When My Heart Joins the Thousand(56)

I stride forward and stop when my knees bump against her desk. Her shoulders tense.

“Listen here. You can’t just barge into my office and—”

“Where is Chance.”

She grimaces, then sighs. “I couldn’t keep that bird around, not after what happened. It was too aggressive, too unpredictable.”

“What happened wasn’t Chance’s fault,” I say, speaking as calmly as I can. “He just panicked. I know him. He didn’t mean to hurt Toby.”

She rubs the bridge of her nose. “That’s not the issue. The kid’s parents were foaming at the mouth. His mother’s a rich-as-piss lawyer, his dad’s a doctor, and their precious baby-poo had come home with five stitches in his arm. They wanted blood. I had to do something.”

As she speaks, the coldness in my stomach deepens and spreads. “Where is Chance.”

She looks away. “It’s too late, Alvie. He’s gone.”

I lean forward and plant my hands on the desk. “Where. Is. He.”

Her red-painted lips are pressed into a thin, almost invisible line, her fingers clenched tight on the paperback. A shirtless man in a cowboy hat stares out of the cover. “Do I need to call security?”

My breathing comes shallow and fast. As realization sinks in, light-headedness passes over me. “You killed him,” I whisper.

She freezes. A muscle twitches in her cheek. When she speaks again, her voice is dangerously soft. “I did the responsible thing. Chance was sick—”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“He was sick in the head,” she snaps. “And he wasn’t getting any better. Putting him down was a mercy.”

I want to scream. “You killed him because he was inconvenient to you.”

The blood drains from her face. Then she flushes, and her eyes narrow. “You think I wanted to do this? I had no choice. Those rich assholes could shut this place down. One crazy-ass bird ain’t worth my livelihood . . . not to mention my employees! What the hell would you do without this place, anyway? What the hell do you know?”

“I know that you had a responsibility to Chance.” I’m making things worse, but I can’t stop myself.

A vein pulses in her temple. “Well, this isn’t your zoo, and it’s not your call to make. It’s mine. This is going to happen, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Going to happen. That means it hasn’t happened yet. There’s still a chance to stop it. Breathing hard, I turn to walk out of the office, and Ms. Nell’s voice stops me: “I’m not through with you. Sit down.”

I stand, feet rooted to the spot. My heart knocks against my sternum.

“If you walk out now, don’t bother coming back. Ever. I gave you so many chances, Alvie. I forgave every blunder, every stupid remark you made to the customers, because I felt sorry for you. But I’m done giving you second chances. If you don’t sit down right now, you can kiss this job good-bye.”

My nails dig into my palms, hard enough to send twinges of pain shooting up my arms.

I walk out.

The sunlight glares at me, blinding white, as I stride through the zoo and into the parking lot. The truck is still there, idling. Two men stand beside it, smoking and talking.

I get into my car and watch, heart thudding, as the men get into the truck. Slowly it pulls out of the parking lot. I wait a moment or two, then follow.

The time slips by, dreamy and unreal, as I tail the truck past strip malls and fields, down long, lonely highways, always staying far enough back that my presence isn’t too obvious. I don’t have a plan. I don’t even know where they’re going; all I can do is keep following.

At last, the truck pulls into a lot in front of a small, gray windowless building. The sky above is smudged with dark clouds.

I park in front of a doughnut shop across the street and watch in the rearview mirror as the men park, get out, and open the back of the truck. Because of the angle, I can’t see what’s inside. The men circle around and disappear behind the building, probably going through a back entrance to get a pushcart for the truck’s cargo. I get out of my car and dash across the street toward the building. Behind it, I see a fenced-in area covered with stubbly yellow grass. In the center stands a small structure, a rectangle of brick. It might be a storage shed.

As I move closer, a peculiar smell invades my nostrils: a cold, dead, ashy smell. I take another look at the shed. There’s a small metal door, too small for a person to go through without stooping. The bricks are blackened around the edges with soot. Down near the base of the door, on one rounded brick, is a smear of something rust-colored. The hairs on the back of my neck rise. It’s not a shed at all. It’s an incinerator.

Angry buzzing fills my ears. Black flecks race across my vision.

Death itself is just part of the order of things; I know that. Every day, I fed dead mice to Chance. I’ve seen gazelles ripped apart on nature shows. But this—this is different. This isn’t about killing to eat, killing to live. This is a place where animals deemed worthless are erased from existence, burned away until there’s nothing left, not even bones. The rust-colored smear on the stone seems to swell, filling my vision, then dissolves into a swirl of red and gray. The colors melt into black. I shut my eyes tightly and back away, hands against my temples.