You first, p.19
You First, page 19
“Hm?”
She pushes the cookie plate closer. “They’re store-bought, but trust me, it’s better that way. You’re not allergic, are you?”
“No.”
“Good. What’s your biggest fear?”
I choke on the cookie. “What?”
“Come on, you’re on the four-day plan here. There’s no time to waste.”
“I have a lot of fears,” I say.
“First one that comes to mind.”
“Abandonment.”
“Being abandoned, or doing the abandoning?”
“Both.”
“Any siblings?”
“Two. A Lev-B and a high-C.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?”
“Possibly. Describe your upbringing in three words.”
“Uh…only mildly traumatizing.”
“First animal you ever talked to?”
“A rat. Near our trash can. I was five.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me to fuck off.”
“How sad. I’m sorry.”
“I probably deserved it.”
“Don’t say that. Are you a vegetarian?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s hard not to be when you’re a talker.”
“Agreed. Portobello steaks for dinner, by the way. Favorite animal?”
“Uh…”
“Quickly now. Don’t think.”
“Swans.”
“Hm. They’re not very friendly.”
“But they mate for life.”
“You’ve never actually spoken to one, have you?”
“No,” I admit.
“Most of them are restless. It’s misplaced loyalty and inborn stubbornness that keeps them together.”
“Oh….okay.”
I put down the rest of my cookie.
“Are you married?” she says gently.
“No—not….” I shift in my seat. “I live with someone.” That’s all she’s getting. I know I’m stereotyping, but I don’t trust a small-town old mountain lady not to be a homophobe, even if she seems sweet.
“Good. That’s good,” she says. “It’s smart to test the waters first.”
I chuckle at the thought of Jay and me testing the waters for thirteen years. A small gray tabby cat pads into the room and hops up on C.C.’s lap.
“How about you?” I say, as C.C.’s chin-rubs coax a purr from the tabby. “Are you married?”
“Nope. Never have been. Confirmed bachelorette, I guess you’d say.” The cat looks up and makes a sound like mah-weep-weep. “Yes, I know, but that was temporary,” C.C. tells her. “I’ve been married to my work, but fortunately it’s treated me well. Always there for me, still excites me, and there’s no chance it’ll leave me for someone better.”
“Sounds like a good match.”
She smiles. “It’s had some ups and downs. But yes.”
The tabby makes another string of meeps I can’t decipher. C.C. rolls her eyes and gives a good-natured groan. “Eleanor is kindly reminding me that I tend to blab forever once I get started,” she says. “Shall we make our way to the training room?”
I experience the words training room the way my six-year-old self experienced the words tetanus shot. Hopefully C.C. won’t have to drag me out of a bathroom stall by my feet the way Ma did.
“Can I ask…” I try to keep the tremor out of my voice. “My phone can’t make calls up here. Could I hop on your wifi before we start? So I can send a quick text?”
“Of course. The password is Stevie79.” She gets a wistful look when she says the name and I imagine the guy (or girl?) who might have broken her heart years ago, disappearing in a blur of flannel and a cloud of pickup-truck exhaust.
C.C. ducks out of the room and I dig out my phone, get myself connected. Our inaugural text. It should be special. Something clever yet lighthearted; something that says you are forever one of my top three reasons for enduring this mortal coil, with an undertone of I feel horrible for fibbing to you but it’s all for our greater good.
HEY, IT’S OUR FIRST TEXT, I type.
A minute passes. The gray texting-you-back dots appear, then vanish, then appear again.
wahoooooooooo! what are you doing this very minute?
Chilling with my father. Reading a 600-page book.
better you than me
A minute later:
the book, I mean! reading the book. not hanging with your dad. that came out wrong.
Thirty seconds later:
except now I sound like a philistine too. wow, delete me from your contacts.
Never, I assure him.
I receive three emojis in response: a red heart, an eggplant, and, for some reason, an open umbrella. I am the recipient of Jay’s first emojis. That has to bode well for our future.
