Prometheus Mode, page 19
very soft at all.
Miss Ronica came running back when she heard me scream. There were cobwebs in her hair, and her cheek was smudged with dirt. The shovel was bouncing on the grass behind her.
I’d already managed to shake the clinging thing off my hand, but as soon as it hit the ground, it leapt back at me, latched onto my ankle with its scraggly wings, and tried to scramble up my leg.
“Stop moving!” Miss Ronica screamed at me.
“Get it off! Get it off me!”
“I told you!” she said, dropping the shovel and grabbing a stick. “I told you not to touch it! Damn it, Cassie!”
“You said it was dead!”
She swiped at the thing, scraping it off the back of my leg. It thudded to the ground and, before it could jump back up on me, Miss Ronica had already stomped on it. I heard its bones crunching beneath her sandal, felt them breaking inside my own head as if she was crushing me. I was horrified by the sight, but, in all honesty, I was also happy. I hated that it had attacked me. I hated that I wanted it dead — really truly dead this time — and I felt terrible at the way it had happened, but it didn’t stop me from also being glad.
“Damn it all to hell, Cass!” Miss Ronica cursed. She was crying, partly from anger, partly from fright. She grabbed my hand to check it and, seeing no marks there, spun me around to look at my leg.
“Did it bite you?”
“You said a bad word—”
“Fuck yeah I said a bad word, girl! I told you not to touch it. Did it bite you? Shit, is that blood? Damn if it is. Cassie, it probably was sick. I bet you it was. Haven’t you ever heard of rabies? Well, have you?”
Panic flared inside of me. I’d heard of it, of course. My parents worked with sick animals, how could I not know about it? Rabies was what made dogs go crazy and want to bite you.
She shook me something fierce, rattling my head on my neck. My teeth clinked and I bit my tongue. I said “Ow!” But that didn’t stop her being so angry.
“Why don’t you listen, Cassie? Damn it!”
“Daddy s–said there’s no such thing as vampires,” I stammered.
She stopped and stared at me, confusion in her eyes. I didn’t know why I’d said it — it had nothing to do with what was happening, except that maybe I’d made some sort of connection between the bat and vampires — but I took advantage of the break to plead with her. “Please, don’t tell Mama.”
“Cassandra Lynn—”
“No, please!”
“I have to, you know that.”
She dragged me into the house, leaving Ben Nicholas to nibble grass on the lawn. By the time she had my heel cleaned up and coated with ointment and a bandage, she’d calmed back down again. At least she wasn’t screaming anymore and looking like she might suddenly explode. Though I could tell by the way she held her jaw that she was still very angry with me.
Through my tears, I continued to beg her not to tell on me.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Cassie, I really don’t. And please stop crying. It’s not going to work on me, young lady.”
“Wh–what are you g–g–going to do with the bat?”
She told me to stay inside the house, but of course I watched from between the railing posts on the porch as she used the shovel to pick its mangled body up and drop it into the little plastic bag that used to hold Ben Nicholas’s treats, which she’d dumped out on the lawn. Blood was leaking from its tiny crushed head, from its ears and its tiny nostrils. One of its gray eyes was swollen open and its tiny wing had been broken.
After she washed her hands, Miss Ronica packed us all up — Ben Nicholas and Shinji included — and drove us in her tiny, noisy, smelly gas car to the nearest animal hospital.
“They’ll test it for diseases,” she told me on the way there. “I’ll bet you anything it was sick. Why else would it just be lying there on the ground in the middle of the day?”
She made me stay in the car in the hot sun with the windows down so I wouldn’t fry my brains. I didn’t argue, just held Ben Nicholas on my lap and petted him while he panted and Shinji stood on the seat and looked out the window and sniffed the air every time someone passed by us carrying some kind of animal or another, like a cat or a dog or a turtle. He didn’t bark even once, not even when the parrot went by and made me jump when it squawked and said a bad word.
When Miss Ronica got back into the car, she whispered, “I hope and pray to God it wasn’t sick.” Then she started it up and backed it out of the parking spot.
