He was being truthful with me.
"All right, let's not go, then," I told him. "It sounds like you'd really hate it."
"I do have an extra ticket to see Van Halen at KeyArena that night," Hutch said. "Noel was going to go with me, but then he realized Spring Fling was the same time. So, ah. We could do that if you want. My parents bought the tickets. It wouldn't cost you anything."
"Yeah," I said. "That would be excellent. I could use a little retro-metal therapy."
"A little what?"
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"Never mind. Do you think David Lee Roth will wear spandex and take his shirt off?"
"He might," said Hutch. "But now you have to promise not to laugh."
"Okay," I said. "But admit: David Lee Roth is a little bit funny."
"I admit nothing," said Hutch. "He's a rock legend."
We got Popsicles out of the back of the freezer and ate them in the greenhouse with my dad, listening to Van Halen sing 'Jump." And I thought: This is my treasure. My ridiculous dad and my oddball friend Hutch, rocking out with purple mouths from the grape Popsicles, in this room full of flowering plants.
Not everybody has this.
***
Polka-dot misbehaved in the Honda on the way to the Woodland Park Zoo. He liked to stick his giant head out the window and bark like a lunatic at all the other cars. I wonder if he thought they were other Great Danes. They weren't that much bigger than him.
Dogs aren't allowed inside the zoo, but I was only going to be a few minutes, so I tied him outside the entrance. No one would ever try to steal Polka-dot. He's too enormous to even chance it. I mean, he is a superfriendly guy, but he looks as if he could bite your head off. And he might-if he thought there was a good chance you'd taste like a homemade doughnut.
I found Anya, my old boss, sitting in her office shuffling papers and wearing a pinched expression. "Ruby,"
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she said crisply when I poked my head in the door. "How can I help you?"
"May I come in?"
"Certainly."
It was impossible to make small talk with Anya-she was an all-business person-so I told her why I'd come: "I want my job back."
"We don't just give jobs back because people ask," Anya said. "You lost your internship for a good reason."
"I know."
"There are other people working your stations now," she said.
"I realize that."
"Then I'm not sure what you expect me to do, Ruby." Anya tapped her pen on the desk as if to show me I was wasting her time.
I didn't think she wanted to hear anything I had to say, but I was going to say it anyway.
"I miss the job a huge amount," I explained. "I miss the animals. I miss their smells. I miss feeling connected to something outside the universe of my school. I miss being cranked to go to work and caring whether I've done well."
"That's all very nice, but you were negligent in surveying the area for which you were responsible, and you were unforgivably rude to one of our patrons," Anya replied.
"If you want to take me out of Family Farm customer interaction, that's fine," I said. "I don't have to do the penguin talk anymore either. You can put me back on planting duty and mucking out farm stalls so I don't have any
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contact with people who come to the zoo. Or you can have me go through training again." Anya's pen stopped tapping.
"Any way you want to work it," I continued. "But I'm really hoping you'll give me another chance."
She looked at me with her tiny brown eyes and ran her tongue over her braces.
"Please?" I said. "
"Lewis does need assistance with the spring plantings," she said finally.
"Great."
"And I have another intern who wants to move out of mucking the farm stalls into an activity that's more patron-oriented."
"I'll do it," I said. "I don't mind."
"We want someone to work Sundays, too," she told me. "None of my interns wants to work Sundays."
"Sundays are fine."
"You'd be on probation for a month," said Anya. "You mean I have the job?"
She didn't smile, but she held out her hand for me to shake. "Wednesdays four to seven, Saturdays twelve to five and Sundays nine to one. You start next week."
When I left the office, I went straight to the Family Farm to see Robespierre and the llamas. Laverne and Shirley snubbed me, acting as if they'd never seen me before in their lives and looking at me snootily through lidded eyes, but Robespierre remembered me. He rubbed his ears up against my hand and snarfled my
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palm. I bought him a handful of farm food and he ate it greedily. Then I wrote him another letter on park stationery.
Dear Robespierre,
I'm back! Did you miss me? I'll be mucking out your pen Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, and scratching your head on a regular basis.
I promise to wear the hoodie you like.
Ruby Oliver
When Polka-dot saw me coming through the front gates, he stood on his hind legs and barked with joy, wagging his tail and slobbering and terrifying a group of small children, one of whom cried, "Mean pony, mean pony!" and burst into tears.
I stroked Polka-dot's neck and told him what a handsome guy he was. Then the two of us squeezed into the Honda and drove away.
***
Tuesday I brought my treasure map to Doctor Z's office. She raised her eyebrows when I walked in with the big sheet of watercolor paper, but she didn't say anything except "Hello, Ruby. Have a seat."
"I'm really freaked out that I met your boyfriend," I blurted.
"Oh?" She reached for the Nicorette and popped a piece of gum out of the packaging.
"Jonah was nice," I said-because he was--"but it was way too much information. Now I'm all spazzed out in
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therapy and I haven't been able to tell you anything that's been going on, like how I kissed Noel and everyone hates me again, and I'm shattered about Nora and Noel maybe going out together, and Jackson asked me to Spring Fling and I said no, and-I haven't said anything about any of it, because whenever I want to start talking, I keep thinking about how you have this whole life outside the office and then nothing comes out of my mouth."
"It's true," said Doctor Z. "I do have a life outside the office."
"I know. Ag."
"Usually my clients don't come across me in my other life, but now and then, we run into one another. Feeling unsettled by an encounter like that is a natural part of the therapeutic situation."
"Were you spazzed out too, then?"
She looked at me but didn't answer.
"Were you?"
"Yes," she admitted. "On principle I don't reveal my private relationships to clients. But Jonah is--he's gregarious. And he'd been talking to you quite a while before I got there."
"Yeah, he's chatty," I said.
"He likes the sandals very much."
I bit my fingernail. "I didn't think you were going to answer me about being spazzed out, actually."
"Why not?"
"You don't admit to emotions. You just get me to admit to emotions. That's your job, isn't it?"
Doctor Z laughed. "I'm not a pod-robot, Ruby."
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"Ha!" I said. "You got that word from me. That's not a shrink term, pod-robot. That's a Ruby Oliver term."
"I listen to you carefully," said Doctor Z. "It's my job to be paying attention."
And that was true. She did listen carefully.
"I feel like this whole thing we do each week, I feel like it's one-sided," I said. "You know nearly everything about me and I know nothing about you. Isn't that sick and unbalanced?"
"It's therapy," said Doctor Z. "It's a methodology."
"I wanted to know all these things about you. I had so many questions. And then when I actually knew something--I really, really didn't want to know," I told her.
"That's probably healthy."
"You mean I have actual evidence of mental health?"
"Sure. We've been over this before, Ruby. You're far from crazy."
"But I am having all these panic attacks," I said. "I keep having them. And I have no one to talk to, because my parents are supremely annoying and Meghan has a new boyfriend. So everything is smashed up inside me and it's making me feel crazy." I sniffed. "The attacks are really scary. And the retro-metal cure isn't working."