As we walked, Anya told me the news about the Family Farm creatures. For example, there was now a box where kids could write notes to the farm animals, plus a box of zoo stationery and minipencils. I was supposed to encourage patrons to write to their favorite goat, pig, llama, whatever. Robespierre, one of the pygmy goats, had had a hoof infection that was being treated, so I had to keep an eye out and inform someone if I noticed a limp or anything else unusual. The pig named Lizzie Borden was in a different pen than she used to be.1 And so on.
I pinned on my “Ask me” button and said goodbye to Anya. The next hour I spent patting the goats and the pig, writing a note to Robespierre and pretty much killing time until a huge after-school group came into the Family Farm yelling and annoying the llamas. The kids were pelting me with questions and then not listening to the answers, and while I was busy with them this dad arrived with a toddler. The dad seemed kinda drunk, but I didn’t pay him any attention because the school group was milling around and jostling each other to pet Lizzie Borden.
In the Family Farm area, the animals live in pens. The fences are low—you can reach right over them. While I was at the other end of the enclosure, surrounded by after-schoolers, this drunk dad lifted his two-year-old and stuck her on Robespierre’s back for a ride. Robespierre bucked. The little girl fell off.
All that happened in about two seconds. “Excuse me,” I said to the crowd of six-year-olds around the pig, and ran over to the goat pen. The toddler stood up, whimpering. She didn’t look hurt. Her dad had forgotten about her because he was distracted trying to get food out of the dispenser, which is kind of hard to use, especially if you’re drunk. Robespierre’s infected foot must have hurt him, and he must have been scared, because he started chasing the toddler with his little pygmy horns lowered. The girl started running and screaming, and the drunk dad turned around. I leaped the fence, grabbed Robespierre by the neck and yelled at the dad to jump in and get his toddler.
He fell over as he was climbing in, cursing all the while, and stopped to brush the straw off his body before he picked up his crying kid. We all climbed out of the pen, and as we got our feet on the ground, he said, “You should have that thing put down, it’s dangerous.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“It’s not friendly. You saw that. It was chasing my kid!” he argued.
“Zoo guests aren’t supposed to get in with the animals,” I told him. “That’s common knowledge. And I saw you put your kid on his back. What were you thinking? He’s a tiny pygmy goat and his foot is infected. You hurt him.”
“You!” The dad stuck his finger in my face and shook it. “You were not doing your job, which is to keep this family area safe and keep control of the animals!”
“I was too doing my job,” I cried. “You weren’t doing your job. You shouldn’t be drunk and failing to watch your daughter. You shouldn’t be sticking a little kid inside a pen.”
“How old are you?” the man yelled. “How dare you talk to me like that?”
“You have no respect for the animals that live here,” I yelled back. “You have no respect for your own kid and her safety. What kind of person does such a thing?”
“Your job is to watch the kids and keep the area safe!”
“You smell like beer!” I shouted. “I hope you’re not driving your kid home.”
I turned in disgust away from him—and then I saw Anya angrily striding toward us.
She gave me a harsh glare. “Sir, I’m the supervisor here. Is there any way I can assist you?” Her voice was exceedingly calm and polite.
“This worker is belligerent,” he said, scooping up his crying daughter. “I asked for help with the feed machines and she started harassing me and my child.”
“That’s not true!” I said—but Anya held her hand up to silence me.
“I’m so sorry you had a negative experience here at the Woodland Park Zoo,” she said soothingly. “Here.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out a red lollipop. “Is it okay for her to have this?”
The man nodded and the toddler stuck out her hand for the candy.
“I apologize for the behavior of our intern here,” Anya continued. “Please rest assured we will take the matter seriously.”
“I want Mommy,” said the toddler, sniffling.
Anya smiled. “Can I help you locate the rest of your family? Are they here at the zoo?”
“Yeah, that would be great, actually,” said the man, wiping his forehead. “I have no idea where they got to.”
Anya made an announcement over the zoo loudspeakers, which located the guy’s wife, who had been over at the penguin exhibit with their older children.
As soon as they were gone and someone else arrived to wear the “Ask me” button at the Family Farm, Anya walked me back to her office. There, she demanded an explanation, but when I gave one, she didn’t seem to listen to it. “You told him he smelled like beer, Ruby,” she reprimanded. “There is no situation in which commenting on someone’s smell is an appropriate response.”
“But he–”
“No situation,” she repeated.
Then I had to sit through a long lecture on how to treat zoo guests.
Then more lecture on how it was imperative that I keep an eye on the whole area even when there were school groups present.
Then guilt over how the zoo would now have to deal with news reporters questioning them and writing headlines like “Baby Mauled by Cranky Pygmy Goat.”
And after all that, Anya fired me for negligence and abusive behavior toward patrons.
Really, she could have fired me without the lectures. Why remind me how to do my job if I’m not going to be working there, anymore?
Dear Robespierre,
Goodbye, my goaty friend. I was fired from taking care of you because I was trying to take care of you.
I wonder if goats understand irony.
Please blow kisses to Laverne, Shirley, Kaczynski, Lizzie Borden and all the rest. I will miss you a lot and will come back to visit if they’ll let me on the premises.
