Bessica Lefter Bites Back (14 page)

“Oh my heck!” I said. “They’re everywhere!”

My dad slowly followed the car in front of us as we rounded corners and saw fluffy brown bear after fluffy brown bear.

“They don’t look ferocious,” I said. “They look zonked.”

“They can flip into attack mode on a dime.” My dad gripped the steering wheel. “Never trust a bear.”

Then our car approached another set of wires.

“We’re leaving the grizzly bear area,” my dad said.

“Really?” I asked. Because that seemed to go by pretty fast. “Can you drive slower?”

“Sure thing,” he said. “Time to cross over the wires again.”

“Would we really get electrocuted if we straddled them wrong?” I asked.

“Yep,” my dad said.

“That’s terrible!” I said. “I can’t believe they electrocute bears here.” Because I was a mascot bear and had recently been locked in a cafeteria, I began to feel very sympathetic toward my fellow creatures.

“Relax,” my dad said in a calm voice. “They only shock the ones trying to escape.”

“That’s cruel!” I said. “Because how is a bear supposed to know that it’s not allowed freedom?”

Seeing all these bears stripped of their right to be bears made me think a lot about my own bear duties at games. When I cheered against the tiger, I needed to show all the fans that bears were ferocious beasts that deserved to live in the wilderness and be as terrible as they wanted to be.

“What are you thinking about?” my mom asked me.

“My duties,” I said.

I watched all the bears sleeping by the side of the road. “Isn’t this exciting?” my mother asked.

I shrugged.

“They’re so big that moving around must make them tired,” my mother said.

I frowned at this. “I know a lot about bears and I don’t think that’s true. They’re bored. And depressed. How do these bears even get here? Do they capture them from Yellowstone?”

“No, no, no,” my father said. “They don’t capture them. Most of them are born here. Look at that one. It’s walking around like a crazy, wild bear.”

I watched a black bear mope in front of our car and sit down.

“Don’t hit it!” I said.

“I’m not going to,” my dad said.

But our car was still moving a little bit.

“Stop!” I said.

So he did.

“I think you’re supposed to nudge it to get it to move,” he said.

“That’s a terrible idea,” I said. Because that was basically almost running over a bear, and I knew we weren’t
allowed to do that. Even though we’d paid a bunch of money to visit the preserve.

“We’re supposed to honk our horn,” my mom said.

So my dad blared the horn. But the bear didn’t even look at our car. The beast stood looking at its paw. And licking it.

“Don’t honk at it!” I said.

I couldn’t believe that my dad didn’t have any respect for bears.

“I’m supposed to,” my dad said. “This bear is causing a traffic jam.”

I looked behind us. There were a lot of cars stopped in a line. Things were pretty backed up. I could see Grandma and Willy and Alma in the car behind us. They were chatting and looked thrilled. Apparently, they didn’t understand that we were experiencing a bear-jam situation.

My dad honked again. This time for longer. That was when I started freaking out and reading the information packet.

“Stop with the long honks!” I said. “You’re supposed to give your horn three quick beeps!”

“A bear can understand that?” my father asked, sounding impressed. “Wow.”

So my father tapped on the horn, and within seconds a preserve ranger came running out toward the bear.

“Is he going to shoot the bear with a tranquilizer and
drag it away?” I asked. Because I’d seen that happen on a nature show once and it was very dramatic.

“Maybe,” my dad said.

“No,” my mom said. “He’s brought a tub of food.”

I watched as the man waved the small yellow tub at the bear.

“Come here, Regina!” the man yelled.

“That bear’s name is Regina!” I said. I loved that the black bear causing the traffic jam was a girl bear.

Regina rolled over onto all four of her legs. But she didn’t leave the road.

“Do you think I should honk again?” my dad asked.

“No!” I said.

“I agree,” my mom said. “I think the ranger has things under control.”

The man held the food container up in the air and shook it a little.

“What do you think is in there?” I asked. I pictured all sorts of terrible things, like fish guts and intestines and raw kidneys.

The ranger took some of the food and threw it on the ground in front of him.

“Looks like dog food,” my dad said.

This was crazy! It did look like dog food! The bear slowly moved off the road and started eating the pellets. I was disgusted. Because in addition to taking away all
the bears’ freedom and allowing them to get honked at by cars, Bear Galaxy was feeding them dog food. It seemed like this place should be illegal.

“Isn’t a bear’s natural diet fish and berries and tubers and nuts and mountain goats?” I asked.

I remembered reading that after I’d looked online for bear information after I became the mascot.

“I’m sure the bear’s pellet food is a balanced blend of the nutrients that it needs to live in captivity,” my mom said. “There are laws about this sort of thing.”

I looked out the back window again to see if Willy and Grandma were watching the bear. And what I saw happening in their front seat disgusted me.

“They’re kissing!” I screamed. “I don’t want to see that.”

“Then don’t look,” my mother said.

I turned around and stared into the front seat. My dad glanced in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t want you to look at them either,” I said.

I really thought it was time that Grandma dumped Willy and started living full-time in the house again. Because living in a motor home in our driveway was lame.

I turned around and looked at Willy and shot him daggers. But it didn’t help. He and Grandma started kissing again.

“Make them stop!” I said. “It’s gross.”

“Bessica, Willy and Grandma are a couple. Deal with it,” my mom said.

The car started moving again and I saw brand-new bears I hadn’t seen before. I thought about what my mom had said. I hated to think of Grandma and Willy being a couple. Grandma deserved so much more.

“Half of all marriages end in divorce,” I said.

I don’t know why this statistic popped into my head, but it did. My mom whipped her head around with a face of total surprise.

“Have you been eavesdropping on their conversations?” she asked. “Do you know something?”

