Grows That Way Page 5

  “He’ll be fine,” says Kansas, heading to the out-gate. I guess she’s saying this to me, because Dr. Cleveland doesn’t appear to need any comforting. “I’ll go first. Sylvia, you go in the middle.”

  I see Dr. Cleveland shorten her reins and Braveheart lifts his head even higher and hollows his back. The last thing I want is Braveheart breathing down my neck. I’d rather take my chances on being picked off at the end of the line by the were-ape.

  “I think I’ll go last,” I tell Dr. Cleveland. “You can go in the middle.”

  Braveheart lunges ahead as though agreeing with my suggestion. He steps outside the arena and then spies my new pink bike leaning against the barn and spooks halfway across the parking lot. I know exactly how he feels.

  Dr. Cleveland laughs. “Oh he’s like this every year on his first ride out of the ring.” She laughs again. I don’t think it’s that funny. I wonder if she’s laughing because deep down she’s scared—my mom says people do that sometimes. Otherwise I don’t understand; I can’t see how she could possibly enjoy this.

  Kansas has gone ahead and hasn’t noticed Braveheart’s antics. She’s started up the fence line the same direction I went yesterday. Dr. Cleveland follows and Brooklyn eagerly takes up the rear.

  Brooklyn doesn’t seem worried at all. He’s acting like he’s heading out on a picnic with his friends, while I feel more like we’re walking headfirst into a live episode of Up Close and Dangerous on Animal Planet.

  But if Brooklyn is calm…maybe I did imagine everything. Maybe there’s something strange happening to my brain and I had a visual hallucination. A tumor perhaps. Dr. Cleveland would know.

  I urge Brooklyn to step faster and pull in beside Braveheart. Brooklyn pins his ears when he’s in line with Braveheart’s head, and threatens to bite him. Braveheart barely notices. He has other things on his mind it seems, as he stares up the path, the whites showing around his eyes. I’m shocked at Brooklyn’s behaviour—has he not even noticed that Braveheart is three-and-a-half hands taller? Can I not count on anyone to be sensible?

  I take a deep breath then sigh. “Dr. Cleveland, I was wondering something—”

  “Wait a minute,” says Dr. Cleveland. She checks Braveheart firmly with her right rein and he flips his head in the air. “Okay, Sylvia, you were saying?”

  “It’s a brain question. I know you’re not at work.”

  “I don’t mind,” says Dr. Cleveland. She shortens her reins another couple of inches, so the bend comes totally out of her elbows. If she continues to ride him like this, he’ll blow for sure. Maybe I shouldn’t be distracting her, except that this were-ape stuff is eating me up.

  “What if you think you see something that doesn’t exist?” I say.

  “Like what?”

  Braveheart breaks into a jiggy trot and Dr. Cleveland yells at him to walk. He takes a few walk steps and Dr. Cleveland tells him he’s a good boy.

  I’m wondering if doctor-patient confidentiality applies when out on horseback, and decide to chance it.

  “Say, sort of like a werewolf, but not really.” To cover myself, I add, “Say on a trail ride, hypothetically.”

  Braveheart grinds his teeth. Dr. Cleveland reaches forward with one hand to stroke his neck in a soothing sort of way which Braveheart takes no notice of whatsoever.

  “Hypothetically?” says Dr. Cleveland. “Well, if you think you’ve seen something that you can’t have seen because it doesn’t exist, then I guess you’ve deluded yourself. You saw something else. This can happen easily, especially if you don’t have time for a good look. Lawyers say that their worst evidence in a court of law is an eyewitness. Perception is a constructive process. I could be more technical…”

  “No, that’s good,” I say, relieved that she hasn’t talked about hallucinations or teen-onset schizophrenia, or other tragedies of mental health that my mom mentions on a regular basis.

  “Especially if you have a concern on your mind already,” says Dr. Cleveland. “For example if you’re frightened after seeing a werewolf in a movie, you can trick yourself into thinking you’ve seen one somewhere else.”