“Where are we going?”
“Home.”
“When will we know?”
She was quiet for a moment, her eyes glancing up at me in the mirror, then back down to the road. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking just by looking at her eyes. Finally, she said, “They told me a day or two for the results. Your parents could probably run the test in their own lab and know within an hour.”
“No! Please!”
“I won’t tell them, Cassie. Not yet.” Her face softened. “Look, I know things have been really rough on you these past few weeks with, you know, stuff. And your folks splitting up like that is just messed up. Anyway, I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it is for all of you. Especially you. But having said that, you have to try harder, Cassie. The last thing they need right now is something else to stress them out, especially your mom.”
She exhaled noisily. “But if that bat was sick, then you know I have no choice but to tell them. God, I should anyway. I could lose my job for keeping it a secret.”
“You won’t,” I said confidently.
She slapped the steering wheel, making me jump. “Why I let you talk me into keeping it a secret—”
“You promised!”
“First of all, I didn’t promise. Second of all, you should be worrying more about the shots than what your parents might do to you.”
My heart fluttered in alarm. “What shots?”
“In your stomach.”
I could sense her anger returning, and I couldn’t understand why she’d be mad about that. She wasn’t the one who’d been bitten; she wasn’t the one who’d have to get any shots.
“Big ones with big needles,” she continued. “And they hurt like hell, too, Cass. But you’d have to get them soon, before you start getting sick. Once you start getting sick—”
“I don’t want shots!”
“If you don’t, Cassie, you could die. I’m serious, girlfriend. Even if you do get the shots, but you wait too long, they won’t work. There’s no cure for rabies. You know that, don’t you? Once you start getting sick, it’s too late.”
A part of me knew she was just pretending to be mean because she was scared for me and angry that I didn’t obey her. I didn’t doubt anything she said, but I did resent the way she said it. It wasn’t fair that she was trying to frighten me.
“Oh, and Cassie,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror again, “I don’t care if you tell your parents I used bad words, because right now I am so pissed off that you didn’t listen to me.”
It was like she was daring me.
“I won’t tell.”
“Yeah, well...” She raised her hands from the steering wheel and shook them at the sides of her head. “Maybe I’ll tell them anyway.”
But I knew we’d crossed some sort of line. I knew she’d keep her word and not say anything. She wouldn’t snitch on me as long as I didn’t snitch on her.
How many times I’ve wondered since then: What if she had told them right away? Would anything have happened differently? Would Ben Nicholas have
died
gotten sick?
Would I have?
“Cassie, please,” Daddy told me that evening, after he and Mama got home from work. “I’ve asked you before not to carry that rabbit around by the neck. You’re choking him. You’re going to get scratched if you’re not careful.”
“He’s stinky. He smells bad.”
“Well, then maybe you need to clean its cage.”
“No, Daddy, I just cleaned it. His breath smells bad.”
Daddy bent down until he was nose-to-nose with Ben Nicholas and took a long, deep breath. Then his eyes went wide. “You’re right. He smells terrible! Just like the bottom of a lawnmower.”
“Daddy!”
He laughed. “Maybe he’s eating too much grass.”
“No, he’s not!”
“Well, that’s what he smells like, freshly cut grass.”
“No, it smells—”
soupy
“—stinky.”
“He smells stinky?”
“And he’s not acting right, either. I think he might be sick.”
“The only thing that animal is suffering from is lack of exercise. I swear its feet never touch the ground.”
“But I love him, Daddy.”
“And you give it way too many treats. It’s getting fat. Maybe you shouldn’t feed it so many.”
“I don’t give him too many,” I insisted.
“I found a whole pile of them on the back lawn, honey. They’re not good for him. And they’re not cheap, either.”
“Rame, leave her alone.”
Daddy’s coffee cup banged a little too loudly on the table, making Ben Nicholas jump in my arms. He let out a raspy squeak and kicked with his hind feet. His claws scratched the inside of my elbow.
“See, honey? I told you you’re choking him.”
“You scared him!”
