Notes From a Liar and Her Dog by Gennifer Choldenko Read Free Book Online Page A

so clean, I wonder if it’s new. If it is, shesure slapped a lot of bumper stickers on right away. Just Carol is a member of everything.
    “Taking us to the zoo on your day off,” I explain.
    “I always go to the zoo on my day off. And I’m taking you because…Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably a bad idea.” She looks over at me as if I will confirm this. I’m quiet, wondering what’s going on. I’m not used to adults doing things they think are a bad idea or sharing a seat belt with Harrison in the front seat of a sports car driven by a teacher. I look over at Harrison to see what he’s thinking. He looks very happy, the way he does when he greets his chicken after a long day away. Neither of us is used to getting special privileges. At school it’s always girls like Joyce Ann Jensen or Alexandra Duncan who get the treats. At home it’s Elizabeth or Kate who get the special things. But today, it’s Harrison and me.
    “Maybe it’s because I’m fond of Harrison and you remind me of me,” Just Carol blurts out suddenly, as if she’s been thinking about it and this is what she’s come up with.
    “Me?”
    “You.”
    “I’m not anything like you. I am not anything like anybody,” I say.
    “Always so suspicious.” She shakes her head, but her earrings don’t tinkle the way they usually do because she’s wearing tiny posts. Her bracelets are gone, too, and so are her big rings and her jangly necklaces. She has jeans and a T-shirt on and her eyeslook small and watery, not dark and dramatic the way she makes them up for school. She does not look like herself at all.
    “Well, I’m not like you,” I say.
    “So you said.”
    “So what made you say I was?”
    Just Carol looks into the rearview mirror to see if it is safe to change lanes. “When I was a kid, I never trusted anyone, either,” she says.
    “I trust Harrison,” I say.
    Just Carol smiles and pats Harrison’s cargo pant leg. “That makes two of us,” she says.
    I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t, so I watch the hills go by the window. One after another full of brown grass. In Las Vegas everything was flat and in Orange County there was nothing but apartments with little strips of grass by the sidewalk, and the hills were all stuffed full of houses. Here there is more room.
    I’ve never been to this zoo before. And I’ve never, ever been to any zoo as an almost zookeeper. I’m wondering if I will get to wear a uniform, when I see the big zebra zoo sign. Just Carol turns up a small winding road and parks her car under a eucalyptus tree.
    We follow her through a gate marked Exit, past some flamingos with legs as skinny as hanger wire, and an empty chimp exhibit. We go down a road and behind a gate with a sign that says Do Not Enter to a row of low buildings next to a big stack of chain-link fence parts.
    The people behind the Do Not Enter sign are all wearing khaki pants and khaki shirts and big black rubber boots. Just Carol seems to know everyone. She nods and says hello to almost all the khaki people and takes us inside a round stucco building, which has lockers on one side and big silver feed bins on the other. On top of the lockers are cases of corn and mixed vegetables, boxes of tennis balls and pillow sacks, infant swings, and stacks of empty milk cartons.
    It smells funny—warm and animal, like a pet store—and there are strange whooping, screeching noises that everyone is ignoring. I ask Just Carol who is making those noises. She says it’s the gibbons calling other gibbons, they do that all the time. Then she hands me and Harrison each a pair of big black boots. They are way too big for us, even with the extra socks she told us to bring. We wear them anyway.
    Pistachio is wiggling in my pocket, as if he wants to get out. I don’t think he likes the gibbons’ whoops that build to an alarming pitch, like some kind of animal siren. Or maybe it’s the strange smells that have him interested. I stick my hand in my