  “Oh yeah. Kind of like how Mom tricks herself into seeing that I have an eating disorder, or Dad sees that we’re wasting money all over the place and are headed for bankruptcy.”

  “Oh,” says Dr. Cleveland. She’s silent for a moment, then says, “That’s the trouble with ideas all right: they attract evidence.”

  This is almost making me feel better. “There’s just one thing, Dr. Cleveland. I haven’t seen a werewolf movie for a long time, and when I did see one I didn’t think it was scary. I thought it was dumb. I really don’t think it’s been on my mind.”

  “Maybe not a werewolf literally then, perhaps there’s some sort of defense mechanism at work: displacement, for example,” says Dr. Cleveland. “Maybe the werewolf stands for something similar that you’re anxious about, or afraid of, or angry with.”

  “Something big and hairy?”

  “Mm hmm.”

  We’ve caught up with Kansas who is waiting for us on the trail and she catches the end of the conversation. “You two talking about men?” she asks.

  Dr. Cleveland laughs and says no.

  Of course I have to wonder. I’ve been finding my dad scary lately, and spent some time closer to Franco than I ever have in my life and always found him scary even from a distance. Maybe it is something to do with men. But if this was the case, why would I imagine a big hairy creature with hairy breasts? Just remembering the creature makes my heart rate soar, and that’s when Brooklyn finally gives in to temptation, reaches up and nips Braveheart firmly on the neck. Braveheart takes off, bouncing and straining to get his head down for a buck but Dr. Cleveland has him in a strangle hold, shortening her reins until they’re about five inches long. Braveheart can’t buck, but he can’t relax either.

  “Kelly, sit up!” shouts Kansas. “Don’t lean forward! Turn him!”

  They’re heading for the branch in the trail.

  “Go left!” I scream, startling Kansas who shoots me a brief puzzled look, then urges Hambone into a trot and we both pursue Dr. Cleveland who, just as I so desperately hoped, manages to take the left branch of the trail, avoiding the river, avoiding things that might exist or might not, and taking her in a big circle back to the barn.

  chapter

  nine

  I’m sitting on Brooklyn, bareback, and there’s no bridle, so that’s a pretty good giveaway that I’m dreaming. Oh good. I could use a dream, with all the stress there is in my life right now.

  We’re riding on a trail. I recognize it. It’s the one that goes down to the river. Since this is a lucid dream where I have control, I change the trail. I make it into an imaginary one that’s nice and wide, with sunlight coming through the branches overhead, and bunnies beside us in the grass, and flowers growing, and baby robins peeping, and I can smell the freshness of the air, and hear the gurgling of the…river. Ack. We’re at the river. How did this happen?

  I try to turn the river into the ocean. I try to put us at the beach with sand and pebbles and seaweed and tidal pools with barnacles but the scene only lasts a few seconds then pops like a bubble and we’re back at the river again.

  We’re not alone.

  There is the creature, standing at the far bank, watching us. Then she turns (definitely a she) and walks, upright and full of grace, into the woods.

  Not a bear. Taller than any gorilla I’ve ever seen on National Geographic channel, and with longer straighter legs. Definitely not a human either.

  “Wait!” I say. I can’t believe I’ve said this. Wait? Wait so we can catch up and you can eat me? Except it’s a dream of course. I can’t get eaten in my own dream. Or I don’t think I can. Brooklyn plows into the water. The river is deep in the middle, so he has to swim. I’m wearing my nig
htshirt and nothing else. I look down and see the wet fabric sticking to me and all my flatness. But as I watch, bulges form on my chest under my shirt, something that isn’t supposed to happen until I start estrogen treatment, though of course in my dreams anything is possible. My nightshirt pulls apart at the neckline and falls off and when I look down again I’m covered with hair. Covered. Not secondary sexual characteristic hair. Total hair. Even more than Franco. Ugh.

  I wake myself by consciously turning my head back and forth on my pillow.

  I am obviously really screwed up.

  It’s Sunday morning, usually my favourite day for riding, but the last thing I want to do today is head out to the barn in case Kansas wants to drag me on another trail ride.

