literature

Sneak out

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I run the sink as I hug the toilet.  I feel bad throwing up the dinner Dad Day made us, but this damn chemo.  Thankfully, it’s my last round for a while.  As I stand up, nearly every joint makes a horrible cracking sound.  I splash my face and hear the clock downstairs chime for the half hour to remind me it was 1230 am.  I sneak back in Alexa’s room, careful not to wake anyone.  Cameron is vegged out on the floor, blanket barely covering any of him, and hair out of his face for once.  He snores ever so quietly.  I crawl back onto Alexa’s bed but in my absence, she has taken the blanket and wrapped herself in it.  I can’t go back to sleep anyway.  All I can think of were those poor creatures taken for their home and locked in those tiny cages.
The clock downstairs chimes again telling me it was one in the morning and I haven’t been able to shake my conscience.  I know I could save them.  I have to save them.  They are not meant to be locked up like this.  It’s not fair.
I can’t take it anymore.  Tiptoeing, I make it downstairs to where my shoes were resting.  I sit on the last step and tie up my sneakers when I hear a creak behind me.  I jump and turn around to find Cameron walking down the stairs.  He slips into his black work boots then looks over at me.
“You can’t drive stick,” he says, pointedly.
“The minivan isn’t stick,” I retort and tighten my second shoe.  “I was planning on walking anyway, I’m only 14.”
“Did you plan on making it tonight?” he scoffs and grabs Dad Day’s keys off the key hook.  “Let’s hurry, before they leave town.”
Cameron’s feet juggle the peddles and make the car sound like a racecar though we never went over the speed limit.  The street lights strobe above us as we coast down the empty road.  I let my head lean back and watch as Cameron casually watches the road.
“You are really good at driving for someone not allowed to drive yet,” I mention.
“Been driving a lot since Ma left,” he mumbles and takes a quick glance at me, moving just his eyes.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but stop,” he rushes out, like that last sorry made him burst.  “She made her decision, and when I’m 17 I’m making my decision.”  His eyes narrow and he grips the steering wheel tighter.
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing, never mind,” he grumbles and pinches his nose bridge.  He makes a sudden turn and he hides the car in a thicket of trees.  I look forward again and see that tacky tent near a quarter mile out.  It was a long, quiet walk.  Just outside the tent we could hear chattering of the crew inside, but nothing can really be made out through the drunken slurs.  Before I can even think of a plan Cameron drops and slithers under the tent.  I quickly follow feeling the moister from the soft dirt seep through my shirt and pants immediately.  We are under the bleachers, but we can see through the slats to the middle of the stage.  I push away a popcorn bucket and two cups to get a clearer view but that’s when I realize the stage is vacant save the partying carneys.  We both wiggle our way back out.
I try to brush off the grass and dirt, but it’s no use.  Cameron grabs my hand and pulls me around the tent and we quickly found the three thirty foot cages mounted on the railway.  The only obstacle with a maze of mobile homes.  Since most of the carneys seem to be in the tent, we easily make it through them without being detected.
“Easy transportation,” Cameron mumbles.  I pick up my pace until it is me pulling him.
“You ever talk to a mermaid?” I ask eagerly, looking back at my friend.
“No, I don’t speak ‘screeching mer-speak’,” he joked dryly.
“Not with that attitude!”  He let go of my hand when we were twenty feet from the cages.  The circus people didn’t bother covering the cages.  I could easily reach through the bars or jump into the merpeoples’ tank.  I first walk up to the merpeople.  They are curled up together in the center of the tank on the ground.  When I approached, the male popped his head up and observed me.  I reached my hand out and placed my palm on the cool glass then bowed my head.
“What are you doing?” Cameron’s whisper was right behind me.
“This is how they shake hands,” I whisper back and cautiously rise my head.  I see that the merman is copying me, raising his head with mine.  “He’s accepted me.”  With a smile, I point up.  He looks up at the top of the tank then slowly climbs the water then leans over the edge of the tank.
