The Menagerie (2 page)

Blue's desk was in front of Logan's. His thick blond hair had a slight greenish tint to it that Logan had only noticed because the back of Blue's head was right in front of him all day long. He also had an odd smell—like the sea, as if he spent most of the day surfing, although there weren't any beaches for hundreds of miles.

Mr. Christopher turned to the blackboard and began writing out a math problem. A crumpled ball of paper zipped past Logan's nose and bonked Blue on the back of the head.

Blue and Logan both turned to Zoe at the same time.

“We have to get to the cafeteria,” she whispered, ignoring Logan.

Blue nodded at Mr. Christopher's back. “But we have class.”

Zoe rubbed her thin wrist. “This is more important! You know what SNAPA'll do if we don't find—” She stopped and glanced at Logan.

“What's Snapple got to do with your dog?” he asked.

“Um,” she said. “Nothing. I didn't say that. We need to know what's happening,” she whispered to Blue, sounding frustrated.

“He won't let you go,” Blue said, shaking his head. “Or me. Not after we were late like that.”

Logan knew that if it were
his
dog, he'd be just as desperate as Zoe sounded right now. For his own dog, he'd do anything to get it back.

“I'll go,” he whispered, raising his hand.

TWO

“W
ait, no,” Zoe objected, but the teacher was already looking at him.

“Mr. Christopher? May I go to the bathroom?” Logan asked.

His teacher put down the chalk and sighed. “All right, but no loitering,” he said, pulling out the hall pass.

Logan glanced back from the door and saw Zoe biting her thumbnail nervously. “Don't worry,” he mouthed.

The hallway was empty as he hurried toward the cafeteria, past rows of yellow lockers. He could hear raised voices as he got closer. He stopped outside the green metal double doors and crouched down, pretending to tie his shoe while he listened.

“How could it
all
be gone?” cried Miss McCaffrey.

“There's nothing left!” That was the voice of Buck, the man who ran the cafeteria kitchen. “I'm telling you, something got into the freezer
and
the refrigerator and ate it all. The chili, the taco shells, the cheese, the Jell-O, the chocolate milk, the chopped tomatoes—everything we were going to serve for lunch today! Gone!”

“It must have been a wild animal,” said Principal Upton in his drawling, half-asleep voice. “Maybe a bear.”

“A very neat bear,” Buck pointed out. “One that could open doors and cans.”

“Cans?” said Miss McCaffrey.

“Look!” said Buck. “All the baked beans. Pried open and licked clean!”

“Maybe the bear used its claws,” said the principal doubtfully.

“It left nothing but the lettuce.” Buck sounded mournful. “And these red feathers. It must have brought some kind of bird in here to eat it.”

“Well, we can't serve lettuce for lunch!” Miss McCaffrey snapped.

“I know that!” Buck shouted.

“Don't you throw feathers at me!” she yelled.

“Mr. Wilde?”

Logan jumped a mile. He'd completely forgotten about pretending to tie his shoe, or watching for anyone coming along the hall.

The school librarian was standing over him, looking friendly and puzzled. She had caramel-colored skin and long, wispy black hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her ankle-length skirt was bright green with tiny diamond-shaped mirrors sewn all over it, and her blouse was a rather startlingly mismatched shade of bright pink. He couldn't remember her name. He was pretty astonished that she knew his.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “I was— I was just—”

She put one finger to her lips. “Have they figured it out?” she whispered, nodding at the cafeteria door.

He shook his head.

“Have
you
figured it out?” she asked.

“Me?” he said. “I don't know anything. I'm just tying my shoe.”

“Hmmm,” she said, glancing skeptically at his sneakers. “Did they say something about feathers?”

“Yeah, but it couldn't have been a bird. Birds don't eat chili,” Logan said. “I mean—right?” She was staring into the cafeteria as if she wasn't really listening.

“Go on, shoo,” she said, waving at him. Relieved, he fled down the hall.

Mr. Christopher was giving a speech about polynomials when Logan got back, so he slipped into his seat and tore a piece of paper out of his notebook.

Something ate all the food in the cafeteria,
he wrote.
Doesn't sound like it could have been a dog, though. Maybe a bear? Nothing much happening now, just grown-ups shouting.
He folded the note, and when Mr. Christopher wasn't looking, he tossed it onto Zoe's desk.