“Cassie!” Mama yelled. “Not so loud. Please. Why don’t you take him and go outside.”
I tried to adjust him, but he kept struggling, so I let him down to the floor. He hopped over to the corner of the cabinets, his claws clacking on the tiles, and there he sat wiggling his nose at us like he was angry and waiting for an apology.
“We should take him in to the vet this weekend to get his nails clipped and his teeth filed down,” Daddy said. “They’re getting long.”
“No!”
Both Mama and Daddy looked up in surprise.
I didn’t want anyone going near the animal hospital. Not until we absolutely had to. “Can’t you do it here?”
“I’m not filing down those vampire teeth.”
“Ramon! Really? Cass, dear, we’ve got a lot going on right now, honey. Okay?”
“Like what?”
Mama and Daddy exchanged glances. I hated that they could pass secret messages with their looks. I hated being left out.
Finally, Daddy shook his head at her. I wasn’t sure if he was giving up or if they were going to start fighting again, and I almost hoped they actually would fight so they’d stop thinking about maybe taking Ben Nicholas to the animal doctor. It’s certainly not where I had intended the conversation to lead when I first mentioned him smelling and acting funny.
I went back over and picked him up again, intent on taking him out to his cage. “He doesn’t need his teeth filed,” I declared. “You’ll hurt him.”
Mama came over and gave me a hug. “All right, honey. We’re sorry. Stop crying. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Her face suddenly twisted, and I wondered if she noticed the strange smell coming off of Ben Nicholas. But as she leaned away from me, a look of concern in her eyes, I realized it wasn’t Ben Nicholas she was worried about. “Are you feeling okay, honey?” She placed her hand against my forehead and kept it there for a moment. “Your face is hot. Maybe I better stay home from work tomorrow.”
Even from across the kitchen I could sense my father’s irritation and waited for him to tell Mama to stop babying me. The bitter smoldering smell of it rolled toward us, but Mama pretended not to notice.
I told her I was okay but avoided looking in her eyes. I actually did feel fine, but it still felt like lying. Plus, I hated the way she just totally ignored Ben Nicholas just now. When she didn’t let me go, I pushed her away, suddenly afraid that she’d notice him and change her mind about sending him to the animal hospital.
“You don’t have to stay home from work tomorrow,” I said.
She held on a moment longer before standing up and going over to the fridge. She stood there for a few seconds without taking anything out, just staring at it with glistening eyes. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, her voice tight and sounding far away. “Go get washed up.”
“First things first,” Daddy said, getting up to set the table. “Go put Ben Nicholas away in his cage. Then go wash your hands.”
The terrible smell coming from my bed the next morning almost made me upchuck. It was the same smell as from Ben Nicholas yesterday, only a lot badder. But Ben Nicholas hadn’t been in bed with me last night; I’d left him in his cage after dinner. And I knew it wasn’t Shinji who smelled, because it stayed after Daddy got him up to go potty outside. The bad smell was me.
When I went out to check on Ben Nicholas after breakfast, I almost stopped. I wanted to run back into the house before I got halfway there. I didn’t want to see what I was afraid I’d find. But when I got to his cage, I saw that he was awake. He hopped over to me— maybe not as quickly as he usually did, but at least he wasn’t dead. I opened his door and scooped him up and the smell came off of him like the smell from a newly tarred driveway on a hot day. I knew then that it was serious, that something was terribly wrong with him, which meant something was wrong with me, too. I knew I’d have
rabies
to let my parents know. Even if it meant getting into trouble for not listening to Miss Ronica yesterday when I got bit. I didn’t want shots, not for either of us, but I wanted even less to die like Remy did. I didn’t want to make Mama and Daddy sadder.
I tried to get their attention by knocking quietly on their bedroom door, but they were too busy yelling at each other about someone from work who wasn’t going to be there. Daddy was saying Mama would have to do his job, which made her even angrier because she had talked about staying home with me today, something I hadn’t wanted because she’d start asking about the animal hospital again. But now I changed my mind.
