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  “I don’t want shots!”

  “If you don’t, Cassie, you could die. I’m serious, girlfriend. Even if you do get the shots, but you wait too long, they won’t work. There’s no cure for rabies. You know that, don’t you? Once you start getting sick, it’s too late.”

  A part of me knew she was just pretending to be mean because she was scared for me and angry that I didn’t obey her. I didn’t doubt anything she said, but I did resent the way she said it. It wasn’t fair that she was trying to frighten me.

  “Oh, and Cassie,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror again, “I don’t care if you tell your parents I used bad words, because right now I am so pissed off that you didn’t listen to me.”

  It was like she was daring me.

  “I won’t tell.”

  “Yeah, well . . . .” She raised her hands from the steering wheel and shook them at the sides of her head. “Maybe I’ll tell them anyway.”

  But I knew we’d crossed some sort of line. I knew she’d keep her word and not say anything. She wouldn’t snitch on me as long as I didn’t snitch on her.

  How many times I’ve wondered since then: What if she had told them right away? Would anything have happened differently? Would Ben Nicholas have

  died

  gotten sick?

  Would I have?

  “Cassie, please,” Daddy told me that evening, after he and Mama got home from work. “I’ve asked you before not to carry that rabbit around by the neck. You’re choking him. You’re going to get scratched if you’re not careful.”

  “He’s stinky. He smells bad.”

  “Well, then maybe you need to clean its cage.”

  “No, Daddy, I just cleaned it. His breath smells bad.”

  Daddy bent down until he was nose-to-nose with Ben Nicholas and took a long, deep breath. Then his eyes went wide. “You’re right. He smells terrible! Just like the bottom of a lawnmower.”

  “Daddy!”

  He laughed. “Maybe he’s eating too much grass.”

  “No he’s not!”

  “Well, that’s what he smells like, freshly cut grass.”

  “No, it smells—”

  soupy

  “—stinky.”

  “He smells stinky?”

  “And he’s not acting right, either. I think he might be sick.”

  “The only thing that animal is suffering from is lack of exercise. I swear its feet never touch the ground.”

  “But I love him, Daddy.”

  “And you give it way too many treats. It’s getting fat. Maybe you shouldn’t feed it so many.”

  “I don’t give him too many,” I insisted.

  “They’re not good for him. And they’re not cheap, either.”

  “Rame, leave her alone.”

  Daddy’s coffee cup banged a little too loudly on the table, making Ben Nicholas jump in my arms. He let out a raspy squeak and kicked with his hind feet. His claws scratched the inside of my elbow.

  “See, honey? I told you you’re choking him.”

  “You scared him!”

  “Cassie!” Mama yelled. “Not so loud. Please. Why don’t you take him in the back room?”

  I tried to adjust him, but he kept struggling, so I let him down to the floor. He hopped over to the corner of the cabinets, his claws clacking on the tiles, and there he sat wiggling his nose at us like he was angry.

  “We should take him in to the vet this weekend to get his nails clipped and his teeth filed down,” Daddy said. “They’re getting long.”

  “No!”

  Both Mama and Daddy looked up in surprise.

  I didn’t want anyone going near the animal hospital. Not until we absolutely had to. “Can’t you do it here?”

  “I’m not filing down those vampire teeth.”

  “Ramon! Cass, dear, we’ve got a lot going on right now, honey. Okay?”

  “Like what?”

  Mama and Daddy exchanged glances. I hated that they could pass secret messages with their looks. I hated being left out.

  Finally, Daddy shook his head at her. I wasn’t sure if he was giving up or if they were going to start fighting again, and I almost hoped they actually would fight so they’d stop thinking about maybe taking Ben Nicholas to the animal doctor. It’s certainly not where I had intended the conversation to lead when I first mentioned him smelling and acting funny.

  I went back over and picked him up again, intent on taking him out to his cage. “He doesn’t need his teeth filed,” I declared.

