Exotics #1: The Floating Menagerie Read online

  Rachael thought some more. “You’re part of my mom’s Animal Lovers’ Club.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Is everybody in the club an Exotic? Is my mom an Exotic? Is that why I couldn’t join the club?”

  Raul didn’t want to answer. He huffed, got up, turned around in a circle, sat down, and huffed again.

  Rachael said, “Raul?”

  Raul yelled, “Yes! Okay, yes, we are. We all are. Including your mom. But she didn’t want you to find out.”

  “What is she?”

  Raul huffed again. “A bee.”

  “A bee?”

  “Not just a bee. The Queen Bee.”

  Rachael didn’t want to say anything, but it seemed strange. She couldn’t imagine her mother turning into a tiny, fat bee who laid eggs all day. If Raul was telling the truth, where were her bee brothers and bee sisters?

  Suddenly, Raul sat up and started scratching his neck with his back foot, turning his collar around so the box was opposite the front door of his cage. “Shh!”

  The door at the end of the hall opened.

  Chapter 6

  The man who had shot Rachael with the tranquilizer gun walked into the room.

  “I want to go home,” Raul growled.

  Ugh, Rachael thought. Why did he even bother to hide the fact that his collar was turned off, if he was just going to give himself away? But that was Raul; he couldn’t keep his temper.

  The man shrugged. “Got your collar turned off, huh? I want a lot of things, too. I’m not going to let you go, so stop asking.”

  “My mom will—”

  “You’re dead,” the man said. When Raul didn’t say anything, he continued, “Oh, sorry. Did I make you cry? Wait, wolves don’t cry. We made it look like you got hit by a car that exploded. Your mom isn’t even looking for you. She’s burying a burnt-up, dead wolf.”

  Raul growled and charged the side of the cage, making the chain links rattle. He banged his head against the wire again and again.

  The dogs on the other side of the hall woke up and started barking and howling. Rachael covered her ears with her hands.

  The man waited until Raul had stopped banging on the fence. Raul stumbled around, dizzy from hitting his head.

  “Make all the noise you want,” the man said. “Nobody can hear you. Don’t worry, nobody will actually kill you; you have too much valuable information. But I don’t really care, as long as you don’t make problems for me before I can get you out of here.”

  Raul turned his back on the man and laid in the corner, whining to himself.

  “You.” The man pointed toward Rachael.

  She tried to make herself smaller, but of course there was nowhere to hide.

  The man said, “You’re the Queen Bee’s daughter. We’ve captured her, but she’s not telling us what we want to know.”

  Rachael felt like her whole body was on fire. He knew about her mother! Maybe he knew where she was!

  The man continued, “It’s probably a waste of time to ask, but if you tell us what we want to know, we’ll let you and your mother go. What is the password for your mom’s computer?”

  Rachael said, “I’m not supposed to tell anybody.” Which was true. She looked at her feet and curled her arm tighter around her knees.

  “Your mother is a prisoner right now, kid. Don’t you want her to go free?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “So what’s her password?”

  She whispered, “I don’t remember.” Even though she did, of course.

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You’re lying,” he said.

  “It’s not fair!” Rachael said. “I want to save my mom. But I can’t remember!” Her voice got louder and whinier, and her eyes filled with tears. “You have to let her go. It’s not her fault I can’t remember!”

  This was something she rarely did, whining and crying about things not being fair. To tell the truth, nobody at her house really cared about what was fair; her parents mostly rolled their eyes and ignored her if she complained about her chores or something like that. On the other hand, she’d seen some of her friends do it, and their parents would do almost anything to make them shut up, so she decided to give it a try.

  Rachael grabbed the side of her cage and shook it, making the dogs bark again. She whined, “I don’t know…” Then she burst into tears.

  She thought she was doing a pretty good job of wailing her head off, but the man just rolled his eyes and left.

  Rachael kept crying and shaking the fence until the man had closed the door to the hallway behind him and turned out the lights in that room, too. Then she started giggling.

