~ There's No Such Thing ~

by

Jeanette Cottrell

Four

"That wasn’t nice, Gina."

Gina landed on the flat metal roof with a decided thump. "He had it coming."

"But Gina! A whole squeeze bottle of mustard?"

"He pulled my tail!"

"He thought it was a pickle. After all, it was lying there on the counter."

"A pickle?" Gina’s voice rose sharply at the end. "Let’s see, so far people think I’m an alligator, a nothing, a car, and a green blanket." She snorted in disgust.

"But I was the mousetrap," Jay said with a twinkle.

"And talking of being mean, what about that poor squirrel? He probably depends on those snacks the ladies give him. You made him miss lunch!"

"Gina, don’t be a pain. He got his nuts back, and I found a plum for him out of the garbage can. He was perfectly happy when we left, and you know it."

"He was, wasn’t he?" she admitted. A sudden chuckle escaped her. "I wonder what those ladies thought, watching him having a wrestling match with nothing at all." She illustrated, waving her claws around in frantic circles.

Jay smirked, and his grin spread all over his small face. "We were a sight! Must have been!" He jumped on her, and they rolled over together a few times. Gina was laughing too hard to continue the battle, so she gave up, slapping her tail on the roof three times in the traditional signal of surrender. Jay collapsed beside her, lying on his back.

"Gina?"

"Yeah?"

"You’re right. He did have it coming."

"He sure did. Did you see the way he treated the poor guy selling food? Everything was too hot, too cold or too slow, and he was going to complain to the boss. Sheesh! He was really mean."

"He sure was. Wow," said Jay dreamily. "A whole squeeze bottle of mustard."

It had been an adventurous day.

A woman speeding erratically on the freeway while talking excitedly into her cell phone had suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. Calmly, she said goodbye, hung up the phone, opened her car door, and poured her coffee onto the ground. She stared fixedly through Jay and Gina, both sprawled on the hood of her car. She repeated continuously, "Too much caffeine, too much caffeine, too much caffeine…"

A politician had seized a half empty bottle, and poured a brown liquid down the sink. With shaking fingers, he locked the door to his office, pulled over a phone book, and dialed the phone number for the Alcoholics Anonymous Hotline.

And the Right Honorable Justice Renfro was trying to get mustard stains out of his suit coat. His secretary was no help at all. She was too busy nattering on about an acrobatic squirrel she’d seen in the square. Women!

"We still didn’t get anywhere, though. Maybe if we hang out with the lady driver? But I couldn’t find her again. She keeps moving."

"The Gadget said there was that thing you could use to find her. GPS?"

"GPS! I still can’t figure out what it means. You know, I thought for sure if we went around the court house and the state offices where all the important people were, we’d find somebody."

"I guess important people can’t see what’s in front of their noses either."

"Hmm," Jay muttered. "I wonder?"

"What?" Gina said suspiciously.

"Well, one guy thought you were a Japanese car, and a lady thought you were a UFO. Hey, if you were a UFO, we’d get everybody’s attention--especially if they tried to shoot you down! That might work!"

"Why, you little--" she hissed indignantly, her breath rushing out white-hot.

Jay scrambled out of the way. "Gina," he cried, "I was only kidding!"

"Well, I was only kidding when I said I eat fish! I’ve never eaten a Wisky Wasky! Maybe I should try one!"

She snatched at him, but he dodged. Jay threw himself to his knees, hands clasped in front of him. "Gina, please! Wisky Waskies taste terrible! It was a joke!"

"Then it was only a joke when I said I’d help you!"

"All right," he said humbly. "It was a rotten joke, and I’m a rotten Wisky Wasky. I’m sorry. Are we friends again?"

"Humph." Gina gave an injured snort. "I guess so."

From the ground below them came the sound of voices.

"…Rattling and bumping... just terrible…can’t concentrate…racket!" a woman’s voice exclaimed.

Jay and Gina leaned out over the edge of the roof and looked below into the courtyard.

A gray-haired woman stood with her hands on her hips, staring up at them.A voice drifted from insider the building. "…kids?…"

"No, I don’t see any. Probably just the dratted heating system. Gets noisier every year." The woman shook her head, and shrugged dramatically. "I just don’t know," she said, disappearing again, "how they expect mumble-mumble adequate funding!"

Jay and Gina gave each other identical looks of resignation.

"Oh well," Jay said, "on with the job! I found this rooftop a few days ago. See? They built the school around this courtyard, and then stuck the library out into the courtyard. We can get at the second floor of the school by wandering around on this roof. Kind of like going to a zoo, you know?"