The thing that turns people off about merpeople is that they are not what everyone sees in the fairytales.  They have pointy teeth like sharks, webbed hands like frogs, and they do not have a beautiful voice.  They speak with a language that sound like a mix of a dolphins’ cry and a child’s shriek.  For some reason, I can understand them.  Maybe because I spend so much time with them on Perdix, maybe because they are half humanoid so our brains are similar, I’m not sure.  Some reason when they speak, I just know what they mean.
“Hello, my name is Isabell, what’s your name?” I call up.  He crosses his arms on the edge of the tank and his grey tail slowly sways back and forth to keep him afloat.  He lets out words of shrieking language and I hear Cameron mumble a startled profanity.  “Wave Jumper?  That’s a strong name.”
“You understood that?!” Cameron gasps.
“Yes, and he can understand you, so please be courteous,” I mention then look back up at Wave Jumper.  “It makes sense why you are so protective over this young girl.  You are very courageous to stand up against that vial man.”
‘Her name is Coral,’ the merman responds.
“Such a common name for such a beautiful girl!” I gasped and looked down at her.  She had awoken and was smiling at us in amazement.  Was this possibly her first experience with humans that were not trying to hunt or exploit her?  I place my hand on the glass and bow.  She copies then swims up to us.  I move my hand and she follows.  I move my hand to the opposite direction and she follows again.  I play with her like this similarly to a cat with a laser.  She screams quietly with glee, flashing her shiny, pointy teeth.  She is so young and full of intrigue, she can’t be much older than me.  Waver Jumper lets out a quiet laugh that sounds like a dolphin’s chirping.
“Why is her hair so matted?” Cameron speaks up and her eyes go to him.
“Think about it, they don’t have brushes and they live in salt water their whole life,” I answer his curiosity.
“But isn’t mermaid hair supposed to make the softest silk?”
“It takes months to make a full head of hair into anything because of all the untangling.”  I look up at Wave Jumper.  He’s looking down at up with a shy smile.  “I’m sorry about your hair.”  His face falls.  He runs his webbed hand through his buzzed blond hair.
‘I can never go home with hair like this,’ he chirps sadly.
“Aw, don’t say that.”
“What?” Cameron asks.
“He’s afraid he’ll never be accepted back home.  Merpeople never cut their hair, even men,” I explain and look back at Wave Jumper.  “Merpeople cut the hair of people that have committed crimes.  Your shame lasts as long as it takes to grow back.  Merpeople with short hair are shunned and are not supposed to be talked to.  But humans invaded Perdix and started chopping off merpeople’s hair and now ones with their hair cut by humans are still shunned, cast out like criminals.”
“That’s terrible,” Cameron mumbles.  Wave Jumper seemes to be finished with conversing because he lets go of the edge of the tub and swims to the bottom to lay down again.
I walk over to the next car and this one I have to climb up to see the cerberus fully.  The three heads are sleeping, curled up on their front arms.  The middle head has blood matted in his brown fir on his neck.  The other heads didn’t even lick the wounds clean.  Every time he exhales a slight whimper bubbled past his lips.
“Poor thing,” Cameron whispers standing next to me.  The left head’s ear flops in response to the sound.  I grab Cameron’s hand and pull him to the next car.  The dragon is awake and is looking at us with his eerie silver eyes.  If he could stand he would be about as tall as the cerberus.  If he could stretch his wings they might be about fifty feet from tip to tip.
“He’s so beautiful,” I gasp and reach out to touch him but Cameron jerks me back.
“You saw what he did today.  He’s dangerous.”
“Like you would just let some abusive ass beat you and not fight back,” I snap and yank my hand out of his.
“What are we even doing here, Isabell?” he argues.  His narrow eyes feel violating as his icy words stabbed me in the stomach with guilt.  I’ve never had him snap at me like that.  “Even if you let them out, unless you have a barn that holds a whole dragon this is pointless.”  He must have seen my reaction because he took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets.  “They will be found in two seconds,” he continues, calmer.
