Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature (16 page)

Abbey couldn't resist asking to come out. But once she was there, all it took were a dozen sets of teeth snapping in the air as the puppies banded together to take her down, and suddenly Abbey was back at the door whining to go in and retreat back to Casey's room. Who can blame her? Those teeth are a menace.

“How's it coming?” Mrs. Connor asked. She joined us out on the porch with a fresh plate of nachos to replenish the one we'd already gone through.

Casey went inside to pour us both some milk. While he was gone, his mom asked, “How'd it go today at school? With the paper?”

“Awful. Everyone hates me.”

“I'm sorry.” She didn't try to tell me I was wrong. I kind of wish she had.

We sat there for a while not talking, just watching the puppies frolic. I could get addicted to that.

“Bad news,” Mrs. Connor said when Casey returned. He handed me my glass. “We sold little White today.”

White was the last one.

I could see Casey wasn't any happier about it than I was. “What's his name?”

Mrs. Connor wrinkled her nose. “Humphrey.”

Casey shook his head. He took a swig that left a milk
mustache above his mouth. This strip of white right above his lips. I wanted to—

Stop. We're not thinking about that. Save it for Wed nesday yoga.

“That's it, then,” Casey said.

“That's it,” his mother agreed. “All our babies gone.” She stood up and patted me on the shoulder. “Hang in there, Mena. It'll get better.” Then she left us to go back to work.

It won't get any better. How can it? The puppies are sold, the project is ending in a week, I can't fully enjoy what time I have left because I'm afraid I might be in love with someone I can't be in love with—

Oh, and there's the whole newspaper scandal and everyone hating me with extra helpings, and who knows what all might happen next week.

And then Kayla burst onto the porch, an enormous grin on her face.

“Read it and gloat, little Mena. Bible Grrrl is a star!”

Thirty-two

Kayla thrust a stack of printouts in front of my face. “Your fan mail, milady.”

Okay, so I admit the e-mails—forty-nine of them in all—were pretty nice. Flattering, in a way. But that doesn't change the fact that what I came up with before was a fluke and I don't have anything else to say.

I handed her back the pages. “I'm happy for you.”

“Happy for me? Happy for you! These people can't wait to hear what you have to say next. Bible Grrr—”

“Well, sorry,” I interrupted before she finished her growl, “because I can't think of anything else to say. I quit.”

“Quit? Are you insane? People
love
you. You can't stop now. We need more content right away. That's how you build a base.”

“But there's nothing else—”

“You mean to tell me the fanatics and fundamentalists are right about everything? Evolution, abortion, civil rights, rights for women, sex ed—all of that? Come on, Mena,
you're not thinking straight. Of course there's something you can work with. You just have to pull yourself out of whatever this mope is you've got going on.” She looked from Casey to me. “You two kids have a fight?”

“No,” we both answered instantly. What a weird question to ask.

“How about that leviathan thing?” Kayla asked. “Wanna use that?”

I sighed. “Too boring.”

“You're
too boring. Jeez! What's going on out here?”

Casey spoke up. “Mom sold the last puppy.”

“So? We were never going to get to keep ‘em all, little man. I love them, too, but buck up. Step back from the ledge.”

Casey groaned and stood up. “Want anything else?” he asked me.

I shook my head.

“Would you tell her?” Kayla demanded.

“Tell her what?”

“To write something! Come on, C. Don't you want your little girlfriend to be a hit?”

Casey's cheeks blazed. “She's not my—”

“We're not—”

She waved us both off. “Who cares? Listen, BG, I don't mean to pressure you, but I could really use something fresh right away. Say, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? No way!”

“Your fans await. Don't disappoint.” Kayla escaped inside before I could argue anymore.

And left Casey and me with that word—
girlfriend
— and both of our denials hanging in the air.

Casey sank back into his seat.

“She's crazy,” I said.

“From birth,” he agreed.

Then neither of us could think of anything else to say. We just stared at the puppies, and as relaxing as that normally is, this time it felt like any moment someone was going to sneak up behind me and push me into traffic.

