Grows That Way (5 page)

chapter
nine

I'm sitting on Brooklyn, bareback, and there's no bridle, so that's a pretty good giveaway that I'm dreaming. Oh good. I could use a dream, with all the stress there is in my life right now.

We're riding on a trail. I recognize it. It's the one that goes down to the river. Since this is a lucid dream where I have control, I change the trail. I make it into an imaginary one that's nice and wide, with sunlight coming through the branches overhead, and bunnies beside us in the grass, and flowers growing, and baby robins peeping, and I can smell the freshness of the air, and hear the gurgling of the…river. Ack. We're at the river. How did this happen?

I try to turn the river into the ocean. I try to put us at the beach with sand and pebbles and seaweed and tidal pools with barnacles but the scene only lasts a few seconds then pops like a bubble and we're back at the river again.

We're not alone.

There is the creature, standing at the far bank, watching us. Then she turns (definitely a she) and walks, upright and full of grace, into the woods.

Not a bear. Taller than any gorilla I've ever seen on National Geographic channel, and with longer straighter legs. Definitely not a human either.

“Wait!” I say. I can't believe I've said this. Wait? Wait so we can catch up and you can eat me? Except it's a dream of course. I can't get eaten in my own dream. Or I don't think I can. Brooklyn plows into the water. The river is deep in the middle, so he has to swim. I'm wearing my nightshirt and nothing else. I look down and see the wet fabric sticking to me and all my flatness. But as I watch, bulges form on my chest under my shirt, something that isn't supposed to happen until I start estrogen treatment, though of course in my dreams anything is possible. My nightshirt pulls apart at the neckline and falls off and when I look down again I'm covered with hair. Covered. Not secondary sexual characteristic hair. Total hair. Even more than Franco. Ugh.

I wake myself by consciously turning my head back and forth on my pillow.

I am obviously really screwed up.

It's Sunday morning, usually my favourite day for riding, but the last thing I want to do today is head out to the barn in case Kansas wants to drag me on another trail ride.

I figure I have some time to work up an excuse for my parents because they usually like to sleep in on Sundays. It used to be that they wanted extra “snuggle time,” and I'd hear them in their room giggling, but now all they do is sleep. I've been hoping it's because people need more sleep as they get older so it's nothing for me to worry about.

When I arrive in the kitchen, Dad is already there, sipping a coffee and texting on his BlackBerry, so I guess he doesn't want cuddles or extra sleep.

I'm feeling pretty tense from my dream, but don't want to talk about it so I make a fake show of relaxed stretching and yawning—unnecessarily, as it turns out. Dad glances up briefly from his BlackBerry and says good morning. I pour myself a bowl of granola and spoon on some peach yoghurt. Dad has had toast for breakfast—I see the burnt crumbs on his plate. Usually he and Mom like a full cooked breakfast on Sunday. In the good old days I made them French toast and served it to them in bed.

Dad pockets his BlackBerry, leans over and plops a hand on my head and ruffles my hair which fortunately I haven't combed yet. I hate it when he does this. I think about saying, “Woof,” but then Dad says, “Going riding today, Munchkin?”

“No,” I say, “Kansas wants Brooklyn to have a day off.” That was easy.

Dad nods as though this is completely plausible, but just in case, I add, “And I have an essay to research for school.”

“Sure,” says Dad. I can't believe that he would buy this crock. His attention is obviously elsewhere. His BlackBerry chimes from his pocket and he checks the display. “Great!” he says, getting up from the table. “I have a lesson with the golf pro at nine.”

A lesson? I thought my dad knew everything about golf. Why would he need a lesson? Is he lying to me? My dad? But then…well, I'm lying to him.

After Dad leaves, before I can even finish my granola, Mom wanders into the kitchen, yawning and stretching, exactly like I did for Dad.

We've turned into a pack of liars.

“Dad has a golf lesson,” I tell her.

“Oh that's good,” she says.

“Why does Dad want lessons?” I ask.

“He tells me he's been having trouble with his long game,” says Mom. “He's not getting the same distance on his fairway shots as he used to. He thinks he's losing power. Of course he's not as young as he used to be. Men have trouble accepting that.”

I sense a lecture brewing on gender differences, which I've heard way too much about in the last few years, so I change the subject. “I'm giving Brooklyn a day off,” I say.

She nods. “Good idea.”

