Leapin' Leopards, page 2
“It’s called the amniotic sac. That’s how God protects babies. He keeps them surrounded with water until it’s time to be born.”
“That’s still . . . gross,” Hector repeated.
“You’ve never seen an animal give birth?”
“Sure, all the time,” he said.
“On TV,” Mom said.
“Right.”
She chuckled. “Well, this will be a lot different.”
Hector swallowed, not thrilled at the sound of her chuckle.
“Oh, look!” Mom cried. “Look under the tail! Do you see the black spot there?”
“What, is she pooping?”
“No, those are the tips of the calf’s hooves.”
“Hooves?”
“Yes, the hooves of his front legs. They’re the first parts to come out.”
Hector stared, trying to comprehend. “You’re telling me a whole giraffe is coming out of . . . there?”
“All 6 feet tall, 150 pounds’ worth.”
“No way.”
Mom gave another chuckle. “Buckle in, my little friend. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
3
The Plot Sickens
THE MULLIGAN CAR WAS PACKED. Nick had already dropped Julie off at the preschool. That left Lisa in the front seat and the twins, along with Stephie, in the back. Of course, with Nick driving, everyone figured they’d be late for school.
“We need to hurry, Nick,” Jessica said. “I don’t want to get detention.”
“Relax,” he assured them. “Detention is nothing. You can do it in your sleep. Sometimes that’s exactly what I do.”
The kids groaned as Nick once again glanced at his hair in the mirror.
“Don’t worry,” Lisa said to him. “I’m sure it’s perfect.”
He shot her a look, wondering how his blind sister always seemed to know such things.
Stephie glanced down at Jessica’s new sneakers and said, “I like them.” Stephie sometimes says stuff out of the blue like that. Some people say it’s because of her autism. But it doesn’t matter to the Mulligans. We’re all used to it, and we all love her.
“Thanks,” Jessica said. “Janelle picked them out. Because . . . you know, I’m not very—”
“She has no fashion sense,” Janelle said. “None whatsoever.”
“Not like me,” Nick said, giving his lime-green suspenders a snap.
Everyone gave an eye roll.
“Why you wear those stupid suspenders is beyond me,” Jessica said.
“Hey, someone has to start fashion trends,” Nick said. “Right, Janelle?”
Janelle sadly shook her head. “Or fashion disasters.”
Nick turned the car onto the street leading to New Hope Christian School, where Stephie and the twins attend.
“Oh, look!” Jessica cried. “There’s Chloe Richardson walking to school with her herd of wannabes! Pull over.”
“We’re still a block from the school,” Nick said.
“I know, I know. But she has to see us get out of the car—with you driving.”
Janelle explained, “She’s got such a crush on you.”
“Well, who could blame her?” Nick said.
Everyone groaned again as Nick pulled over to the side of the road.
“Those other kids . . . they follow her around just because she’s so popular,” Jessica said.
“I don’t know . . . ,” Janelle said. “Nothing wrong with a little popularity.”
“Whatever,” Jessica said. The car had barely stopped before she threw open the door and shouted, “Hey, Chloe!”
Chloe and her posse slowed to a stop. “Hi, yourself,” Chloe said with an expression like she’d just eaten a lemon and washed it down with a box of thumbtacks.
But Jessica wouldn’t be put off. “You know my brother, right?” she asked.
Lisa rolled down her window so Chloe could get a better view of Nick. As soon as Chloe saw him, her expression changed from snarky to starstruck.
“H . . . h . . . h . . . ,” Chloe stuttered.
“I think she’s trying to say hello,” Janelle said.
In his deepest, most manly voice, Nick answered, “Why, hello, my dear, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“H . . . h . . . h . . .”
“She’s speechless,” Stephie said as she and the twins climbed out of the car.
“Of course she is,” Nick said. Then, doing another hair check, he asked, “You kids got everything?”
“We sure do, dear brother,” Jessica said. “And thank you so much for being such a good big brother.”