Because it's bad enough to have Kayla barking at me to get her a new column, without her casually throwing out that whole girlfriend thing and then having Casey act so offended.

There's only so much abuse a girl can take in one day.

When it was finally time to go home, I'd made up my mind to be friendly to Kayla but firm. No means no.

But she's good. For every argument I made, she had three against it. And as hard as it is for me to understand, by the time we reached my house, despite all my efforts, I had actually agreed to give it one more try.

Which is why I've been sitting here for the past two hours flipping through my Bible, checking out footnotes, frantically trying to think of anything I could possibly say that would be of interest to anyone, including me.

At least when my mom came in to check on me just now before she went to bed, she saw what I was reading and seemed genuinely impressed. And surprised.

I hardly ever think fast on my feet, but this time I did. “I've been reading it a lot lately. And I was kind of
hoping … could I maybe do this instead of watching those TV shows on Sunday mornings?”

She thought about it for a moment. But it's hard to deny a child's wish to spend more time reading the Bible.

“All right, but you still need to write us a report.”

“Okay.”

“With citations.”

“No problem.”

So now I have my own separate Bible Grrrl thing to do for my parents. What a weird and wacky world.

But if I can find something tonight and bring it to Kayla tomorrow, then maybe I can relax for a few days. Between her, my teachers, and my parents, I have enough work to last me until college.

Tomorrow I have to work in my parents’ storeroom, but then they said I can go to Casey's—sorry, KC's—in the afternoon.

Which is good. I think.

I need to treasure this time. There's not much of it left.

Hold that thought until Wednesday.

Thirty-three

It's two twenty-five in the morning.

And I can't believe it.

I'm very, very tired right now, so I'm not sure I can really trust myself. But if I'm right, oh my gosh.

I can't be right. Someone else would have discovered this by now, wouldn't they? There are all those Bible scholars out there—grown men and women—and this is their
job,
and I'm just some stupid freshman reading the Bible on my own.

So I know I'm probably wrong.

But still. If what I found is true, then it may turn out to be the hugest thing I've ever thought of.

But I have to be sure. Because once I say it out loud, I don't know what's going to happen. People are going to be either incredibly angry or incredibly—well, maybe not happy, but at least very, very interested.

I need some sleep. I have to think this through, down to the last detail, before I ever present it to Kayla. Because knowing her, once it's out of my mouth, it's going to be all over the internet in a matter of minutes.

And on T-shirts and in the
Post
and who knows where else.

And if I'm wrong, then I'll look like an absolute idiot in front of Casey and everyone.

So I'm going to go to sleep now. And when I wake up, I'll read the parable once more, and then read it another fifty times if I have to.

I don't know if this is real.

I almost hope it's not.

Thirty-four

There wasn't enough mochaccino in the world to wake me up this morning, but I worked at my parents’ agency nonetheless. It wasn't too bad—they're actually talking to me a little more lately. I wonder if it's because they're so impressed by my diligence over my science project. If only they knew.

As I rode the bus to Casey's, I still wasn't sure what, if anything, I was going to tell Kayla. I was still too groggy to know whether what I came up with in the wee hours of this morning makes any sense.

But luckily, Kayla and some of her friends had decided at the last minute to go to some political rally this afternoon, so it was just Casey, his mom, and me—and the dogs, of course. That was really nice.

Mrs. Connor fixed us lunch—these huge chicken salads with slices of pear fanned along the edges and blue cheese and walnuts on top—and we ate with her in the kitchen while she told us about the new wing of the art museum she's designing. Then Casey and I went to his room to spend some time graphing out the puppy results.

I was lying on his floor coloring in the bar graph when I noticed Casey kept looking over at me, then looking away. Then he'd clear his throat, go back to working on some calculations we're going to need, then a few seconds later he'd be back to looking at me.

Finally he spit it out. “Have you, um, had a chance to look at my dad's book yet?”

I felt like such a jerk. I hadn't even looked at the first page. “Oh no. I'm really sorry. I've been so busy—”

“No problem, no problem.” He looked like he wished he hadn't asked me.

And maybe it's because I felt so guilty that I fell for what he did next.