Do my parents not know me at all? When have I ever not wanted to go to the barn? This is as out of character as it would be if Dad suggested we take his American Express card and go have a good time.

Mom pours herself a mug of coffee. “I think I'll take Auntie Sally out for lunch. Do you want a ride over to visit with Taylor?”

Just what I don't need—time with Taylor who will want to teach me how to be an animal communicator. “No thanks, Mom, I'll be fine here on my own.” This will give me time to do what I really need to do: research, but not for a dumb school essay.

I have to wait for Mom to leave before I can sit down in private in front of the computer. I press my palms together, concentrating on my problem and how to frame it with the right key words for Google. There are so many choices:
hallucinations, bears, exotic animals, brain tumors, anxiety, defense mechanisms. I groan aloud at the thought of my problem being psychological, which would sooner or later attract my mom's attention and ruin my life. So I decide to eliminate these possibilities from my search. I would rather I had seen a real were-ape than that I imagined it—for any reason.

I start by Googling
werewolf.

The werewolf movie I saw months ago wasn't scary, but the pictures on the Internet are another matter. They show werewolves being so gruesome and bloodthirsty that I wonder how much I want to learn about them. But I feel mesmerized by the pictures, in the same way that I was mesmerized by the alien movie when I was young and couldn't stop watching until I was practically petrified with terror.

I force myself to take my eyes off the computer screen and think sensibly for a moment. After all, I don't really believe that what I saw was a werewolf. The creature I saw definitely didn't have a wolf face because there was no long pointy snout. On the other hand, werewolves could be similar to dogs, where there are a lot of variations in facial features. Kansas's dog Bernadette has a pointy nose because she's part German shepherd. Taylor's dog Bunga is part pug and his nose is flat, as though he ran face-first into a cement wall several times (which wouldn't surprise me, because he is so slow to learn). Bernadette and Bunga don't even look like they're the same species, so maybe the same applies to werewolves, in which case, I should scroll through all the pictures I can find.

After five minutes my pulse is racing and I'm wanting to lock all the doors in the house and nail the windows closed. Werewolves are totally menacing, with lots of long teeth and lean muscle. Not that I believe in them. Clearly they are imaginary—I do get that. Well, mostly I get that. But part of my brain is terrified.

I take several deep breaths and try to focus and steady my brain.

I decide to make a list of the differences between the creature I saw and a werewolf. I sift through the Wikipedia article for information, even though my teacher Mr. Brumby insists that this is not a reliable source of information and he won't accept it as a source for any essays we write for his class.

Werewolves are menacing and aggressive but the creature I saw disappeared as though she was frightened of me.

In pages and pages of information there was no indication that werewolves liked to fish.

Werewolves have long tails and perky ears. I can't remember my creature having either.

There are absolutely no werewolves with ape-like or pug faces.

Werewolves have long sinewy necks. The creature I saw had a neck shorter than Franco's.

As I study my list I realize that, unlike when I was young and frightened by the violence of that stupid alien movie, I'm not afraid that the creature I discovered will eat me or attack me, because she showed no sign of aggression. I haven't feared for my life these last few days; more I've feared for my sanity. It's the weirdness that has been deeply troubling. Not being able to understand what I saw has thrown me off-kilter.

I decide I need to do another search. This time I don't use Google, but go to Dogpile which is a metasearch engine that Mom is always telling me is better for finding scientific information. Mr. Brumby would be proud of me too. Not that I care.

I enter
were-ape
on the search bar.

There's some funny goofy stuff on YouTube, and not much else until I notice some interesting information about ape and human evolution in an article about
Ardipithecus ramidus
. To read more than the abstract I have to set up a free membership with an online science magazine, so I enter my mom's name and what I remember of her credentials as a registered therapist and her university degrees, and then I am granted access. The full article is pretty technical and frankly way over my head. But several of the diagrams are interesting. Even though the drawings are all of skeletons, I think if I added flesh and lots of hair, I would have something that looked like what I saw: an upright ape, long extinct.

Not a werewolf.

Not a were-ape.

My heart is racing again, but from excitement now, not fear. I have made an earth-shattering scientific discovery.

I print off the article and stash it in my backpack. I can hardly wait to discuss it with Logan Losino.

chapter
ten

Monday morning is going fine until I grab my backpack, stumble into the garage and stub my eyes on the pink and white abomination. I can't do it. I can't ride it to school. The teasing would be unbearable.

