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I watched as Jamie flipped the phone open, dialed 4-1-1, and pressed it to his left ear. He tapped his pointer finger against the back of the phone. Like he was conducting business as usual.
“Yes,” he said into the receiver. “Would you please connect me with PETA.” He continued tapping. “Thank you, I’ll hold.”
I reached for the phone to try to get him to stop the call, but Jamie pulled away and smiled. I swallowed, a heavy weight suddenly forming in my gut.
Cut it out, I mouthed. Scanning our vicinity, I searched to see if we actually did have anyone watching us.No. Surprisingly not. In the entire exhibit room, full of modern sculptures similar toPrometheus, it was just me and Jamie. Nothing but bright, white walls surrounded us. Well, and the female guard who stood by the opening which lead into the area. But she wasn’t close enough to hear what was going on over here.
“Hi!” Jamie said brightly into the phone. “If you wouldn’t mind settling an argument for me… I have a question about animal abuse.”
Here we fucking go.
He put the phone between the two of us and, despite myself, I leaned closer, so I could hear what the PETA person had to say. I relaxed into my own skin knowing it wasn’t like Jamie called frommyphone.
“What’s the question?” The woman sounded neither friendly or hostile. Sort of like she’d heard it all. A rush of relief washed over me at that idea.
“Okay, so,” I said, “if a man was strangling a vulture—”
“If agodwas strangling a mythical creature,” Jamie interjected.
“Fine. Hypothetically, if a man, who happened to be a god, was strangling a vulture—”
“A vulture ordered to eat his liver by Zeus himself!” Jamie threw his free hand in the air. He seemed to like to do that.
I sighed, my voice feeling small as hell. “…Would said vulture be the victim of animal cruelty?”
There was a long, long pause.
A long. Long. Pause.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Are you kids on drugs?” the woman asked. Her voice dripped with a secretarial annoyance—which meant her tone stayed as monotone as it had been when she first answered the line. At least she wasn’t like Nina fromOffice Space. You know, the secretary with the high-pitched voice who kept on answering, “Just a moment!”
“Uh, no,” I said defensively. “Not on drugs.”
“Okay.” She dragged out the word. “Let me get my supervisor.”
Before Jamie had a chance to react, I hit the red button and disconnected the call. He scrunched his nose.
“What’d you do that for?” he asked.
“She thought we were ondrugs!”
“So?” he said without a beat.
“So… everything.”
“But… that doesn’t settle the argument.” He snapped the phone shut and squinted his eyes, gazing at me pensively. He grabbed my arm as he said, “Come on, let’s find another way.”
Before I knew it, he was leading me back out into the main hallway of the art museum, scattered with other Stony Point Academy kids who had joined for the field trip.
Something told me that, unlike us, those kids weren’t arguing over Prometheus and the vulture.
I also sensed that this was the start of the strangest friendship I’d ever had in my entire existence.
Chapter Five
Seventeen Years Later