Your affectionate pal,
Ruby Oliver
I had a panic attack late that night. After I got out of Anya’s office, after I snuck back to Family Farm to write my goodbye note to Robespierre, after I called my dad and asked him to pick me up early, after I made it through a dinner of sprouted-chickpea bread and something Mom called Sea-Veggie Pizza; after I had suffered through my mother saying Anya was an “unsympathetic troll” and my father saying he was sure that if I had another chance I’d “make different choices about how to handle a stressful situation;” after my father criticized my mother for the Anya-troll comment and after my mother yelled, “I’ll call anyone a troll who acts like a troll! I say it like it is, Kevin! That’s what I’m all about in this world. Saying it like it is, troll or no troll! You used to be able to handle it! You used to love that about me!”
After my mother burst into tears and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door shut, and after my father, without a word, dragged the box of sugary breakfast cereal from its hiding place underneath the kitchen sink and began to eat it, without milk; after Dad had washed the dishes and I had wiped the table, after he’d gone into the bedroom to make it up to my mother, after all that, when I went to my room and was thinking, ironically, that I was handling the whole debacle with a reasonable degree of calm-after that, I had the panic attack.
I had lost my job.
Anya used to like me and now she thought I sucked. I would miss Robespierre and Laverne and Shirley and the rest.
I would miss the smells of the zoo and the sound of the penguins as they dove into the water.
I would miss being good at something, good at relating to animals and speaking in public for the penguin feedings.
I had no money.
I had to earn money or I couldn’t pay for gas.
If I couldn’t pay for gas I couldn’t use the car.
Also, I was living in t
he middle of my parents’ marriage. No one ever says this about families, and maybe people who aren’t only children don’t even notice it, but half the time I feel like I’m this extra person watching them have a marriage. They fight, they kiss, they discuss the in-laws, they do projects, they take down the Christmas tree and reminisce about things I don’t remember, they fight some more-and it’s all this personal stuff that I really have no business witnessing, except I have nowhere else to go because I live here. I’m just trying to eat my dinner and instead I’m in the middle of this grown-up relationship that is complicated and disgustingly mushy and sometimes angry.
I know they’re not getting divorced or anything, but when your parents argue it makes the whole universe seem like it’s tipping, like everything could change if they got mad enough at each other, like the world isn’t a safe place.
And of course, that’s true, isn’t it? The world is not a safe place.
All this I was worrying about on top of the job problem and the boy problems, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. There was no air in my room and my heart was so loud I felt sure my mom was going to pop in and say, “Roo, your father and I are having a serious conversation, could you please keep your heart down?”
No air.
No air.
I remembered this trick Doctor Z taught me, where you get a tennis ball and you toss it back and forth from one hand to the other, keeping your eyes on it. The concentration balances the two spazzing-out sides of your brain. Gasping, I left my room and went into my dad’s greenhouse. I knew there were a couple of those hand-strengthening squeezy balls in there, because my dad uses them to de-stress.
The greenhouse smelled of dirt and flowers. I don’t know what kind. There were some blooms and they weren’t roses, that’s all I know. I found one of the hand-strengtheners and sat on a plastic crate, tossing it back and forth. Back and forth. Just watching the ball and nothing else, until—after a bit—my breathing became normal and I looked up.
The southern deck of our houseboat looks out on the Hassinblads’ northern deck, and I could see George Hassinblad through his window, cooking something in a pot on his stove and drinking root beer out of a bottle. The greenhouse felt calm and I could see the stars and there was stuff growing.
My heartbeat slowed. George Hassinblad’s sporty little wife came in from a nighttime run and the two of them sat down to eat the soup he’d made. They laughed. George spilled soup on his lap and wiped it off with a dish towel.
My dad’s old CD player is filthy with potting soil. On top of it sits a collection of CDs devoted entirely to nostalgic heavy metal. It’s Hutch’s fault. Ever since he became my dad’s garden assistant, he’s encouraged Kevin Oliver’s musical tastes in directions that other people can only call unpleasant. He and Dad rock out whenever they’re working in the greenhouse. I walked over and hit Play without looking at what was in the box.
Na na na NA na na na NA na.
Steven Tyler’s demented squeal blasted through the greenhouse.
Na na na NA na na na NA na.
Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.”
Retro metal isn’t my thing, but I stood and danced like a maniac until the song was over.
1 Aside from Laverne and Shirley, most of the Family Farm animals are named after criminals, which is a problem when you are asked to explain their origins to a camp group of six-year-olds. Robespierre, I learned in History of Europe, was a leader of the French Revolution who killed ginormous numbers of people during the Reign of Terror. Lizzie Borden was famous for killing her parents with an axe.
I Uncover the Secret Mental Health of Hair Bands
Hello there, Ruby,
You probably don’t know this about me, but: my brownies have reached crazy ninja-good level.
Also, I am behind on community service hours.
If you want some help with the chubby thing, whatever it’s called, let me know.
Finn
—found in my mail cubby, written on unlined white paper in lines of blue ink that slanted down toward the right corner of the page.
on Friday, Finn Murphy—soccer-team stud muffin and Kim’s ex-boyfriend from before Jackson—Finn Murphy left me a note.
