Read Three Years with the Rat for Free Online Page B

around on my arm.
    There is no food in the crook of the cage’s wire lid but I have filled the water bottle and slotted the drinking nozzle through the bars. I remember John feeding hard little cylinders to the rats but I have no idea what the pellets actually were. I consider my current options, pasta or toast, and put a slice of bread in the toaster oven. The sight of food reminds me that I haven’t eaten since the mashed potatoes so I drop in another slice for myself. I raise my arms to stretch and I can feel the medical tape pull at my skin.
    While the bread is toasting, I put Buddy on the top of the miniature box. He would fit comfortably inside. I’m overtaken by a powerful yawn, but when I check my phone it isn’t even ten o’clock yet. My legs ache as if I’ve been up for days. By now the liquor is warming my head and making a film over my eyes.
    And then I hear a scrabbling sound and look to the box in time to see Buddy’s tail disappear into the rubber hole. My heart begins to race.
    “You little shit,” I whisper. “You didn’t.”
    I’m not putting my hand into the box to retrieve him. The toaster oven pings. I butter my slice, decide to butter Buddy’s, too. I break his piece up and drop it onto the bedding inside the cage. Then I check the refrigerator, find half a head of iceberg lettuce,tear a leaf off, and put it in the cage. I know very little about what rats eat but I doubt toast and lettuce will kill him.
    But the box might. I am absolutely not putting my hand into it to retrieve him. I push at the slat with the rubber hole, hoping it will slide, but nothing happens. Then I wipe off the butter knife and use it to pry along one of the edges of the box. I hear a snap and the panel with the rubberized hole detaches. As expected, the inside of the box is lined with mirrors. But Buddy isn’t inside. I check the counter, the floor, the corners of the room, the box again. Buddy is gone.
    A laugh comes out of me, mean and hard, and I push the box away from me in disgust. I curse their disappearances, Buddy’s a few minutes ago, John’s last year, Grace’s almost two years, now. I can see my reflection inside the box: bearded, worn, unkempt. It would feel satisfying to smash the box to pieces with the hammer. I seriously consider it for a moment.
    Instead I empty the scotch bottle into my glass, turn out the lights, and grab the blue lab notebook on my way to the bedroom. I carry the toast in my mouth. I use my toes to pull off my socks and I slip out of my jeans. In bed, I swallow down my meal in a few bites and wipe the crumbs off the comforter. I lie on my side to avoid the stitches and rub at my eyes to clear away the glaze.
    Skimming through the lab notebook doesn’t help my anger. It could be some code, but none of John’s “phrases” in the formulae seem to repeat, as I’d expect to see for words like
the
or
it.
The street where I grew up led to a dead end.
    MOIJX­+NEW-­T*HHV­XI/NR­RX+NY­UWIFM­WVH-H­IDQBQ­W*ZMX­RWLDI­YG/RR­P+HLR­L-KS*­XESR/­UCO=Q­RZE+U­ACRJB­GATWJ­=QG-C­ACYGD­*LK/M­VSM+S­KFH-V­DCJWQ­ZV*HY­X/TUK­PQPHH­D+FA-­JRIL*­PHS/Y­SMFVF­USF 2 …
    —
    I first met John over the holidays, a year and a half before I moved to the city. By then I was on my way to flunking out for the second time at the same university (ultimately the same university where I flunked out a third time). Coming home from Vancouver on a cheap flight was a great excuse to miss exams I didn’t care about.
    Grace rejected the idea of family dinner at first, but not as fiercely as usual. It was hardly a struggle to convince her, actually. And when I answered the door at my mother’s house and found her standing next to John, I understood why: she was happy.
    The two of them must have been dating for a year by then, but standing near them as they took off their coats, I could feel the air thrumming with energy. Grace caught his glance and laughed spontaneously,
hah.
She reached out