New Beginnings (12 page)

Join the Vet Volunteers on another animal adventure!

Masks

Chapter One

Y
ou'll make an awesome tiger, Sunita,” Maggie tells me as we spread our art materials across her kitchen table. It's Thursday afternoon, a week before Halloween. We've decided we'd better start making costumes for the big Halloween party at the Ambler Town Center.

“Your dark eyes will look so cool through the mask,” Maggie adds.

She's totally focusing on my costume now. Once Maggie sets her mind to a project, she locks in. Sometimes she reminds me of a bulldog—playful and fun, but once she sinks her teeth into something, it's awfully hard to shake her loose!

She studies me intently, working out my costume in her mind. “I've never seen a tiger with long black hair, though. Maybe we can make you an orange-striped hood to wear. Or a scarf out of tiger-striped fabric.” She smiles. “Being a tiger is just perfect for you.”

I'm surprised and pleased that Maggie sees me that way, but I'm not sure that being a tiger fits my personality. I think of tigers as fierce and strong. I'm more on the shy, timid side.

Being a tiger does fit with my number-one passion in life: cats. There are lots of other things I like—computers and computer games, ballet, reading (especially about animals), and collecting Ganesha statues. (Ganesha's a sweet Hindu god with a boy's body and an elephant's head.) But there's nothing I love more than cats—domestic cats, wild cats, large and small cats.

Another reason being a tiger fits me is that one home of the tiger is India, and that's where my ancestors came from. Both my mother and father are doctors who have lived in this country for many years, but we stay in touch with our Indian background.

There's a knock on the kitchen door, and Maggie opens it. David Hutchinson and Brenna Lake come in. Brenna has a shopping bag stuffed with even more art supplies. She begins adding them to the pile of materials we've already loaded onto the table.

“Are you going to be a horse for Halloween?” I ask David. He's wild about horses.

He shakes his head. “A vampire. I vant to suck your blood!”

“He can't figure out how to make a horse mask,” Brenna adds.

“I could too!” David objects. “I just think being a horse would be sort of geeky.”

“Mucho geeky,” Maggie agrees.

“What will you be?” I ask her.

“A vet, of course,” Maggie replies.

“You don't need a mask for that,” Brenna says.

“Yes, you do—a surgical mask. Gran has a ton of them in the supply cabinet,” Maggie says.

“That's too easy. No fair,” Brenna says. “I want to be something unusual—maybe a unicorn. Is that too babyish? I don't know. I still have to think about it.”

Dr. Mac comes in and runs her hand through her short white hair as she surveys all our stuff—colored paper, yarn, glue, markers, beads and buttons, paints, pipe cleaners, and stickers. “Wow!” she says. “What's the big project?”

Dr. Mac is Dr. J.J. MacKenzie, veterinarian extraordinaire. She lives in a big brick house with Maggie. Although Dr. Mac is Maggie's grandmother, she's so full of energy that she doesn't seem like a regular grandmother to me.

Dr. Mac and Maggie live with lots of animals. Besides their cat, Socrates, and their dog, Sherlock Holmes, they have a house full of animal patients. That's because Dr. Mac runs Dr. Mac's Place Veterinary Clinic right here, attached to her own house. She treats any animals that come through the door—pets, strays, and even wild animals. People who bring in strays or wild animals pay her what they can or sometimes nothing at all.

I volunteer at Dr. Mac's Place, along with Maggie, David, and Brenna. I love working at the clinic. In fact, my dream is to be a vet someday.

“We're making masks for the Halloween party at Town Center,” Maggie tells Dr. Mac. “Do you need us, Gran?”

Dr. Mac shakes her head. “So far it's been a slow morning. If something comes up, I'll holler,” she says as she leaves the kitchen.

“Guess who I saw this morning?” Brenna asks as she redoes the elastic at the end of her long brown braid. She continues without waiting for an answer. “As I was coming here, I saw the woman who just moved into that big old converted barn down the road.”

“Does she have any kids?” David asks.

Brenna shrugs her slim shoulders. “I didn't see any,” she answers. “My mom heard that she's some kind of artist.”

“That barn would be great for a studio,” I say. “It's so big, and the last owners put in skylights.”

“I saw the woman at the market,” Maggie says, brushing her red hair out of her eyes. “She was wearing all black, and she has wild gray hair that makes her look like a witch!”