I felt terrible. Because this meant my mom thought it was possible that Willy and Grandma might get married. But I wasn’t even thinking of anything that horrible. I was just focusing on how many couples get divorced every year.

“Let’s mind our own business,” my dad said.

“Okay,” I said. But really, that wasn’t how I felt on the inside. On the inside, I was thinking there must be a way to break up Grandma and Willy before they decided to do something as stupid as get married.

“Ooh,” my mother squealed. “There’s a pair of arctic wolves!”

I looked at them, but I wasn’t very excited.

“It says here that they’re a couple,” my mom said.

“Wonderful,” I said. But I thought it was obvious that they were a couple. Because they were the only two arctic wolves in the preserve. Then it hit me: just like the female arctic wolf who only had one choice of a mate, Grandma was limited to terrible Willy. I looked back at them. I knew what this problem needed. More arctic wolves. Lots and lots and lots of wolves.

O
n the morning of Sylvie’s birthday party I got out her present and sat on my floor and looked at the purple paper and admired what a good job I’d done wrapping the box. I felt terrible that I was going to miss her disco/jungle party. And I’d miss the chance to hang out with Raya Papas too. I regretted sending a lot of those texts.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“I’m busy,” I called from my bed. But that wasn’t true. I just didn’t feel like talking to anybody.

“It’s your grandma!” a voice called through the door.

“Hi, Grandma,” I said. “You can come in.”

Because even though I was in a terrible mood, I still wanted to see Grandma.

She swung my door open and practically jumped into my room. “Are you looking forward to the party?” she asked. “Mrs. Potaski always makes the most amazing cakes.”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t really feel like telling Grandma about how Sylvie had told my principal I had fungal foot and this somehow had led to rude text messages and how I eventually got uninvited to her birthday party. And how the present on my bed for Sylvie was a battery-powered nose hair trimmer.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?” Grandma asked me.

I looked up at her. She was smiling. I had no idea what she was thinking. “I think I should take you to the party! It would be great to see the Potaskis. Plus, I have to give Sylvie that present I bought her in Minnesota.”

“Is it a bear key chain with a terrible paint job?”

And as soon as I said that I felt bad about criticizing my gift. But the paint
was
chipped, and also sort of sloppy. Instead of having defined teeth, my grizzly bear just had a pure white mouth. It didn’t even have a tongue.

“You don’t like your key chain? I thought it was a very appropriate gift,” Grandma said. She sat down next to me. “Okay. I did get you something else, but I’m saving it.”

“For what?” I asked. I was worried she was going to say
my birthday, which was four months away. And I didn’t feel I should have to wait that long.

“Willy and I want to take you out to dinner and give it to you as a special treat,” Grandma said.

This was terrible news. Because I really wanted Willy to just disappear.

“Oh,” I said.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I watched as Grandma tapped on the purple box holding Sylvie’s nose hair trimmer.

“What’s inside?” Grandma asked.

“Sylvie’s birthday present,” I said.

“So you want to keep it a mystery until the big reveal,” Grandma said.

I nodded.

“Bessica, would you prefer that I not take you to Sylvie’s party?” Grandma asked.

She sounded a little bit hurt when she asked me this question. Like maybe I’d be ashamed to have her take me to the party. But that wasn’t it. I just didn’t know how I felt about Grandma taking me to a party I wasn’t invited to.

“You can come,” I said.

And I was really surprised to hear myself say this, because it meant that Grandma and I were both going to Sylvie’s party even though neither one of us was invited.

“Great!” Grandma said. “You should get moving. We need to leave in an hour.”

I looked at my clock. She was right.

“Are you going to dress up?” Grandma asked. “Maybe wear a skirt?”

I shook my head. “No skirt. It’s a disco/jungle theme party. I think she’s playing a roller-skating game, and I’ll need to use my legs and stuff.”

“Really?” Grandma asked.

I nodded.

“Well, then I won’t wear a skirt either,” she said. She winked at me and got up.

“Hey,” I said as she was leaving the room. “Willy won’t be coming, will he?” I knew my question sounded a little rude, but I didn’t like the idea of three uninvited people showing up at Sylvie’s birthday party.

“No, Willy went to the auto parts store,” Grandma said. “He’s fixing a couple of things in the Winnebago.”

“Oh,” I said. “Cool.”

After Grandma left I thought for one second that maybe I should call Sylvie and ask if me and Grandma could come. But then I decided it made a lot more sense just to show up with Grandma and pretend I’d forgotten about all those texts. Or maybe pretend I thought we’d made up. Then the phone rang and I thought maybe Sylvie was
calling to invite me at the absolute last minute, so I answered it very quickly.

“This is Bessica,” I said.

“This is Alma.”

“Oh,” I said. I tried not to sound as disappointed as I was.

“Is your grandma or Willy there?”

Grandma didn’t have time to have a conversation with Alma. But instead of telling her that, I thought of a better idea. Because I realized that Alma would make a great third wolf! Which was exactly what Willy and Grandma needed so they could break up.

“Willy is at the store, but he’ll be back soon. You should come over. He needs help,” I said.

“Can’t Rhoda help him?” Alma asked.

Rhoda was Grandma’s name.

“No,” I said. “She’s escorting me somewhere.” I didn’t think I needed to tell Alma all the details of my life.

“I’ll see if I can stop by,” Alma said.

“Great!”

Then we hung up and I kept getting ready. When I finally came out of my bedroom I was wearing cute jeans, a blue top, and my special sneakers. I’d put in the orange tongues, in honor of Sylvie’s jungle theme. Because tigers were orange.

“You look great,” Grandma said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Where’s your present for Sylvie?” Grandma asked.

It was hidden under my bed. But I didn’t tell Grandma that. “Can’t your present be from both of us?” I asked.