Zoo (5 page)

Sometimes, though, Janice made me feel sad
for her, like when she told me about how her drug habit started.
She seemed genuinely ashamed as she told me all about it. “My
parents were always gone. Dad was overseas on business, and Mom was
off to California for weeks at a time. They left me with a Nanny,
but she was probably 150 and went to sleep at 6:30 every night. At
first, I’d sneak out and go dancing with some of my friends—just
dancing. But it didn’t take long for us to start getting approached
by older guys, offering up a hit of this or that. We’d do it to get
a buzz.”

She continued on while absently messing with
her cuticles. “It only took a couple of weeks to get hooked. I
started stealing jewelry out of my mom’s lingerie drawer and
selling it for cocaine. I stole money from my Dad’s safe. I even
slept with a guy once for drugs. I was a total mess.” A lone tear
rolled down her cheek and stopped at the corner of her mouth. She
violently brushed it away with the back of her hand like she was
brushing away the bad memories of her short life. My heart broke
for her.

“
I can’t even believe that
was me. In a way, I’m grateful to be here. I didn’t even have to go
through withdrawal. It’s like they took care of all that. They
fixed me or something.” Janice gave me a half smile.

She made me glad that I never got into
drugs. I enjoyed my average social status and would have done a lot
of things to be more popular, but there were some lines I would
never cross. It pained me that she had to live that life.

“
Do you miss your parents
or your old life at all?” I asked.

“
No,” she admitted. I
wasn’t shocked by her answer. “There’s nothing to miss. I didn’t
know my parents, and like I said, I was a total mess. What about
you?”

“
Yeah, I miss everything
about my life. I miss my parents, my friends, my car, my room, and
even my school. And I miss small things like a hot shower, a real
toilet, a hairbrush, soda, and chips. Oh and chocolate! Man, I miss
chocolate!” My eyes started to water at that point, not over the
chocolate, but over all of it. I wanted it back and it would never
happen. Even if I broke out of the enclosure, I couldn’t go back. I
didn’t own a time machine.

“
You know, I had nice
things, but at the end of the day that’s not what matters,” she
said, and I knew she was right. “You’re lucky you have things to
miss. You’re lucky you had great parents and good
friends.”

“
I know, but it makes it
that much harder to be here, Janice,” I sadly admitted.

Silence passed between us for a few minutes,
as we both thought about our past lives. It was like a bad
chic-flick movie with all the crying and sharing. We just needed to
eat some ice cream and badmouth our old boyfriends. Our fire was
dying down, and I was getting tired so I excused myself, happy to
remove myself from the sob-fest. “Going to call it a night. See ya
in the morning,” I told Janice as I stood to leave.

Little did I know what the next morning
would actually bring . . .

HELLOOOO COWBOY!

Straight across from our enclosure was
another dome. We could only see one of its enclosures—well, kind
of. From the time I had arrived at the zoo, it had been closed. The
glass was an opaque shade of blue. Bright orange lettering flashed
across the front of the enclosure that said, “New Exhibit Coming
Soon!” When I got up that morning, however, it was open. The glass
was clear, and I could see a dusty, western landscape. There were
two small, wooden buildings with tiny porches, a horse tied to a
post beside a water trough, two cows fenced off toward the back,
some cacti, a few tumble weeds that would blow past every once in a
while, and the hottest guy I’ve ever seen in my life.

I figured he must be a little older than me,
but no more than 21. He was sitting on the porch of one of the
buildings with his head resting against the wall. He had gorgeous
light brown hair that fell over his eyes. His clothing was typical
of a cowboy: tight jeans, a pale blue button-up shirt, and a cowboy
hat that was lying beside him.

I drifted toward him; sure I was still
asleep and dreaming. I realized I was awake when I smacked my head
against our enclosure’s glass. The new guy saw my smooth moves and
looked up at me with a grin. Even though he was about 20 to 30 feet
away from me, I could tell his eyes were a piercing blue. If I
could see the color of his eyes, there was no doubt he could see
the scarlet shade of my face.

He didn’t laugh at me. He
casually pushed his hair out of his face and placed the hat upon
his head. Then he smiled and tipped the brim of his cowboy hat. My
knees went weak, and all I could think to do at the time was
curtsey.
OMG!
I
actually curtsied. It was so embarrassing.

“
What are you doing?”
Janice called from somewhere behind me.

“
Making an ass of myself.”
I answered when I turned around to find her watching me.

She laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. Pretty
cute,” she said as she glanced around me to get a good look at our
new neighbor. “Guess that’s why you’re so red.”

“
Hey there cowboy!” Janice
hollered across to him, while she waved and gave her best
smile.

“
Stop it,” I said as I
yanked her by the hand and dragged her away from the glass
wall.

“
What’s wrong with you?”
she giggled all the way over to the vegetable garden, where I
stopped and released my hold on her. “Don’t worry. It’s not like I
can actually do anything, but you can’t stop me from having a
little fun. I’ve been so bored lately.”

“
Whatever. Help me weed,
okay?” I tried to find something to distract her from the new guy.
Unfortunately, I quickly found out that weeding was probably not
the best answer, because she was unintentionally bending over and
giving him the best possible view the whole time we worked. Thank
goodness her dress was long enough to cover her butt, because we’ve
still never been given underwear with better coverage.

Fortunately, the park opened and people
flooded the pathways, which prompted Janice to get bored and move
on with her day. I stayed near the front of our enclosure and sat
off to the side near Auntie Josephine’s section of the dome. Her
singing was out of tune, but she was so passionate when she sang,
it made you want to like it. I listened to the melody as I watched
the new guy explore his enclosure. He was looking for a way out,
much like I had.

Sometime after lunch, the
cowboy gave up looking for a door. He went into one of the wooden
structures and came out again with a bowl of stew and a glass of
water.
Seriously?