  Mama came over and gave me a hug. “All right, honey. We’re sorry. Stop crying. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Her face suddenly twisted, and I wondered if she noticed the strange smell coming off of Ben Nicholas. But as she leaned us both away from her face, a look of concern in her eyes, I realized it wasn’t Ben Nicholas she was worried about, it was me. “Are you feeling okay, honey?” She placed her hand against my forehead and kept it there for a moment. “Your face is hot. Maybe I better stay home from work tomorrow.”

  Even from across the kitchen I could sense my father’s irritation and waited for him to tell Mama to stop babying me. The bitter smoldering smell of it rolled toward us, but Mama pretended not to notice.

  I told her I was okay but avoided looking in her eyes. I actually did feel fine, but it still felt like lying. Plus, I hated the way she just totally ignored Ben Nicholas just now. When she didn’t let me go, I pushed her away, suddenly afraid that she’d notice him and change her mind about sending him to the animal hospital.

  “You don’t have to stay home from work tomorrow,” I added.

  She held on a moment longer before standing up and going over to the fridge. She stood there for a few seconds without taking anything out, just staring at it with glistening eyes. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, her voice tight and sounding far away. “Go get washed up.”

  “First things first,” Daddy said, getting up to set the table. “Go put Ben Nicholas away in his cage first.”

  The terrible smell coming from my bed the next morning almost made me upchuck. It was the same smell as from Ben Nicholas yesterday, only a lot badder. But Ben Nicholas hadn’t been in bed with me last night; I’d left him in his cage after dinner. And I knew it wasn’t Shinji who smelled, because it stayed after Daddy got him up to go potty outside. It was me.

  When I went out to check on Ben Nicholas after breakfast, I almost stopped. I wanted to run back into the house before I got halfway there. I didn’t want to see what I was afraid I’d find. But when I got to his cage, I saw that he was awake. He hopped over to me — maybe not as quickly as he usually did, but at least he wasn’t dead. I opened his door and scooped him up and the smell came off of him like the smell from a newly tarred driveway on a hot day. I knew then that it was serious, that something was terribly wrong with him, which meant something was wrong with me, too. I knew I’d have

  rabies

  to let my parents know. Even if it meant getting into trouble for not listening to Miss Ronica yesterday when I got bit. I didn’t want shots — for either of us — but I wanted even less to die like Remy did. I didn’t want to make Mama and Daddy sadder.

  I tried to get their attention by knocking quietly on their bedroom door, but they were too busy yelling at each other about someone from work who wasn’t going to be there. Daddy was saying Mama would have to do his job, which made her even angrier because she had talked about staying home with me today, something I didn’t want then because she’d start asking about the animal hospital again. But now I changed my mind.

  I knew better than to interrupt them when they were like this, so I went out to my swings to wait for them to finish. That’s when I noticed the blood around Ben Nicholas’s back foot. It was old and dried, and it was proof enough for me about how he’d gotten sick. He’d gotten bitten just like me. Of course, my own heel started throbbing something terrible all of a sudden.

  With my heart beating a thous
and million miles a second, I took Ben Nicholas inside to show Daddy. The house was quiet by then, so I knew they’d stopped arguing.

  “It’s a torn claw, Cassie,” he told me, barely glancing down at us from the mirror where he was putting on his tie. He took a step away from us, clearly not wanting to touch — or be touched by — Ben Nicholas. He didn’t want to get his white shirt dirty. “I told you we should get them clipped. It’s okay, honey. He’ll survive. Just leave him alone and it’ll heal on its own.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “If it’s not better when I get home tonight, we’ll take him to see the doctor, okay? See? It’s already stopped bleeding. Tomorrow, I promise. Or this weekend, honey. I can’t do it right now. I’m already going to be late.”

  I tried to tell him that it didn’t look like the blood was coming from his claw. I wanted to say it looked like

  a bat bite

  something else. But all my words came out in a jumble. He hurried past me, muttering to himself about his car keys being lost.

  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 cou
ld 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.”