Lisa could only shake her head at the performance.
“My honor,” he said. “You know how I love to serve you and Janelle. It’s the best part of my entire day.”
Lisa mumbled, “I think I’m going to get sick.”
“All right, then,” Nick said. “You children have a wonderful day at school.” He leaned over a little to look out Lisa’s window. “Oh, and Chloe?”
Chloe just stared, forgetting how to speak. Or breathe.
Nick flashed a bright smile. “It’s such an honor to finally make your acquaintance.”
With the help of a friend’s elbow jabbing her rib cage, Chloe regained consciousness enough to answer, “M . . . m . . . me . . . too.”
“Of course it is,” Nick said as he pulled his car away from the curb. “Have a wonderful day!”
Jessica and Janelle waved, calling after him in perfect two-part harmony, “Goodbye, dear brother.”
“Amazing,” Lisa muttered.
“Please,” Nick said, smiling broadly. “Try not to be so judgmental of my awesomeness.”
As the two oldest Mulligans continued on to the high school, Lisa’s cell phone rang with Dad’s ringtone.
She pulled it from her pocket and answered, “Hey, Dad, what’s up? You meet yet with that adoption agen—” She stopped. “What? When?” After another long moment, she asked, “What can we do?”
Hearing her concern, Nick asked, “Lisa? What is it?”
She shook her head and continued speaking into the phone. “But—” She stopped, listened some more, then replied, “Dad, she doesn’t know anybody. She’ll be scared to death. She knows me. She trusts—”
Again, she paused to listen. “But—” More listening. Finally, she answered, “All right. But you’ll call me right away? Promise? As soon as you hear? Okay. All right. I love you too.” With a deep breath, she ended the call.
“What’s going on?” Nick said.
“Freda . . . ,” Lisa started. There was no missing the slight quaver in her voice.
“Our leopard?” Nick asked. “Is she okay?”
“She got out.”
“She what?”
“Someone forgot to check her pen last night and she . . .” Lisa paused to take another breath. “Somehow, she got out. And now she’s wandering the streets of the city.”
Nick closed his eyes for a moment. They both knew who that “someone” was. They knew Freda’s pen should have been locked for the night by a staff member, but they also knew it was Nick’s job to double-check.
And Nick had forgotten.
He cleared his throat. “What, uh . . .” He cleared it again. “What does Dad want us to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Dad said the police have been notified. So they’re going to handle it for now.”
“The police?” Nick said. “They don’t know a thing about leopards.”
Lisa’s voice thickened with emotion. “I know.”
He stole a glance at her and saw she was fighting back tears.
“I’ve got to help her, Nick. She’s out there all by herself. Who knows what she’ll do? She could hurt someone. And if that happens the police could . . .” Lisa stopped, unable to finish the sentence.
Nick swallowed. The guilt over his actions clutched at his throat.
“She needs me!” Lisa cried. “I’ve got to find her and save her!”
Nick nodded. But as much as he hated it, he knew better. “Dad’s right,” he said. “We have to let the authorities handle it.” He stole another look to see silent tears spilling onto Lisa’s cheeks. She loved that cat. Once or twice when Freda was a kitten, Mom even caught Lisa trying to sneak her into her bed.
“What if she thinks they’re trying to hurt her?” Lisa’s voice trembled. She was clearly crying now. “What if . . . what if she attacks someone?”
For once in his life Nick had no words—no clever sayings, no witty comments. Just the guilt gnawing away at him . . . that would grow throughout the day. And if things went wrong, it would remain for a long, long time. Unsure what to do, he reached out and set a comforting hand on top of Lisa’s, his way of saying he was sorry.
But she pulled hers away, wanting nothing to do with him.
And the sad thing was . . . he didn’t blame her.
4
“Nice Kitty . . .”
OFFICER TIPPET WAS A GOOD GUY. Granted, he may have had a little too much cream filling around the edges—and over his belt—but that made him all the more lovable. It wasn’t his fault that when he was at the police academy, they never taught him how to deal with leopards. And you couldn’t really blame him for being allergic to cats.