“Levon?” C.C. strolls back in with a manila folder. “You about ready?”
“I am.”
“Excellent. You’ll have to sign this little waiver first, okay?”
I open the folder and skim the form inside. The words insomnia, melancholia, and mental confusion jump out at me from the POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS list. It’s like one of those word searches where the first three words you see are supposed to say deep things about your personality and/or destiny. I don’t even read it all. I take a breath and sign the witch’s scroll—I mean, the perfectly routine and not at all concerning waiver.
Gotta go, I text to Jay. Let’s see if I can get my dad out of the house.
good luck babe, he texts back, not knowing how much I’ll actually need.
now
“Welcome,” says C.C., “to the Menagerie.”
She opens the door to the back room, and I’m hit with the sterile smell of a doctor’s office. The Menagerie is shaped like a hexagon and contains exactly no animals. The doorway we pass through takes up most of one side, and the other five sides are large white panels, each of which houses an embedded TV screen, a pair of white padded headphones on a silver hook, and a couple of side-by-side buttons that glow like the eyes of wild creatures in the dark. The rest of the room is empty except for a chaise and a metal cart in the center. The cart holds an assortment of supplies: pill bottles, an ice pack, antiseptic wipes, a remote control, and a white washcloth and bucket that look sinister in this context. The chaise is upholstered in green velvet and resembles one of those old fainting couches.
“What’s that?” I ask C.C.
“Ye olde fainting couch.” She laughs at my alarm. “Don’t worry, it’s mostly a joke. It hardly ever comes to that.”
Hardly ever is zero percent comforting to people of my ilk, but I try to match her grin.
“Now, where would you like to start?” She punches a few buttons on the remote. All five TV screens light up, each with a different white word in its center: MAMMALS BIRDS FISH REPTILES AMPHIBIANS.
“Reptiles, definitely.”
“Oh?”
“Pythons and alligators in particular.”
“Hm.”
The hm reminds me of Alex. I bristle.
“Well, don’t get offended; I’m surprised, that’s all.” She cleans her hands with an antiseptic wipe. “I thought maybe a nice panda to start things off. Or a slow loris.”
I shake my head. “It has to be snakes. And gators.”
“If you say so, hon.”
I sit down in front of the REPTILES screen. She brings out a contraption that resembles nothing so much as a round metal pasta strainer with a chin strap attached to it. At the top of this questionable helmet is a small glass dome that holds a quantity of pearly pale-blue goop, like the homemade glitter slime that Gael and Gaby bring to Wishpenny. For a moment I am seized with doubt: what if Lynette’s information was faulty? What if C.C. O’Callaghan is merely a wacky grandma with a cartload of phony equipment and a safe of scammed cash?
C.C. wipes down the chin strap. “Top-secret technology. I developed it with a colleague of mine. Claire Bouchard. She’s based in Melbourne, have you been?”
She might as well have asked have you been to Neptune, but I shake my head and say, “I’ve been meaning to.”
“Anyway, she was a Level-A bestower. Is, I should say.”
“You know a bestower?”
“We’ve lost touch. But yes. And she hated the rules, as you can imagine.”
I nod, but I don’t understand, not really. Only a handful of supers have bestowing as their power, and I’ve always thought it was a good thing that there were strict laws guiding the use of their gift. For their own protection, more than anything: who could endure a constant drumbeat of supers begging for new and improved powers?
“So she figured out a way to embed a bit of her bestowing power into this fine doohickey I designed.” She flips a switch on the helmet, and the shimmery goop inside the glass dome starts to pulse and knead itself. “It’s genius, really. Like training wheels for the brain. Go ahead, put it on.”
“…Now?”
She chuckles. “Levon.”