“Maybe,” I allow and he shakes his head in disbelief.  “But anywhere is better than here.”  His glare slowly melted away.
“Your head is in the clouds.”  He reaches up into my hair and I’m confused until he pulls out one of my bobby pins letting a lock of my long bangs fell into my face.  A thrill goes through me and he smiles softly in response.  The dragon watches us with his shiny silver eyes as Cameron made quick work of the pad lock on the cage.  Once the door was open just enough, I slip in front of him and approach the marvelous beast.  The dragon huffs smoke at me so I freeze.  “Careful,” Cameron hisses and the dragon grumbles.
“You are making him nervous, back up,” I warn and reach out a hand to the dragon’s large snout.  I’ve never been face to face with a dragon, even on Perdix, but I figure a bow of the head is universal.  I drop my head and wait.  I feel many seconds tick by.  Cameron shifts behind me, very uneasy.  My arm is getting heavy and I almost drop it, but then the feel of scales warms my touch.  I look back up in surprise to see the dragon has nudged his muzzled maw into my hand with close eyes.  I softly run my hand up his snout and I can’t help a smile breaking out of my composure.
I wave for Cameron and keep my known hand on his head to calm him as Cameron clicks away at the four padlocks on the opposite side of the muzzle.  Once the fourth lock thuds to the ground the dragon’s eyes snap open and Cameron jumps to his feet and scrambles out of the cage.  The dragon pick’s his head up, slipping out from my reach, and claws at the muzzle until the whole contraption falls to the cage floor with a muffled thud.  He turns his head to face behind him and blows blue fire at himself, setting his binding ropes ablaze.  The heat knocks me back and I’m instantly covered in a sheen of sweat.  I think my outstretched hand might have been burned too.
He looks back at me with eyes that bleed with gratitude then they shift down to my hand that I have clutched against my chest.  He gurgles deep in his throat and cocks his head slightly.  With a delicate reach, he pries my hand away from my body with a claw and I uncurl my fingers to show my pink palm.  He gurgles again then his forked tongue spools out of his mouth.  His tongue is nearly the size of my arm, and I know that’s not even all of it.  He delicately runs his tongue over my hand, covering near my whole forearm in his metallic saliva.  I fight the nausea rolling in my empty stomach but then I realize what his saliva does.  It was healing the burns on my hand and up my arm I wasn’t aware of.  I smile and pat his snout.  He purrs and nestles his head into me.  I know he means it to be soft, but it knocks me back into the bars and kicks all the wind from my lungs.
It was then that he took is leave.  He pushes open the door with his head and clambers out of the cage and onto the ground.  I look over and see Cameron has already opened the cerberus’s door and the pup was just waking up.  He jumps over to the empty cage with me and hides in the safety of the bars.  The heads poked up and yawned in unison, their large tongues stretching out of their mouths and they reach their paws forward into the new space they acquired.  The left paw was the first to cautiously venture out.  When he sees the dragon sitting on the grass in front of him, stretching his wings, he jumps off the car with a thunderous ‘boom’.  Cameron and I both look anxiously at the distant circus tent and the many trailers near us, but no one comes out.
I leave the cage and stand on the edge of the car to watch the animals explore their new freedom.  The cerberus is the first to bolt.  He jumps over his cage hand heads for the woods with thunderous bounds.  Next the dragon gets airborne for the first time in much too long.  His grand wings push against the air with such gust it pushes me back against the cage and I heard Cameron curse from inside.  Another push and he is thirty foot in the air.
‘Take us with you!’ Wave Jumper screeches, holding his arms up to the dragon.  Another crushing gale blows me back as the dragon moves over the tank and dunks its back feet.  Both the mermaids swam into his claws with all the trust in the world and the dragon closed his claws, securing them for the flight.  Dragons eat merpeople on Perdix, but I guess all that is put aside when they have a common goal to escape the humans.
I remember something terrible.  I jump two cars over and look up at the merpeople.
