“Hey!” I grab the iguana under the arms. Spike has him by the tail. Each of us pulls, like it’s a tug-of-war and the iguana is the rope.
“Ouch!” Spike lets go. He holds his hand up.
“See what this jerk-girl did?”
His hand has a long cut through it. Sliced as clean as a razor.
I put the iguana down on the ground, gently but quickly. I don’t want my hand to get sliced through. The iguana’s tail now has a ninety-degree turn in it. “You broke his tail.”
“You broke it. Shoulda left him alone.”
“I’m taking him to the vet.” I switch off the grill. The flames startle, flicker, and die.
“No point.” Spike reaches into the cabinet under the grill. “I’m better than a vet.”
Just then the iguana wakes up. Lifts his head and looks at me, his eyes unblinking.
His eyes are like deep, dark, cave entrances. They invite me in. They promise to reveal mysteries that no one else will ever know.
I fall into those eyes so far, so deep, that I don’t even see Spike lift the heavy iron spatula until it’s too late.
He brings it crashing down and slices off the iguana’s tail right at the break.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 cheer.
I scream.
I scoop up the iguana and run.
Heart pounding, I make it back to my room before Mom sees the iguana. He doesn’t move much. Just blinks every now and then.
I set up a cardboard box with a towel, put the iguana in there, throw some shredded lettuce in with him.
The iguana seems completely uninterested in the lettuce. I find a couple dead cockroaches on the porch—Mom says they’re palmetto bugs, but they look just like the cockroaches in New York—and throw those in for good measure.
Then it occurs to me the cockroaches were probably poisoned, so I take them out again.
The iguana doesn’t move.
I look for blood on my shirt, and in the box, but there’s hardly any. Maybe iguana tails are like lizard tails. Will it grow back?
I could take the iguana to Mom and ask her to take us to the veterinarian, like she used to do when our cat was sick. Back when we had a cat. Back when we lived at home.
But now I’m looking at the iguana, and I get this really strong feeling that I shouldn’t tell Mom. I remember the day Mom took our cat to the ASPCA, even though I screamed and cried.
No way I’m telling her about the iguana.
The iguana’s still not moving.
“Are you cold?” I pick him up and lay him on my chest. I make sure not to touch what’s left of his tail.
“I’m so sorry he did that to you.” I stroke him lightly, hoping my body warmth will help him. “We’re going to make him pay. I don’t know how, but we will.”
The iguana just blinks.
I stare deep into his eyes, the dark pupils surrounded by a band of gold.
The iguana stares back.
Mom calls me to dinner.
Startled, the iguana jumps off my chest and scampers under the bed. Moves as quick as lightning.
“That’s what I’ll call you. Green Lightning. What do you think?”
The iguana stays under the bed, and Mom yells again. I don’t want her to come into my room, so I go out.
“Takeout again?” I sit down at the table and contemplate the fried chicken from the grocery store, the canned green beans.
“I cooked the potatoes.”
“I don’t like ’em baked. I like mashed. You know that.”
Mom sighs but doesn’t scold me. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in days. Since we moved here.
“Look,” she says, pulling the skin off the fried chicken, “I can’t cook until—”
“—until you get everything in the kitchen set up. I know, I know.”
I reach for her chicken skin. “This is the best part. Why do you buy fried chicken if you don’t like it?”
“Because you do.”
I’m sorry I said anything. She turns everything into a guilt trip.
I eat the skin. I wonder what she has in the fridge that the iguana would eat, since the lettuce didn’t work.
“We could unpack the kitchen together.” Mom peels off another piece of the skin, but this time she eats it before I can grab it. “Then I could start cooking again.”
“I like fried chicken.”
Those wavy worry lines appear on my mom’s forehead. Her eyes droop. She presses her lips together, as if she’s trying not to cry.
Now I feel bad.
Then I remember I’m still angry at her. I’m never going to forgive her for getting divorced and moving us here.
We used to be different. I miss that. I really do.
