Amphibian (18 page)

‘What?' I screamed. ‘She's going to take him back for an exchange?'

Bird nodded his head.

I was just standing looking at Bird with my mouth open when the bell rang.

When we got inside, I got my outdoor shoes off really quickly and ran into the classroom while all the other kids were still busy at the cubbies. I went over to the fridge and opened the door. I saw a brown paper bag and peeked inside. Sure enough, there was the body of Cuddles. I took him out of the bag and put him in my desk. Off and on all afternoon I reached in and lay my hand on his cold skin because it was still hard for me to believe he was really dead.

When school was over, I tucked Cuddles in my jacket pocket. I didn't care if Mrs. Wardman found out he was missing. Did she really have to flop his dead body around and turn him in for an exchange like he's a pair of shoes or something? Wasn't it bad enough that she abused his life? Did she really have to abuse his death too?

On my way home, I walked to the edge of a swamp near the school playground. I've heard frogs croaking there lots of times before – not White's tree frogs, but frogs all the same. It was the best I could do. I dug a hole with a stick and put Cuddles in. I looked at him for a few minutes and said, ‘Goodbye, Cuddles.' Then I covered him up with mud and tears.

Today's Saturday and I don't feel like doing anything. Not a thing. I feel like I have one of those big, heavy capes on that the dentist makes me wear when she X-rays my teeth.

When I was just sitting rubbing Fiddledee and not saying anything, my mother told me that it was normal to feel like I was feeling but that soon I would be better. Then later when I was crying, she told me that as sad as I am, I had to try to look for something positive in all this. I told her that all I could think of is that my face is cleaner.

Maybe another positive is that she's been letting me sleep with her and not even complaining about it. But it's been nine days since Cuddles died, and I am still so sad. All I can think of is Cuddles and how he spent his last few months – in a cage with humans looking in at him and laughing. I know a little how that feels because when I was seven, I spent a week in a cardboard box that our television came in. I climbed in and closed the flaps. It was big enough to hold me but not big enough to let me move around. I did this because I had read about Laika, the dog in Russia who was launched into space in 1957, and I wanted to know how she might have felt. The problem was I was in my backyard listening to the birds and the squirrels and completely still while Laika could
hear nothing that sounded like life, was hooked up to all sorts of equipment and shot into space. I also knew that I could leave whenever I wanted and, in fact, I had to come out for a while every hour because my mother made me. But for all Laika knew, she would never get to move around again, and that's exactly what happened.

When I was in the cardboard box, I tried to imagine Laika's conditions as best as I could. Just before getting into the capsule, she was hooked up to a bag to collect her pee, sponged with alcohol and had electrodes placed on her to measure her body signs.

Then someone led her into the capsule and she went with them because that's what dogs do – they go with their humans. They put her in a harness that would allow her to only sit, stand or lie down in the capsule. They put enough gel food in with her to keep her alive for seven days. The food for the seventh day was poisoned so that she would die after they proved that a dog could live in space. Then they closed the door and sealed her up in there all alone.

When Sputnik II was launched, Laika's breathing rate went up to four times its normal rate and her heart rate more than doubled. By the time it reached orbit, Laika's heart stopped beating. She died of being so afraid.

I tried to imagine how scared she was, but I don't think I even came close to feeling that. She died alone, scared and in a place that was completely unknown to her. To make it even worse, she was a dog and dogs are social animals. That means they love being around other dogs and they love their humans too. Being all alone to Laika would have been even worse than being all alone was to Cuddles when he died.

To make it even worse, Laika may even have trusted the humans. She may have done what they wanted because, being a social animal, she wanted to please them.

To make it even worse, the scientists knew that they were sending Laika to her death. They knew it when they closed the door, and still they did it. I bet they even smiled at her or said, ‘Good dog, Laika.' But in Russian.

Part of being social means you feel love for other animals. Scientists have found that most rhesus monkeys will suffer of hunger if getting food means that another monkey will be shocked in the next cage.

I would rather live nine years and die on earth with my family around than live one hundred years in a cage in space all alone.

I couldn't save Cuddles. I couldn't even save one frog. Not even one small, little frog.

I saw on the Green Channel how some people in Spain are trying to get the government to declare that other primates, like the great apes, are humans too. Then they'd have the right not to be locked in cages and used in experiments and killed, their hands used as trophies and their tails used as dusters. So far the people haven't been able to do that, but if they're successful I'm thinking I'd like to apply for a species change.

I've had it with humans. I'd rather be a rhesus monkey.

Today all I could think about was death. Everywhere I looked, I noticed dead things – like the dead spider in a web in the corner of the bathroom whose legs were all curled up. The spider looked like the eyelashes of a doll I once had. Grammie and Granddad – someone else who's dead – gave me that doll when I was three.

Thinking of death started me wondering about how long animals live on average. I looked up the life expectancy of different animals on Google. Then I made a list:

Tree frog: 8 years
Cat: 18 years
Dog: 13 years
Horse: 22 years
Deer: 8 years
Elephant: 50 years
Yellow-headed Amazon parrot: 70 years
Galapagos land turtle: over 100 years
Human: 80 years

You can't count on those averages, though. You never know who's going to get ripped off next. You could be walking along thinking you have another fifty-three years and then all of a sudden you're dead – or worse, stuck in a cage somewhere. It could happen just like that, in the blink of an eye, before you even know what hit you.

