Nature of Jade (7 page)

One more block over, and you hit the zoo parking lot. That's how close we are. I walk, counting my steps in groups of eight. I show our family pass to the older lady with the big button that reads ask me about becoming a zoo pal, then push through the revolving metal gates. Someone who had snuck in would have had to climb the stone border around the zoo's perimeter.

My cell phone rings--Jenna--but I ignore it. I'm feeling too nervous to talk. I look at the face of my phone, though, to see

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the time. Three fifteen. He usually appears about three thirty.

I take the path past the giraffes and zebras, around the African savannah. I hear weird bird calls, exotic messages. Hippos, the meanest and most dangerous animals on earth, are off on their own, like we put away prisoners. Down the path a bit farther is the elephant house, and the outdoor enclosure, a large, mostly flat area of bamboo fields with its own "watering hole" and a few trees.

As far as the rain Mom warned me about, it is more of a drizzle, a sprinkle, a mist. We've got a thousand words for rain here, same as Eskimos have for snow.

I duck my chin down and walk fast. The rain means the zoo is nearly empty of visitors, except for this one mother, who looks slightly dazed and is pulling on the hand of her sticky toddler.

God, I'm nervous. I have this wound-up, hyper feeling, energized fear, and I'm thinking this is about the nuttiest thing I've ever done. And stupid. And maybe dangerous. He's a stranger. He has a baby, which makes him seem unlikely as a rapist, but come on. I don't know him and here I am going to meet him, and I barely feel good about talking to guys I don't know at my own school. This could be one of those horrible stories you hear about, where some dumb girl meets some guy she's talked to on the Internet. It's either the bravest thing I have ever done or the most idiotic, and I suddenly realize how hard it is to tell the difference.

There is an overhang by the outdoor viewing area where I can stay dry, and that's where I head. I sit on the bench for a few minutes; I look out at Onyx, an Asian elephant and the only animal I see out there, except for a few pigeons pecking at the ground in a bored, halfhearted manner. My stomach is flopping around in anticipation. I watch Onyx for calm, her 57

swaying body, her trunk that rises to explore the upper leaves of a tree. Onyx isn't the best choice for calm. Onyx is pretty old, I think--at least she looks old and acts old. She moves more slowly than the others, her movements dull and cranky. Her eyes look sad and sweet, dark and down-turned, as if she's asking for something but would refuse it if you offered. She makes me think of those days you have sometimes, when you're pissed off and driving everyone away with your mood, but what you most need is for someone to love you in spite of yourself. I've seen Onyx be aggressive with the others--shoving and nudging with her trunk, refusing to move when it would be the friendly thing to do. I know it sounds silly, like those people who have their dogs analyzed, but she seems depressed.

I'm getting cold just sitting, so I stand and lean against the railing. Just because it's three thirty, I shouldn't panic. He could be late. I'm sure he's still coming. I hope my hair still looks okay. I search off in the distance, hoping to see a red jacket. My heart thumps around at the thought of actually seeing and maybe talking to the real him. No one is around at all, and it's just me and all of the sounds around me. Rain falling, a strange twittering of some bird, the eerie warbling of another. I can hear water rushing somewhere, maybe from the brown bears' river, I'm not sure. I look back at the camera where it is perched at the corner of the elephant house, and I give a small wave to the me's out there who are watching.

Red jacket! I mentally call. Where are you? Only five minutes, but forever passes. I take out a Kleenex, blow my nose again, which is when he'll probably come.

But no.

I blow it again, just to give him a second chance to meet me the nature of jade 58

at a bad time. I hear an elephant trumpet, not Onyx, who is just standing under that tree, sniffing its bark. More twittering. The trees shh-shush with a bit of wind. One of the pigeons hops around by my feet arid pecks at pieces of dropped, soggy popcorn. God damn it, red jacket!

I sit back down. Go through the list in my head again. He's babysitting. It's his sister's baby. It's his baby, and he's married. Too young, unhappily. Happily married. Divorced, raising a baby alone. What I am doing here today is a stupid thing. It's a brave and bold thing. I say the phrase over again, It's a brave and bold thing, count off the words using the fingers of one hand. It's is my thumb, a my forefinger, et cetera. I start again from the next finger and count until the sentence ends on my pinkie.

My butt is cold sitting on the bench, and so are my hands, shoved in my pockets. My Kleenex supply is dwindling. It's three forty-five, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but probably does mean something.