  Raul snarled, “It’s not a game, Rachael. What if you get your mom killed messing around like that? They can probably see you on a spy camera right now.”

  She hadn’t thought of it like that. “Oh,” she said. Suddenly, she felt very cold and sad. She’d been trying so hard not to think about her mom being gone.

  Rachael sat on the floor in the corner closest to Raul and leaned her head on the cage. She pulled her arms inside her shirt and cried.

  Chapter 7

  It took a long time to fall asleep. Rachael woke up shivering and hungry. Her stomach was upset, and she needed to use the bathroom.

  While she’d been complaining about things that weren’t fair last night, she should have included “no bathrooms.” And no food. And the place where her leg hurt from the tranquilizer dart.

  Raul was lying on the floor with his eyes wide open, not really looking at anything.

  “Are you okay?” Rachael asked.

  “No,” Raul said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll rescue you.”

  Raul snorted. “You can’t even rescue yourself.”

  “I will. And I promise I’ll rescue you, too.”

  Rachael expected Raul to make fun of her for saying that, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Thank you. I guess.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” Raul said.

  Rachael thought about reminding Raul that wolves didn’t use the bathroom. However, the cages already smelled bad enough, and Rachael thought Raul would probably stop talking to her if she told him quit whining and pee in the corner.

  The man opened the door to the hallway. He was wearing the same kind of blue-and-white striped shirt, but it wasn’t dirty from their fight. It must be his work uniform.

  Why wasn’t he in disguise? she wondered. Did he think they would never be let go? Or was he just dumb? She would tell the cops on him, no matter what.

  “Are you ready to tell me your mom’s computer password yet?” the man said.

  “Excuse me?” Rachael said. “May I use the bathroom?”

  The man said, “Sure,” then shook his head. “No, wait. First you tell me your mom’s password, and then I let you go to the bathroom.”

  “That’s not fair,” Rachael said.

  The man turned around and started to leave.

  Rachael sighed. “Please, mister? I have to go. I’ll be good.”

  Raul paced back and forth in his cage. Rachael suspected that Raul was angry that she hadn’t asked for him to go to the bathroom too, but Raul could ask for himself, and besides, Rachael wasn’t worrying about going the bathroom as much as she was about trying to escape.

  The man unlocked Rachael’s cage and led her through the door at the end of the hall into a grooming area, with tables that had poles and chains on them. You could put a dog on the table, clip the chain onto the pole onto its collar, and make it stand still while you combed it, cut its hair, and trimmed its nails. Ox would have hated it.

  The man pointed at a door in the side of the room. “In there. You have two minutes.”

  Rachael went through the door and locked it behind her. There was a window!

  She closed the toilet lid and climbed onto the back as quic
kly but as quietly as she could. She braced one foot on the top of the toilet paper holder, whispering to herself please don’t break, please don’t break, and looked out the window.

  She could see a big road with a bunch of cars on it and tall buildings on the other side of the road. Just outside the window were a bunch of bushes.

  The window wasn’t locked, only latched. She opened the latch and pushed the window out as far as it would go, then grabbed the windowsill and jumped and pulled herself up so her head was sticking out the window and the top of her body was resting on the windowsill.

  Her feet thumped on the wall.

  “What’s going on in there?” the man asked. “You come out right now!”

  Chapter 8

  The air outside the window was really cold. The sun hadn’t really risen yet—it was light but not bright outside. This was the earliest Rachael had been awake for a really, really long time, and she was very tired.

  The man pounded on the door. “Get out here! Right now!”

  Rachael sighed and slid back inside the bathroom, pulling the window shut behind her. She couldn’t leave without Raul. She knew her dad would think she was being stupid; she should escape and tell the police where Raul was, so the police could rescue him, but she just couldn’t do it. She’d promised.

