Gone, Gone, Gone(2)

Mom always tried to open windows because of the smell, but I’d stop her because I was afraid they would escape. Every day I breathe in feathers and dander and urine so they will not escape.

My mother sometimes curls her hand into a loose fist and presses her knuckles against my cheek. When she does, I smell her lotion, always lemongrass. Todd will do something similar, but it feels different, more urgent, when he does.

The animals. They were with me when I fell asleep last night. I didn’t notice I was sleeping in my shoes, and I didn’t notice when they left.

This is why I need more sleep. This is how things slip through my fingers.

My head is spinning with fourteen names I didn’t protect.

“We’ll find them, Craig,” Mom says, with a hand on the back of my head. “They were probably just scared from the noise. They’ll come back.”

“They should have stayed in the basement,” I whisper. “Why did they run away?”

Why were a few open doors enough incentive for them to leave?

I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I suck.

“We’ll put up posters, Craig, okay?” Mom says. Like she doesn’t have enough to worry about and people to call— insurance companies, someone to fix the window, and her mother to assure her that being this close to D.C. really doesn’t mean we’re going to die. It’s been thirteen months, almost, since the terrorist attacks, and we’re still convinced that any mishap means someone will steer a plane into one of our buildings.

We don’t say that out loud.

Usually this time in the morning, I take all the different kinds of food and I fill all the bowls. They come running, tripping over themselves, rubbing against me, nipping my face and my hands like I am the food, like I just poured myself into a bowl and offered myself to them. Then I clean the litter boxes and the cages and take the dogs out for a walk. I can do this all really, really quickly, after a year of practice.

Mom helps, usually, and sometimes I hear her counting under her breath, or staring at one of the animals, trying to figure out if one is new—sometimes yes, sometimes no.

The deal Mom and I have is no new animals. The deal is I don’t have to give them away, I don’t have to see a therapist, but I can’t have any more animals. I don’t want a therapist because therapists are stupid, and I am not crazy.

And the truth is it’s not my fault. The animals find me. A kitten behind a Dumpster, a rabbit the girl at school can’t keep. A dog too old for anyone to want. I just hope they find me again now that they’re gone.

Part of the deal was also that Mom got to name a few of the newer ones, which is how I ended up with a few with really girly names.

But I love them. I tell them all the time. I’ll pick Hail up and cuddle him to my face in that way that makes his ears get all twitchy. I’ll make loose fists and hold them up to Marigold and Jupiter’s cheeks. They’ll lick my knuckles. “I love you,” I tell them. It’s always been really easy for me to say. I’ve never been one of those people who can’t say it.

It’s October 4th. Just starting to get cold, but it gets cold fast around here.

God, I hope they’re okay.

I’m up way too early now that I don’t have to feed the animals, but I don’t know what else to do but get dressed and get ready for school. It takes like two minutes, and now what?

A year ago, back when it was still 2001 . . .

Back when we still clung . . .

Back when I slept upstairs . . .

There was a boy.

A very, very, very important boy.

Now . . .

There’s Lio.

Lio. I knew how it was spelled before I ever heard it out loud. It sounds normal, like Leo, but it looks so special. I love that.

I started talking to Lio back in June. I’m this thing for my school called an ambassador, which basically means I get good grades and I don’t smoke, so they give out my email and a little bit about me to incoming students so I can gush about how cool this place is or something like that.

He sent me a message. He said he’s about to move here, he’s going to be at my school, we’re the same age, and this is so creepy stalker, but you like Jefferson Airplane and I like Jefferson Airplane too, so cool, do you think we could IM sometime?

So he did and we are and I do and we did.

Lio is, to sum him up quickly, a koala. I realized that pretty early on.

He gets good grades, but he smokes, so he could never be an ambassador. There are a few reasons it’s really, really stupid for Lio to smoke, but that doesn’t seem to stop him. I don’t know him well enough to admit that it scares me to death. And really, it seems like everything scares me to death now, so I’ve learned to shut up about it.

He’s not a boy to me, not yet, because boy implies some kind of intimacy, but Lio is a boy in the natural sense of the word, at least I assume so, since I’ve never seen him with his clothes off and barely with his coat off, to be honest. Though I can imagine. And sometimes I do. Oh, God.

He wears a lot of hats. That’s how we met for real, once his family moved here. I thought he’d come looking for me as soon as school started, but I couldn’t find him anywhere, which was immediately a shame, because I was beginning to get sick of eating my lunch alone every day.

Then Ms. Hoole made both of us take our hats off in honors precalculus last month, on the third day of school.