For a while she thought about begging off—saying she felt sick suddenly and could the others keep looking without her?—but then she caught Max’s eye and realized he felt as miserable as she did.
And a couple of minutes later, Hayley’s car passed them and then slowed down and stopped, pulled over against the curb.
“Well hey there, Sykeses!” called her mom cheerily, rolling down the driver’s-side window. “Whatcha doing?”
They clustered around the car, Cara bending down to wave to Hayley in the passenger seat as her dad explained to Hayley’s mother that they were looking for Rufus. Cara walked around the car as Hayley rolled down her own window.
“So—what happened? Did it work?” asked Hayley, low.
“It worked,” whispered Cara. “We saw her.”
“OMG,” breathed Hayley. “No way!”
“Shh!”
“And so—?”
“I’ll tell you about on the cell later, OK?”
“Why don’t you all come over for dinner?” asked her mom. “I have this new recipe I’d love to try out on you! Do you like prawns, William?”
Looking at Hayley’s mom smiling up at her dad from behind the steering wheel—with her frosted hair and shiny lipstick and tanned cleavage showing—it occurred to Cara for the first time: she liked him.
Hayley’s mom had a crush on her dad. Seriously.
Ew. She tried to wipe the thought away.
Hopefully she was wrong.
“Sure,” her dad was saying when she paid attention again. “Sure, that sounds great.”
He wouldn’t like her, anyway. She wasn’t his type at all. For one thing, she wore press-on nails.
“Maybe we should split up,” suggested Jax, after Hayley’s car pulled away again. “Go looking separately. Cover more ground.”
“OK,” said their dad. “Max can come with me; Cara and Jax, why don’t you circle around over there.” And he pointed.
After that the fake search was more bearable, since she and Jax didn’t have to pretend. They just walked along in a glum but companionable silence, remembering their dog.
“Die Tiere sind nicht, was sie scheinen,” said Jax softly.
It was later, in Cara’s room. Their dad had given up on looking for Rufus, for now; he was puzzled, but he said they should put a bowl of food out on the porch and maybe Rufus would come back. Max had gone out to help Zee get the scuba gear back from where Jax and Cara had left it, hidden in the scrubby vegetation atop the bluffs. He had to do it right away, before her father found out the gear was missing and she got in serious trouble.
The afternoon was warm, and someone in the neighborhood was having a barbecue again, Cara guessed: the smell of woodsy smoke drifted in her open window. She could hear the tinkly music of an ice-cream truck down the street.
“What?”
“Thing is, I could see it. I could read the letters in her mind, though I can’t read all of Mom. She’s a hard one to read. There are things in there that are hidden to me….”
“Jax,” broke in Cara. “Did you really want—did you want to go with her?”
“Maybe,” said Jax. “Didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Cara. “I want her to come back here, is what I want.”
Jax nodded slowly.
“You wouldn’t have left me, though, would you?” she asked.
“I won’t leave you,” said Jax solemnly.
Their eyes met. Cara smiled, and then Jax did, too.
“Anyway,” he picked up again. “I did see the sentence. I read it. So I didn’t need to just go by the sounds; I knew how it was written.”
“And?” she asked.
“It turns out to be German,” he said.
“So what does it mean?”
“I translated it online,” he said, and handed her a scrap of paper. “It took all of five seconds. If Mom wanted to keep the message secret from us, she should have remembered we have access to basic software technology. Of course, she’s right in that we already know the substance of the message—in one sense, at least. Where maybe Dad doesn’t. But whatever. I wrote it down for you.”
She looked down at the big, block letters of his kid’s handwriting.
THE ANIMALS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.
About the Author
Lydia Millet is the author of many novels for adult readers, including My Happy Life, which won the PEN-USA Award for Fiction in 2003, and Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, about the scientists who designed the first atomic bomb, which was shortlisted for the UK’s Arthur C. Clarke Prize. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Arizona and now works as a writer and editor at an endangered-species protection group. This is her first novel for young readers.
She is working on the second book in the Dissenters series, The Shimmers in the Night.
