Invisible Inkling

“Maybe you just felt badly going into my pocket for my money,” I say. “Maybe it’s mental.”

“Mental?” Patne asks.

“Maybe you didn’t really want to take my money,” I explain. I finish changing and sit down to put on my shoes.

“You do have money, then?” Kim says. “That’s great. You can buy a new lemonade.”

Oh.

Yeah.

Maybe I’m not such a good liar after all. “You can’t have my money!” I yell. “Patne, I can’t believe you’re being such a dirtbug, to stick your hand in my pocket.”

Patne looks up at me and shrugs. “Henry told me to,” he says.

“You were over at my house on the weekend! You made ice cream with me. We splatted the alien poo. What kind of person splats alien poo one day and sticks a hand in a pocket another, huh? Is that a nice person? Because I don’t think so.”

Kim wrinkles his nose. “Alien poo?”

Patne gets very busy looking for his shoes inside his locker. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Are you going to say something about sticking your hand in my pocket?” I ask Patne. “Are you?”

“Sheesh, Hank, you don’t have to get so upset about it. We were just kidding around,” says Patne.

What?

What?

“I wasn’t really going to take your money.”

“Oh yeah?” I say.

Patne laughs. “Of course not. What kind of guy do you think I am?”

I squint my eyes at them. “I just wanted to see if he’d do it,” Kim explains, smiling. “I love seeing if I can get Joe to do stuff.”

Patne socks him in the arm. “I hardly ever do stuff you tell me.”

“Yes you do.” Kim laughs.

“Only sometimes.”

“Only a lot of times.”

“Only when I want to.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“I wasn’t really taking your money, Hank,” says Patne.

“You don’t need to get mad,” says Kim.

I don’t know what to say. I feel like an idiot. “Okay, fine,” I say. “Fine.”

I walk to the front of the locker room and collect some towels. Come back and wipe up the spilled lemonade in silence. Then I get my bag, hold it open for a moment while Inkling climbs in, and wave good-bye to Patne and Kim. They are throwing each other’s sneakers on top of the lockers.

Laughing hysterically.

A Pygmy Hedgehog Sounds All Right

Nadia picks me up outside the gym. “Remember about pygmy hedgehogs?” she says. “Remember how you tried to convince Mom to get you one and she said no way?”

“Yeah,” I say. It was a while ago, though.

“So guess what?”

“What?”

“Jacquie got two.”

“For serious?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were mad at Jacquie,” I say.

“I am, but she has pygmy hedgehogs.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, I don’t trust her. We used to be friends, but now she’s just my halfway friend. But hello? Pygmy hedgehogs!”

I laugh.

“It’s worth going over there,” Nadia says. “Don’t you want to see them?”

“Of course. What could be better than a pygmy hedgehog?”

“Nothing!” shouts Nadia.

“Nothing!” I cry.

Inkling bops me on the ear. (He’s riding on my back.) Ow!

“I mean, a pygmy hedgehog sounds all right, as far as pets go,” I say, backtracking. “An invisible talking creature from the Peruvian Woods of Mystery would be much better. If such a thing existed, which it totally does not.”

“Sometimes you are not a normal person, Hank,” says Nadia.

“You tell me that all the time,” I answer. “It’s not new information.”

Jacquie lives in a brownstone in Park Slope, which is a neighborhood a half-hour walk from our place. It’s a pretty area: big town houses in rows. The wide sidewalks are lined with trees. Inkling even climbs off my back and trots alongside me for some of the walk, though on our home streets he’s scared of getting stepped on.

Jacquie opens the door of her house wearing shorts and a bathing-suit top even though it’s cold outside. She’s got a ski hat on her head. Dance music is blasting so loud she doesn’t say hi, just waves at us to come in. The hedgehogs are in a huge cage near the entrance to the backyard.

Once she turns the music down, Jacquie tells us about them. “They need lots of space,” she says, “plus a plastic running wheel.” There’s also a litter box, tubes for them to crawl through, a couple of boxes lined with washcloths for the hedgehogs to nest in, a bowl of lettuce and another of cat food, plus a bottle of water like you’d give to a hamster.

At first I can’t see the hedgies. They’re hiding in the boxes. They’re nocturnal, Jacquie explains, but they’ll wake up if we tempt them with food.

I feel Inkling’s thick furry body leaning against me as I peer into the boxes. The hedgies are so small! So spiny!

“They’re babies,” Jacquie tells us. “It’s better to adopt them as babies because they get used to being handled.”

Jacquie pulls some carrots out of her fridge and gives them to Nadia. “Put them in, and I’ll tap the box gently,” she says. “I think they’ll wake up.”

And they do! Two tiny, sleepy-eyed hedgehogs come out of the boxes, waddling toward the carrots eagerly. The darker one is Derek and the lighter one is Teakettle.

“I can’t believe you named your hedgehog after Derek,” laughs Nadia.

“Who’s Derek?” I ask.

“Jacquie’s ex-boyfriend,” says Nadia. “Why would you want to remember that idiot every time you look at your hedgie?”