Page 5

“It’s an alligator,” I tell him.

“Whatever. Next time a kid gets bit, you know Cecil’s going down.”

I pull my feet out of the water, toes dripping, one finger in Ribbit’s face. “First of all, he didn’t get bit—he was scratched by the orangutan, and second, he was inside the line.”

I repaint the lines every Sunday, a yellow stripe in the ground to mark what’s safe and what’s not. Some mom wanted a better shot of her kid with Rue, and our waiver is worded the way it is for a reason.

“People are stupid,” I say, putting my feet back in the water, letting the coolness slip up my legs as I sink into the pond, wishing it could touch the heat in my chest.

“People are,” he agrees. “Dill Riley coughed at the township meeting, and everybody about lost their shit.”

“Old Dill or Young Dill?” I ask, even though Young Dill probably has a least thirty years on both of us.

“Old Dill.”

“Flu?” I ask, but Ribbit only shrugs. There’s been a nasty strain running through the county, tearing up guts and leaving people wilted and pale in its wake. They gave out flu shots for free at the clinic last week, urging the very young and very old to get vaccinated. I guess that’s how death works, clipping us off at both ends.

“Doesn’t matter if Dill had it or not,” Ribbit says. “We all treated him like he did. He could’ve swung a dead cat with a long tail and not hit anybody. People got far away, fast.”

“Hmm . . . ,” I say, trying to remember if any of our zoo visitors have been coughing, and wondering if they could pass it to the animals. Last thing we need to be is the Amontillado Dead Animal Attractions. I slip farther out into the water to where it grows colder, near the drop-off.

“Hey, don’t . . .” Ribbit scoots closer to the edge of the tailgate, one hand on my shoulder. He hates it when I go in the water.

“I can swim,” I remind him.

“I can’t,” he tells me for the millionth time. “So stop making me nervous.”

“It’s the panther the township should be worried about, not the alligator,” I say, ignoring him as the mud I stirred up settles, the fish coming back in to see what changed in their world.

“They are.”

I sigh again and pull myself back up onto the tailgate, the ends of my jeans wet where I didn’t roll them up far enough. “You have anything good to tell me?”

“There’s gonna be a party,” he offers. “Last one, before the Allan house is torn down.”

“Yeah?” I say, unrolling my pant legs.

“Everybody’ll be there,” Ribbit pushes. “I figured you could, you know, maybe make some money.”

I stop struggling with the wet denim. He’s got a point. Where there’s a party there’s plenty of wants, and I’m able to fill them, taking care of my own needs in return. I’ve been looking out for myself long enough to smell opportunity, but I know the scent of danger, too. If the township council finally gets it into their head to come after Amontillado Animal Attractions, Lenore Usher’s vote won’t be enough to save us, and I can’t say for sure that she’d back us. She and my mom might have had the same last name and shared the same blood, but it takes more than that to make someone family.

Grandma died before I knew her, slow and awful, by all accounts. The slow part she was thankful for, calling a lawyer to her bedside to take the house right out from under Cecil’s feet and give it to Lenore. The awful part I don’t like to think on much. Lenore told me once she died screaming, clutching her belly and refusing to leave her land. Lenore put her mom in the ground the next day, her father out of the house within the week. My mom landed on her feet, marrying a Montor. Cecil landed in the trailer and has been rolling downhill ever since.

I don’t love Cecil’s trailer, but it’s got a roof and four walls. And a mortgage. One that gets paid more by what we grow on the back acre than the animals that live up front. But at least the animals let us pretend to be respectable.

What bothers me, though, is that I know Ribbit isn’t talking about the party because he’s worried about my financial situation. He brought it up because he can’t go alone. One drink and he’ll do anything that’s asked of him, strip down, bark like a dog, or funnel a quart of vinegar straight to his gut . . . or somewhere else. I’ve seen him do all these things, and smile doing them, because it makes people laugh. He doesn’t understand that it’s not because he’s funny but because he’s the joke.

I hate when they do that to him.

I hate that he lets them.

But I know why, and I kind of get it. Lenore’s had him jumping to her beck and call since he had his feet under him, and the only time she had a smile for Ribbit is when he did as he was asked. If Cecil had trained up our animals half as well as Lenore did her son, I wouldn’t have to go to the Allan house tomorrow night just to keep our electricity on.

A minnow comes in close to investigate where my feet have been, the last swirls of mud finally settling. A larger bluegill follows behind, curious. I wonder for a second if the bluegill is the minnow’s mom or dad. I’ve been doing that ever since my own parents disappeared, coupling up smaller animals with larger ones, not wanting even a fish to feel the pain of being an orphan. I can’t even claim the title of orphan, not yet. Next month will mark seven years since anyone has seen my mom or dad. Until then, I’m just a ward and Cecil my guardian, because we don’t use words like grandpa or granddaughter to refer to each other. That would imply an emotional connection that isn’t there.

But the blood connection is there, one I can’t deny because you can see it in the way we both hold our heads high, or square our shoulders when someone walks up to us too quick for comfort. Maybe I learned it from watching him, but I don’t think so. I think there’s a steel streak in me that comes from Cecil, and I think that same bit of steel is partly what’s held up the Allan house for all these years, not the brick and mortar. I’ve felt it every time I’ve walked into a party, something calling to me, something saying I belong there.

I know that house, and not just because I’ve scouted out the best places to do my business dealings at parties. I know that house because it knows me, and we’ve both been abandoned. There are dark corners inside of it, as there are in me. And if it’s going to be destroyed, I’ve got someone in mind to go down with it.