I stand up again, hold the railing and lean back, face to the sky like he does, rain falling on my cheeks and eyes and chin. Maybe he's done with elephants, moved on to a different animal.

Maybe he's just moved on, period. Maybe I'd missed my chance by waiting too long. By just watching and not doing.

Four o'clock. He'd never been this late before, unless he came at night. I see the green pants and green shirt of the zookeeper who seems to be in charge of the elephants, an Indian man with a curving mustache and beard. He catches me watching him and waves and I smile. He disappears into the elephant house. I walk over to the house, peer inside at the glass windows of the huge stalls where Hansa and Chai and Tombi

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are snuggled, eating. The zookeeper isn't there, but a young woman feeds them something out of a metal bucket.

Outside again, the rain has turned from drizzly to insistent, consistent, drenching. I think maybe my chest feels heavy, a bit heavy--does it? From standing outside in the cold that long? That kind of heavy means a chest-heaving cough is coming on. Bronchitis, maybe. Pneumonia, my backstage mind says. There is not a red jacket anywhere, and my Kleenex is now a small, basically unusable wet ball, a soggy clump.

I walk away from the elephant house. My stupidity and I head home. We are both dripping wet, my hair becoming plastered to my face. In the zoo parking lot, I see Jake Gillette, the idiot genius, riding around on his skateboard in the rain, doing tricks, the parachute still attached to the back. That parachute looks optimistic in the gray wetness--trying hard even as it becomes heavy with rain--and something about this pitiful sight annoys me. I pass Total Vid, see Titus in his pineapple shirt behind the counter.

My shoes are sopping, my hair is too; even my pant legs are drenched when I get home. I don't want to see Mom, or for her to see me, so I close the front door very quietly, avoid the squeaky parts of the stairs. I knock on my doorframe softly three times. I take off my clothes, which an hour ago were confident and daring but are now soaked and humiliated. I drop them on the floor in a heap, leave them there where they belong. I have a bad headache. So bad that my headache has a headache.

I put on my robe. The only item of clothing that gives you unconditional love. I have dinner with my family, do my homework. The rumble in my chest is getting worse, I am sure. It feels dark, deep. I eat about ten cough drops to keep any anxiety

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under control, and because they have medicinal purposes.

And, yes, I watch the screen, in case he appears that night. But he doesn't. He's gone.

I turn the light off in my cage. Watch the screen. There are no flickering images. Just the muddy black of darkness lying on bamboo fields.

The next day, there's excitement in the air. It is a cliche to say so, I know, but it's true. And the reason there's excitement in the air is because the homecoming dance has finally arrived. Oh, yay.

My mom is up early making breakfast for us on a school day, French toast, when we usually just have cereal. She's got the kind of looking-forward-to-it excitement that gives you culinary energy. Mom, though, doesn't eat any of it herself, she says, because she has to fit into her dress-

-like one piece of French toast is going to suddenly split her zipper. I know I'm just pissed off and am acting horrible and will probably get struck by lightning for all the awful thoughts I'm having. And I know none of the homecoming stuff is meant to hurt me--Mom's explained that she has to go as one of the dance coordinators. Still, she's obviously revved up, and her cheery anticipation makes me want to fling French-toast triangles like boomerangs.

"I'm just glad I finally found my beaded purse," Mom says, as she flips a couple more pieces of toast onto Oliver's plate. They're perfect, too. Browned, yet still fluffy. Buttery, but not heavy with grease. "In the coat closet! With Oliver's dirty cleats and soccer socks and your old school backpack piled on top. It's a metaphor for my life. Buried under everyone else's."

"I wish there was a dance every day," Oliver says, and pours more syrup on his breakfast.

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I glare at him. "Don't even joke," I say. "What?" he says.

Mom doesn't hear us. "I've got a hair appointment at one, so you'd better pick up your brother after school in case I'm late," she says.

"Cretin," I say.

"It's not my fault," Oliver says, which is true, but who cares.

Ordinarily, I might have been sick enough to stay home, but there's no way I can deal with this all day. Calculus even sounds like more fun. Dad must have felt the same way, because he'd left for work early.

"Dad took the bus so we'd have the car. In fact, if you can take Oliver this morning, too, that'd be great. I've got so much to do yet to get ready."

"Fine."

"Jade? Is there a problem?" Her spatula stops midair. "No, Mom. I said fine." "It's just your tone."