But Officer Tippet was a great detective and followed all the leads—starting first with the sighting of Freda by old Mr. Hagan, who said the following:
“At first I thought he was Bernard, my Great Dane, who ran away years ago.” (Mr. Hagan’s eyesight isn’t so good.) “Until I let her inside and she ate Thelma, my parakeet. Bernard wouldn’t have done that!”
Further down the street was the gym where the leopard showed up at the Pilates class, sending a dozen women running and
AAARRRH-ing
for their lives, leaving Freda a dozen exercise balls to bat around as she
purrrrr-ed
in contentment.
It wasn’t until Tippet heard little Mackenzie Corning screaming that he finally spotted Freda. Mackenzie was on her bicycle, pedaling as fast as she could, while Freda ran right beside her, trying to catch the little streamers fluttering from the girl’s handlebars. And the faster Mackenzie pedaled, the faster Freda ran.
(It wasn’t much of a contest. Leopards can run thirty-six miles per hour.)
Officer Tippet hopped in his car and began pursuit—lights flashing and siren blaring. But Freda soon got bored and, much to Mackenzie’s relief, veered away, disappearing behind some houses.
The trail went cold with no more sightings for several minutes . . . until Officer Tippet suddenly broke into a fit of
A-CHOOO A-CHOOO A-CHOOO-ing.
He never had hay fever this time of year. His sneezing made no sense until he heard the sounds of
K-THUMP-ing
and
K-BUMP-ing
on top of his car.
People on the sidewalk began pointing. Others shouted. It wasn’t until he rolled down his window that he heard:
“She’s on your roof!”
He scowled. “What are you
A-CHOOO!
saying?”
“The leopard is on your roof!”
“On my
A-CHOOO!
roof?”
“Yes! On your roof!”
Carefully opening his door, Officer Tippet stepped out to have a look. And there was the leopard, three feet away, slapping and batting at the red and yellow flashing lights atop his car.
Freda paused a moment, taking a look at him.
Tippet paused a moment, forgetting to breathe.
Freda growled, ever so slightly.
Tippet smiled, ever so nervously.
He had no idea what to do. If he moved away quickly, she could easily catch him. And if he moved slowly, she still might pounce on him and . . . well, he didn’t want to join old Mr. Hagan’s parakeet as a midmorning snack.
“Nice kitty, kitty, kitty,” he said.
“Grrrr,” Freda replied.
Officer Tippet kept smiling his nervous smile, wondering if now might be a perfect time to make sure things were good with God.
“This is gross,” Hector said.
“You keep saying that,” Mom said. “But the birth of a new life is a beautiful, miraculous thing.”
“It’s all slimy,” Hector said.
“He,” Mom said. “He’s a calf—a living animal. And that slimy stuff you’re seeing is part mucus and part of the amniotic fluid we talked about.”
By now the head of the baby giraffe was completely visible while his front legs flailed, trying to pull the rest of his body out.
“Looks like something out of an alien movie,” Hector said.
“Do you compare everything you see to TV and the movies?”
Hector grinned. “What else is there?”
Mom smiled. “You’d be surprised.”
“Well, I didn’t just watch TV when I was back home,” he argued.
“Hector?” she softly said. He looked at her. “You are home. This is your home now.”
Ignoring her, Hector said, “Back in Brazil, back on the streets people thought I was a pretty tough guy.”
“At ten years old?”
“Of course. You have to be if you want to survive. I remember one time when—Oh, gross.”
He stopped as the baby giraffe’s chest and then abdomen slipped out of Guinevere. The baby now hung upside down from his mother with only his hind legs holding him in. “I think I’m going to get sick.”
“Tough guy, huh?” Mom teased.
Hector spit, then spit again, hoping not to throw up.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, wiping his mouth, obviously embarrassed. “But shouldn’t we do something? I mean, he’s just hanging there.”