I take the helmet from her and carefully place it on my head. My hair’s getting shaggy again and I regret not getting it trimmed before my transformation. C.C. stoops in front of me to adjust the chin strap and I take a cleansing breath, try to quiet my hammering heart. I’m here. This is happening. Please don’t let me throw up pecan sandies.
“Okay. Eyes on the screen now.” I obey. My scalp has begun to tingle. “Who would you like to start with? Burmese python? Alligator? Komodo—”
“Python,” I say.
“That’s a bold choice.”
“I’m a bold kind of guy.”
I feel her hold back a comment.
“So what you’re about to see,” she says, pressing a button on the remote, “is a ten-minute sample of the snake in his natural environment. I’ve collected authentic animal-talk samples from all over the world, to use in my trainings.” The snake comes onscreen, a light tan coil with an intricate pattern of amber-brown patches. “Now, about this guy, I should warn you—”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Sorry. I don’t want to get scared off.”
“Fair enough.” She hands me a pen and pad. “He’ll start vocalizing in about one minute. It’ll take the bestowing device about another minute or so to start doing its job. As soon as you start understanding words, record them on the pad, okay? If you need to pause the sample, hit that button. Questions?”
So many.
“None,” I say.
On the screen before me, the snake uncoils. He slides slowly through the sun-scorched grass, his forked tongue flicking out, sampling the scents around him. Then he lifts his head and hisses at the camera.
A bolt of pain. It hits the top of my head and branches through my brain, a network of tiny electric shocks. I grip the sides of my seat and grit though it, my eyes never leaving the snake. He keeps up his chatter, expelling the kind of staticky hiss-stream I’ve never been able to shape into meaning.
Then a word leaps out, clear as the summer sky:
you
I grab the pen and scribble the word down, circling it twice. For about another minute, that’s the only word I hear clearly.
drmfked you ssskremusfrj you adjrfkssshh…
Pain-bombs explode in my head, fuzzing my thoughts and blurring my vision. I fight through it, keep my eyes on the screen. Focus. Focus. Focus.
Then it’s like the clouds part. Words rain down, washing over me in a cold rush that makes all my hairs stand on end:
you should die
you should all die
you rotten sssssstinking sacks of meat
you cruel brssafklrg puppets with your sky gods and metal birds
I will sssssqueeze you till the lrgmslshh leaves your eyes
I will crush your bones to dust
I will water the earth with your psshhfrmkss blood
I will laugh as you struggle and smother your screamssss
you are nothing
the planet’s biggest mistake
no one will miss you
no one will missssssssss
It gets uglier, angrier. I go as long as I can, which isn’t much longer. I unbuckle the chin strap and fumble the helmet off.
“Are you all right?” C.C. swoops in and hits pause.
“I need a break.”
“Do you want some water?”
I shake my head.
“How about some ibuprofen?”
“No.” My eyes sweep over the words I’ve transcribed, but they blur on the page. “I wrote down—this.”
I pass the pad to her: hands trembling, head pounding. I try to make my mind blank as she reviews what I’ve written. It seeps in anyway.
You are nothing.
No one will miss you.
“Good…ohh, yes, that’s very good. Sixty-one percent accuracy on your first time out! That’s above average, Levon.”
“Those things he said…”
“Yep, that’s a python for you. Nasty misanthropes, except if you catch them right after they eat.” She passes the pad back to me. “I did try to warn you.”
“Are they—all like that?”
“Well, I’d never stereotype. But there’s a reason most talkers don’t choose to work with big reptiles. It takes a certain kind of personality. I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure. Ted’s about as much as I can handle.”
A wave of nausea crashes over me. I lean forward and swallow it down. My head aches so hard I want to stab myself in the leg just to have a different kind of pain to focus on. Nut up, I tell myself. You signed the waiver. You knew the hurt was coming.
“Would you like to stop for tonight?” she asks me. “Maybe that’s good enough for now.”
I’m nowhere near good enough. I click the pen open and fix my eyes to the screen.
“Let’s keep going,” I say.
