Pickle (15 page)

Okay, that's a lie. The whole end went in, and it swished around a little bit before I noticed because I was pulling up the padded stomach and squeezing my arms into the holes as fast as I could. I tried to dry off the tail with some toilet paper, but the tissue just fell apart, so I grabbed a couple of toilet seat covers.

“What are you doing in there?” Oliver yelled over the wall. “Are you dressed yet?”

“Almost,” I said.

“What's all the crackling paper? Dude, are you going to the
bathroom
?”

“No!” I said. I gave up on the soggy tail, threw the seat covers into the toilet and flushed.

“Dude. You
were
going to the bathroom. This isn't number two time, it's showtime,” Oliver said.

“Don't give him grief,” Frank said. “When you have to go, you go. Ben, you could have told us. We would have waited. Outside.”

“I WASN'T pooping!” I said, and squeezed out of the stall.

I could see myself in the dirty mirror. I had a furry beige potbelly. A big fluffy tail swung out behind me, dripping toilet water. The whole thing itched.

I took the head out of the bag. Big eyes. Big, buck teeth and pointy ears. I put my clothes into the plastic bag. Oliver came out of his stall. He was a bear with long pointy teeth and shaggy, matted fur. He'd make a pretty good grizzly, if a grizzly bear had a high-pitched laugh. I looked in the mirror over the sinks.

“I am a giant squirrel,” I whispered. I looked pretty lifelike, besides the jumbo factor.

“
Squirrelus giganticus
!” Frank said. Bean came back in and laughed so hard she almost fell backward into the trash can. I wish she had.

“I can't go out there like this,” I said. “There's no such thing as a giant squirrel.” Frank grabbed my bag of clothes and passed it to Oliver, who ran outside with it. It dawned on me too late that I could have put the costume on
over
my clothes. Then I wondered how often the costumes got washed. It didn't smell like it was very often. Maybe other people changed in bathrooms and parts fell into the toilet. I felt ill.

“You're a new species. Just discovered,” Frank said. “Let's go!” He ran out of the bathroom growling.

The idea was for Frank, Oliver, and me to dash around like we were escaping. If we got separated, we would meet up later on the sidewalk outside the side entrance. Bean's job was to make a fuss and act scared if people didn't notice. She said we should try to stick together, so it would seem natural. I haven't spent much time out in the wilderness, but if giant squirrels, bears, and lions prowl around together, I'll stick to the city.

Frank dragged me out of the restroom, and we followed Oliver and Bean down the path. We came around a corner to find a family trying to feed popcorn to a red-bellied woodpecker, according to the sign. We stood there until they turned to look at us. I waited for the panic, but they just smiled. One of the kids ran over and hugged me while the dad snapped a photo and I tried to keep the kid from touching my tail. I think the woodpecker laughed at us.

“We're going to have to try something different,” Bean said when the family left to find the ducks.

Different meant going for an element of surprise. Bean stood on the path while we spread out. I hid behind a tree. Oliver got behind a trash can, and Frank crouched in the bushes behind the birdhouse.

Some teenagers came along and Oliver jumped his bear butt out from behind the trash can, waving his arms.

“ROOOAAAAWWWWRRR!” It was a pretty awesome roar. It was almost louder than their hysterical laughter. It didn't help when Frank jumped out as the lion. Nope, it didn't help at all.

“Ben, Ben, Ben. I think we could have sold that if you had come out from behind the tree,” Frank said.

“Really? You think they would have stopped laughing at Oliver?” I said.

“You know, you're making it difficult for me to stay in character. Be present, Ben,” Oliver said. He tried to balance on one leg with his hands over his head. He looked like a bear trying to do yoga, which might have been what he was going for. I didn't want to see it again, so I jumped out at the next family that passed. I woke up the baby. It cried, but nobody else was impressed.

“Somebody might complain,” Frank said. “Let's move.” We darted through the shadows like fat, furry ninjas, until we were almost to the flamingos.

I crawled underneath a lilac bush. Oliver and Frank crouched behind a trash can in front of some bamboo stuff. Bean paced around. Nobody came for a while, so I poked through the leaves with a dirty old lollipop stick. I thought about how maybe the P.T.A. wasn't such a great idea. I mean, I was in the bushes, squatting in dead leaves and trash in a scratchy suit that I couldn't even see out of that well. On a SATURDAY. It should have been a big red flag that Bean spit on her hand to make me not want to shake it. This is Bean we're talking about. But it wasn't just her. Everything was out of control. My breath was hot under the squirrel head. I wanted to go home and watch TV, or read, or any kind of comfortable thing I could think of. My lungs felt too small. I had to get out. I crawled out of the bushes on all fours. I really needed to tell the others that I was going home. And that's when things got weird.

Out of the tiny squirrel eyeholes I saw the fender of a big rig, speeding right toward my squirrel nose.

“Sheep!” I heard the driver yell, but it wasn't
exactly
“sheep.” And it wasn't a big rig. It was one of those zoo golf carts. He swerved around me and hit the trash cans, and that made Frank and Oliver jump out. They disappeared into the bamboo stuff, which made the driver yell “Sheep!” again, but it wasn't sheep that time, either. I jumped up when the zoo guy tried to reverse the cart, but it was stuck on the curb. He unlatched his seat belt and sort of tumble-crawled out of his seat to the back of the cart, where he opened a big toolbox-type thing.