Mom shook her head. “Right now, that is making the calf stronger. If we step in, we could be doing him more harm than good.”
“I don’t know,” Hector said. “If I were him, I’d want some help.”
“We’re here if he needs us. But for now, hanging upside down like that is actually helping him. Sometimes it’s the hard things that give us strength.”
Hector nodded.
Mom continued, “There’s a lot that God can teach us through His creation.”
Hector continued to stare, watching—part in wonder and part in concern—at what was happening before them.
5
Betrayal!
JESSICA WAS RIGHT when she said she had zero fashion sense. Her idea of “dressing up” was changing out of her sweats into . . . well, another pair of sweats. So it hadn’t been her fault when she took Janelle’s advice and bought those crazy, five-inch-tall platform tennis shoes.
Seriously? Platform tennis shoes!? What’s next, high-heeled flip-flops? You humans . . . is there nothing you won’t think of?
Anyhow, Chloe, superstar and captain of the school’s mean girl team, was still floating on air from Nick talking to her. Unfortunately, it didn’t last forever. By midmorning, the effects had worn off and the insults began—particularly about Jessica’s shoes.
Not with words, of course. Why bother to use words when you can insult someone with a scrunched-up face, a turned-up nose, or the ever-popular
EWwww . . .
Chloe was an expert at ewww-ing. She’d been practicing it for years. And if Chloe did it, rest assured her clones did it. Not quite as well as Chloe . . .
eWw
wEw
EwwE
. . . but give them time; practice makes perfect.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Janelle said to Jessica as they headed down the school hallway. “It’s not your fault they’re fashion-impaired.”
But as Chloe’s meanness wore on, Jessica’s strength wore out. In fact, and maybe it was just her imagination, but it seemed that even Janelle was beginning to keep her distance . . . walking just a little farther away from Jessica whenever Chloe approached.
By noon, when they were in the cafeteria—better known to the students as the toxic waste site—things came to a head. The twin sisters were standing in line, being served some kind of noodles that looked like strips of a yellow raincoat, along with green peas that were burned. (Seriously, how do you burn peas?)
“Trust me,” the server whispered so she wouldn’t be overheard by the cook, “it’s totally edible . . . except for the yellow and green parts.”
“Oh look, girls,” Chloe sneered from the back of the line. Pointing at Jessica’s tall platforms, she said, “It’s a Mulligan giant!”
Chloe’s fan club gave the mandatory
GIGGLE . . . GIGGLE . . . SNICKER
except for the dimmest member of the group who was still working on her
Ewwws.
Jessica felt her face grow hot. And when she turned to Janelle, she saw that her sister was actually cutting in front of someone up the line to get farther away from her.
But Chloe had only just begun. “So, what circus clown died and left you those shoes?”
GIGGLE . . . GIGGLE . . . SNICKER
Ewww . . .
Again, Jessica turned to Janelle for support, but her sister had moved even farther up the line.
But not quite far enough.
“Say, Janelle,” Chloe called, “you’re the fashion queen. Please tell me you weren’t around when your sister bought those goofy things.”
Janelle pretended not to hear.
“Janelle,” Chloe repeated.
Janelle turned to her. “Oh, sorry, what?”
“Your sister’s shoes,” Chloe said with her carefully crafted, patent-pending scorn.
“Oh, yeah.” Janelle said, smiling weakly. “I don’t know where she got them.”
Jessica stared in disbelief. “Janelle!”
Chloe laughed. “Some people should never be allowed to shop on their own.”
Janelle forced a chuckle as Chloe and one of her clones high-fived.
Jessica could only stare at her twin—a sister who now avoided her eyes. A sister who had just betrayed her. A sister who had left her totally defenseless in the shark tank of middle-school mean girls.
If Chloe and her pals continued their attack, she barely heard. The anger and resentment toward her sister drowned everything else out. And it didn’t stop there. As the day continued, it grew stronger and stronger until it became the only thing she could think about.