  I figure I have some time to work up an excuse for my parents because they usually like to sleep in on Sundays. It used to be that they wanted extra “snuggle time,” and I’d hear them in their room giggling, but now all they do is sleep. I’ve been hoping it’s because people need more sleep as they get older so it’s nothing for me to worry about.

  When I arrive in the kitchen, Dad is already there, sipping a coffee and texting on his BlackBerry, so I guess he doesn’t want cuddles or extra sleep.

  I’m feeling pretty tense from my dream, but don’t want to talk about it so I make a fake show of relaxed stretching and yawning—unnecessarily, as it turns out. Dad glances up briefly from his BlackBerry and says good morning. I pour myself a bowl of granola and spoon on some peach yoghurt. Dad has had toast for breakfast—I see the burnt crumbs on his plate. Usually he and Mom like a full cooked breakfast on Sunday. In the good old days I made them French toast and served it to them in bed.

  Dad pockets his BlackBerry, leans over and plops a hand on my head and ruffles my hair which fortunately I haven’t combed yet. I hate it when he does this. I think about saying, “Woof,” but then Dad says, “Going riding today, Munchkin?”

  “No,” I say, “Kansas wants Brooklyn to have a day off.” That was easy.

  Dad nods as though this is completely plausible, but just in case, I add, “And I have an essay to research for school.”

  “Sure,” says Dad. I can’t believe that he would buy this crock. His attention is obviously elsewhere. His BlackBerry chimes from his pocket and he checks the display. “Great!” he says, getting up from the table. “I have a lesson with the golf pro at nine.”

  A lesson? I thought my dad knew everything about golf. Why would he need a lesson? Is he lying to me? My dad? But then…well, I’m lying to him.

  After Dad leaves, before I can even finish my granola, Mom wanders into the kitchen, yawning and stretching, exactly like I did for Dad.

  We’ve turned into a pack of liars.

  “Dad has a golf lesson,” I tell her.

  “Oh that’s good,” she says.

  “Why does Dad want lessons?” I ask.

  “He tells me he’s been having trouble with his long game,” says Mom. “He’s not getting the same distance on his fairway shots as he used to. He thinks he’s losing power. Of course he’s not as young as he used to be. Men have trouble accepting that.”

  I sense a lecture brewing on gender differences, which I’ve heard way too much about in the last few years, so I change the subject. “I’m giving Brooklyn a day off,” I say.

  She nods. “Good idea.”

  Do my parents not know me at all? When have I ever not wanted to go to the barn? This is as out of character as it would be if Dad suggested we take his American Express card and go have a good time.

  Mom pours herself a mug of coffee. “I think I’ll take Auntie Sally out for lunch. Do you want a ride over to visit with Taylor?”

  Just what I don’t need—time with Taylor who will want to teach me how to be an animal communicator. “No thanks, Mom, I’ll be fine here on my own.” This will give me time to do what I really need to do: research, but not for a dumb school essay.

  I have to wait for Mom to leave before I can sit down in private in front of the computer. I press my palms together, concentrating on my problem and how to frame it with the right key words for Google. There are so many choices:

  hallucinations, bears, exotic animals, brain tumors, anxiety, defense mechanisms. I groan aloud at the thought of my problem being psychological, which would sooner or later attract my mom’s attention and ruin my life. So I decide to eliminate these possibilities from my search. I would rather I had seen a real were-ape than that I imagined it—for any reason.

  I start by Googling werewolf.

  The werewolf movie I saw months ago wasn’t scary, but the pictures on the Internet are another matter. They show werewolves being so gruesome and bloodthirsty that I wonder how much I want to learn about them. But I feel mesmerized by the pictures, in the same way that I was mesmerized by the alien movie when I was young and couldn’t stop watching until I was practically petrified with terror.

