Velveteen (5 page)

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 I dropped Ben Nicholas by the leg and he cried out before hopping 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.

Next, she told me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue and say, “Ahhh.”

Finally, 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. That’s where the blood came from.” I heard him pick up his keys and jangle them as he left, slamming the door and leaving a trail of burnt metal smell 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.” And 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.

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 to 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 which made me be able to smell it.

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.

Only once did Miss Ronica ask me to come inside. I was lying beneath the slide, holding Ben Nicholas to my aching stomach and digging a small hole in the dirt with the same stick from yesterday, just in case I needed to be sick. The ache in my heel was nearly unbearable by then and my head was pounding, too.

“It’s too hot out there, Cassie. I don’t want you to overheat.”

“I’m in the shade.”

“Cassie—”

“I’m fine.”

Silence. Then: “Suit yourself. I don’t know why you always have to be so stubborn.”

But I wasn’t being stubborn. I wasn’t not trying harder, either, like she said I should. I was freezing to death.

And so was Ben Nicholas.

Most of the memories from that day onward are broken, the pieces scattered like torn up paper. As hard as I try to fit them together, I can’t. Some of them have gone missing. The rest don’t seem to fit very well with each other. Still, I hold onto them. I don’t want to

lose

forget something important.

“Mama?”

I tried to shift my legs but couldn’t move them. They felt heavy and hot. My whole body did.

“It’s me, honey.” She smiled down and wiped the hair from my eyes with her fingers.

I suddenly had this strange need to bite them, to bite her. I wanted to scratch and yell. But I felt so heavy.

“I’m home, sweetie. I left as soon as Veronica called. I’m sorry it took so long.”

“Miss Ronica?”

“I sent her home. She said you were throwing up earlier. You’re dehydrated. You got too much sun today.”

I struggled once more to sit up and then realized why I couldn’t, which was because Shinji was lying on my legs. Mom pushed him off the bed, but he hopped right back up again and laid down next to me.

“Where’s Ben Nicholas?” I asked.

“Outside, in his cage. Veronica put him away. She said you were playing with him in the yard all morning.” She shook her head. “You’re going to make him sick doing that, Cassie. Too much sun and too many treats. He needs some alone-time too, honey.”

“We weren’t playing.”

She didn’t hear me. “Why didn’t you come inside after Veronica told you to? You should have listened to her. It’s not good for you to be outside in the heat for so long.”

“She only told me once.”

“She shouldn’t have to ask more than that.”

The smell of my sickness was making my head swim, making my stomach clench. But even with that filling my nose, I noticed a different smell coming off Mama now, sickly sweet and salty at the same time. She was sick now too, except it was a different sickness than mine and Ben Nicholas’s.

“Drink this,” she told me. A straw poked out through the top of the bottle in her hand. Inside was a blue liquid, and the salty sweet odor made me gag. “You’re dehydrated and need to replace the fluids you lost, honey.”

But I wasn’t dehydrated, like she said. I had the rabies. I knew this even though Miss Ronica hadn’t said anything. She’d been right about the bat all along, and now I was sick and somehow Ben Nicholas had it too, because he’d gotten bitten on the foot, just like me.

“Come on, baby. I want you to finish this whole bottle.”

My throat felt thick and tight, and I was sure if I tried to drink anything, I’d choke. Luckily, the phone rang just then, and Mama got up to answer it.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a little while, honey.”

“Okay.”

I heard her run down the hall, taking the smell of her sickness with her and leaving me drowning in mine.

I took the bottle to the bathroom and dumped most of it down the sink.

On the way back, I could hear her in the kitchen asking, over and over again, who it was calling. “Is anybody there? Hello? Ramon? Is that you? Who’s there?”

After a couple minutes, the house was quiet again.

The next day, the day before Ben Nicholas died, Mama and Daddy decided we should go to the shore as a family. I could smell the unhappiness between them like a dark rain cloud filled with sharp electricity, except instead of lightning and thunder, this cloud was filled with fear and anger.

“I need a moment at work first,” Daddy said, biting his lip. “Then it’s off to Islip Beach.”

Of course, Mama didn’t want to go at all. She said the last thing I needed after yesterday was more sun, which led to another argument between them. Daddy kept telling her not to baby me, and Mama kept telling him as my mother it was her right. He argued that I’d finished two whole big bottles last night (
I hadn’t
) and was fine. He didn’t have to say it, but it was obvious he thought Mama was overreacting again.

He slid a palm across my forehead and said, “She’s good, Lyssa. Cass, you want to go to the beach, don’t you? Of course you do.”

I was feeling weak, but I knew if I told the truth about dumping the drink down the sink, I’d get in trouble, so I didn’t. Besides, I did want to get away from the house. It felt like the sickness had settled in here. Maybe if we could just get away for a few hours, then it would go away. So I told them yes, I wanted to go. In the least, we’d get to spend the day together as a family.

The phone kept ringing as we got ready, and I became aware that something was happening outside, something not normal. When I checked out the window, I saw a whole bunch of strange people standing out on the street, shouting and waving their arms. And when I asked about them, Daddy’s face went hard and he pulled me away and closed the curtains and warned me to stay away, to not let them see me. He said we couldn’t go outside, not except if it was to go into the backyard only, which I wasn’t much in the mood to do since Ben Nicholas’s cage smelled even worse by then and I felt like it was all my fault he was sick.

When I mentioned his name to Daddy, he said I couldn’t bring Ben Nicholas, even though I hadn’t actually asked about that specifically. “The beach isn’t a good place for a rabbit,” he said. “But I bet you Shinji would love to go. Dogs love the beach. We’ll bring a tennis ball and play catch.”

I knew I should say something to my parents about Ben Nicholas’s and my sickness, but I knew it was already too late because of what Miss Ronica said about there being no cure once we started getting sick. Also, I guess it still didn’t seem real. I mean, I knew about death from my little baby brother dying, but it still didn’t seem like it could happen to me.

I slept most of the way there in the car and don’t remember much of the ride except when Mama pointed out to Daddy the people who were working on the sides of the road. They looked like dead people to me, and I said so. Mama turned around and gave me a frown. She must’ve thought I was asleep, but I wasn’t. I lifted my head and stared at them as we passed, my curiosity overcoming my sleepiness, but as soon as they were out of sight, I laid back down in the back seat again and drifted off.

I don’t remember the security gate at Laroda Island, where Mama and Daddy work, or even getting out of the car after we got to Islip Beach. I faintly remember walking down to the water’s edge and Shinji running and snapping at the waves. Also, I definitely do remember going swimming with my bubble ring. The ocean water felt very good on my itchy skin, cool and wet and oily and waking me up a bit. At least until something happened inside of my head, like a click or a timer going off or something, and suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere near the water no more. Not even just my toes touching it.

I got out and stretched out on the sand to one side of where Mama and Daddy were sitting, staring at the sky with their sunglasses on and the flies buzzing around their knees. The ocean hadn’t been able to wash away the smell of my sickness, and the sun only made it stronger, more rotten. The smell coming from Mama was even worse.

Coming back home in the car, I buried my nose in Shinji’s wet fur. He had a nice smell to him, a little like cinnamon and salt water, and he laid real still so I could sleep. He was always a good dog, and it made me sad when Mama didn’t take to him the way I took to Ben Nicholas.

The last thing I remember about that day is waking up in the middle of the night seeing Mama put a new bandage on my heel. She didn’t say a word, just seemed real sad. I knew then that Miss Ronica had finally gotten the call and had told Mama what had happened a couple days before. And that’s when it really finally did hit me that I was dying, and it made me sad because I knew how much Mama would cry when I did.