I enviously watched him eat spoonful after
spoonful of his chunky stew, as he sat on the shallow porch. When
he was finished, he left his bowl on the ground and walked over to
his new horse and rubbed her nose. He pulled a few carrots out of
his pocket and fed her a snack before giving her a good brushing.
Every move he made was so natural for him. There was no doubt in my
mind that he was actually from the Wild West or the
countryside.

Outside the cowboy’s enclosure, the public
crowded around the new exhibit. They were consumed with him. Much
to my relief, all eyes were on him instead of us that day.

NICE TO MEET YOU

The morning following the cowboy’s arrival,
I woke up early. The zoo was not yet open, and Janice was still
fast asleep in her hut. The sun had not made its appearance thus
far, but I could tell it was getting close by the subtle change of
colors in the sky. Oranges and pinks were fighting the night’s dark
hues away.

I quietly pushed through the jungle foliage
and made my way over to the waterfall for a quick shower. Before
leaving the fresh water source, I filled my animal skin with
drinking water for the morning. It took about six or seven weeks,
but I finally got over the “gross factor” of the container. I
wasn’t really sure how long I’d been held captive at that
point.

The sun was up by the time I reached the
front of the dome, and I could faintly hear the chirping of an
unusual-looking bird. It was perched on the railing just outside of
our enclosure. It was brown with a few orange feathers on the
wings, and it had an orange beak with a strange hook at the end of
it. I’d never seen a bird like that before.

I sat down on the hard earth and pressed my
ear up against the cool glass to get a better listen. The bird was
serenading me with a pleasant melody. I think I smiled for the
first time since I’d been imprisoned in the People’s Past
Anthropological Center.

Eventually, the bird flitted off to sing its
song for someone else. As I pulled my face away from the glass, I
noticed the cowboy watching me from his enclosure. He tipped his
head at me, and like before, touched the brim of his hat as he
approached the glass wall. I could feel my cheeks heating up, but I
managed to nod back.

I held my breath, as I waited for what would
happen next. I was nervous, which was completely ridiculous since
there were two glass domes and at least 20 feet of open space
between us. I had always been shy around boys though. It was a
nervous reaction that was very different from my everyday, somewhat
sarcastic and determined attitude. Cute boys brought out the pink
ribbon and bubblegum in me. I couldn’t help it.

The cowboy sat down across
from me with his long legs stretched out. He unscrewed the top off
of his canteen and poured some of the water onto the ground next to
him. My mind started spinning.
What a
strange thing to do
, I thought.

He swirled his index
finger in circles, as he mixed the water and the soil until they
met with his approval. Then he brought his finger up to the glass
in front of him. He wrote,
Hello
.

And then, I smiled for the second time since
I’d been imprisoned.

I hurriedly followed his
lead and emptied some of the water from my animal skin pouch onto
the ground. I mixed them until I got a muddy paste and replied to
the handsome cowboy with,
iH
. Oops. I needed to write in
reverse for him to be able to read it correctly. I rubbed out
the
i
and moved
it to the other side of the
H
so that the message then read
Hi
.

He wrote back
again.
Name?

Emma. U?

I watched as his mouth
formed around the syllables of my name. I wished I could hear his
voice as he said my name. As I anxiously awaited him to mix more
water with dirt, I tried to guess what his name
was
.
Hmmm . . .
Was it Wyatt or maybe Daniel? He kind of looked like a
Sean.

James Wilder

Yes. That was better. He absolutely looked
like a James.

He then wrote,
Time?

Did he mean when was I
born or when did I die? I decided that he was asking about when I
was taken. I wrote back,
2013.
U?

He looked at me for a
moment with a confused expression. His forehead was scrunched up
and his eyebrows were pushed close together. Maybe it was because
my surroundings didn’t match what he imagined my era to look like,
which they definitely did not. He finally wrote back,
1876
. Then he scooted
over a little to his left to get some more empty space to write on.
He lifted his finger to the glass and smudged the mud on the
surface forming the question,
How?

Did they even have cars
back then? He wasn’t going to have a clue what I meant by a car
accident, but I wrote it anyway.
Car
Accident

His demise was similar.
Horses were the vehicles of the Wild West, right? He wrote,
Driving cattle. Thrown from horse. Broken
back.

“
Hey, what are you doing?
Are you okay?” Janice called from somewhere behind me.

James’ eyes shifted over my right shoulder,
and I momentarily hated Janice for taking his attention away from
me once again.

Before she got too close, I rubbed out my
messages to James and splashed some water on them to wash away any
traces. He did the same on his side, perhaps guessing from my
reaction to Janice’s approach that I didn’t want her knowing we
could communicate without screaming at each other through the
glass.

“
Hey, Emma. What’s going
on?” She looked down at me and then across at James.

“
Nothing. Why?”

“
Geez. You on your period
or something?”

I jumped up from the ground to face her.
“No! Can’t I get a little privacy around here?” The constant eyes
on me, even Janice’s, overwhelmed me.

Janice looked hurt by my words and said,
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I just saw you
staring at the glass. I was coming to check on you. I thought maybe
you were upset or something. Were you two writing on the
glass?”

“
Oh. Thanks.” I was thrown
off by her actually caring about me and instantly regretted my
harsh words. I knew that I should apologize, but I still wasn’t
going to tell her anything I learned about James, especially his
name. That was for me alone. “Sorry for the outburst. Guess I’m
feeling a little tense. Um. Yeah, he made some mud and wrote on the
glass. Smart, right?” I motioned over my shoulder.

“
Yeah, sure.” Janice
didn’t seem very impressed. “Well, since you’re okay, I guess I’m
going to go and get ready for the show today. Going to milk Betsy
or something equally entertaining.”