She read it, groaned softly, and clunked her head down on her folded arms. Which wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting.

Logan concentrated on picking loose scraps of paper out of his notebook's spiral binding. It wasn't like he really needed to be friends with weird Zoe Kahn anyway. She was constantly falling asleep in class and making up wild stories about why her homework wasn't done. Even if the teacher couldn't tell she was lying, Logan could.

Her clothes were always ripped or stained, and she acted like she didn't even care. She mumbled to herself and bit her nails and looked worried all the time. She barely spoke to anyone but Blue, who was mysteriously friends with her even though he could have hung out with anyone.

Logan didn't need a friend
that
badly. Did he?

 

It was a relief to get home after a long day of boring classes and boring lunch, most of which he spent thinking about places in Xanadu where a dog might hide. He wheeled his bike into the garage and let himself into the house.

“Purrs?” he called.

“Rrrreow,”
she answered from under the couch.

“Still acting crazy?” he asked, grabbing a Gatorade from the kitchen. “Boy, something really spooked you, didn't it?”

“RRRRRRRRRRRREOW.”

There was another note from his dad on the kitchen counter.
Busy work weekend ahead,
it said.
Sorry I'll be out so much. Pizza and the Bears game Sunday night? Lots of leftovers in the fridge when you get hungry. Call if you need me.

Logan knew his dad's new job with the wildlife department kept him busy, and he liked that his dad trusted him to be on his own. But he was pretty sure some of those extra “work” hours were actually spent searching for Mom. After all, the last postcard from her—all lame excuses and good-byes—had been mailed from Cheyenne, Wyoming. It wasn't a coincidence that Dad had suddenly moved them here a month after it arrived. They never talked about it, but obviously Dad was hoping to find her and change her mind.

That wasn't going to happen, though. His mom had always liked traveling more than being at home. She'd barely slowed down to eat dinner even when she
was
home. She wasn't the kind of mom who was into family game nights and bike rides, even if she loved Logan and his dad. Logan had always felt like she had a duffel bag packed and ready to go, so he shouldn't have been surprised or hurt when she finally didn't come back.

He was, though.

Who broke up with their family by postcard?

Still, lots of his friends in Chicago had only one parent. For most of them it was the dad who'd left and the mom who'd stayed. Or the dad who'd never been there in the first place. Or the dad who was there but acted more like an extra couch cushion than a person.

So really, Logan was lucky. At least he had a dad who made burritos and shot hoops with him in the driveway and tried to read the same books Logan did.

He shook his head. He didn't want to think about this.

“Okay, Purrs,” he said, “I'm going to feed Mr. and Mrs. Smith, if you want to come watch.” Normally Purrsimmon loved to sit on his desk and stare ominously at his mice while Logan fed them. But today she refused to come out from under the couch.

With a shrug, Logan went into his room, dropped his backpack, and checked on the mouse cage. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were still huddled under their pile of wood shavings. Their small pink noses twitched at him anxiously.

“Poor little guys,” Logan said, picking up their food container. “What's got you so—” He paused. “That's weird.” The container felt much lighter than it had that morning. He pulled off the top of the canister and peered inside.

It was completely empty.

“What the . . . ,” Logan muttered. “Guys, who ate all your food?”
And then put the lid back on?

“SQUUUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOORP.”

Logan froze. That was a noise he had definitely never heard before. And it had come from somewhere in his room.

He turned around slowly, his heart pounding.

That's when he saw the tail stretched out along his carpet, sticking out from the trailing edge of his comforter. A long, golden, furry lion's tail.

There was a monster under his bed.

THREE

I
t couldn't be a lion. There weren't any lions in Wyoming. Right? Maybe cougars, but those didn't have tails like that.

Logan grabbed the baseball bat that was leaning inside his closet door. Cautiously he edged a bit closer, then crouched down and peered under the bed.

The thing had its eyes closed. The front half of it looked like a giant golden eagle, wings and beak and all. The rest of its body was furry, with sharp lion claws on its four paws.

A bolt of fear shot through him, followed immediately by relief. It wasn't real. It couldn't be real. Something else must have made the noise. And this must be some kind of weird stuffed animal his grandparents had sent for him. Sometimes Grams forgot that twelve-year-olds wanted iPods and video games and dogs, not kid toys.

