Jackie's Wild Seattle by Will Hobbs Page B

spot. I can see the door to Jackie’s house and the door to the clinic. I can hang in the shade but stay tuned to everybody’s comings and goings.”
    â€œYou like it here, don’t you?”
    â€œOh yeah, I like the people, I like the animals, I like everything about it.”
    Tyler didn’t say anything, he just scraped a little swath clear of cedar needles. But then he said, “It’s kind of growing on me, too. I couldn’t stand it for a long time—I’ve been coming here since school got out. But now I kind of look forward to it.”
    It can’t be because we’ve been seeing each other lately, I thought, because we haven’t. “What made the difference?” I asked him.
    He closed his fist on a little pile of needles, lifted his hand, and started sifting them out the bottom, sprinkling a line across the patch he’d cleared. “To tell you the truth, I kind of expected everything to go south, but it never has.” He laughed. “People don’t get mad around here. I mean,even like Jackie. She’s pretty serious—everything has to be done just so—but she never gets angry, really. Your uncle—I can tell he doesn’t like me, but at least he doesn’t go out of his way to tell me about it. That’s kind of refreshing.”
    Tyler needed to talk. Did I really want to go there, wherever this was headed? Yet if I didn’t, who would?
    Why was it I had never believed he was a hopeless case? In a flash, I could picture him at the creek, what he’d done, and I pictured his father’s face in the driveway.
    I took a leap of faith. “At home,” I began, “I guess it’s not so easy?”
    â€œYou got that right. It’s never been easy. My old man’s got a temper like you wouldn’t believe.”
    â€œI’m sorry. Cody and I are lucky in the parent department.”
    â€œI heard about your parents going to Pakistan and all that. That whole part of the world is dangerous, isn’t it?”
    â€œIt’s definitely something to worry about.”
    â€œBoth doctors, that’s pretty impressive. I’m the son of a mechanic and a checker at Wal-Mart.”
    â€œSo, how come you’re putting that down? What’s wrong with either of those?”
    He looked at me skeptically.
    â€œMy parents weren’t born doctors,” I said. “My dad’s parents were farmers. My mother was the daughter of a warehouse manager and a clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles. This is America, Tyler.”
    He glanced at me like I’d made a speech, which I guess I had. “I know, I know. What I should have said was, sometimes I wish my father would go to Pakistan for a nice long vacation.”
    â€œReally?”
    He laughed and said, “Sure. It would be a break for me and my mom.”
    To that, I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to run away from the topic but I got brave and said, “I guess you don’t mind getting out of the house to come to the center, even if it’s not by choice. It gets you away from your dad.”
    â€œRight. This is all working out pretty good this summer. I can’t drive yet so I can’t get very far away, but this place kind of gives me a place to hide out. I just wish it made more sense.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œDon’t get me wrong, but what happened to ‘survival of the fittest’ and all that? I mean, rehabbing birds and squirrels that cats have dragged in, and raccoons that have been hit by cars. What happened to letting nature take its course?”
    I didn’t even have to think about it. I’d been thinking about it since he started talking like this the last time. “Tyler, there isn’t any ‘nature’ anymore.”
    â€œNo nature?”
    â€œI mean, we’ve interfered too much. We keep taking away land from them and using it for ourselves. Isn’t it