by Joanne Levy
Kat: Just busy, Ty. NBD.
Tyler: ok. So we are good?
Kat: of course, nerd
Tyler: lol, dork :P
I smiled at that. Even though I felt bad about all the pretending. It felt weird, but in the end he and Olivia would be together, so it would all be okay.
Right?
Kat: I should go. Working on my manga
Tyler: when do I get to see it?
I thought about it. I really wanted to show it to him, but not yet. I had always been good at art, and he’d seen my very first Hector drawing, but this was my first try at doing a whole graphic novel, and it was going pretty slow.
Kat: soon.
Tyler: can’t wait.
That made me feel good; I knew he wasn’t just faking wanting to see it. We’d talked about the storyline already—he’d helped me figure that part out—so I felt like I sort of owed it to him to show him the artwork. But I really wanted him to be impressed, which meant I needed to make sure it was as good as I could get it.
Kat: better go. See you tomorrow.
Tyler: C U bye
Chapter 11
“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT to do this?” I asked Olivia.
It was Sunday, her mom had just dropped her off at my place, and we were in the kitchen putting together snacks to take with us to the animal shelter. Tyler was due to arrive in ten minutes, and then my mom would be driving us; Dad had already left to spend the day at his clinic, since this wasn’t one of his volunteer Sundays. Before that happened, though, I thought I should give her one last chance to back out.
She paused in slicing an apple and looked up at me. “Am I sure I want to do what?”
“Volunteer at the shelter.”
She rolled her eyes. “Uh, yeah. I signed up for it.”
I did an eye-roll of my own. “I know, but you don’t exactly love animals.”
“I can pretend,” she said very matter-of-factly.
“Okay, but you don’t just not love animals,” I said, looking her in the eye so she would really understand. “You are afraid of animals. How are you going to manage that?”
What I really meant was, How are you going to not squeal and freak out if a big dog comes near you? It wasn’t that I blamed her for her fear of dogs—Great Danes are huge and I understood how she could be scarred for life after being knocked down by Uncle Fred’s—but it seemed kind of stupid for her to pretend she wasn’t afraid and go out of her way to be around animals.
Olivia returned to slicing the apple and shrugged. “I’ll figure it out. Tyler obviously likes animals, so I need to too. Plus”—she looked up at me again—“the dance is this Friday, and he hasn’t asked me yet. I need to be around him every second so he has the opportunity. I need to make this happen.”
She still didn’t seem sure enough to invite him to the dance herself, so I knew where she was coming from, but still, the animal-shelter thing seemed like a bad idea.
“Maybe stay near the cats,” I said. “You’ll probably do better with smaller animals.”
“But they have claws,” she said. “Do they have any bunny rabbits? Maybe I could do something with rabbits. Although they poop a lot, don’t they?”
I looked at my cousin and her scrunched-up face as she thought about rabbit poop.
Yeah, this is such a bad idea, I thought. Like, epically bad.
Tyler showed up a little while later, let himself into the house like he always did, and followed the voices to find us in the kitchen.
“Oh, hi, Tyler!” Olivia said, gliding over to him, carrying the package of oatmeal-raisin cookies I’d made for him. “I remembered oatmeal-raisin is your favorite.”
He smiled at her and even blushed a little as he thanked her. He took the cookies and stuffed them into his pocket. “So, you excited for today?” he asked.
I looked at Olivia, wondering how she was going to answer, but before she got the chance, Mom rushed into the room, keys in hand and purse over her shoulder. “Okay, let’s go,” she said, not even slowing down on her way to the garage door.
Olivia turned and followed as though she’d been distracted away from Tyler’s question. But I had a suspicion she’d used the interruption as an excuse to not have to answer.
We piled into the car—me in front and Tyler and Olivia in the back—and buckled in for the short drive to the animal shelter. Mom and Olivia talked about the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars, discussing who should win this season. I had no idea who the people were that they were talking about, so I turned in my seat and rolled my eyes at Tyler. He grinned back at me and then pushed his fingers through his hair. But that little piece fell back down onto his forehead, and I had to turn back around to look out the front or he was going to see me blushing.
