The Queen of Cool (7 page)

I am sitting in the café with my boys, Kenji, Mike Dutko, and Sid. Kenji is sitting next to me. He smells like lemon.

I want to be close to someone. I put my arm around Kenji. He slides in closer to me.

“So, how was the internship?” Sid asks. “Didn’t that start today?”

I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to say that I wore the wrong shoes, stepped in a pile of shit, got lost trying to find the zoo exit.

“It was like being exiled to the Siberia of social rejects,” I say. “Mostly, so far, I’ve seen monkeys rub themselves.”

“Hot,” Mike Dutko says.

“Not so much,” I say.

“I can’t believe you haven’t quit yet,” Kenji says as he rubs my leg under the table.

“Yeah,” Mike Dutko says, agreeing with Kenji as always.

“I think that’s too bad,” Sid says. “I thought it’d be different.”

“Well, it’s not,” I say.

But it is different. And I don’t think I like that.

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that all my friends might be right.

Maybe this internship
is
a bad idea.

“Blue Team, today we’re on elephant duty,” Tiny says, joining us. Clearly, Tiny has assigned herself to be our team leader.

Toby, the animal services guy, has already moved the elephants inside so that it’s safe for us to walk around the pens. We undo the padlock and begin bringing out the hay.

“Elephants are intelligent mammals,” Toby explains. “One of our most important responsibilities here at the zoo is animal enrichment. That means we come up with new ways to keep them stimulated.”

“How do you keep an elephant stimulated?” I say.

Tiny laughs. “Ew! That sounds dirty,” she says.

“Yeah! I’m perverted,” I say, and I laugh along with her.

“What’s your name?” Toby asks.

“Libby.”

“Libby, this is serious business. These animals are wild animals, and I expect you to be serious when you are working.”

“Okay. I got it.”

Sheldon says something.

“What?” I say, throwing my hands around like fake sign language. “I can’t hear you.”

Sheldon stares at me blankly.

“He said that we have to make sure that the mud pit is muddy enough,” Tiny translates. “They love mud.”

“That’s correct,” Toby says. “Good work, Sheldon and Tina. They also like bark. We need to make sure the bark is rough enough. That is something we check every day.”

“How does Sheldon know that?” I ask.

“Duh, it’s the example in the handbook they gave us at orientation,” Tiny says.

“It’s important that you read the handbook. That way you’ll know to do things properly and safely,” Toby says. Then he leaves us alone with a list of instructions.

Tiny shuffles through the hay toward Sheldon and begins to help as he hands me the field notebook. He doesn’t have to say anything that I can’t hear. I know what it means. It means stay out of the way, take down notations of what we’ve done, and watch the elephants and see what they do while Toby exercises them in their individual pens.

I know my place.

I’m the Blue Team pencil pusher.

This time, I try not to fall behind. I make an effort to pay attention. I note everything and I write fast. I list all the fruits and veggies that are in the food barrel. I even note how the elephants behave as Toby runs them through their muscle exercises.

Tiny and Sheldon seem to have all the hard stuff under control, the actual cleaning of the pens and the portioning out of the bale of hay. It’s probably better this way. There might be big elephant turds everywhere, and I don’t want to get dirty.

Toby keeps an eye on us from the pen he’s in as he goes about his business. Occasionally he comes over to give us an additional duty to perform or to check on our progress.

“This place is a real shit hole,” I say.

“You know what Toby said?” Sheldon says softly. “Elephants like to roam, and it’s too small in the pens for them. So every other morning, they get walked once around the zoo.”

“Hey, Toby!” Tiny yells out. Big voice. Little girl. “Can we come see the elephants roam one morning?”

How can Tiny hear Sheldon from where she is on the other side of the pen? I can barely hear him and he’s working right next to me. Maybe because she got gypped in her body, she’s got like bionic ears or something.

“Let’s see how good a job you do,” Toby says. “Now just concentrate on getting those pens ready so I can move the elephants back in there.”

Mom and Dad come out of the kitchen when they hear me walking down the hallway.

“Libby, where are you going?” Mom asks.

“Out,” I say. I indicate my coat. “Duh.”

“We need to talk to you,” Dad says. “We need to have a family meeting.”

“What is it?” I say.

“It’s going to be a pretty low-key Christmas this year,” Dad says.

“Okay, whatever,” I say, and start to head out the door, my hand extended, waiting for the slap and slip of green. Only this time, Dad puts his hand into mine and looks at me.

“Things are going to be different around here,” he says, “because I’ve quit my job.”

He’s obviously excited, and Mom is obviously not. She bites her lip and looks at the floor.

“Okay,” I say, “but I’m still going out.”

“Good, I’m glad you’re all right with it,” Dad says.

