Wild Life by Keena Roberts

Author:Keena Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

“Why don’t you write in your journal?” Mom asked me. I had some free time in the evenings now that the school year was winding down and Mom was getting tired of me pacing back and forth in the hallway like a dog waiting to be let outside.

“What would I write about?” I said. “Nothing happens here.”

I missed being outside and didn’t understand why no one else seemed to crave sunshine like I did. When our English teacher said we could have class outside, my classmates squealed and fussed about having to sit on the grass where there might be bugs and dirt. Like most Americans I knew, they acted like they were at war with nature. Instead of enjoying the seasons, even when they were unpleasant, they constantly complained about the weather and aggressively climate-controlled everything from their cars to their patios. Wild animals were always pests, even when they weren’t doing anything wrong, and that I really didn’t understand.

One morning in early May, a few weeks before school let out for the summer, I was walking into school after being dropped off in the morning when I saw a fat raccoon bumbling through the woods behind the gymnasium. Since I was early, I sat on a rock and watched him for a while before going inside. Seeing me smiling, my homeroom teacher asked me what made me so happy and I told him about the raccoon. I later found out that instead of letting the raccoon go about his business, the school called animal control and had the raccoon shot, claiming that since it was out during the day it “might have been rabid.” I was heartbroken.

At the end of the school year, I received an academic prize—Mrs. Graff gave a speech about each kid who won, and in mine she pointed out my “strong sense of fairness,” as well as my “childlike worldview.” I was already uncomfortable standing in front of my class in a dress for the awards assembly, and this remark made me instantly defensive. The speech made me sound like a little kid (Meghan’s words about not growing up still thundered through my head). Mom said later that Mrs. Graff was just trying to say I had a strong sense of how the world should work, particularly when it came to nature and animals. Though I allowed myself to be angry with Mrs. Graff for the “childlike worldview” part, I agreed that she might have been right about fairness, especially if she meant respect for other creatures. I already knew that was true, but it was yet another example of something I cared about that no one else around me seemed to. Go ahead, I thought angrily. Tell the whole world how different I am. I am already out of place, so why not separate me even further? I didn’t care anyway. I already knew there was a place in the world where I did fit. I just had to wait a few more weeks to go back.

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