He had never written me a note. He was Kim’s ex, but he’d liked me back in elementary school—therefore making him yet another boy I was supposed to stay far away from. Even now, months and months after they’d broken up, by talking to Finn I’d risk spoiling the delicate truce at which Kim and I had finally arrived just before winter break.
But hey, I needed bakers.
I got the note Monday afternoon, so Meghan and I went to the B&O Espresso after school. The B&O is a coffee bar a little ways off Broadway. It has spankin’ cake. You can go in there and do your homework and drink lattes or espresso milk shakes and they never kick you out for being there too long. Finn was working the counter, like usual.
“Got your note,” I said as Meghan and I walked in and plopped ourselves at the table nearest the register.
Finn blushed. Actually blushed, to the roots of his cropped sandy hair. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black apron. He had the thin forearms and thick legs of a soccer player, big thoughtful eyes and the general look of someone who is good at skiing.
Why was he blushing?
Wasn’t this about the ninja brownies?
It had better be about ninja brownies.
“I’ll have a Valencia mocha,” said Meghan.
“Same,” I said. “And can I get the chocolate raspberry torte?” I had no business buying myself exotic tortes when I’d just lost my job, but the thing was calling to me in all its chocolaty deliciousness.
Finn wiped the counter in front of us and started making coffee drinks.
“You’re our first boy,” said Meghan.
“Don’t bring gender into it,” I said. “You’re our first anyone besides me, Meghan and Nora. If you want, you can be a founding member of the inaugural Baby CHuBS.”
Finn chuckled and shook his head. I wasn’t sure if it meant yes, or no, or what.
“He’s embarrassed!” yelled Meghan. “Finn, why are you embarrassed?”
“I’m not embarrassed,” he answered, pouring milk. “I just feel bad because I was about to bail, and now here you guys are calling me a founding member.”
“What? You can’t bail on us,” said Meghan. “We have your brownie pledge in writing.”
Finn shrugged. “Well, I—”
I interrupted him: “You also can’t describe ninja-good levels of brownies and then fail to follow through. How do we know you can even make ninja brownies?”
“I learned from the guys in the kitchen here,” Finn said. “I started working the early-morning shift on weekends, so now I’m around when they’re baking. I can do lemon bars too.”
He put our lattes on the counter and gave us two extra-large pieces of chocolate raspberry torte. “It’s on me, by the way,” Finn said, gesturing at the cake.
“Really? I think I might love you.” It was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.
Ag.
Cancel. Erase.
Saying things like that to completely inappropriate boys who are not mine to say such things to is one of the reasons I have antagonized most of my former friends and am now a roly-poly.
How could I say that to Finn?
How stupid am I?
And of course, he blushed again.
Stop blushing, Finn! Stop it, stop it! I shoved a bite of torte into my mouth so I wouldn’t talk anymore.
Meghan, who flirts with everyone and therefore has no need to go into mental gyrations any time something suggestive comes out of her mouth, saw it all in terms of Operation Sophomore Love. “Hey,” she said, “maybe the other guys on the soccer team can bake too. How about some of the underclassmen?”
“Hardly.” Finn laughed.
“What?” Meghan looked innocent. “They have a lot of free time. They don’t have to worry ab
out the SATs or anything. Don’t you think you could get some of the JV players to contribute?”
Finn coughed on purpose. “The soccer team guys are not bakers.”
“Why not?” Meghan asked, spooning a bit of foam from her mocha and licking it off in a way that would have made me hate her guts a year ago. “A guy who bakes is very attractive.”
What the hell. It was all for charity, right? “Me too,” I said. “Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me.”
Finn stammered. He flushed. By the end of the conversation, he had promised to make ninja brownies and lemon bars, plus he swore he’d recruit the members of the soccer team for the manly baking project by convincing them that it would attract girls.
“This is going to change the whole social order at Tate,” I said to Meghan as we left the B&O in the rain.
“It’ll get us out of this state of Noboyfriend, if that’s what you mean,” she answered, unlocking the doors and climbing into the Jeep.
“No, I mean it’ll change the antiquated sex roles that go on during bake sales,” I said.
“Speak English.”
“You know. Every year, girls bake. Boys eat. It’s like the nineteenth century.”
“I guess.”
“That’s why I never liked CHuBS that much in the first place. It was all girls in the kitchen. In fact, I bet you no boy has contributed to CHuBS, ever. And like Wallace said in American H and P last year, if you change one part of the pattern in a social system, the rest will have to shift in accordance.”
Meghan said, “Finn was blushing the whole time we were in there. Did you notice?”
Yeah. I noticed.
Being Meghan, she didn’t see how complicated it was that he was blushing at me and I’d noticed him blushing; and that I’d looked at his forearms with his shirtsleeves rolled up and that he gave me free cake. It was so, so complicated, because Finn used to be Kim’s and I used to be Jackson’s but Finn always looked at my legs, and today I’d said “Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me” like a complete slut and he kept blushing-it was all so complicated, my heart started pounding.