I started to feel super, to-infinity worried about who would be robbed next. I kept thinking that maybe it would be my grandmother. This made me feel all skinny inside. I made a list of animals I knew personally who got robbed and how many years each got robbed:

Cuddles (if he was one year old when he was caught, that would put him at about seven years robbed, –7)

Karen, a kid I knew in kindergarten who died of leukemia (–72)

Jakie, Uncle John's dog who got hit by a car when he was six (–7)

Aaron, a friend of my mom and dad who used to come for dinner, who died of a brain aneurysm while he was driving to work (about –40)

My grandfather (–12)

Although Granddad died at the age of sixty-eight, the very last time I saw him, he looked more like 108. He was in hospital and looked like he was shrinking right down to just his bones. That last time I saw him, my mom left the room to go ask a nurse to give him more pain medication. While she was gone, Granddad, who was trying to sit up, made a motion with his hand that meant push a button on the side of his bed to make the front part go up. I pushed it and it kept going up and up and Granddad didn't say stop. He didn't say anything. He had closed his eyes and his mouth was shaped in an O. He didn't move and he didn't say anything at all. I finally stopped pushing the button when it looked like he was folded over too much. When my mom came back in, she looked at Granddad and then ran and pressed the
buzzer to call the nurse in. When the nurse came in, my mom told me to go sit in the
TV
room. Grammie showed up a few minutes later and she was crying. I sat there some more not watching
TV
and the nurses tried to talk with me but I didn't want to talk. Eventually Uncle John came to get me and take me to Grammie and Granddad's house. Granddad died later that night.

A few days later, I couldn't stop thinking that maybe I pushed the button for too long. Maybe Granddad got folded over too much and that put too much pressure on his organs or something. Or maybe when Granddad made that motion with his hands, it wasn't that he wanted me to push the button – maybe he wanted me to run for help.

At first, I didn't tell my mom what I was thinking because she was too upset. And then later I didn't tell her because I was afraid I might make her think of something she had never thought of before – that me and the cancer were co-murderers. I know deep down that's not true. But sometimes I still think about it. And now I just can't stop thinking that maybe Mission Amphibian was too hard on Cuddles, and that I'm the reason he died. Not only couldn't I save him, I may have helped kill him.

My mother keeps asking me what's the matter. ‘What's the matter? What's the matter, Phin?' she keeps saying over and over. She's been saying that to me for a week now. I guess she was giving me ten days to be sad and when I didn't all of a sudden feel happy again, she was like, ‘Time's up. Smile now.' She sounds like a
CD
with a scratch on it. I keep telling her nothing's the matter. But that's a lie, and she knows it.

I don't feel well. I don't feel like having Bird over after school. I don't feel like going outside. I don't feel like drawing or writing in my Reull book. I don't feel like playing with Fiddledee, but I do like her to sit next to me. I didn't feel like going to swimming lessons, though my mother made me. I don't feel like doing anything.

My mother said she's worried about me. She says I'm just not myself. I said, ‘Why does that make you worried? Isn't that what you and Dr. Barrett want?' She didn't say anything back.

Then after a minute she said, ‘Phin, that's not true. Dr. Barrett and I want you to be exactly who you are – only less worried.'

‘All right then, be happy,' I said, ‘because I'm not worried.'

My mother changed the subject and asked if I'd like her to read to me, and I said no. She asked me if I wanted to play chess, and I said no. She asked me if I wanted to use the internet to look up the answers to questions I have, and I told her that the internet didn't have the answers to my questions. Then she asked me if I wanted an ice cream, and I said no. I went to watch
TV.
That's all I want to do after school because it means I don't have to move or even think. And I don't even care what kind of
TV
it is. Yesterday I watched
Doodlebops
. It had a bunch of adults dressed up in bright costumes and wigs. They all jumped around and sang weird songs. Once in a while a moose head on a wall talked and some lady jumped out of the wall and sang more weird songs.

Today I watched
Atomic Betty
, which is really super stupid. It's about a girl whose watch rings every once in a while and a spaceship picks her up and she goes off to fight evil things with an alien and a robot.

While
Atomic Betty
was on, one of the commercials was of a father and son on different sides of the world who eat an Oreo cookie together on a webcam. It made me miss my father even more. It also made me really irritated. Why can't we do things like that while he's away? Some kids have all the luck.
My
father doesn't have a webcam. And he doesn't even like Oreo cookies.

After
Atomic Betty
I watched
Pokemon
. That's where the characters capture this wild Pokemon stored in this little tiny Pokeball and battle other people with Pokemons. I wasn't even sure why they were fighting in the first place. It didn't make any logical sense. But I didn't care.

Then I watched a show called
Animals Flanimals
. It was a cartoon of a giraffe who lived in the jungle. A giraffe living in the
jungle. That made my mind wake up. The jungle! Giraffes don't live in the jungle – they live in flat, grassy areas. What the bleep would be the point of a long, long neck if you lived in the bleeping jungle where you could only see one-hundred-foot trees right in front of your face no matter how tall you were?

That's when all of a sudden a thought struck me. And it was almost like it really did strike me because when I thought it, my head whipped backwards and hit the back of the couch.

It struck me that watching all this stupid
TV
was making me into a moron. I couldn't count on the normal channels to give me good information. I had to get back to reading my books and watching shows that told me the truth. I needed to watch the Green Channel – the one channel in the world I'm not allowed to watch.

Then all of a sudden the sadness went away. It was like somebody opened my lid and tipped me upside down and let the sadness all drain out and then they filled me back up, but with something different: anger. I felt really angry. Really, really, really, really, to-infinity ANGRY.

I got up and turned the
TV
off, and then I went to look for my mother.

My mother painted the study – again. This is the third time as far as I can remember. First it was white, which she said was too boring, so she painted it burgundy. Then she said that colour was too dark and painted it green, which I liked because it looked like a forest and when I lay on the sofa listening to the sounds at Pete's Pond, I could imagine I was actually there. Now she's painting it yellow, but not yellow the colour of lemons – yellow the colour of buttercups. And pee after you take a vitamin.

My mother asked me how I liked the colour and I said, ‘Why do you like to torture me like this?'