Hazel's Theory of Evolution

by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

  I swallowed and said quietly, “I’m not mad. I promise.”

  “Even about Kirsten?”

  “Okay, about Kirsten a little bit,” I said, even though furious would have been a better word. “But don’t worry about me. Do your thing. I’ll be fine, as long as we’re still friends.”

  “Of course we’re still friends.” Becca sounded surprised. “Why would that change?”

  I hadn’t completely forgiven Becca by lunchtime on Friday. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d joined any other sport—cross-country running or volleyball or tennis. The problem wasn’t even cheerleading, per se. It was that she’d also chosen Kirsten.

  “Have you ever known someone forever, and then, wham! Something happens and you feel like you don’t know them anymore?” I asked Carina.

  She raised her eyebrows. “We’re not talking about me, are we?”

  “We barely know each other. I’m talking about Becca.”

  “Becca . . . oh, back at Osterhout. Uh-oh. What happened?”

  “We were supposed to have a sleepover tonight, but she’s got some big cheerleading thing instead.”

  “I didn’t know Becca was a cheerleader.”

  “Exactly! This is the new Becca. I transfer to Finley, and she gets a brain transplant.”

  “Wow,” Carina said. “Is it really that bad?”

  “Cheerleaders hop around in seasonally inappropriate clothing, chanting dopey rhymes for the sake of a bunch of boys. What’s not awful about that?”

  Carina shrugged. “I always sort of wanted to be a cheerleader. I like dancing and gymnastics type stuff. And I stink at football, but it’s fun to watch. And I like the band and the color guard and, yeah, the cheerleaders, too. I guess I haven’t thought much about the politics.”

  “Why didn’t you join the cheerleading team at Osterhout? Anyone could try out.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Like I wasn’t already going around school with a giant ‘kick me—no actually, beat the living crap out of me’ sign on my back.”

  “But now you could, couldn’t you?”

  “I know, but I don’t feel ready. Maybe next year.”

  She looked doubtful, and I felt guilty for pushing. “Yeah. Maybe next year,” I said.

  Next year we’d all be at Van Buren High. Would Becca still be a cheerleader then, and would she still be hanging out with Kirsten? If Carina joined cheerleading, would Kirsten and the other girls accept her, or would Carina retreat into her shell? And where did I fit into the picture?

  “Sorry Becca bailed on you,” Carina said. “That sucks.”

  “I’ll find something else to do. I don’t get bored.”

  “You live on a farm, right? Is there lots of work?”

  “It’s technically a farm, but it’s tiny. Mom does most of the work, and also Rowan—my brother—because he’s taking a year off school. The goats have to be milked twice a day, and fed and groomed and all that. Oh, and we have a donkey. We don’t milk him, obviously.”

  “So you sell goat’s milk? Goat cheese?”

  I shook my head. “We have milk and cheese for home, but you need a license and all this special equipment to sell food-quality dairy products. Most of our milk goes into bath products.”

  Carina’s eyes lit up. “That’s so cool.”

  “Mom grows her own herbs, too. So there’s lavender soap and rose hip lotion and all.”

  “I wish I could see it. The animals, the stuff your mom makes, everything.”

  “Want to come this weekend?” I blurted.

  Carina hesitated, and I wished I hadn’t asked. Maybe Carina had been exaggerating her interest to be polite. Or maybe I sounded too desperate, like someone who never had friends over to her house—which, with the exception of Becca, was true.

  But she said, “Sunday’s all church and family stuff, but tomorrow? In the afternoon?”

  I grinned, relieved. “That’s perfect. Do you want directions? I give excellent directions.”

  She shook her head. “That’s okay. We’ll use GPS.” I was about to argue that my directions were better than GPS, but she added, “It’s so cool that satellites hundreds of miles away can tell us how to get to the grocery store. Or a friend’s house. Wherever. Did you know they travel two hundred miles above Earth’s surface to avoid atmospheric interference?”

