Blue Menagerie Pt V

Sallie knew she had to get back to the menagerie. The question, of course, was how. And also when. The fair grounds were a good five miles from her house- not an undoable distance by bike, but not the sort of thing she could conceal under the guise of a trip to the corner gas station (not that Mommy and Daddy were overly keen on her going even that far without a chaperon). And she had to decide fast, because she was pretty sure that the menagerie wouldn’t be spending more than a month in town- and she wasn’t sure how long it has already been there.

In the end she decided the only thing for it was to go at night, after her parents had gone to bed. She knew they would probably cheerfully murder her if they caught her out of bed after midnight, but also she knew it would all be worth it if she brought Zeb back. She refused to think about the problem of him being in lemur form. Mommy was fond of saying, “How do we eat a bear?” to which Daddy and Sallie would chorus, “One bite at a time!” Sallie knew it meant she was supposed to focus on the task at hand, instead of worrying about what might was going to happen in the long run. Perversely, it always made her wonder why she would be eating a bear in the first place…

It was Thursday night, five days since she’d fainted at the menagerie. Sallie, pleading a headache she didn’t feel, went up to bed a full half-hour early, at seven-thirty. She figured it would be smart to get in a decent nap before her adventure- no good breaking Zeb out if she was too sleepy to think straight. She’d packed a backpack full of potentially useful items earlier in the week (including a heavy flashlight as long as her forearm, half the contents of her father’s tool box, and a few snack bars raided from the pantry), and had conveniently “forgotten” to put her bike in the garage that afternoon. She took a moment to set the alarm on her pink plastic watch to one in the morning- her parents were sure to be asleep by then. She let out a shaking breath; she was ready- now she just needed to go to sleep.

Sleep, of course, refused to cooperate. Sallie lay in her bed, trying every trick she knew to coax the Sandman in. She tried counting sheep, but the darn things kept wandering away from the fence she was trying to get them to jump over. Next she counted all the triangles she could see in her room, to no avail. She even resorted to Daddy’s advice of actively tensing and relaxing each bit of her body.

Useless. All useless.

Sallie sighed noisily and rolled over. Great. She was going to have to go on a rescue mission with zero sleep. This was less than ideal. In fact, this was… was…

Beepity-Beep! Beepity-Beep! Beepity-Beep!

Sallie bolted upright, feeling panicked. Her stupid watch was going off too early! And it was so loud! Her parents were sure to hear it! Sallie fumbled at her wrist until she managed to press the correct combination of buttons that silenced the incessant beeping. She glared at it in the darkness, wondering what had set it off, and then glanced over at the cheerful aqua glow of her bedside clock. Oh. It hadn’t gone off early at all: the numbers read 0101. Maybe Daddy’s secret sleeping technique wasn’t so useless, after all.

She sat very still, ignoring the way her heart was doing its best to claw its way up her throat, and strained to hear any noise that might indicate a wakeful presence in the house.

Nothing.

She eased herself out of bed, crept to the bedroom door, and poked her head out. Still nothing. She decided she would do a quick test run before committing to her backpack: she could always pass it off as needing a drink of water, should anyone still be up.

But no one was. Sallie made it to the bathroom and back with only the reassuring rattle of Daddy’s snore to break the silence. Thus satisfied that her parents were not in fact waiting around the corner to bust her, she pulled on a pair of dark jeans and black socks under her navy blue nightgown, then topped it all off with a long-sleeved black shirt. Perfect. Well, she might wish for some black mud to put on her face, or a black knit stocking to cover her braided hair- but it was too warm for that sort of thing, anyway.

She laced up her tennis shoes (dark blue and green canvas- perfectly respectable for someone with a lot of night time sneaking to do), hefted her backpack, and took a deep breath.

It was time to go.