“Oh, my gosh!” Brenna cries. “Listen to this! When I saw her, she was pulling a big black kettle out of the back of her station wagon!”

“Oh, man, she's a witch for sure!” David says, his eyes lighting up.

Brenna wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “Whoa—a witch! And just in time for Halloween! Cool!”

“I can picture her with the black kettle,” David says. “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!” He mimics a cackling witch voice, pretending to stir an imaginary potion.

As David does his witch act, a black-and-white tuxedo cat strolls in. It's my cat, Mittens. I brought her with me this morning, because at my house repairmen are fixing our front steps, and all the hammering was scaring her. Mittens jumps up onto the table, and I scratch her between the ears. “Hi, honey,” I murmur.

Before she was mine, Mittens was a stray. I first saw her one day when she came wandering around the clinic.

“Let's go check out the witch,” David says. “I've never seen a real one.”

“Oh, come on!” I say, laughing. “You don't really think she's a witch!”

“You never know,” David says in a low, creepy voice, his eyes darting mysteriously from side to side. “At Halloween, anything is possible.”

“David, you're so weird,” I tease.

“I think there might really be such things as witches,” Brenna says. “They can do good stuff, too.”

“Yeah,” Maggie agrees. “I mean, people have believed in them for so long. Could people be totally wrong?”

“Sure they could be wrong!” I argue. “People used to think the earth was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth, and all sorts of crazy things.”

“I heard a story once,” David begins in a spooky tone. “During the Salem witch trials, a woman was hanged for being a witch. But as they put the noose around her neck, she put this horrible curse on the people. She swore she would dance on their graves.

“Every year on the anniversary of her death, footprints appeared on the graves of anyone who had watched the witch get hanged. When people tried to wipe away the footprints, their hands were covered with blood.”

“Ew!” Brenna cries with a shiver.

“Creepy,” Maggie agrees.

I smile and roll my eyes. Spooky stuff like witches, ghosts, and ancient curses are fun at Halloween, but they're not for real. I'll take scientific explanations every time.

Mittens begins batting markers across the table. One of the markers rolls off and falls to the floor. As I bend to pick it up, Mittens starts chewing on a button. I pull it away from her. My cat has been known to eat strange things.

She pounces on my hand with her claws sheathed. “OK! OK! I get the message,” I say to her. I pull a length of thick orange yarn out of its skein and cut it off. I dangle the yarn in front of Mittens. “Here you go, Mittens—catch this!”

I reach high and jiggle the yarn. Mittens rises on her back legs and swings her paws at it.

“Go on! Catch it!” I coax, pulling the yarn just out of her reach. “You can get it, Mittens.” I lower the yarn just a bit so she can have the satisfaction of capturing it.

We laugh as Mittens pounces ferociously. She reminds me of a lioness, hunting out on the savanna. She snatches the whole piece of yarn out of my hand and then sits on it, protecting her prize.

“Good job!” we praise her, clapping. “Way to go!”

I stroke my cat's silky fur. I'd wanted a cat for so long before my mother finally gave in. At first, she had a million excuses—cats shed, cats tear up the furniture, and so on. When she finally let me have Mittens, it was the happiest day of my life.

I named my cat Mittens because she looks like she's wearing two little white mittens on her front paws.

I've never met a more affectionate cat. She's always nuzzling me and giving me scratchy little love-kiss licks. I return those with a kiss on her furry forehead.

David cuts a piece of white cardboard into the shape of a face. He cuts out the eyeholes, then a slit for the mouth. “Should I draw the fangs or make them with clay?” he wonders aloud.

Suddenly there's a loud bang from outside, as if something heavy has just fallen. Some animal makes a screechy, screaming sound. The howl becomes more high-pitched.

“That is definitely a cat!” I say—a very upset, angry, threatening cat.

We jump up and rush to the door. It sounds like a cat fight, but I can hear only one cat screaming. I get to the door first and pull it open, but before I can step out, Maggie grabs my shoulder, holding me back. “Look out!” she cries as a black blur streaks by my feet.

Collect All the Vet Volunteers Books

Fight for Life

Homeless

Trickster

Manatee Blues

Say Good-bye

Storm Rescue

Teacher's Pet

Trapped

Fear of Falling

Time to Fly

Masks

End of the Race

New Beginnings

Acting Out