Then he heads back down the hall, kind of skipping. Mom turns her attention back to me, following me down the hallway to the front door.

“So, as Dad was saying, Christmas is going to be low-key. Pick one gift you really want. Something that’s not
too
expensive,” she says. “After all, the holidays aren’t about presents. They’re about us all being together, right?”

“Yeah, well, I already have plans during break, like, every day,” I say.

Before she can respond, I’m out the door.

It’s open mic night at the café, and Sid has signed up to play a song. We watch him from our table in the back as he mingles with the other musicians.

“I don’t know why he always wears that sorry-ass green hoodie. And look, he cut the label off his jeans. Why?” Kenji says.

“I don’t think he likes brands,” I say. “Didn’t he say that once?”

“Why does he always have to be so different?” Kenji says, then drains his cup of coffee. “Refill.”

Kenji slides over to the coffee bar. On the way, he stops by the table of musicians where Sid is engaged in a serious conversation. Kenji slaps Sid on the back and slips himself between Sid and the guy he’s talking to.

“Speaking of brands,” Perla says, pushing the ice around in her Italian soda with a long spoon, “I want to get one of those T-shirts that has every single cool brand on it, like, in a pattern. Everybody wants it. I told my mom that’s what I wanted for Christmas. It’s, like, crazy expensive. You should get one too, Libby — then we can match. My dad told me it’s going to be in the Paramount Studio Christmas gift bags.”

“I don’t want it,” I say.

“Of course you do,” Perla says. “It’s
ironic.
”

“I don’t want to match,” I say, even though we are wearing the exact same outfit this evening. Baby pink T-shirts, arm warmers, low-slung button-up jeans, and boots.

I am scattering straw down in the petting zoo. The pen is full of children and sheep and goats. One of the animal services guys is playing with a goat by bumping his forehead with it. The goat likes it. That’s how they play; they bonk each other’s heads.

I eye Sheldon, who is wearing another fashion disaster (high-waisted jeans, acid wash, too short, no belt, makes his butt look like a woman’s), and I realize that he has said exactly three sentences to me today.

All this not talking is driving me crazy. The silence may actually kill me.

I stop with the working and start with the talking.

“So, what’s your deal?” I ask Sheldon.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“For starters, you don’t go to our school,” I say. “Where do you go?”

“I go to the Science Magnet,” he says.

“Ew. Public school? Why?”

“I want to be an exobiologist.”

“Exobiology?” I say. “Wha?”

“It’s the study of alien life,” he says.

“What does that mean?” I laugh.

Sheldon looks at me like I’m stupid.

“I mean, sorry, but there are no aliens.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Sheldon says. “A lot of scientists think that life is rare. That Earth is rare. But I know there is more life out there. We can’t be alone.”

His face turns upward. My eyes follow his, but there is nothing up there to see but the smog that makes the sky look paper white today.

“Why do you work at the zoo, then?” I ask. “If you want to be an astronaut, or whatever, why don’t you work at the Griffith Park Observatory?”

“They don’t have internships,” Sheldon says.

“Well, how about that NASA place?” I suggest.

“I don’t do well at interviews,” he says.

“You just need to stop whispering and speak up,” I say. But even after it comes out of my mouth, I realize that it’s kind of mean.

“The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is
very competitive,
” Sheldon says. His hand movements become more animated as he tries to stress this point to me.

“But how could you not get in?” I ask. “Aren’t you like a genius?”

He turns his usual shade of red as his blush creeps up all the way from his neck to his ears.

“Uh,” he continues, ignoring my compliment, “so as an exobiologist, I want to see how animals adapt and are different on this planet so I can think about how they might live on other planets. I get an opportunity to do that here at the zoo.”

Sheldon looks at his now still hands. The red in his face has retreated to a pale white. I bet he uses a lot of sunscreen on that sensitive skin of his. He seems relieved when Tiny appears so that he can change the subject.

“Tina, there’s going to be a lunar eclipse at the end of the month,” he says.

“Did you know you can go up to the observatory and they let you look through the big telescope?” Tiny says. “It’s amazing. You can see the ice caps on Mars and the rings on Saturn.”

“You don’t need the observatory for that,” Sheldon says. “I can see those things with my telescope at home.”

I laugh. “Most boys have a telescope because they are perverts,” I say. “Kenji totally told his parents he wanted to
stargaze,
but he really wanted a view of the girl who stars on that WB show who lives across the street from him. She walks around naked in her house all the time.”

“N-n-n-o, I have a telescope because I want to be an
exobiologist
and I like to observe the night sky and — and dream about what might be out there,” he stammers. He’s turning all red again. “And I plan on being on one of the Mars teams one day.”

Hey, Sheldon, I think. Try figuring out how to live on THIS planet.