The Tiger Rising

Chapter 11

That afternoon, Rob was out in front of the Kentucky Star, weeding between the cracks in the sidewalk, when the school bus rumbled up.

“Hey!” he heard Norton Threemonger yell.

Rob didn’t look up. He concentrated on the weeds.

“Hey, disease boy!” Norton shouted. “We know what you got. It’s called leprosy.”

“Yeah!” Billy shouted. “Leprosy. All of your body parts are going to fall off.”

“They’re going to rot off!” Norton yelled.

“Yeah!” Billy screamed. “That’s what I meant. Rot. They’re going to rot off.”

Rob stared at the sidewalk and imagined the tiger eating Norton and Billy Threemonger and then spitting out their bones.

“Hey!” Norton shouted. “Here comes your girlfriend, disease boy.”

The bus coughed and sputtered and finally roared away. Rob looked up. Sistine was walking toward him. She was wearing a lime green dress. As she got closer, he could see that it was torn and dirty.

“I brought your homework,” she said. She held out a red notebook stuffed full of papers. The knuckles on her hand were bleeding.

“Thank you,” said Rob. He took the notebook. He was determined to say nothing else to her. He was determined to keep his words inside himself, where they belonged.

Sistine stared past him at the motel. It was an ugly two-story building, squat and small, composed entirely of cement block. The doors of each room were painted a different color, pink or blue or green, and there was a chair, painted in a matching color, sitting in front of each door.

“Why is this place called the Kentucky Star?” Sistine asked.

“Because,” said Rob. It was the shortest answer he could think of.

“Because why?” she asked.

Rob sighed. “Because Beauchamp, the man who owns it, he had a horse once, called Kentucky Star.”

“Well,” said Sistine, “it’s a stupid name for a hotel in Florida.”

Rob shrugged.

It started to rain; Sistine stood in front of him and continued to stare. She looked at the motel and then over at the blinking Kentucky Star sign, and then she looked back at him, as if it was all a math equation she was trying to make come out right in her head.

The rain made her hair stick to her scalp. It made her dress droopy. Rob looked at her small pinched face and her bleeding knuckles and dark eyes, and he felt something inside of him open up. It was the same way he felt when he picked up a piece of wood and started working on it, not knowing what it would be and then watching it turn into something he recognized.

He took a breath. He opened his mouth and let the words fall out. “I know where there’s a tiger.”

Sistine stood in the drizzly rain and stared at him, her eyes black and fierce.

She didn’t say “A real one?”

She didn’t say “Are you crazy?”

She didn’t say “You’re a big old liar.”

She said one word: “Where?”

And Rob knew then that he had picked the right person to tell.