  Rachael shouted, “I’m busy! Just wait a minute.” She used the bathroom, washed her hands, and looked in all the drawers while the water was still running. She found a small pair of clippers with short, curved snippers on them, and put them in the deep pocket on the leg of her pajamas.

  Then she turned off the water, unlocked the door, and came out.

  “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “But I really, really had to go.”

  “I don’t need to know, kid,” the man said. “Did you change your mind about your mom’s password yet? Did you ‘remember’ it?”

  Rachael shook her head, and the man led her back to the room with the cages. He locked her in her cage.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” she asked.

  The man grinned. “The two of you are going on a little trip to meet someone who isn’t as nice as I am. So, you know, if you don’t want to go, you should tell me the password first.”

  Raul headbutted the cage. “Shut up about the password already. She isn’t going to tell you.”

  The man shrugged. “In that case, it’s time for the trip.”

  “To where?” Rachael asked.

  “Far, far away,” the man said. “I’ll bring you some food and water in a few minutes.”

  “Do you know where my mom is? Is that where we’re going?”

  The man laughed. “If you think I’m going to tell you, you’re dumber than a box of rocks.”

  “What?”

  “I mean you’re stupid, kid.”

  “I’ll tell you my mom’s password if you tell me where she is,” Rachael wheedled.

  “Nah, it’s too late for that now. You had your chance. But tell me anyway. What is it?”

  “I was lying.” Rachael crossed her arms over her chest. “I still don’t remember what it is.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the man said. “Why would your mom even tell you what her password is? You didn’t even know she was a spy.”

  “Did too,” Rachael lied. Her mother was a spy?

  “Hah.” The man locked the door behind him as he left.

  Raul paced back and forth. Rachael noticed that Raul had used one corner of his cage as a toilet after all, but she decided not to mention it.

  “We have to figure out a way to get out of here,” Raul said, his toenails clicking on the floor. It was very distracting.

  “If you can turn into a human, you can get out the bathroom window,” Rachael said.

  Raul stopped walking as he realized that Rachael hadn’t gone out the window, not without him. “Oh.” After a few seconds, he started walking again. “I know, when they come to get us, we’ll charge them. We’ll knock them down and run away.”

  Rachael pulled the clippers out of her pocket and tried to cut through the lock, but the U-shaped shackle was too strong.

  “Try the wire,” Raul said.

  Rachael couldn’t cut through the wire of the cage, but she could wedge the clippers under the loops of wire holding the cage walls together. She twisted the clippers around until the end of one loop popped free.

  Rachael inspected her cage. If she could pop off two more wire loops, she’d be able to push the corner of the cage up and sneak into Raul’s cage. Then she could get through the front of Raul’s cage so they could both escape.

  She started to work on the next wire loop. It popped off right away. But the last one was wrapped around twice and wouldn’t budge.

  Raul yipped, “He’s coming back!”

  Chapter 9

  The man came through the door just as Rachael put the clippers in her pocket. She ran toward him and started shaking the door of her cage to distract him so he wouldn’t look at the missing wires.

  “I’m so hungry,” she moaned.

  “Well, aren’t you lucky,” the man said. “I brought you something to eat.” He had a plate of cheese and crackers and a carton of milk. “Go stand in the corner. I don’t want you trying to run away.”

  Rachael let go of the door and backed away. Should she try to run past the man?

  The man wouldn’t unlock her cage until she touched the back wall. Rachael tried to look like she wasn’t paying attention, but as soon as the man opened the door, she ran straight toward him.

  The man dropped the tray. Rachael ducked and twisted, but the man’s big body was in the way. He shoved her, and she tripped on the tray, knocking crackers, cheese, and milk everywhere.

  “Ow!”

  “Nice try. Too bad I’m so fat, or you might have knocked me over. Oh no, did you spill your food? Too bad. Now you’ll have to eat it off the floor.” He slammed the cage door. “I’ll bring you another carton of milk, though.”

  He carried a bucket of water and a small bowl of dog food up to Raul’s cage. “Are you going to give me any problems?”