I also can't leave it in the garage. If my dad notices I'm not using something he paid perfectly good money for, he'll go ballistic. I know, because that's what happened when my mom didn't use the spa gift certificate for laser hair removal that he bought her for her birthday. He said it was non-refundable and if she didn't redeem it, then next year he won't buy her anything. Mom said that's fine with her.

The other reason I can't leave Pinky in the garage is that I have to be able to bike to the stable after school. So I have to stash it somewhere, not on our property, and I don't have much time to find a place.

I pedal through the neighborhood, well off my usual bike route that would take me in a loop out into the country past Kansas's farm. Instead I take much the same path I used when I had to walk to school. I cruise through suburbia, looking for a hiding place—a shed, a bush, something.

I'm going slowly so I don't miss any opportunities, otherwise I never would have noticed Logan Losino as I round a corner, sitting on the front steps of a brown two-storey house, rubbing his hands together, searching the road in my direction.

He leaps to his feet when he sees me which makes me feel pretty happy but then he slows and strolls to the bottom of his driveway so casually that I have to doubt he's meaning to meet me at all. I feel confused, and am inclined to pedal on past him, except that Logan might know a good hiding place for Pinky. I decide to stop. I wait beside Pinky at the edge of the road. As Logan approaches I catch a whiff of that horse liniment smell. Could Franco be around? I peer around Logan but can't see Franco anywhere, and as Logan draws closer I realize that he is the source of the smell. Of course it's not horse liniment, I know that. Maybe it's some other medicated product, such as shampoo. The whole Losino family could have some sort of contagious hair condition, like dandruff. If Logan wasn't so much taller than me I could check.

Logan stands in front of me, bouncing on his toes. “You're riding this way to school now?” he says. He hasn't even noticed the hideous Pinky. He must be colour blind. I remember from one of my mom's gender difference lectures that this is much more common in boys than girls.

“My dad bought me a new bike,” I say. I don't want Logan to feel self-conscious about his colour blindness, so I steer clear of mentioning the ghastly pinkishness. “Obviously it's meant for a six-year-old. Amber and Topaz…” My voice catches unexpectedly and I can't finish the sentence but Logan nods understandingly so I say, “I have to hide it somewhere. I'm not taking it to school.”

Logan doesn't even take time to think, and he doesn't assess the bike at all, he just takes my word for it. It's as though he's been presented with some sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and doesn't have a second to waste. “Put it in our garage,” he says urgently. “You can hide it there every day. I'll show you the side door.”

Logan grabs my bike, vaults onto the seat and pedals up the driveway. The bike is so small for him that his knees come up around his elbows and he has to hunch over the handlebar. He looks like a cute circus bear.

He's almost at the top of the driveway up by the house when Franco comes out the front door. Franco has his gym bag in one hand and a math textbook in the other. He must be doing remedial math because it's the same one I'm using. Franco takes one look at Logan and goes crazy. “You stupid fairy! What do you think you're doing? If I ever see you at school on a pink bike you're dead!” He flings the book and it hits the front wheel and breaks in two down the binding. Loose pages flutter across the driveway. I can't say I've never wanted to do that to a math book, but still I find Franco pretty scary.

“It's not my bike, you moron,” says Logan. “It's Sylvia's. I'm hiding it in the garage for her.” He reaches to open the side door of the garage, but Franco stops him.

“She's not going in there,” says Franco.

Logan looks at Franco and shakes his head. “Oh here we go again. Fine. I'll put the bike in the shed.” Logan goes out of his way to drive over a page, then disappears around the back of the house, calling for me to follow.

I give Franco a wide berth and manage to time it so he's bending to pick up some pages when I slip past.

I find Logan around the corner tucking Pinky in beside another bike in a garden shed. I take off my helmet and loop the chinstrap over my bike's handlebar. Pinky looks even more ridiculous in comparison with the other bike, which is black and red, has no sparkles, and the frame is so thick it looks like it could carry an elephant.

“This is my mountain bike,” says Logan. “It's full-suspension.” He shows me the front shocks and the heavy-duty spring in the frame. “You wouldn't believe what I can do with this baby.”

“You don't ride it to school?” I ask.

“No way,” says Logan. “It's not a road bike. It's made for trails and jumping off cliffs. Besides, someone would steal it. I had to save for months to buy it.” He checks his watch. “We better hurry if we want to get to school on time.” He grabs my hand, and together we run back to the driveway—where Franco is waiting for us.