Chapter 25 Clarice
CLARICE
Clarice had already resigned herself to being head over heels with Bruno, but she hadn’t expected to be so taken with Gil.
The little boy was cute and frequently hysterically funny, even (maybe especially!) when he didn’t mean to be.
He had better manners than Clarice expected, and he apologized adorably when he ran into someone (which happened several times).
He threw himself into the golf game with enthusiasm, and clearly improved as they played. Improvement from rock bottom was still pretty bad; Gil obviously wasn’t going to be some kind of mini golf prodigy.
Clarice liked the way Bruno kept the game from being high-pressure, and was glad when they decided to stop keeping score and just celebrate every little victory.
Clarice couldn’t say that they had any kind of meaningful conversation, given the circumstances, but she jumped at the opportunity to get Gil alone. It was getting late and by the sounds in the darkness, Clarice suspected they were the last players in the building.
“Good job, Gil!” she crowed, when he was able to sink the shot that she’d carefully set up for him. “You won this hole!”
Gil did an elaborate victory dance that involved chicken wings and whooping. There was a picnic table by this strip and Clarice sat down on it and patted the seat beside her. “You played a good game,” she said.
Gil plopped himself next to her, his legs swinging wildly. “I’m GOOD at SPORTS!” He considered. “Well, SOME sports. Sports I’m GOOD AT.”
Clarice knew she didn’t have a lot of time before Bruno came back. “How do you like it at Tiny Paws?” she asked.
“It’s okay,” Gil said, still swinging his legs. “I like the snacks. And the art. And the play time in the back yard. And my friends!”
“Can your friends teleport, too?”
“Only Jackson.”
Clarice had expected more resistance than that. “Jackson can teleport?”
“He’s not very good at it,” Gil said scornfully.
“But you are, I guess?”
“I can’t TELEPORT,” Gil scoffed.
Clarice picked her words carefully. “What CAN you do, then?”
Gil went suddenly still and Clarice could all but feel the prickles of his sudden reservation. She had pushed too hard.
Then he seemed to relax and his legs resumed swinging, like he’d just received some kind of outside okay. “I can be a BALL.”
“A ball.” Clarice abruptly remembered the leathery ball she’d found outside of Tiny Paws. She hadn’t found it in her car again so she assumed she’d just missed it, feeling around in the box. “What kind of ball? A golf ball?”
Gil laughed outrageously. “NO!” he said gleefully. “An ARMADILLO ball!”
Clarice blinked at him. What was an armadillo ball? Was she misunderstanding his words? He did have a bit of a lisp, and when he spoke quickly, he was hard to follow. “What’s an armadillo ball?”
“It’s a ball,” Gil said, as if she were very stupid, “that an armadillo makes. I’m a THREE-BANDED armadillo, so I can make a PERFECT ball. AND I can take my CLOTHES. And I don’t have LESPERY.”
What did clothes have to do with a ball? What was lespery? Clarice knew she was running out of time for her interrogation, and she felt like she’d squandered it. “Can you show me?” she said desperately.
Gil looked around. “You have to PROMISE not to tell,” he said in a stage whisper.
“Of course,” Clarice agreed. “I promise.”
Then Gil bounced off the bench and pitched forward onto the green, melting down into a little leathery ball with feet and tufts of fur.
He tip-toed around delicately on long claws, twitching teardrop ears, and then sort of hopped in place and rolled into a perfect ball.
His armored nose and ears completed the sphere almost seamlessly; even his tail tucked into place.
Clarice’s heart hammered in her chest. The adorable little boy had just turned into a…was an armadillo a lizard? It was easier to wonder about its genus than it was to accept that the rocking globe was Gil.
Just as fast as he’d sucked into the orb, he popped out, and he stuck a very, very long tongue out of his narrow face and ran around in gleeful circles, looking like a roly poly dancer wearing high heels.
“GIL!”
Clarice looked up to find Bruno at the edge of the pool of light, clutching an armful of hot dogs, drinks, and single-serve bags of potato chips with a look of horror on his oddly-lit face.