“Wave Jumper, our ocean is different than yours!” I call to him and he looks back at me with worry.  “Do not trust anything bigger than you.  Our ocean is not kind like yours!”  He nods with conviction and the dragon flaps his wings again.  Only this time I’m standing on the edge of the car and nothing is behind me to brace me.  I fall over the edge.  I try to grasp anything, but nothing is there.  I slam against the ground with added force from the dragon’s wind and land on my leg in a not so fun way.  Pain shoots up from my right leg.  I hear Cameron franticly calling my name and I lay as still as I can, watching the dragon disappear into the night.  Cameron scoops me up and carries the right side of my body as we hobble quickly back to the car.  All the while he was cursing my brittle bones.
“Only you can break a bone from a tiny fall like that,” he grumbles over and over.  My oncologist told me my bones were beyond frail because of the cancer rotting them away, but I didn’t think this frail.  I watch the street lights pass quicker than before in the car with a quiet mind and a calm conscience.

“Is!” Mom gasps when she sees me in the Emergency Room sitting at the end of the bed.  She rushes up to me and I see she’s wearing sweat pants and a wife beater.  I was surprised she felt I was enough of an emergency to even rush out of the house without doing her make up first.  I always hate it when she calls me Is, but no amount of complaining will make her stop.  She rushes up to Cameron and me and quickly analyzes the situation.  My right leg in a cast, left wrist in a brace, and the only well one is an anxious boy standing next to me.
“This is not his fault!” I jump in before she can spit hateful words toward my friend.  She looks at me with such heated eyes and I was a bit taken back.  I’m making everyone angry tonight.  Cameron took this distraction to flee.  “I tripped down half a flight stairs, he drove me here.”
“You are sick, you have to be more careful,” she urged and now I’m angry.
“‘Sick’ is not my only defining feature, Mom,” I snap back at her.  “What do you want me to say?  Sorry I made a human mistake and fell?!”  That sobers her of her anger.  She cups my cheek in her hand and kisses the top of my head.  My anger at her is sapped out with that kiss.  “Surprised you didn’t put make up on before coming out,” I joke and she giggles.
“I should have, right?  I look like a disaster.”  She attempts to smooth out her bedhead.  “We better get you out of here, your flight is in a few hours.”  As I crutch out of the ER, I didn’t see a hint of my friend and I feel guilt cripple me farther.  I didn’t get to say goodbye before I jump on a shuttle to Perdix.  This was the last time I would see my friends all summer.

Ships to Perdix leave on every 1st and 15th.  Today is June 15th, time 7:30 in the morning.  Mom was triple checking my carry on to make sure I had all my meds while the airport assistant pushes me in a wheel chair to my terminal.
“Socks, underwear, shirts, meds, toothbrush…” Mom mumbles under her breath as she walked.  When we arrived at my terminal I snatch the backpack from her hands and zip it closed.
“It’s fine, Mom,” I complain.  A woman with a thick accent comes over the grainy intercom to announce my flight is boarding.  Mom bends down to give me one of her crushing hugs and I have to avoid smothering to death in her cleavage.
“I love you, Is,” she whispers as she lets go.
“Love you too,” I mumble then she dashes off before she could cry, like she always does.  I get wheeled into the ship.  It looks just like a commercial airline on the inside except there are no windows and each seat is equipped with a four-point harness.  I stumble into my seat and the assistant buckles me in and hands me a pill with a small cup of water.  After I choke back the horse pill he takes the cup.
“I will tell the stewardess about your medications.  They will be given to you through an IV through the journey,” he explains and I nod.  This isn’t my first rodeo.  He stuffs my bag into the overhead compartment and disappears.  The flight fills up more compared to most trips.  Everyone had someone sitting next to them except me thankfully.  The stewardesses walks around to do final check as we are taxied to the launch pad.  They tighten everyone’s harness to the point of near asphyxiation then the captain announces for the stewardesses to get buckled.
My stomach does a flip as the front of the ship makes its accent skyward until we are now laying on our backs instead of sitting on our bums.  Before the captain can finish his countdown, the pill takes effect and I doze off.
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