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  But I wasn’t thinking of the satellites. It was amazing that Carina had called me her friend. Until then, I’d still sort of seen her only as someone to eat lunch with until I got Becca back. Now it seemed like it might become more. Like friendship might be a twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  At dinner I asked, “Can I have a friend over tomorrow?”

  Mom and Mimi exchanged a look. I knew they were wondering, Who could Hazel be talking about, when she clearly doesn’t mean Becca? How did Hazel make a new friend? Is this a real-life scenario or some kind of thought experiment, like whether an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters could eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare?

  “Of course,” Mom began, but Mimi put out a hand. Mom shut her mouth.

  “Tell us more about your friend,” Mimi said.

  “Her name is Carina, she’s in eighth grade, and we have lunch, algebra, and language arts together.”

  Mom beamed. “What did I tell you? New school, new friends, new opportunities.”

  Mimi asked, “Does Carina have a last name?”

  “Why, are you planning to run a criminal record check?” said Rowan.

  Mimi rolled her eyes. “This is basic mom level of scrutiny. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t look her up in the school directory.”

  “It’s Robles,” I said, “and I’m pretty sure she’s never done anything illegal.”

  “Even if she had,” Mom said with a shrug, “who hasn’t? I’ve gotten a speeding ticket.”

  She’d actually gotten five that I knew of, but I appreciated her point.

  “Carina Robles . . .” said Mimi. “Wasn’t there a Robles family at your old school?”

  “There’s a Marta Robles a year behind me,” Rowan said. “I’m pretty sure she has a little brother Hazel’s age.”

  I cut him off. “A little sister. Carina.”

  Again, there was the mom-to-mom meeting of glances. Then Mom said, “Terrific!”

  Mimi’s expression was harder to read. “I’m glad you found each other,” she said after a moment. “I’m guessing you both really needed a friend.”

  That bothered me a bit, because what was Becca, a garden gnome?

  I waited for Rowan to tease me—like, Are you sure she really wants to be friends with you? Does she know how weird you are? Instead he said, “Marta’s cool. I bet her sister is, too.”

  Sometimes Rowan was all right.

  Chapter 9

  And sometimes Rowan was a total pain in the neck.

  “You have to pick up your socks,” I told him when I got home from the farmers’ market.

  “What, do I have three moms now?” He was lying on the couch, eating dry cereal from the box by the handful.

  “Other people might want to eat that, you know, and you’re getting your germs on every single flake.”

  Rowan snorted. “Mom eats that weird flax cereal, you’re a Cheerios fanatic, and Mimi barely eats breakfast.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “If we had guests, they might want some.”

  “Were you planning to serve Carina cereal for a snack? Because I’d be happy to switch to those brownies you brought home from the market. What are they again? Double-chocolate caramel? Sounds good to me.” He shoved another handful in his mouth. Crumbs sprayed everywhere—gross.

  “Whatever. Just pick up your socks before three o’clock.”

  He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to say yes.

  “If she’s really your friend, it’s n
ot going to bother her if there are a few dirty socks lying around.” Before I could protest, he added, “Relax. I’ll pick them up. But seriously, she’s coming to hang out with you, not do a health inspection.”

  Still, over the next half hour, I went all over the house picking things up, wiping off the kitchen counters, and even rinsing toothpaste streaks from the bathroom sink.

  “Babe,” Mimi said from the kitchen table where she sat working on her laptop, her feet up on the chair beside her. “You’ve been through here fifteen times. I can’t focus with you flitting around. Go outside. Take Arby with you.”

  On the front lawn, I tossed fallen apples for Arby to retrieve, but she ignored me. Instead she sniffed all over and threw herself on the ground, wriggling on her back. Arby always loved to find the stinkiest spot—some pile of deer poo or rotting ex-mouse—and roll in it. When she was done, she popped back onto her feet, her mouth stretched into a panting doggy grin. I called her over and, with a sense of impending doom, gave her collar a sniff. I didn’t have time to give her a bath before Carina arrived. Fortunately, she smelled like dirt and grass. Totally acceptable.

