Read Zoo for Free Online Page B

dome, and I could faintly hear the chirping of an
unusual-looking bird. It was perched on the railing just outside of
our enclosure. It was brown with a few orange feathers on the
wings, and it had an orange beak with a strange hook at the end of
it. I’d never seen a bird like that before.
    I sat down on the hard earth and pressed my
ear up against the cool glass to get a better listen. The bird was
serenading me with a pleasant melody. I think I smiled for the
first time since I’d been imprisoned in the People’s Past
Anthropological Center.
    Eventually, the bird flitted off to sing its
song for someone else. As I pulled my face away from the glass, I
noticed the cowboy watching me from his enclosure. He tipped his
head at me, and like before, touched the brim of his hat as he
approached the glass wall. I could feel my cheeks heating up, but I
managed to nod back.
    I held my breath, as I waited for what would
happen next. I was nervous, which was completely ridiculous since
there were two glass domes and at least 20 feet of open space
between us. I had always been shy around boys though. It was a
nervous reaction that was very different from my everyday, somewhat
sarcastic and determined attitude. Cute boys brought out the pink
ribbon and bubblegum in me. I couldn’t help it.
    The cowboy sat down across
from me with his long legs stretched out. He unscrewed the top off
of his canteen and poured some of the water onto the ground next to
him. My mind started spinning. What a
strange thing to do , I thought.
    He swirled his index
finger in circles, as he mixed the water and the soil until they
met with his approval. Then he brought his finger up to the glass
in front of him. He wrote, Hello .
    And then, I smiled for the second time since
I’d been imprisoned.
    I hurriedly followed his
lead and emptied some of the water from my animal skin pouch onto
the ground. I mixed them until I got a muddy paste and replied to
the handsome cowboy with, iH . Oops. I needed to write in
reverse for him to be able to read it correctly. I rubbed out
the i and moved
it to the other side of the H so that the message then read Hi .
    He wrote back
again. Name?
    Emma. U?
    I watched as his mouth
formed around the syllables of my name. I wished I could hear his
voice as he said my name. As I anxiously awaited him to mix more
water with dirt, I tried to guess what his name
was . Hmmm . . .
Was it Wyatt or maybe Daniel? He kind of looked like a
Sean.
    James Wilder
    Yes. That was better. He absolutely looked
like a James.
    He then wrote, Time?
    Did he mean when was I
born or when did I die? I decided that he was asking about when I
was taken. I wrote back, 2013.
U?
    He looked at me for a
moment with a confused expression. His forehead was scrunched up
and his eyebrows were pushed close together. Maybe it was because
my surroundings didn’t match what he imagined my era to look like,
which they definitely did not. He finally wrote back, 1876 . Then he scooted
over a little to his left to get some more empty space to write on.
He lifted his finger to the glass and smudged the mud on the
surface forming the question, How?
    Did they even have cars
back then? He wasn’t going to have a clue what I meant by a car
accident, but I wrote it anyway. Car
Accident
    His demise was similar.
Horses were the vehicles of the Wild West, right? He wrote, Driving cattle. Thrown from horse. Broken
back.
    “ Hey, what are you doing?
Are you okay?” Janice called from somewhere behind me.
    James’ eyes shifted over my right shoulder,
and I momentarily hated Janice for taking his attention away from
me once again.
    Before she got too close, I rubbed out my
messages to James and splashed some water on them to wash away any
traces. He did the same on his side, perhaps guessing from my
reaction to Janice’s approach that I didn’t want her knowing we
could communicate without screaming at each other through the
glass.
    “ Hey, Emma. What’s going
on?” She looked