Finally, we arrived at the shelter. The three of us got out of the car after Mom promised she’d be back at two. We led Olivia toward the volunteer desk to sign in and get our badges.
I barely even noticed the echoes of all the dogs barking—we’d gotten used to it quickly last week—but it was all new for Olivia, who had never set foot in a shelter before that moment.
“Gah! It’s so loud in here!” she yelled, pressing her hands over her ears.
I exchanged glances with Tyler. Yeah it was loud, but that was all part of it. What did she think, that a shelter full of dogs was going to be like a library?
“You’ll get used to it,” he said to her. “Come on, we’d better sign in.”
Olivia gave me a sideways look that I knew meant Help me! but what could I do? I’d warned her and had even given her a last chance to bail, but here she was anyway. Maybe I could try to make the best of it for her somehow.
I stepped ahead of her at the sign-up desk. “Hi,” I said to Justine, the volunteer coordinator I remembered from the week before. “This is Olivia—today’s her first day. Maybe she should start off in the cat room?”
Justine smiled at Olivia as she got badges out of a drawer and slid them across the desk at us. “Welcome, Olivia. A cat lover, are you?”
Olivia quickly glanced at Tyler before she smiled at Justine. “Oh yes. Very much. The only thing I like better than cats are bunny rabbits. Do you have any rabbits?”
Justine blinked at her a few times before she said, “Actually, we do. But the early-morning crew has already taken care of them.”
“What do you need done today?” Tyler asked.
Justine smiled at him. “What don’t we need done?” she said with a wink before she picked up a clipboard in front of her. “All right. I need dogs walked, floors mopped, and kennels cleaned.”
“I’ll mop floors!” Olivia said quickly.
Justine laughed, her eyebrows high up on her head. “I’ve never had anyone so enthusiastic about mopping, but who am I to judge?”
I grabbed my badge and clipped it to my shirt, then handed Olivia one for her to do the same. “I’ll walk,” I said.
Tyler signed in last and then said, “I guess that leaves me to the kennels.”
“We can swap out halfway,” I said, because it was only fair. Walking the dogs was the best part of being a volunteer.
He smiled at me. “Thanks.”
“You remember where you’re going, Kat?” Justine asked.
I pointed toward the hallway that led to the kennels. “Yep, thanks.”
“All righty,” she said. “Don’t forget to mark down in the log who you walk. I’ll show Olivia and Tyler where the cleaning supplies are.”
I was reluctant to leave them, knowing Olivia was totally out of her comfort zone, but I had no choice. Anyway, like Dad always said, she’d made her bed; now it was time for her to lie in it.
About a half hour later I was walking Ranger—a Labradoodle—when my phone rang in my pocket. I ignored it, but the second it went to voice mail it started to ring again, so I figured whoever was calling really wanted to get a hold of me.
Olivia, I thought instantly. I stopped in my tracks and gave Ranger a bit of slack on
the leash so he could sniff around while I answered the call.
Sure enough, her name came up on my screen. I answered it right away.
“Hey” was barely out of my mouth when I heard an ear-piercing screech that made me hold the phone away from my face. (I could still hear her.)
“I need your help!”
I waited half a second to make sure she was done yelling before I brought the phone to my ear. “What’s going on?” I asked, and then immediately held the phone away.
“There’s a PIG here!” she hollered.
“What?”
“A pig!”
“A pig?”
“Yes! A pig! You know, oink, oink, pork chops and bacon.”
I pictured a huge pink animal like we’d seen at the fair last year, but that didn’t seem right. I couldn’t imagine there being a giant pig at the shelter. And then I remembered that my Dad had had this client back at the old vet office where he used to work. . . .
“Wait, Livvy, do you mean a pot-bellied pig? Like someone’s pet?”