  Meanwhile, I kept checking my watch. 2:55. 2:58. What if Carina’s GPS didn’t work? What if she’d changed her mind and wasn’t coming? Finally, at 3:02, a red car slowed on the road. It pulled up on the gravel in front of our house. Carina said goodbye to the driver and bounced out of the passenger door, a Pikachu purse slung over her shoulder. “Hey! Hazel!”

  “Carina!” I forgot my worries. “Meet Arby.”

  Arby was already licking Carina’s knees below her shorts. Carina leaned over to tousle Arby’s ears. “Arby like the roast-beef sandwich place?”

  Normally it annoyed me when people asked that, because why would someone name their dog after a fast-food restaurant? It would be like naming your dog Pizza Hut. But for some reason, coming from Carina, it didn’t bother me.

  “It’s actually short for RBG,” I explained, “which is short for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

  “She’s someone important, right?” Carina asked. “In the government?”

  I nodded. “She was appointed to the United States Supreme Court when Mimi was a kid. She partly inspired Mimi to go to law school. She’s kind of a hero in our family.”

  Carina rubbed Arby’s tummy. Arby squirmed and groaned in happiness. “That’s funny. Arby’s not exactly dignified. No offense, Arby.”

  “Mimi says the name is aspirational,” I said, leaning over to pat Arby myself. As if on cue, she leaped to her feet and dashed off after what might have been a squirrel or an imaginary rabbit or a milkweed seed on the wind.

  Carina stood and spun in a slow circle. I watched her take it all in. The Thimbleweed Farm sign. Our farmhouse, its wood weathered and gray. Her eyes drifted to the yellow diamonds posted along the road, painted with silhouettes of skunks and the words Skunk X-ing.

  Her eyes went wide. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those before.”

  In the space of a second I relived the whole thing: Miles, Sweet Melissa, her disappearing kits. I said, “Did you know fifty percent of skunks die from being hit by cars?” and held my breath, waiting for her to say, Who cares, skunks are gross! or Why do you know that, freak?

  Instead she said, “Oh. That’s really sad. Are they . . . are they not too smart?”

  “They’re plenty smart! But they have bad eyesight, and they’re not very fast. So by the time they realize a car is coming, they don’t have time to get out of the way.”

  Carina nodded. “And they’re hard for people to see.” She suddenly brightened. “Wait a second. A couple of years ago, were you on TV and in the paper, talking about this stuff?”

  I squirmed. “I was trying to get these signs posted everywhere. It didn’t work.”

  “At least you tried. That’s more than you can say about most people.”

  “And I got named Skunk Girl for my trouble.” My voice shook. Carina probably thought I was ridiculous for crying about it, two years later. But she didn’t know the whole story.

  “That was that mean girl Kirsten Von Hoorn, wasn’t it?” She shook her head. “Forget her. I want to meet the goats.”

  She held out her hand. I stared at it, confused. Skunk Girl stank. Skunk Girl was a weirdo. What was Carina playing at?

  Something flashed across her face—disappointment? Sadness? She took half a step back, taking her hand with her, and a shock went through me. She thought I was the one who didn’t want to touch her. The realization unfroze me. I brushed away my tears and took her hand.

  We put Carina’s purse and Arby inside the house. I called to anyone who was listening that we were going out back. Carina would meet everyone eventually, but I wanted her to meet the rest of the non-humans first. They wouldn’t say anything potentially embarrassing.

  “That’s the barn.” I pointed as we passed through the gate. “Here’s the pasture.”

  “It’s so weedy.” Carina scratched her leg where the tall grass tickled it.

  “Goats aren’t like cows, munching on grass all day,” I explained. “They like to nibble a little of this and a little of that. Cows graze. Goats browse.”

  “Like going to the mall and trying on a bunch of outfits.”

  “Right. Or to the library, and reading a few pages of each book to find the perfect one.”

  “Is it true they’ll eat anything? Even tin cans?”

  My voice rose. “Goats do not eat tin cans. They’re not stupid! Just curious. They use their mouths to explore the world. Babies do, too, and we don’t call them stupid.” Carina stared, and I had to remind myself She isn’t Kirsten. She didn’t actually call goats stupid. She was only asking a question. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. I hate it when people get things wrong.”

