Page 11 of Batty About You
Oh! I see it! I see it! I let out a happy squeak. ( I hope Kelly thinks it’s a cute sound.Ithink it’s a cute sound. I could be both boyfriendandadorable pet. I’m multipurpose.)
Hope floods me as I zoom in closer—
Ahh! Too bright, too bright! What in the—
Twack!
“Oh, no. No, no, no! No!” I hit something. Please don’t let it have damaged the car... Mom’s old car has been in the family for twenty-two years, and unless you count the time Lourdes ran full-tilt into one of the rear doors with her new electric scooter, it’s never been in an accident.
I hurry out of the car and stop dead when I get to the bumper, horrified at what’s on the lid of my trunk. A little bat, its wings fluttering in a spasm, like it's locked in a seizure. “Oh, God!” I gasp, my eyes filling with tears.
Rushing back to the front seat, I grab my phone and turn on the flashlight. No blood. His eyes are shut, but his wings are still moving.
Good. He’s alive. Maybe I can keep him alive.
I look at the screen. 7:10. What the heck was I thinking, leaving thirty minutes early to meet Boggie at a place that’s a five-minute drive? Well. I have time. I can get this little guy some help. I can’t just brush it off the back of the car with the snow scraper in the back seat and leave him out here on the ground, unconscious. Someone could run over him. A stray cat might eat him.
I’d be guilty of bat-slaughter by negligence instead of directly.
“My God, Kelly, is bat-slaughter even a thing?” I dig in the backseat for an old notebook and gently shift the bat onto it, trying not to scream when it flails harder, wings whipping upand down, his little eyes still shut. “I damaged your tiny brain, didn’t I?” I whisper, hurrying into the house.
I’ll call Bogdan as soon as I... “Ohh! I know. I know, I’ll put you in Pedro’s cage overnight, and I’ll look up online what I should do if a bat flies into a window. I’m putting half the blame on you, little guy. The parking lot was clear when I checked my rearview mirror. You must have swooped down out of nowhere. Poor baby.”
Iowe my family a boatload of apologies.
I wake up, stuck in my little batty body, lying on my back with my head throbbing—and I can’t shift.
Slowly, with the world blurring, I sit up and crawl to the bars of my cell.
Cell? Birdcage.
Fancy, fancy birdcage that smells like parrot poop and newsprint, and has decorative silver bits all over the sides. On all of the sides.
Silver is great for protecting people from evil, which is why I often wear a silver cross and have one dangling in my car. But if you surround a shifter with it? That suppresses the ability to shift, at least in my case. I never thought it would be a problem. Who has a room with four walls of silver? No one!
But a silver box. Or birdcage...
Kelly’s sweet, soft voice suddenly penetrates the pounding in my head. “Oh, good! Little bat, you’re alive! And awake!”
Ohhh. She is so beautiful. Even more beautiful up close than her pictures. Her big, brown eyes are warm and compassionate, smiling into my beady little red eyes as they finally focus. Her lips look soft and full as they smile down on me, and one of her slender, violinist’s fingers gently strokes the bars.
“You rest here and recover, and when I come back, my boyfriend and I will let you out and make sure you can fly. Don’t worry. I won’t be gone for more than a few hours.”
I flail and struggle to fly to the side of the cage, hooking the single claws at the tip of my wings to the bars, squeaking and slapping my wings.
Don’t leave me in here! Let me out now!
Kelly shakes her head and bites her lip as I flail and fall backwards with a thump.
“Little buddy, you’re still too dizzy to fly! You rest—just a couple of hours. Good little bat!” She blows me a kiss and heads out the door while I shriek in my cell.
With one last, uncertain look, Kelly slides out of the apartment and locks the door behind her.
Have you ever heard a bat scream? Not a pretty noise. Very high-pitched. It hurtsmyears, but what else am I going to do as I watch the woman I love walk away from me, thinking I’m a wounded woodland creature, heading out to what was supposed to be our first date, the beginning of our great romance, and now...
I’m going to have to tell my entire family that they were right. Halloween is cursed for me, and this is the form the curse takes—watching helplessly as the person I love most in the world blithely drives into the night to get her heartbroken.