"A what?"

"Zoo. That’s where they put animals in cages so people can look at them. With this setup," Jay said, patting the rooftop approvingly, "we’ve got a kind of home base. We can go from cage to cage--I mean, room to room--and look in all the windows to find a good spot. Okay?"

Two small windows were open in the first room, but the rest were welded shut--probably so the kids couldn’t escape. Throughout the room were a bunch of rock-like objects with shiny surfaces, sitting on a table. Young people sat in front of them. An older woman walked around the room.

"What are those rock things they’re all staring at?"

"Computers."

"Are they alive?"

"The people, or the computers?"

Gina shot Jay an exasperated look. "I know the people are alive, dimwit."

"It’s hard to tell sometimes. If you see them frozen in front of those things for long, you start to wonder if they can even move, let alone think!" Jay waggled a frosty eyebrow comically. "Computers are big Gadgets. People use them to write stuff, or talk to each other, or to play games."

"Wow! All kinds of stuff. They sleep on it, too?"

"I don’t think so."

"I’m getting a crick in my neck," Gina complained. There was a severe disadvantage to having a snout, she reflected. When you wanted to put your eye to a window, you had to twist your head to the side, and close the other eye. Somehow, it was a disadvantage she’d never noticed before today. Probably because she’d never had to cope with windows.

Gina wriggled her head into the small open window. Jay popped through and perched on her ear companionably. The room was filled with kids sitting in front of computers with expressions ranging from concentration to the vague suffering looks of dazed boredom. Hot, stuffy air filled the room, laced with the smells of dust and sweaty socks. Gina wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Hey!" she hissed. "It’s the red-haired kid we saw at that house! The one we saw with those littler kids."

Just beyond snout’s reach sat Ryan. His hair rose in stiff spikes like a stegosaurus. Today some of the spikes were green. His eyes were riveted to the screen in front of him. One hand jerked spasmodically, pulling on a gray lump with a tail snaking around the back of the computer. On the screen, small figures wrestled, and hit each other with heavy objects.

The boy next to him poked half-heartedly at a board, making black marks appear on the screen. He stared wistfully at Ryan’s machine. "Hey, Ryan," he hissed. "Try the Turbo Wombat."

"Shh," Ryan muttered. He grimaced as one figure trampled the other.

"But the Turbo Wombat has laser claws!"

"Shut up!" Ryan’s lips scarcely moved. His eyes flicked nervously across the room towards the teacher, and then back to the screen."

Gina edged a little closer to the screen, fascinated. "What’s a Turbo Wombat?" she asked. Ryan’s head jerked slightly.

"Shut up, cretin!" Ryan breathed. "Everybody knows what a Turbo Wombat is!"

Jay bounced onto Ryan’s quickly moving hand. Ryan didn’t notice. Jay flailed wildly. "Bucking Bronco!" he yelled. "Ride ‘em, cowboy!" He wrapped an arm around Ryan’s thumb, and the other around a finger. "Go for it, kid! Let’s bash that sucker!"

Gina laughed, and then looked about guiltily. No one had noticed. With growing restlessness, she studied the room. Not one face was turned towards her. Face by face, she scanned the students, and then the teacher standing on the other side of the room. She and Jay had been pestering people all morning. She’d been ignored through every move, every word. It was exactly like being invisible. With a sick certainty, she knew that Jay’s school plan would turn out like all the other plans today. Well, she’d had enough!

"Hey!" she yelled suddenly.

"Gina! What’s up?" Jay flipped off Ryan’s hand, and faced her.

"Hey, you guys!" Gina bellowed. "What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf?"

"Gina, they can’t hear you."

"But I’m here!"

"They don’t know it." Jay sounded tired. "They see you and hear you, but they don’t believe in you. Their brains kind of glaze right over you."

Gina lashed her tail. Things were different at home. Parents paid attention to her; friends laughed with her or yelled at her; her little brother Sidney tagged after her. Clyde tried to ignore her in his snotty older brother way, but he never managed it for long. She teased him, jumped on him, or screamed at him, and eventually he reacted.

"I’ll make them hear me!" Gina snapped her mouth shut around the table leg next to her and gave it a sharp jerk. With a rumble and crash, Ryan’s computer hit the floor. The monitor flipped backwards onto the desk behind it. "Aaarrgh!" Ryan yelled. He shoved himself away from his desk and threw his hands up into the air. "What the shit happened!"