I was busy coloring in the green bars for Green (now known as Smoky) when I saw Casey out of the corner of my eye fiddling around near his TV.

I let it go on for a bit longer before my antennae went up and I understood what he was doing.

“Oh no.”

“Come on,” he said. “Just one scene.”

“No way!”

“Mena, I promise it won't corrupt you. It's this really cool scene with a horse. You'll like it.” He loaded the DVD and scrolled through the menu. “It's from the second movie, but you don't need to have seen the first one to understand it. I just thought you might like it, since it's about animals.”

I got up and stood near the door, ready to make my escape. But I admit I was curious.

Is not saying no to something the same as saying yes?

The scene started with some old guy with long white hair standing out in a meadow and whistling. I laughed because the whistling sounded so weird, but Casey frowned and I stopped.

And then the most beautiful thing happened. This gorgeous white horse came galloping across the field—in slow motion, so it looked especially stunning—with its long white mane and white tail flowing out behind it. And it came right to the old man (Gandalf, I now know), who said the horse was called Shadowfax, which is an odd name, but there's no denying the horse was spectacular.

Casey paused it at the end of the scene. “Want to see another one?”

I shrugged, which isn't exactly a no.

He switched to a scene where some guy with a couple days’ growth of beard (Aragorn—HOT—I can see what Ms. Shepherd and Kayla are talking about) is in a stable watching some brown horse go nuts. And Aragorn steps up and talks softly to the horse in a strange language, and the horse settles down. Then this woman with long blond hair (Éowyn—I'd like to be her) tells Aragorn the horse's name is Brego, and it used to belong to her cousin, who died in battle. And Aragorn says to set Brego free, since the horse has seen enough of war.

Then Casey skipped ahead to this scene where Aragorn is passed out, floating on his back down a river, and he washes up on the bank. And some ethereal woman with pointy ears (Arwen—don't really want to be her,
although she is beautiful, but I still like the other woman better) kisses him (which is, I guess, one reason to be her). But it turns out it's just a dream, and her lips fade away and morph into horse's lips, and it turns out to be Brego, and he's come to save Aragorn. The horse kneels down and Aragorn grabs his mane and struggles to climb on his back, then Brego stands and carries Aragorn back to the castle and his friends.

And if you're going to watch those scenes, you might as well watch some more, and one thing led to another, and next thing I know, it's a couple of hours later and I'm sitting on the floor next to Casey, propped up against his bed, and Kayla's standing in the doorway yelling, “Mom! Casey's giving Mena drugs!”

There were two girls standing in the hallway behind Kayla, one with rust-colored hair and a ton of freckles, and a kind of stocky girl with short brown hair and glasses. They craned their necks to look into Casey's room. They seemed particularly intrigued by the hanging jackalope.

“What are you talking about?” Casey demanded. “We're not doing drugs.”

“Same difference,” Kayla said. “I thought Mena's not supposed to watch
Lord of the Rings.
Shape up. We need to keep Bible Grrrl pure.”

“Kayla!” I looked from her to her friends. She had called me Bible Grrrl, right in front of them.

“Don't worry, they're cool. They already know.”

“I thought you said I was anonymous.”

“To the world,” Kayla said as if it were obvious, “not to
the inner circle. Listen, we're having girls’ night—pizza and Michael Moore with a Clive Owen chaser. Wanna join us?”

“No, thank you.”

Kayla shrugged. “Fine, hang with the geek. But don't lose your innocence over this, Bible Grrrl. You need your standards.”

Casey stood up and went to the door. “Thanks for stopping by.” He shut it in her face. We heard laughter on the other side. “Sorry,” he said to me.

But I was already on my feet. “She's right. I should go.” It was like Kayla had just caught us doing something seedy. “Can you … do you think your mom can give me a ride home? I don't think Kayla—”

“Sure,” Casey said, but then he hesitated. “You can … stay if you want. We can get our own pizza—”

“No. I should go. I'm still sort of on restriction.” Which was kind of a lie. True, I am still grounded in some ways, but my parents are making a total exception for this project. And since it's not a school night and I told them we still have so much to do, they agreed I didn't have to be home for dinner tonight.