  I force myself to take my eyes off the computer screen and think sensibly for a moment. After all, I don’t really believe that what I saw was a werewolf. The creature I saw definitely didn’t have a wolf face because there was no long pointy snout. On the other hand, werewolves could be similar to dogs, where there are a lot of variations in facial features. Kansas’s dog Bernadette has a pointy nose because she’s part German shepherd. Taylor’s dog Bunga is part pug and his nose is flat, as though he ran face-first into a cement wall several times (which wouldn’t surprise me, because he is so slow to learn). Bernadette and Bunga don’t even look like they’re the same species, so maybe the same applies to werewolves, in which case, I should scroll through all the pictures I can find.

  After five minutes my pulse is racing and I’m wanting to lock all the doors in the house and nail the windows closed. Werewolves are totally menacing, with lots of long teeth and lean muscle. Not that I believe in them. Clearly they are imaginary—I do get that. Well, mostly I get that. But part of my brain is terrified.

  I take several deep breaths and try to focus and steady my brain.

  I decide to make a list of the differences between the creature I saw and a werewolf. I sift through the Wikipedia article for information, even though my teacher Mr. Brumby insists that this is not a reliable source of information and he won’t accept it as a source for any essays we write for his class.

  Werewolves are menacing and aggressive but the creature I saw disappeared as though she was frightened of me.

  In pages and pages of information there was no indication that werewolves liked to fish.

  Werewolves have long tails and perky ears. I can’t remember my creature having either.

  There are absolutely no werewolves with ape-like or pug faces.

  Werewolves have long sinewy necks. The creature I saw had a neck shorter than Franco’s.

  As I study my list I realize that, unlike when I was young and frightened by the violence of that stupid alien movie, I’m not afraid that the creature I discovered will eat me or attack me, because she showed no sign of aggression. I haven’t feared for my life these last few days; more I’ve feared for my sanity. It’s the weirdness that has been deeply troubling. Not being able to understand what I saw has thrown me off-kilter.

  I decide I need to do another search. This time I don’t use Google, but go to Dogpile which is a metasearch engine that Mom is always telling me is better for finding scientific information. Mr. Brumby would be proud of me too. Not that I care.

  I enter were-ape on the search bar.

  There’s some funny goofy stuff on YouTube, and not much else until I notice some interesting information about ape and human evolution in an article about Ardipithecus ramidus. To read more than the abstract I have to set up a free membership with an online science magazine, so I enter my mom’s name and what I remember of her credentials as a registered therapist and her university degrees, and then I
am granted access. The full article is pretty technical and frankly way over my head. But several of the diagrams are interesting. Even though the drawings are all of skeletons, I think if I added flesh and lots of hair, I would have something that looked like what I saw: an upright ape, long extinct.

  Not a werewolf.

  Not a were-ape.

  My heart is racing again, but from excitement now, not fear. I have made an earth-shattering scientific discovery.

  I print off the article and stash it in my backpack. I can hardly wait to discuss it with Logan Losino.

  chapter

  ten

  Monday morning is going fine until I grab my backpack, stumble into the garage and stub my eyes on the pink and white abomination. I can’t do it. I can’t ride it to school. The teasing would be unbearable.

  I also can’t leave it in the garage. If my dad notices I’m not using something he paid perfectly good money for, he’ll go ballistic. I know, because that’s what happened when my mom didn’t use the spa gift certificate for laser hair removal that he bought her for her birthday. He said it was non-refundable and if she didn’t redeem it, then next year he won’t buy her anything. Mom said that’s fine with her.

  The other reason I can’t leave Pinky in the garage is that I have to be able to bike to the stable after school. So I have to stash it somewhere, not on our property, and I don’t have much time to find a place.

  I pedal through the neighborhood, well off my usual bike route that would take me in a loop out into the country past Kansas’s farm. Instead I take much the same path I used when I had to walk to school. I cruise through suburbia, looking for a hiding place—a shed, a bush, something.

  I’m going slowly so I don’t miss any opportunities, otherwise I never would have noticed Logan Losino as I round a corner, sitting on the front steps of a brown two-storey house, rubbing his hands together, searching the road in my direction.