  “It’s okay,” Carina said. “I’d rather have someone tell me when I’m wrong than keep making the same mistake. Although I disagree about babies. I swallowed a penny when I was two. That was pretty stupid. The doctor couldn’t do a thing about it, either. My parents had to poke through my diapers for days, to make sure it came out again.”

  She grinned, and I relaxed. “You’re right,” I said. “Babies are pretty stupid.”

  Her attention broke. “Oh my gosh! They’re adorable! Their pointy ears! Their fuzzy beards!”

  They were the goats, of course, who were trotting over to investigate, Pax towering over them. Kali shoved her way into the lead. The herd engulfed Carina. She looked both delighted and freaked out, as whiffling snouts came at her from all angles—goats nibbling her shoelaces, goats nibbling her shorts and shirttail, and Kali yelling her head off.

  “Back off!” I shooed them. “Especially you, Kali! You don’t have to scream.”

  The goats listened—enough of them, anyway, that Carina was able to laugh. “Yikes! How many are there?”

  “Only ten.” I waved a handful of dropseed in hopes of distracting the goats. It was a waste of time. I’d brought them something way more interesting than a bundle of grass: a new person. “Kali, that noisy black one, is the most ornery. And Brigid, the one who keeps nosing your hand, is the sweetest. Pax is our guard donkey.”

  “Guard donkey?”

  “Donkeys hate canids. They’ll defend their turf against coyotes, foxes, and dogs. That’s one of the reasons we couldn’t bring Arby with us. You can’t tell it right now, but he’s actually very fierce,” I said, petting Pax’s neck. He nudged his snout against me.

  “None of them have horns. Does that mean they’re all nanny goats?” Carina peeked down at their half-swollen udders.

  “We prefer to call them does, but yes,” I said. “Females can have horns, but ours were disbudded when they were a few days old. If we did have bucks, they’d have to be kept separate, obviously. Also, if you ever meet a buck, you’ll hear—and smell—him a mile away.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They pee on themselves.”

  Carina looked horrified. �
�That’s disgusting! Why would they do that?”

  “Goat cologne,” I said with a shrug. “The ladies love it. Apparently.”

  Carina looked even more horrified—before breaking into a chuckle and then all-out laughter. I did, too. We giggled and guffawed, grabbing our aching stomachs.

  Carina said, “They could call it Eau de Pee! I bet it’s all the rage in Paree.”

  We laughed harder at the rhyme. I couldn’t remember laughing at anything so hard, not in a really long time. Every time we started to catch our breath, one of us would repeat, “Eau de Pee!” and the other would say, “All the rage in Paree!” until Carina lost her balance and was swarmed by curious, slightly concerned goats, and I had to pull her up.

  “Come on,” I said, wheezing, “let’s go sit in the half-ton.”

  The door let out a skronk of protest as it swung open. I hopped up and held out a hand to Carina. As soon as she’d slammed the door, the rattles and bangs and MAA-AA-AA-AAs of ten goats piling into the bed began.

  Carina winced as Kali crashed onto the roof. “Do they always do that?”

  “All the time. Goats love climbing.”

  She shook her head, gazing out across the pasture. I watched her take in the wildflowers, the goats’ rock pile and tree house. She chewed her lip. What was she thinking? I flashed back to the first day of kindergarten and felt queasy.

  But when she turned back to me, her eyes shone. She said, “Everything about this is completely amazing. Did your family always live here?”

  “Only since I was five. Mom says we’ll always be city people as far as our neighbors are concerned, whatever that means.” I shrugged. “Mimi still works in Kalamazoo, though, and my aunt Keisha lives there, and so do a bunch of my moms’ friends.”

  “How did they meet, your moms?” Carina asked. “Was it in college?”

  “No, Mom’s a few years older,” I said. “It’s kind of a funny story. Mom was a yoga teacher, and Mimi was just starting out as a lawyer. She went into Mom’s studio to unwind.”

  “That’s adorable,” said Carina.