But what kind of animal was a bird at one end and a lion on the other? He'd never seen a stuffed toy like that before.

Well, whatever it was, at least he could be sure that it was absolutely, one hundred percent not real.

The creature's eyes popped open.

“Mork!” it declared.

Logan slammed backward into the closet door and dropped the baseball bat. It was alive! He was about to be eaten by a . . . by a lion-eagle thing!

“Mork!” the creature warbled again, clacking its beak at him. At least it didn't
sound
threatening. In fact, the noises it made were kind of cute. “Mork! Mork!”

“I'm asleep,” Logan said. “I'm dreaming. I'm hallucinating.”

“Mork!” the thing under the bed insisted. “MORK!”

Logan closed his eyes. “Logan, you're imagining this. There must have been something weird in the pizzas they got us for lunch. There is definitely not a monster under your bed morking at you right now.”

Loooooooogan!

Was that a voice inside his head? Logan peeked. The creature's eyes were dark and huge, watching him with bright curiosity. They looked exactly the way he'd always imagined his future dog's eyes would look.

“Was that you?” Logan asked.

Logan hear me?

“Um—” Logan started.

“Mork!”

His bed shuddered and shifted as the animal slowly crawled out into the open and Logan got his first good look at it. It was smaller than he'd thought—no bigger than a Labrador puppy. Soft golden wings unfurled from its furry back. Long lion claws dug into his gray carpet as it shook itself, lion tail lashing. The feathers on its head and chest blurred into fur for the rest of its body. Its hooked beak went
clack clack clack
as it snapped at the air. A crest of golden feathers fanned out around its head like a tiny mane.

Logan realized he had seen a drawing of something like this before, on the cover of a Diana Wynne Jones fantasy book. It looked like a griffin . . . but those didn't exist.

It shook itself again and bounded over to him. Before he could scramble away, it leaped into his lap. He winced as its claws sank through his jeans, but it didn't attack. It tucked its tail around itself and sat down. Its dark eyes stared at him earnestly, and when it head-butted his chest, he couldn't resist reaching out to pat it.

“Moooooooork,” the creature gurgled in delight, wriggling closer to him and curling into a ball just like his cat. Logan stroked its soft fur—even softer than Purrsimmon's—and carefully touched one of its folded wings. This didn't feel like a dream or a pizza-induced hallucination.

“What the heck are you?” he asked. “Some kind of government experiment?” Scientists were always putting plants together and making weird fruits like pluots, after all. Maybe they could make eaglions as well.

The creature opened its mouth, but instead of saying “Mork” again, it let out a loud
“SQUUOOORP
.
”

Logan laughed. “So may I call you Squorp?” he asked.

Squorp!
chirped the voice in his head.
Good name! Squorp like Squorp! Logan! Listening!

“That's right,” Logan said. “I'm Logan. You're Squorp.”

Squorp eat!
It nipped at one of Logan's fingers, and he pulled his hand away with a yelp.

“Okay, but not me!” he said. “You're the one who ate all the mouse food, aren't you?”

Squorp hungry,
said the creature, giving him the saddest eyes an eagle face could muster.
Small scritchy food very very gross.
Its face brightened.
Eat small scritchies instead?

“No,” Logan said sternly. It was lucky the lid on his terrarium was locked down to protect Mr. and Mrs. Smith from Purrsimmon. “No eating my mice. They're my friends.”

Squorp nestled closer to him and leaned his head on Logan's chest.
Squorp your friend.

“Aww,” Logan said, scratching Squorp's head.

Squorp much better friend than small scritchies. Small scritchies unnecessary. And delicious!

“NO,” Logan said. “We'll get you hamburger instead. Okay? You'll like that much better, I promise.”

Suddenly Squorp bolted upright and clacked his beak frantically.
Uh-oh!
The little creature leaped onto Logan's bed and burrowed into the bedclothes, shedding golden fur all over his sheets.

“What?” Logan asked, standing up. “What happened?”

“Mork!” Squorp yelped. With a frantic glance at the window, he rolled and dug the sheets around until he was just a big lump under the dark blue comforter.

Logan peeked out the window, then ducked quickly out of sight.

Zoe and Blue were standing right outside, staring at the low hedges around his house.