shove it closed from the inside.
“Watch yourself,” Kate said calmly. “You don’t want to ruin all that lovely artwork.”
I sighed, shaking my head. One thing I’d learned about having a cast is that everyone wanted to sign it. Kate might think all the signatures and messages from friends were “artwork,” but right then I could have had an original Picasso painting on my cast and I’d still be annoyed.
With the door firmly shut, I changed the water while Kate hacked off some small branches from nearby trees.
When we were finished with the first cage, that familiar thrill ran through me again as I stepped out and relocked it. All those squirrels would be dead if it wasn’t for us helping them, and soon they would be ready to be released again. The rest of the cages went faster, and soon we were heading farther into the woods, toward the large mammal enclosure.
“Now,” Kate said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “We’ll need to be extremely quiet. Foxes are incredibly skittish around people, and we want it to stay that way. She was looking quite out of sorts when she first arrived after your mother treated her, but I’m hoping she will be ready for release soon.” She gestured to the large fence up ahead of us. “Here she is.”
“Wait. It’s a girl?” I gawked at Kate.
She winked. “Indeed she is. Sometimes animals surprise you!”
My heart skipped a beat as we approached closer. Willing my boots to step only on the quiet patches of dirt, I tiptoed to the fence. The enclosure was like a huge wire-fence box, with wooden corners keeping the whole thing intact. Inside, it looked like a giant woodland playground, with log beams, rocks, thick trees, and even a kiddie pool filled with half-frozen water.
And in the center of it all, curled up under a large, man-made rock cliff with her tail tucked around her snout, was my fox.
Okay, not my fox. But I couldn’t help but feel a little protective of her, you know? I’d been there when she was stitched up, so that had to mean something. Her ears twitched in the breeze as we stepped closer. I couldn’t help but wonder: Did she remember me like I remembered her?
A shiver zipped through me as she locked eyes with me. The rusty orange flickered like gemstones against her reddish fur. “She looks so much better!” I whispered.
Kate lifted her chin to peek through some of the trees in front of us. “Certainly has an appetite,” she said. “That’s good news.” She pulled out her notebook and scribbled a few lines.
I gulped. Now that I was looking closer, I could see something small and furry on the rock in front of her.
Meat.
“Voles,” Kate said, reading my mind.
I watched in awe as she stood, stretching her rump high in the air with her front paws digging into the ground. Her big, fluffy tail flicked at the air playfully. She lowered her head to chomp away on the meat at her feet. Her shiny, white canines were easy to spot, even from where we stood. And she was still wearing her blue bandage.
“Hey,” I said, stifling my giggle. “We match.” I held up my cast and waved it at Kate. “We both have hurt paws.”
She nudged my shoulder playfully as we watched her eat. “Hopefully you’re not as messy an eater as she is.” She popped an almond from her pocket into her mouth and gave me a sly smile. “You know, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this particular fox.”
I looked up at her. “It’s not? Has she been hurt before?”
“Do you see that tiny orange tag fixed to her ear? It looks like a small earring.” Kate leaned over, pointing through the fence.
I squinted. The tag was tiny, and against the orangey fur in her ears, it was easy to miss. “Is that an ID tag?” I asked. I’d heard that people sometimes tag animals to keep track of them in the wild.
“Indeed,” Kate said, eating another almond. “She was here when she was a kit. Her mother had been hit by a car, and she and her two siblings were brought in. They were tagged then for some local researchers. Imagine my surprise when I examined her after she was dropped off
last week!” she said, eyes twinkling.
“Whoa,” I said, turning back to the fence. “So she’s had a pretty tough life so far. Losing her mom, and then getting hurt again.” A lump formed in my throat as I watched her. She was so beautiful, and I wished there were something I could do to go back in time so she still had her mom’s help growing up.
Kate nodded. “She has. But most animals—most everyone—has challenges. I wouldn’t have recognized her if it hadn’t been for the tag,” she said.
“Has she changed a lot? I mean, can you tell some animals are the same when you meet them again sometimes?” I took the almond that Kate was offering me. For some reason, pocket germs didn’t seem so scary now.
Kate looked thoughtful. “Growing up can be tough, and it’s no different if you’re a wild animal with a big family like a fox or a tiny turtle that never gets to meet her parents. When she was here first as a wee thing, she was playful like all kits. Despite being in a rough state, she was open and curious. Now,” Kate said, snuggling deeper into her scarf, “she’s a lot more careful. And much more skittish. Life teaches some hard lessons. Foxes are very resilient though.”
“That’s good,” I said. A warm feeling spread through my chest. Something about Kate’s mellow Australian accent seemed to make me feel a little better.
“Sometimes, though,” she continued, “I catch a glimpse of that little kit again.” Her face broke into a wide smile. “Yesterday, she chased a bug through her pen, exactly like she did when she was a youngster! She may have changed growing up, but I think that little troublemaker is still in there!” Something about Kate’s nostalgic eyes stuck in my mind. She gestured for me to look back at the fox, which was now chasing her tail like a dog. A goofy dog.
“Do you think I could come when she’s released?” I asked Kate. Now more than ever, I knew I wanted to be there when he was set free. “I promise I won’t get in the way.”
Kate hoisted the food bucket back up over her shoulder. “I had a feeling you’d ask.” She grinned sneakily. “I’m sure that can be arranged.”