But there’s no way I’m going to admit it.
“Besides, I have to find the third non-native species.”
Mom keeps her eyes on her plate. She moves her food around without eating it. “How many do you have?”
“I have Egyptian geese and iguanas. I got some good pictures. But I need a third one.”
“Crocodiles.”
“Get out of here!” I point to the magnet on the fridge door with a crocodile and its gaping, open mouth showing off its sharp, scary teeth. “Crocodiles are everywhere in Florida! How can they be non-native?”
“Look it up.”
I heave a huge sigh. I really don’t want to work on this assignment anymore. “Well, even if they are, how am I going to get a picture? The dork teacher says we have to take the picture ourselves; it can’t be from the internet.”
“Take a picture of the magnet.”
“That’s cheating. Not allowed.”
Mom takes another bite of chicken, skin and all, chews, and thinks. “Remember when we went to the reptile farm? On our drive down here?”
Of course I remember. It was just, like, ten days ago. It was excruciating. Mom trying to turn the complete disaster that our life is now into fun.
“I have that picture of you holding a baby crocodile. The crocodile in the picture is a man-eating Nile crocodile.”
“That cuddly baby crocodile was a person-eating crocodile?”
I can’t believe Mom said “man-eating.” She’s the one who always says it should be “person.” Because otherwise it’s like only men are people.
“Oh yeah. That’s the only reason you let me take a picture of you with it. You thought it was cuddly.”
She stares at the pile of chicken bones on her plate. “I can take the time to dig it up . . . if you help me unpack the kitchen.”
I know this is blackmail, but if I have to research stupid non-native animals, it might as well be a crocodile that eats people. “Okay.”
My mom looks up, her mouth open, her hands in the air. “Great.” She shoves her plate away. “I’m tired of eating on paper plates.”
I hate everything about school. I especially hate my locker, which is a bottom locker. I have to sit on the floor to get my stuff. The people with lockers around me act like I’m not there. I get elbowed and kneed and even hit by a backpack as my locker neighbor slams her locker shut and leaves.
Today I don’t mind. At least not much. I’m looking forward to Mr. Matlo’s class. I have a nice PowerPoint all ready, with some nice, gory details.
Which is good, because Mr. Matlo calls on me first. He likes to pick on me, just like everybody else does.
I hook my laptop up to the projector. I hear Spike snicker. He and his friends at the back of the class are whispering to the people around them. More snickering.
Just you wait, Spike. Just you wait.
I show the slide of the Egyptian Geese. I don’t say too much about them because they’re boring.
I show the slide of the iguana. A picture I took of Green Lightning, on the grate, before Spike cut off his tail.
The picture makes me choke up. Look at the beautiful tail he had, before that bully Spike ruined it. I’m so mad I can’t speak.
Mr. Matlo nudges me. “Oka
y. An iguana. What do you have to tell us about iguanas?”
I look at Spike again. Mr. Matlo almost never calls on him. Like he’s afraid of Spike or something. Maybe he’s afraid of Spike’s rich dad.
I used to be that kid. The girl with the rich dad who all the teachers were nice to no matter what.
I say my stuff about iguanas, and the irresponsible pet owners who let them run free and now they’re all over, and go to my last slide.
Me holding the person-eating Nile crocodile. I enlarged the picture so only the crocodile would show on the slide. They didn’t make us use computers so much at my old school, so I don’t know how to crop images, and I wasn’t about to ask my mom. At home it looked okay.
But now something goes wrong because when I click it, the full picture comes up, showing off me and that stupid grin on my face, and my braces in all their hideous glory.
“Which one is the invasive critter, the croc or her?” That’s Spike. Of course.
The class titters. Thing 1 and Thing 2 laugh.
But I’m ready for him. For this.
“It’s true I’m new here.” I click for the next slide. “But at least I’m not an iguana torturer like you.” I showed my picture of Green Lightning again. “This is what he looked like before. Just yesterday afternoon, in fact.”