***
We sit at the round yellow Formica table in the kitchen downstairs from the Menagerie, the remains of our portobello steaks and potatoes au gratin congealing on our plates. It’s only nine o’clock but it feels like it’s three in the morning.
“You should be proud,” C.C. tells me. “You pushed yourself hard up there. We had a very productive first session.”
I wish I had a quiet space for pride in my brain, but it’s throbbing like a bastard and thoroughly shredded from two hours of one-sided psychological warfare. A giant tegu who predicted the human world would fall to the animal world in less than twenty years. An alligator who said our inherent cruelty and selfishness made our flesh taste like dead skunk. A Nile monitor who said we were worthless oppressors with zero capacity for change. And now C.C.’s crunching on some Chips Ahoy and talking about how much more intense tomorrow’s going to be, how I’m going to practice translating through noise interference and ever-increasing distances.
I miss Jay so much I could cry.
“Levon? What’s on your mind?” C.C. asks. Eleanor is on her lap, her banded tail undulating like a snake.
“Oh, not much.” Will my head always feel like a struck gong now? If I jump out the window, could I find my way back to the train station? What is the singular of Chips Ahoy? “I’m a little worn out, that’s all.”
“You’d better get a good night’s sleep, then. Your room’s right in there.” She points to the hallway off the kitchen. “It’s nice, you’ll like it. Roomy queen bed, you can really spread out. Splurged on a new mattress topper, so the bed should be—”
“I don’t think I can sleep in there,” I blurt.
“No?”
Eleanor makes a mah-weep of judgment. The penguin clock above the sink ticks loudly.
“I’m sure the bed’s great. And—thank you for the room.” My voice cracks like I’m thirteen. “But it’s—”
C.C. shoos Eleanor off her lap. She puts her hand on my arm and when she does, I want to spill my entire life story. I never knew either of my grandmothers and she looks so kind, like a grandma from a storybook who bakes you pie and flies a homemade kite with you.
“Tell me,” she says.
“I have a boyfriend.” I tense up. “The one I live with. He’s a water mover. And a flyer. And, ah…”
“You’re missing him.”
Her voice stays soft and she doesn’t take her hand away. I unclench.
“We’ve been together for thirteen years. We haven’t spent a night apart in probably a decade.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It sounds pathetic. I know.”
C.C. gives my hand a squeeze. “It sounds like you love him very much.” She takes my dinner plate and stacks it on top of hers. “But something called you here to me. You’re trying to sort yourself out. And it seems like that’s something you need to do without him.”
I don’t tell her that what called me here was my desperate need to hold on to him. I take two aspirin and help her clear the table and wash the dishes. When she offers me a sleeping bag and a spot on the floor of her animal room, I accept. I’m so tired I could sleep on a bed of nails, as long as it wasn’t big enough for two.
***
The animals in C.C.’s tanks indulge in a round of titters. They’re all watching me change for bed, and I’m guessing they’ve never seen chili pepper boxers before. I ignore them and dig in my bag for a t-shirt. I shove aside the small bottle of vodka I stashed in there for liquid courage; C.C. warned me at dinner that booze would dull the effects of the bestowing device. Underneath the bottle and Lynette’s payment envelope and my neatly folded READERS GONNA READ t-shirt is something both strange and familiar: a pineapple-covered pillowcase, far from home and rolled up like a miniature sleeping bag. A pink sticky note in Jay’s slapdash handwriting is rubber-banded to it:
i know you’re not that far away, but just in CASE you miss home.
(“case.” did you get it? you probably got it.)
I click the overhead light off fast. C.C.’s owl-shaped night light flickers on, bathing the room in a pale blue glow. I pick up my phone, weigh it in my hand. What I’m feeling is odd. My heart and my body are calling out for his, but my brain is a bit annoyed that he’s being so oppressively adorable from two hundred miles away, while I’m trying to sort through the strangeness of today.
