“Stand away,” he said.
The kidney can exhaled a fine blue mist that smelled like coffee. J.Lo coated the Plexiglas front of the vending machine, and stepped back to admire his work.
“What now?” I asked.
“We to wait,” said J.Lo as the Plexiglas began to steam.
I said that was fine. I had to use the restroom anyway.
“Yes,” said J.Lo, following me to the ladies’ room door. “I have also to do this thing.”
“Whoa,” I said, blocking the doorway. “You can’t come in here. This is the girls’ room.”
Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought, and maybe even wrong.
“You…you are a boy, aren’t you?” I asked. “I mean, don’t take that the wrong way or anything—”
“J.Lo is a boy, yes.”
I let that go. “So…you Boov have boys and girls…just like us?”
“Of course,” said J.Lo. “Do not to be ridicumulous.”
I smiled a wan little smile. “Sorry.”
“The Boov are having seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.”
I had absolutely no response to this.
“I’m going to go to the restroom now,” I said finally. “You use that one, over there.”
J.Lo pattered off to the boys’ room. He paused at the door, looking at the little man painted on it. A second later he produced some kind of pen from his toolbox, drew six more legs on the man, and went inside. I pulled the girls’ room door shut behind me.
The bathroom was pitch black, except for a small slit of a window framing the pink moon outside. The air was stale and thick. It wrapped itself around me, and I wore it like a mummy. It was nice to be alone for a moment. But I didn’t dwell on it; I was all business. I didn’t stare for too long at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t cry or anything. I was okay. I was excited about getting to Florida. Beaches. Fun in the sun. Happy Mouse Kingdom was there. Mom had always loved Happy Mouse Kingdom.
After a while I washed my hands and splashed my face, then rejoined J.Lo outside.
He was standing in front of the vending machine, eating mints. The front had almost completely evaporated.
“I don’t suppose you want any of the other stuff,” I said, waving my hand at the junk feast awaiting me.
J.Lo answered through loud crunches. “No. Mints.”
“You…can’t just have mints. Not that it makes any difference to me—”
He swallowed. “I did also find delicious, fragrant cakes in the Boovs’ room.”
It would be months before I understood he’d eaten deodorizers out of the urinals.
I would have liked to sleep outside and look up at the sky. The sky looked really great when nearly the entire country was blacked out. Of course, now it looked dangerous, too. I wondered if it would ever be just the night sky again, and not a black sea, full of sharks.
Anyway, there were too many bugs to sleep outside. I got an anklet of red bites around each ankle, and the mosquitos just swarmed around J.Lo. We spent the night in Slushious: me in the backseat, J.Lo and Pig in the front. I may be one of the few people alive who have heard the sound of a Boov snoring. It will haunt me to my grave.
The next morning we did our business quickly and got back on the road. Do you know how you can be around a smell for a long time, but you have to leave it and come back to even notice it’s there? When we were gliding back onto the interstate I noticed the smell.
Now, I have to admit that, at this point, I hadn’t bathed in four days. There hadn’t really been time. So I sniffed under my arms, but I was still very ladylike, thank you. I looked over at J.Lo. Pig was purring loudly at his feet, rubbing at his knees.
“Do you smell something?” I asked.
“I am smelling pine freshness,” he replied, looking up at the cardboard tree hanging from the mirror.
“You don’t smell something…kind of…fishy?”
J.Lo swung his legs in little circles. “I am not knowing this ‘fishy.’ How smells this—B-A-AAOOW!”
He nearly scared me right off the road.
“What? What is it?”
J.Lo frowned down at Pig. “The cat did to bite me!” he said.
“She bit you? Pig never bites.”
Pig was still purring, still trying to rub against J.Lo’s feet, which were now pulled up safely against his stumpy body.
“Well, she is to biting now! Now she is excellent biter!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have been swinging your legs around, then. What do you expect when you scare her like that.”
But I knew that wasn’t it. Suddenly everything made sense. I leaned to the right and drew a long breath through my nose. Fish.
“It’s you!” I shouted happily. “You smell like fish!”
J.Lo was stunned.
“Noooo,” he said finally. “I am not to smelling—”
“You do!” I insisted. “You smell just like fish. Stinky fish. No wonder cats like you guys so much! You’re like a big piece of sushi.”
J.Lo stared down at Pig. “Perhaps I am to needing a bath, then.”
“You’re forgiven, Pig,” I said, laughing. “You couldn’t help yourself.”
“Please not to laugh,” said J.Lo. “She bit wicked hard.”
I stopped laughing. We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“Okay,” I said. “What is it with that word? Wicked. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Nobody?” asked J.Lo.
“Hardly anybody.”
The Boov shrugged his frog arms, never taking his eyes off Pig.
“I do not to know. It was teached to me by the tutor. It is not a word?”
“It’s a word,” I said. How to explain? “It’s just that…you’re using it in a way that…isn’t really common anymore. If it’s all the same to you, I’d really like it if you didn’t say it again.”
J.Lo nodded. “It is all the same to me. I am not meaning to upset you, Turtlebear.”
I must have slammed on the brakes, because the car squealed to a halt. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes.
“Get out!” I yelled.
“Wh—get into the out? Here? Wh—oh…okay.”
Something about the look on my face sent J.Lo scrambling out the door, onto the edge of a grassy hill. Pig followed.
“Should I…Should I to—”