The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,33

in my hand.

“What?” I’d looked down at it, shocked, then back up to see Rue giving me . . . well, giving me a shit-eating grin.

“You asshole!” I’d said—a word that Cecil dropped a lot around the cages—and done the only thing that seemed like the right reaction. I threw it at her.

She’d been thrilled, ducking her head and jumping into the tree to grab an apple from the stash she kept up there, throwing it at me the second I turned my back. It sailed through the square holes of the fence and I understood; we were playing a game.

I’d gathered a few things, some apples from the orchard, a tennis ball I usually tossed with Goldie, and a balled-up sock from the box of mismatches. Rue and I spent most of the afternoon throwing things at each other, which I guess is how you make friends with an orangutan.

She’s watching me now from her tree; I can see her eyeing me through the leaves. She’ll probably wait until I’m in throwing distance and peg me from afar. She’s gotten pretty good at judging what will fit through the fence holes and what won’t, and her aim is improving.

“All right, Zee,” I tell the zebra, giving her a last rub on the neck. “You’re good.”

Goldie slips through the paddock slats as I climb over, her dirty haunches bouncing as she runs in front of me. I really need to trim her up, give her a bath. Not that long ago she had monthly appointments with the groomer and would come home with a bow on top of her head, Mom and Dad telling her she was a good girl, a pretty girl. Dad would roll around on the ground with Goldie, then grab my leg and pull me into the pile, telling me I was a good girl, too, while I shrieked and reached for Mom, who would pretend I was invisible.

“What is that?” she’d say, cocking her head. “I think I hear my daughter . . . but I can’t see her. Weird.”

I squash the thought as soon as I have it, painful because it came true. Mom can’t see me now, neither can Dad, and I bet they can’t hear me, either. Felicity Turnado showed up at my house in her nightgown, crying, asking if she could spend the night, and after that everything changed. Goldie isn’t an indoor dog anymore, and she isn’t a clean dog anymore. Cecil doesn’t tell me that I’m a good girl, either, no matter how clean the pens are or how hard I work. That’s just the way it is.

The tennis ball hits me square in the forehead, and Goldie grabs it on the third bounce, running off with her head in the air. I rub the spot.

“Nice, Rue,” I tell her. I hold my hands up, empty. Goldie ran off with my only ammo. “You win.” She gives me a chirp and comes down, graceful and effortless, swinging easily through the power of her own strength. She drops in front of me, cocking her head when my phone goes off in my back pocket. There’s a question on her face—what is this new thing?

I’m as surprised as she is. Right after Mom and Dad disappeared there had been a lot of messages, kids from school asking if I was all right (I wasn’t) and if there was anything they could do (they couldn’t). But the messages had dwindled as time passed, and my new situation became old. I wasn’t news anymore. I was just poor now. I couldn’t do the movies or the mall without that awkward moment when someone else’s mom handed me a folded twenty, or spend the night without being encouraged to take a shower and scrub real good before bedtime.

I stopped taking the twenties, started refusing to scrub real good, and the pity invitations didn’t come anymore. The only person I hadn’t heard from in months was the person I wanted to talk to the most: Felicity. So when I pull the phone out of my back pocket and see that I’ve got a text from her, and that she wants me to come to her birthday party, I say the first thing that comes to mind, some more words that Cecil taught me.

“Holy shit.”

In her cage, Rue grins at me.

I am not glad I came to the party.

Cecil was not happy when I told him I wasn’t doing chores tonight, because it means he can’t