“Yes! That’s what I said! A pig! Someone dropped it off at the lost and found when I was cleaning the floor. It was running around squealing and going nuts and then it—ugh!—POOPED on the floor I’d just washed! Then it ran through the poop . . .” I heard her start to gag, and though I felt really bad, I couldn’t help but laugh a little.
“Kat, I swear . . . it’s NOT FUNNY! There are smeared poopy pig prints all over, and it stinks so bad!”
That just made it funnier, but she was freaking out, so I tried to hold it in for her sake. “No, it’s not funny. I’m sorry, Livvy. But I’m at least twenty minutes away; what do you want me to do?”
“Help me figure out how to handle this! Justine is at lunch, the other volunteers are busy, and Tyler thinks I know about pigs because I told him about the farm, but I don’t know anything . . . and . . . I . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I could tell she was starting to cry.
“Livvy, calm down. Where is the pig now?”
“I don’t know. Out in the hall, I guess.”
“Where are you?”
“In the bathroom.”
I sighed. “Okay. You’re going to have to go out there and act calm. If you’re freaking out, the pig is going to freak out too. They’re really sensitive.” My pig knowledge wasn’t exactly extensive, but I knew enough about animals from my dad to make an educated guess.
“I don’t think I can do it, Kat,” she whined.
“Livvy, yes you can. You just need to focus. Now breathe.”
I heard her take a few deep breaths.
“Good,” I said. “Now listen to me. You need to go out there and secure the pig. If the floor was wet, it might have scared him a little. He’s probably not used to sliding around on slippery surfaces, so maybe that’s why he started going nuts. Does he have a collar on or something you can grab on to?”
“I . . . I think he was wearing a harness,” she said.
“Okay, good. So what you need to do is be very calm and see if you can grab his harness and lead him into one of the dog kennels. Talk in a soothing voice to calm him down. He will quiet down more quickly if he’s in a smaller space and can’t run around too much.”
“You sure?”
No, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I figured that at least if the pig was locked in a kennel, he couldn’t hurt her or himself. “Yes,” I said. “But the key is to be really calm. Can you do that?”
“I . . . I’ll try,” she said.
Suddenly I heard squealing through the phone, and then someone shouted, “Olivia! Where are you?”
“Oh no, that’s Tyler!” she hissed.
“You’d better go,” I said as I tugged on the leash to get Ranger’s attention so we could start walking back to the shelter. “I’m on my way back. Just be calm, Livvy. You’ve got this.”
“Okay, but please hurry!”
I started to jog, the excited Ranger matching my pace. “I’m coming as fast as I can!”
“You should have seen her!” Tyler said, his eyes wide with awe.
I’d just returned to the shelter and put Ranger away when Olivia and Tyler greeted me to tell me what had happened with the arrival of the pot-bellied pig, as if it was the first I was hearing about the ordeal. “At first I thought she was freaking out and hiding, but then she came out of the bathroom and handled that pig like a boss!”
I looked at my best cousin, and yeah, she was smiling like crazy, obviously basking in Tyler’s praise and attention.
“Well, I wanted to make sure my hands were clean before I handled the pig,” she said, like she hadn’t, in fact, been hiding in the bathroom calling me in a total panic and instead had had the whole situation under control from the beginning. “You don’t want to spread disease. And in a shelter environment, that’s especially important.”
Okay, so obviously she’d read the little notice by the bathroom sink about the importance of hand washing. But I had to say, she sure did sound like she knew what she was talking about. She’d never mentioned wanting to be an actress before, but I had a feeling it was a career she could totally nail.
“You were so calm,” Tyler said to her. “I had no idea what to do. I’m so glad you have all that farm experience. That really came in handy!”
“Of course,” she said, waving him off like it was no big deal.
Right. “Where is the pig now?” I asked, looking around.
“Livvy put him in one of the kennels. We notified one of the techs, and she’s going to check him out and give him a bath.”
“I was going to—give him a bath, I mean,” Olivia said. “But the floor was such a mess and I didn’t want it to get worse.”
