10 Things I Hate About Pinky - Sandhya Menon Page 0,32
what looked like a large purple belt. “Aha. I knew I had this somewhere.”
“What is that?”
“It’s Lucifer’s halter.”
Samir stared at her blankly. “Are you surprised that I have no idea what you’re talking about?”
“My cat, Lucifer,” she clarified. “He died when I was ten, but I used to take him out for walks in this halter. It’s a little worse for wear, but it should be fine.…” Pinky fiddled with the buckles for a moment. “Oh, shoot. The one that goes around her tummy is broken.”
“You could just not use a leash on the rodent,” Samir suggested.
“She’s a mar—”
“Marsupial, yeah, I got you.” Samir walked over to her. “Let me see it.” She handed it over and he looked at it, turning it this way and that. “Hmm. What if we…?” Samir jerry-rigged the straps with complicated-looking knots. “There. That should hold.”
“Wow.” Pinky took it from him and buckled and unbuckled the halter, looking genuinely impressed. “Thanks.” She grinned. “Did you learn that at Boy Scouts or something?”
Samir raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, actually. Is that funny for some reason?”
“Um, nope,” Pinky said, but she was biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. “Not at all.”
Annoying little renegade freak. What was wrong with the Boy Scouts? “Anyway.” Samir turned to face the opossum. “So you’re just going to slip the harness on her and, what? Stroll out the front door?”
“You think so little of me.” Pinky walked over to her closet and pulled out a large canvas tote bag. Grinning toothily at Samir, she reached for the opossum.
* * *
“Wow, I did not think that was going to work,” Samir said once they were outside, in the wooded glen past the lake house property line. The sun’s heat wasn’t nearly as oppressive in the shade of the trees, but he still felt like he was covered in wet, hot towels. They walked through a buzzing cloud of gnats and he closed his eyes and held his breath so he wouldn’t accidentally inhale one. Or twelve. Once they were out of the danger zone, he said, “She just held so still in that bag.”
“She did,” Pinky said, gazing fondly at the opossum, which was now happily sniffing around the grass, wearing its ridiculous purple halter. “I half thought she was playing dead again, but no. I guess she just sensed that I needed her to be quiet.”
“Your parents and uncle and aunt were pretty enthralled by Dolly’s reenactment of her class-president campaign though, to be honest. That made it easy.”
“They’re always enthralled with her,” Pinky said, kicking a pebble, and Samir thought she was mostly just talking to herself.
“Really? And with you, they’re…”
“Exasperated.”
Samir snorted and brushed away an insistent mosquito. “No kidding.”
Pinky gave him a look that could wither mighty oak trees. “What does that mean?”
Somewhere in the distance, Samir could hear splashing on the lake. “I have a feeling you give your parents plenty of reasons to be exasperated.” He gestured to her marsupial. “Case in point.” He wasn’t her parent and even he was kind of exasperated, to be honest.
Pinky tugged the opossum away from a pinecone she was trying to eat. “Or maybe they—and you—could be inspired by me. Ever think of that?”
“Ha. Inspired by your complete lack of respect for rules?” Samir pushed a branch out of the way as they wound deeper into the woods. “Or by your affinity for dangerous situations?”
“I know you spend all your free time arranging your sock drawer by color, but out here in the real world, independence, bravery, and passion are positive traits,” Pinky said, her voice bitingly sarcastic. “Just FYI.”
For a fleeting moment, Samir considered shoving her into a small hole in the ground they were passing. “And out in the real world, bragging about your positive traits is considered a very negative trait. Just FYI.”
“I’m not bragging,” Pinky said, her jaw clenched as tight as the fist that held the opossum’s leash. “I’m just aware of my good qualities.”
Samir ducked under a tree limb and took a deep breath. “You know what? Let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine.”
They watched the opossum for a minute, the tension still thick and soupy in the air. Finally, to clear it, Samir said, “So? What are you going to name it? Her? Your opossum, I mean.”
“You can just say ‘possum’ like the rest of America, you know.”
“But technically, she’s an opossum,” Samir explained, baffled. “Why wouldn’t you want to say it correctly?”