Ah, yes--the tone. The nasty traitor. My tone has gotten me into more trouble over the years than any actual behavior. And as much as I knew she'd hassle me about it, I couldn't help but let it slip.

My tone is like one of those guys who commit crimes right under a surveillance camera.

"I'm sorry," I say, not in the least sorry, or maybe just a small bit sorry. I give Milo the rest of my French toast, even though he's too fat already. "Hurry up, Oliver. If you make me late, I'm going to hurt you."

"God, I didn't do anything."

I change all the radio stations in Mom's car. We drive along the nature of jade 62

to rap music, which I actually hate. I hate it all the way to Oliver's school.

"Sis, do you ever get the feeling our parents are wacko?" Oliver asks.

"All the time, Tiger." I pull up in front of Oliver's school, past the flag whipping on the flag pole and the little kids with drooping backpacks waiting obediently at the crosswalk. I am feeling a little bad about how I treated him, though, because I really do like him. He's my brother, and we go through things together that no one else will ever understand. I have the thought that he's sure to get hit by a school bus or be killed in a school shooting now that I'd been mean to him. He'd be dead and I'd have guilt forever and never have the chance to make it up to him. "Have a good day, okay?" I say.

"It'll be a good day since it's the last one I'll have with all my limbs. The first football game is tomorrow." He scoots across the seat, opens the door.

"Oh, man. I'm sorry, Oliver."

"Not as sorry as I am."

He shuts the car door. I watch him walk toward the building. From behind, Oliver, too, is mostly all backpack. He seems too small for a big world. Which is funny, because I'm feeling too big for my small one.

"Why don't you come hang with Akello and me tonight," Michael says. "Forget all this homecoming crap."

It sounds good, but I don't like how Michael drives. And I'd never driven with Akello before, so he might be reckless. He's nice, but that doesn't necessarily tell you everything you need to know.

I could always meet them wherever they were going,

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though. "Sure," I say. "What are you guys doing?" "Movies?" "Okay."

"Should we ask Jenna?" Michael asks. Hannah's going to homecoming, with this guy named Jordan from another school, so she won't be there.

"Nah. If we ask Jenna, we'll have to watch Mary Poppins," I say. It isn't nice, but I'm not feeling nice. I have this bone-deep ticked-offness, like those days when no clothes look right and your jeans are too tight, and you feel so negative you know you're going to end up working in a 7-Eleven the rest of your life, with only an occasional robbery to look forward to for excitement. I get a 96 percent on my Faulkner paper (big deal), am asked by Ms. Deninslaw to run for an Honor Society office (so what). No way in hell I'd do it anyway, as it would mean giving a speech in front of the club, and I'd rather walk around naked in Costco during free-sample hour than give a speech. I smiled and thanked her, though, and told her I'd think it over. Just another moment brought to you by the Politeness Equals Bullshit network.

After school, I pick up Oliver, who isn't dead, and we head home. Now that he is still alive, he's annoying me again, telling me that Narnia is the name of an Italian town, that J. R. R. Tolkien criticized The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe so much that C. S. Lewis almost didn't finish it, something Oliver's told me at least three times. The house smells all perfumey when I get in, and it isn't even time for Mom to leave yet. This can only mean she is back from the hairdresser's.

Hairspray fumes. If aerosol could destroy ozone, God knows what it could do to our insides, so I hold my breath. Mom's dress hangs on the back of her door, and the sight of it, plus my extreme, bordering-on

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homicidal mood, makes me go into my room and hunt around in my box of patron saint candles.

We're not devout Catholic or anything, but I like the patron saint idea. There's a saint for everything. There are patron saints for rain (Gratus of Aosta), rats (Servatus), respiratory problems (Bernadine of Sienna), riots (Andrew Corsini), and ruptures (Florentius of Strasburg), and that's only the Rs. They've got these cool candles for each different one, a column of tall glass with a picture of the saint on the front, and a matching prayer on the back, one in English and one in Spanish. They are pretty in-depth prayers and do a way better job of kissing up to God than you could ever think up on your own. For example, a prayer to Anthony of Padua, a full-service saint who protects against shipwrecks and starvation, helps you find lost things, and protects old people, pregnant women, and fishermen, reads like this: Glorious Saint Anthony, my friend and special protector, I come to you with full confidence in my present necessity. In your overflowing generosity you hear all those umo turn to you. Your influence before the throne of God is so effective that the Lord readily grants Jauors at your request, in spite of my unworthiness.