Her smile faltered a bit then; she covered it up quickly, but I could tell that she was struggling to keep it together. The whole pig and pig’s mess was way more than she had signed up for, but if she had to choose between the two, a mop and a bucket would win out over a squealing swine anytime.
“That makes sense,” I said encouragingly. “Best to let them deal with the pig anyway. Where did he come from?”
“Someone dropped him off in the lost-and-found area,” Tyler said. “Just dumped him there and left—no one even knew he was there until he started running around squealing. Poor guy.”
“Any word on his owner?” I asked.
“No,” Tyler said. “Do they microchip pigs?”
I shrugged. “No idea, but I’m sure they’ll scan him for one if they do.” I really wanted to check him out, because I’d never actually seen a pot-bellied pig before, but while I wasn’t as bothered by the kind of dirty things that came with being an animal lover as Olivia was, I didn’t exactly want to play with a poopy pig.
“Hey, you did great today,” Tyler said suddenly. He was looking at Olivia, and—wait a minute—was he making googly eyes at her? Yes, he was. He was totally staring at her that way. It bothered me a little, which was stupid, because getting him to like her was exactly what we were doing all this for: Project Ty-Livia.
I looked at her and she was looking at . . . her shirt. She pulled at the bottom and held it out from her body. “Ugh, I think I have . . . ew!” She slapped her hand over her mouth and ran for the bathroom.
“Poor Olivia,” I muttered.
“Huh?” Tyler said, reminding me he was right there.
“Uh . . . just that her first shift here was so . . . eventful!”
“She did great, though. I mean, I really don’t know what I would have done with that pig if it wasn’t for her,” he said. “Crisis averted.”
“Yeah. Well, I guess I should go walk the next dog. Unless you want to switch?”
He glanced toward the bathroom that Olivia had disappeared into, and then back at me. “I’m okay. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.”
“All right, I’ll get back to it then,” I said, turning back toward the kennels.
“Hey, Kat?”
I turned back again. “Yeah?”
&n
bsp; He stepped close. Really close. “Do you think . . .” He looked over his shoulder and then back at me. “Do you think Olivia . . . would she . . . do you think she’d want to go to the dance with me?”
“I thought you didn’t want to go!” The words came out before I could stop them, and I actually clamped my hand over my mouth. “I mean,” I added, trying not to sound like I was bonkers, “you didn’t seem interested before.”
He shrugged. “Well, uh, I guess that was before I got to know Olivia better.” He paused. “So, do you think she would go with me?”
My breath caught in my lungs a little, and I stood there trying to figure out what I was feeling, because I should have been happy for Olivia, but . . . Then I realized he was standing there, staring at me and waiting for my answer. “Uh . . . yeah, I’m pretty sure she would.”
He nodded. “I think I like her.”
“Of course you do,” I said, despite the lump in my throat. “She’s so beautiful and graceful and fun and all that. Why wouldn’t you like her?”
He frowned. “That’s not why I like her, Kat. I like her because she’s into all the same stuff I like. I like that she remembered oatmeal-raisin cookies are my favorite and that she has no problem kicking my butt at Zombie Slashers. And she’s got real opinions about the Blackwood Knights books. She’s pretty, sure,” he said, his eyes dropping from mine as his face suddenly got really red, “but no prettier than you.”
“What?” came out of my mouth before I even realized. But seriously, what had he just said? My face was burning hot, and I was sure I looked like a big red idiot.
“I should go,” he said suddenly. “I have a lot of kennels to clean before we leave today.”
And then he was gone.
“What just happened?” I asked the empty hallway. “Did he just say I was as pretty as Olivia?” I shook my head, convinced I was hearing things. Tyler had never looked at me that way. I would have noticed. Wouldn’t I have?
But as I made my way toward where I would pick up my next dog to walk, what he’d said started to roll around in my head. All the reasons why he liked Olivia were exactly the things that made him and me friends.