“Run!” Bean yelled. “RUN!” She was already halfway to the Primate Plaza.

I ran, screaming, down the path, which apparently is what we should have done in the first place if we wanted to freak out the zoogoers. I slammed straight into a pack of people watching the chimpanzees pick bugs off each other.

The cart driver yelled something, but I couldn't hear him through my padded head. I kept screaming, and the people all started shouting and screaming, too. They jumped out of the way, and took off in the opposite direction down the path. I don't know if they were running from me, or the freaked-out zoo guy.

I stopped to look for Frank and Oliver, but they were nowhere around. Bean ran right into me, literally, which got my attention, because everyone else was moving away from me. She looked at me over her shoulder as she ran past into the Bat House, carrying the plastic bag my costume came in. The bag with my clothes. I followed her into the Bat House, and squeezed through as the doors closed behind me. The zoo guy stopped on the path, looking wobbly and green through the tinted glass. He held a walkie-talkie up to his mouth. He wasn't coming in, but he wasn't going away, either.

“What are we going to do?” I said, as Zoo Guy stopped a couple of people from coming into the Bat House. Another golf cart pulled up and the first zoo guy grabbed a bullhorn off the seat. More people tried to come in, but they were stopped like the others. A crowd gathered around the carts.

“ATTENTION, GUESTS CURRENTLY ENJOYING THE BAT HOUSE. THERE IS SOMEONE—OR SOMETHING—ODD WITH YOU IN THE BAT HOUSE. PLEASE LEAVE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. IMMEDIATELY.”

“Get dressed. Quick!” Bean threw the bag at me and turned around. I got out of the squirrel suit a lot quicker than I had gotten into it. I put my clothes back on and looked around, but Bean had disappeared behind me through the dark tunnel that led to the bat cavern. Just as I buttoned up my pants, a family ran past toward the doors with Bean right behind them. I shoved the squirrel suit back in the bag. Bean crouched down to whisper into my ear. “This is the only way out. I checked. Come on, it's time to panic.”

We ran out of the bat house together screaming. I realized I sounded a lot like me as the squirrel, so I tried to scream a little deeper.

Zoo Guy stood in front of the crowd with the bullhorn, and two more zookeepers had joined him. One held a weird-looking gun, and the other two talked into walkie-talkies. I wondered if they were talking to each other, just trying to look cool, but then it dawned on me that they might have called the police.

“HELP! It's back there in the bat house. It's terrible!” I yelled. Bean made some blubbering noises, which I thought sounded fake, but she had real tears squirting. The zoo guys all started shouting questions, but we acted like we were too scared to stay anywhere close to the Bat House and ran away.

We didn't slow down until we were through the side gate. Frank and Oliver, out of their costumes, were waiting for us under the “Get Wild This Summer!” banner. They were just looking like normal everyday kids standing around on the street holding plastic bags full of fur and rubber. Sienna was with them, too.

“Hey, I thought you were staying home to talk to your dad,” I said.

“I guess he was busy.” Sienna shrugged and looked down the street. “I came over here to see if you needed help and found these guys coming out. Did you get the eggs back yet?”

“I'll get them later,” I said. I nodded toward Frank and Oliver. “How'd it go with you guys?”

Frank and Oliver worried about getting caught, so they headed straight back to the Birds of America bathroom and took the costumes off. Those braniacs had just put the costumes on over their clothes, so they didn't have to get naked in public. Genius. We took a vote, and agreed there would be no more missions requiring the use of big furry costumes. It was unanimous.

“Not bad, but this doesn't get you in the club,
Margaret
.” I ducked out of the way of her fist.

“As if! I'm totally a member, Diaz,” Bean said.

“I'm with Ben,” Oliver said. “We took all the risk in there.”

“You guys were hiding in the toilet stalls! Ben and I were the ones dodging tranquilizer darts.”

“Wait, they tried to
tranquilize
you?” Oliver said. I shook my head.

“They totally could have. Back me up, Frank,” Bean said.

“I'm going with Ben on this one. But we all have faith that you'll come up with something Beany,” Frank said. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. She grabbed the costume bags and glared at us.

“Sorry about the tail. How often do you clean these anyway?”

“What?”

“How often do you clean the costumes?”

“What?”

“The costumes. Not to be rude, but they don't seem very clean,” I said. Bean held her hand up to her ear and shook her head like she couldn't hear me. I was pretty sure I had my answer, so I gave up and walked home.

 

36

The Next Twenty Minutes

I really just wanted to go home, relax, and read a book in something non-itchy before I had to be at Lupe's, but it wasn't over yet. I opened the front door to my building and found Hector standing in front of the mailboxes with his arms crossed and his feet wide. Like he expected someone to try to shove him over.

“Just say it, Ben.”

The lobby is more like a wide hall with just enough room for mailboxes and peeling wallpaper before you get to the stairs. I couldn't really get up to my apartment without pushing Hector out of the way. He looked like he wanted me to push him so he could push back.

“Hey, is it a good time to come up and get the eggs?” I said. He just glared at me. I sighed. “What do you want me to say, Hector?”

“Say you're done being friends with me. You only want to hang out with your cool, new friends—fine by me. But have the guts to say it to my face.”

“Hector, I'm not in the mood,” I said. I tried to go around him, but he moved to block my way. “Look, you don't understand. There are things I can't tell you.”