  Raul bared his teeth at him.

  “I’m going to take that as a yes.” The man went back into the other room for a few seconds and returned with a yellow stick or gun with a handle on one end and two points on the other. The man opened Raul’s cage door. Raul charged the door, and the man poked him with the stick. Raul jumped and whimpered in pain.

  “Don’t like that, do you? It’s called an electric cattle prod, and it’ll shock you if I poke you with it. Now stand back from the door, or I’ll do it again.”

  But Raul wasn’t ready to give up yet. He charged the man again—and got shocked again. But this time, Raul didn’t back away. He kept charging forward until he was under the prod. Then he bit the man on his arm.

  The man yelled, and the door at the end of the hall burst open, and two older boys with red hair ran through.

  When they saw the man hitting Raul with the prod, trying to get him to let go of his arm (instead of shocking Raul with the prod), they laughed.

  “Good job with that wolf, Joe,” said one.

  Rachael thought the boys looked familiar; they might be eighth-graders at her school, but she couldn’t remember their names. They were twins.

  “Shut up and help me,” the man said. “Ow!”

  The two boys dropped to their hands and knees, shook off their clothes, and turned into the big dogs that had chased them yesterday. Raul growled through his clenched teeth. The two dogs circled Raul inside his cage until one of the dogs was behind him. Then the dog bit Raul on the back leg. Raul yipped with pain and let go of Joe’s arm, and he jumped out of reach.

  Joe checked his arm. It was scratched up but not bleeding too badly; Raul hadn’t bitten him as hard as he could have. “It felt like he was going to tear my whole arm off!” He shoved the bucket and dog food into Raul’s cage. The two dogs slipped out of the cage, and Joe slammed the door.

  Raul
charged toward the door, trying to get out, but the door hit him in the head. He slid backward, lying on the floor.

  Joe locked the door. The two dogs whined at him.

  Joe said, “What, do you think I’m your mother? Pick up your own clothes.”

  “There’s a girl,” one of the big black dogs said.

  Joe snorted and picked up the dog-boys’ scattered clothes, and they all left.

  Rachael looked around. Something was missing. “Were did the other dogs go?”

  “That man came for them earlier this morning, while you were asleep,” Raul panted. “He told me he was going to put them to sleep and that we were next.”

  “Oh no,” Rachael said.

  “He was probably lying. Probably.”

  Chapter 10

  Rachael was so hungry that she picked up all the cheese, wiped off the dirt as best she could, and ate it. The crackers were mostly crushed into powder, but she ate a few of the larger pieces. The milk carton was flat, and her bottom was a bit damp from falling in the milk.

  Raul drank some of his water but didn’t touch the food.

  Joe came back a few minutes later with another carton of milk and the cattle prod. He opened her cage, waved the prod at her a few times, then put the milk on the floor and relocked the cage.

  Rachael started to open the carton and noticed that one corner was already open. “This one is open already,” she said.

  “That’s because I was going to drink it. But you wasted all your milk, so I’m giving you mine. I’m being nice. I don’t have to be nice.”

  Raul bared his teeth at Joe and growled, but didn’t get off the floor.

  Rachael said, “Okay,” and drank the milk. “Do you want your tray back?”

  “Nah,” Joe said. “I’ll clean up your pens after you’re gone.”

  “When are we leaving?” Rachael asked.

  The man checked his watch. “In about fifteen minutes.”

  Rachael sat against the back wall. She hadn’t slept much, and she was tired again. She decided to close her eyes and rest until they came to get her…

  ***

  Rachael had a terrible nightmare. She dreamed that she was in the dark, and it was really, really cold, and she could barely move. Her ears hurt. She swallowed, and they hurt even more for a few seconds, then felt a little better. Her stomach felt awful. She tried to talk out loud, but she could only whisper. She tried to kick, but her feet wouldn’t move. Then she felt really dizzy, and that’s where the dream ended. She couldn’t remember any more.