I switched the slide. “This is what he looks like now.”
I showed a close-up picture of Green Lightning’s bloody stump of a tail.
Even in the half-light of the flickering screen, I can see Spike’s face is all red. I wonder if anyone has ever challenged him before.
He scoffs. “What’d you do to him?”
“And this is how he got that way.” I show the next slide, of Spike slamming down the heavy metal spatula on Green Lightning’s tail.
A lot of gasps and then quiet in the room.
“That’s Photoshopped,” says Spike.
“I don’t know. Your buddy took it.” I point to Thing 2. “Check with him. I got it off his Instagram.”
I looked at Mr. Matlo. Here’s his chance to stand up to Spike the bully, both the son and the Spike-dad. Will he take it? “Iguanas are a protected species, aren’t they, Mr. Matlo?”
Mr. Matlo shakes his head. “No, they aren’t.”
Spike exhales with a sharp little laugh. He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms behind his head, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “You see. It doesn’t matter.”
Mr. Matlo continues, “But . . . torturing them like that . . . That’s animal cruelty. It’s a crime.”
Ah, Mr. Matlo. You’re my hero after all.
“Angus, I’ll have to ask you to stay after school.”
Angus. Like the beef? That’s Spike’s real name?
No wonder he’d rather be called Spike.
“And you—” Mr. Matlo turns to Thing 2, who’s pulled his phone out. Probably trying to delete the picture. “Give me that phone. Now.”
It’s the weekend, but the cold spell hasn’t broken. It’s thirty-five, thirty-six degrees at the most in the middle of the day.
We’ve unpacked most of the kitchen, so Mom and I have real plates and real forks and real knives now. But the table is covered with boxes and wrapping and whatnot, so we sit on the sofa and eat while we watch the local news.
Mom probably takes this as another sign that she and I are getting along better. But I’m there because of the iguanas. The newscaster says there are lots of them. Going into hibernation because of the cold. Falling out of trees. Landing on cars. Hitting people in the head. Kamikaze iguanas.
After dinner I do the dishes without Mom asking. That way I can grab some lettuce from the fridge and take it to my room.
I open the closet and pull up the lid to Green Lightning’s box.
The box is empty.
I look under the bed. No glittering yellow eyes.
I feel like someone stuck a knife in my heart. He’s gone somewhere to die, I’m sure of it. I should have shown him to Mom; we should have taken him to the vet; he’ll die all alone, and I’ll never have another friend.
I tear my room apart. Blankets, clothes, school bag, candy wrappers.
No sign of Green Lightning anywhere.
My mother calls me. “Come help me unpack the books.”
I pretend I haven’t heard her. I duck into the bathroom, hoping Green Lightning is there.
No Green Lightning.
Mom yells at me again.
I flush the toilet, to justify not hearing her. I look in the hall closet. I even duck into my mom’s room, which is even more of a mess than mine.
I slide into the kitchen, bent low so Mom doesn’t see me from the living room.
No Green Lightning.
My mom’s phone rings. She answers it. It’s Dad.
Dad is the last person I want to talk to, so I edge my way over to the sliding door, crack the door open just a bit, and go outside, pulling the door shut after me.
Green Lightning is not on the porch.
Maybe I should look more in her room. What if he’s under her bed? Or in her closet?
But I don’t want to go back in now and risk her putting me on the phone with Dad.
Even our porch is filled with bags, boxes, plastic wrap, and things from home, like a huge easy chair that won’t fit in this apartment.
Just looking at it makes me more homesick than I already am.
I run out to the lawn. There’s a strip of grass that Mom calls “our lawn,” as if anything could compare to the huge front and back lawns we had in New York. Beyond that, a golf course, our view of it broken up a little by some big trees.
Maybe Green Lightning doesn’t want to live in a box. Maybe he wants to live out here in a tree.
But it’s still too cold for him.
