Page 39 of Montana Falls
He grinned at me as he picked his own box. “They don’t go in boxes. Boxes are just for stuff that isn’t breathing.”
“Like the barbies and clothes?”
“Yeah. The kittens have to go in special bags that are made for them. It lets them be safe and breathe right.”
“They like breathing.” I grabbed a bunch of dolls from a pile on the floor, picking up as many as I could as Angel did the same.“The kittens do it all the time, and I know when I don’t breathe, it hurts my chest.”
He paused his packing, but I carried on, seeing how fast I could go.
“Why don’t you breathe sometimes?” He asked.
“Yumi told me through the robot lady on the phone, that she did it when she got sad, so I tried to see if I could. But I didn’t last very long. I only counted to five before I had to breathe again.” I sighed. “Do you think when I’m bigger like Yumi is, I can stop breathing for longer? She did it last night for almost a minute before she had to stop.”
She hadn’t told me not to tell anyone about the breathing, so I was fine to tell Angel. He would probably know how to not breathe for ages too; he was about as big as Yumi was. When we had watched a movie together, they had both been talking. And Yumi said that Angel was okay for a boy child. Then Angel had insisted he was older than her, and not a child. I hadn’t listened to much after that, but I did remember them agreeing to being the same amount of numbers old.
Angel didn’t get a chance to tell me about his breathing before I had more questions.
“Will this new house have a room for me?” I wondered, as I finished with my barbies and started with my ribbons next, only stopping for a second to grab one of the red ones for Beau and putting it in my pocket, too.
“It has enough rooms for everybody. But we might not have one that’s just yours yet. Sapphire said she needs to get stuff built soon, so you can have what you want. So for now we are staying at Henley’s house.” Angel picked up some more toys, placing them inside his box. “I think we should figure out what you want in your forever room, and then we can tell Sapphire.”
“I want you and Yeva. Then Yumi, and the other girls. And I want the kittens and barbies.” I dropped more stuff into the box. “Then maybe I can have a dinosaur. A big one with a red bow on his head.”
He laughed a little. “I was thinking, more like the colours. What color do you want the walls? Or your bed? Sapphire said you can pick everything out. Plus, dinosaurs are not real now, unfortunately. So you can only think of animals that are real now.”
I thought long and hard about it as I finished filling my box and got another one, eventually deciding what I wanted the most. The walls were going to be blue like the sky. The floor green like grass. Then I wanted a rainbow, and a sun, and some birds on the wall. Real ones that made noises and had soft feathers. After that, I needed cat trees everywhere, so the kittens would stay with me even more than they already did.
Though they would have to share. There was one other thing I wanted if I could not have a dinosaur.
“Can I have a pony? Ruby told me she rode ponies when she was little like me and that she fed them sugar cubes and they were cute.” I would call my pony Chicken Nugget because I liked chicken nuggets. They tasted good, especially when I put them into the red sauce. The one that the lady liked to put on her eggs to make Lincoln pull funny faces.
Angel chuckled again. “Probably. I can ask.”
“What about an elephant, too? Yumi said she had a pet elephant called Dumbo, and he had massive ears that could let him fly.” She also said she had a bunch of pet mice who made her clothes and took her to parties, but I didn’t know how that worked. Mice were too small to make clothes. The material would be too big for their tiny hands to hold. Plus, in the bad place there had been lots of mice, and they had never offered to makemeclothes.
“I think Sapphire would say yes. But it isn’t smart. Elephants don’t like to be kept in bedrooms.” Angel filled his box and picked up another. “And I think Yumi was joking; elephants can’t fly. At least not when people are watching them. They might be able to do it when nobody else is around.”
I sighed, sad about the elephants not flying when I watched them. “But they could go in the garden? Beau said the Montana house has a bigger garden than this one when he asked if I would like stuff to go in it. He asked about something called a swing and a slide and when he showed me pictures, I liked them. So maybe the elephant will like them, too.”
When Beau had been drinking his funny juice, he’d told me I could swing on the swing and go to space. I didn’t want to go to space because it was dark, but Ididwant to fly. It seemed like it could be fun, and I couldn’t wait to do it on my swing.
“Elephants like more space – bigger gardens with different weather. It’s not the happiest place for them to be in someone’s house.” Angel grinned. “But we could get you a toy elephant – one that doesn’t breathe.”
“Can I have one as big as my bunny? I think he needs a friend.”
“Sure. We can get one,” he promised. “But we have to pack as fast as we can first – like a race.”
I instantly wanted to win.
The hours went by faster and faster and faster. By the time all my stuff was in boxes, my tummy was grumbling again, and Yeva had woken up. She’d given me a hug, stared at Angel with only a bit of badness as she said words in her funny language. Then gone for a shower so she could smell like fruit and not the funny juice. When she left, Angel offered to take me for a snack, and I wasn’t sad this time. I didn’t mind leaving my new room, or even my new house.
I didn’t mind leaving the place at all. Not when I knew I was not alone. I was not going back to the bad place and I never would. I was staying with my friends and the lady who had saved me, and I was not going to end up like my mama. Where one minute I was there, then the next I was gone.
So no, I wasn’t sad anymore. I felt…. I felt different. Less bad and sad and there was no wetness on my cheeks.
My face was smiling, and I liked smiling.
Chapter Twelve