I knew better than to interrupt them when they were like this, so I went outside in back to my swings to wait for them to finish. That’s when I noticed the blood around Ben Nicholas’s back foot. It was old and dried, and it was proof enough for me about how he’d gotten sick. He must have gotten bitten just like me. Of course, my own heel started throbbing something terrible all of a sudden.
With my heart beating a thousand million miles a second, I took Ben Nicholas inside to show Daddy. The house was quiet by then, so I knew they’d stopped arguing.
“It’s a torn claw, Cassie,” he told me, barely glancing down at us from the mirror where he was putting on his tie. He took a step away from us, clearly not wanting to touch — or be touched by — Ben Nicholas. He didn’t want to get his white shirt bloody. “I told you we should get them clipped. It’s okay, honey. He’ll survive. Just leave him alone and it’ll heal on its own.”
“But, Daddy—”
“If it’s not better when I get home tonight, we’ll take him to see the doctor, okay? See? It’s already stopped bleeding. Tomorrow, I promise. Or this weekend, honey. I can’t do it right now. I’m already going to be late.”
I tried to tell him that it didn’t look like the blood was coming from his claw. I wanted to say it looked like
a bat bite
something else. But all my words came out in a jumble. He hurried past me, muttering to himself about his car keys being lost.
So I took him to show Mama instead, except when she saw the blood, she thought it was mine instead of his. She pulled my arm in such a panic that Ben Nicholas slipped out of my grip except for one leg. He cried out, kicked, and scrambled under the couch. She made me go wash my hands while she watched, and then inspected them. “It’s Ben Nicholas’s blood,” I kept telling her. “Not mine.” But she wouldn’t listen.
“Stick out your tongue and say, ‘Ahhh.’ ”
“It’s not me, Mama!”
She looked inside at my tonsils and told me I needed to brush my teeth. “Your breath stinks.” Then she checked my forehead with her hand.
“You’re not feverish.”
“I already told her, Lyss,” Daddy shouted from the other room. “The rabbit just ripped a claw is all. Probably caught it on the wire in his cage. It happens. I’m sure that’s where the blood came from.”
I heard him pick up his keys and jangle them. The door slammed shut. His exit left a trail of burnt metal smoke floating in the air behind him.
“You’re not driving with Daddy today?” I asked.
Mama’s face scrunched up tight. “I have to stop off somewhere before I go in. A friend’s.” She pushed me out of the bathroom and closed the door so she could finish getting ready. I hung around for a minute to see if she was okay, but then I left in a hurry in case she started crying again.
After Miss Ronica arrived, I heard them talking quietly at the front door. They both looked at me and stopped when I came out of the kitchen, so I realized that Miss Ronica must have gotten the call from the animal hospital. I hurried to my room because I was afraid of getting the shot in my tummy.
I kept expecting Mama to start screaming, since I’d been bitten by a sick bat. But then I heard the front door close and her car start and I knew she was gone without even saying goodbye. A moment later Miss Ronica was coming in to check on me. She took a look at my ankle and proclaimed it healed, which confused me.
It certainly didn’t look all that bad, a bit puffy, maybe, but definitely nowheres near as horrible as it felt. She smiled and shook her head, and her cheerfulness took me by surprise, such that when she asked how I was doing, I automatically said okay, even though I felt like I was going to be sick in my stomach.
One thing I knew: it was obvious she couldn’t smell the sickness building inside of me. She couldn’t smell it on Ben Nicholas, neither. None of them could. That’s because it was the rabies that made me be able to smell it. I don’t care what the animal doctor said about the bat.
For the rest of the day, neither of us said another word about yesterday. We just pretended everything was all right. And if she noticed that Ben Nicholas spent most of the morning on his side in the long, shady grass beneath the slide, she didn’t mention it. But I certainly noticed. How could I not? He was breathing very quickly, his mouth open and his tongue sticking out. I put a dish of cold water and a carrot next to him, but although he drank a little, he didn’t eat. Later, after lunch, I put the carrot back in the refrigerator before going back outside with him.