“Green Lightning! Green Lightning!” I call for him, but not too loud, so Mom doesn’t find me. “Come back in, or you’ll die!”
Mom has parked my old red Radio Flyer wagon next to an empty flower bed. Instead of looking for a job like she’s supposed to, she must’ve gone to a nursery because my wagon is packed full with potted flowers, plants, and herbs.
And in the middle of it all, Green Lightning.
Eating all of Mom’s plants.
Rather than move him, I take out the pots, until finally Green Lightning is alone in the middle of the wagon.
I crouch down and look deep into his beautiful eyes.
“What should I do, Green Lightning? Where do you want to go?”
Green Lightning tells me.
I pull the wagon all over the condo association. It takes a few hours. I look in hedges and up in trees. I climb a few trees.
It’s still only thirty-seven degrees out, so the iguanas-in-hibernation are everywhere. I pick up the ones I find and set them in the wagon next to Green Lightning.
Sometimes I find an iguana that’s dead. I know because ants are already crawling into its eyes.
By the time I reach the pool, the wagon is full of hibernating iguanas. Green Lightning sits atop them, his head held high, like a king.
I pull the wagon into a sunny spot and cover them with a space blanket I found on the porch. I’m hoping that will warm them up.
“Whatcha got in your little red wagon, alien?”
It’s Spike and his squad. All clustered around the barbecue grill. Do they ever go anywhere else?
“We’ve got something for you, Ms. Alien.” Spike snaps his fingers. Thing 1 and Thing 2 step aside, and I see now what they’re cooking.
Green Lightning’s tail.
I run at Spike, my fists up, but Thing 1 and Thing 2 grab me before I get anywhere near him.
That was stupid of me.
I kick them, hit them with my elbows. But they’re bigger. Stronger.
Spike leans in to my face.
“So, what’s in the wagon, little alien? Your doll collection? Do you still play with dolls, little alien?”
I spit into his face.
He straig
htens up, wipes the spit away, and with it that evil smile.
I kinda wish that smile was back because the look that replaces it is cold. Calculating. Cruel.
Not good for me.
“We have to clog up that spitting mouth, don’t we, boys?” Spike turns, grabs the iguana tail off the grill, tossing it from hand to hand like a hot potato. “Ow, ow. Hot. Hot. Hold her steady, boys.”
The boys hold me steady.
Spike grabs my hair with one hand and pulls my head back, sharp.
I open my mouth and scream.
He stuffs the burning hot iguana tail down my throat.
He stands back as I twist and turn and try to get away from the hands that hold me trapped.
I scream, but this hot thing burns my lips, my mouth, my tongue, my throat; chokes me, kills my voice.
Tears squeeze out of my eyes. I work my jaw, trying to force it open, to spit out the tail. But Spike has one hand on top of my head, the other under my chin, locking my jaw closed.
I gag and gag and gag.
It tastes like coal. Like grit. Like bacon.
Like death.
I’m breathing through my nose, fast short breaths, but it’s no good.
I’m going to choke to death. I’m going to die.
Suddenly, the pressure eases up. Spike has let go.
I hear a splash, but I can’t see anything because Thing 1 and Thing 2 have also let go, and now I’m doubled over, pulling Green Lightning’s burnt tail out of my mouth, dropping it, heaving up my lunch and my breakfast and my dinner and probably everything I’ve ever eaten since I moved to this horrible place.
A scream.
I manage to look up, still clutching my stomach, still another heave coming up.
Spike is in the pool.
But he’s not alone.
There are, like, twenty iguanas in the pool with him. Swirling around him like quicksand.
Biting him.
Pulling him down.
His cries fade, his head goes underwater.
It’s a beautiful sight. Spike, or rather, Angus the bully, getting pulled down by iguanas that just a few minutes ago were nearly dead of cold.
Spike’s head emerges from the water. “Help me! Help m—”
His cries are drowned out as he’s pulled down again.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 stand at the edge, yelling out words of encouragement, their arms flailing.