Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Skylar
Having a tortoise was honestly boring.
I didn’t know why I’d thought it would suddenly make my life thrilling to have a tortoise, but I kind of had. It had taken a few weeks to make it happen, working with the animal rescue and not the sexy vet, tragically. In my imagination, I saw the movie montages of misadventures with puppies and expected that. But after the fun of research, making an indoor habitat, and naming her Scooter, mostly she just hung around. Her prehistoric face didn’t give me any clues about her happiness level though, so mostly I talked to her. Probably better than talking aloud to myself, I guessed.
My friends back home thought it was fucking hilarious that I’d moved to a landlocked, snowy landscape—even though it was summer now—from Florida and gotten a tortoise , which was the same as a turtle as far as they were concerned.
If I hadn’t started classes last week, I probably would have been pettier about the whole thing. The classes were amazing, but the other students in my cohort hadn’t fallen at my feet or added me to brilliantly gossipy group texts like I had with my friends back home.
“Things sure have changed since I was in undergrad,” I whined to Scooter one night during a study break. “That was the last time I had to make friends from scratch.”
Scooter made a loop at one end of her habitat and drifted back the other way.
“Exactly, I can’t stop going in circles about it.”
I knew I would stay in this self-pitying circle of hell if I didn’t pull my shit together. So I put Scooter in her harness and attached the leash, then took her to my favorite park so far. It had a playground and a gazebo for picnics and birthday parties, but I breezed past that with Scooter in my arms because I wasn’t there for the slides or the water fountain.
On the other side of the park, it was all open space, with a stretch on the north end that was shaped like a very uncut, very thick dick. A lazy, shallow river spurted out of the tip, and I spent a good amount of my free time there. I waded around on the pokey rocks at the bottom of the river, smelling like sunscreen and trying not to take a thousand pics.
I got to the riverbank, set Scooter down, took off my shoes, and rolled my pants up a few inches. Everyone else was in full-on summer wear, but the heat here was dry and felt a lot cooler than this time of year in Florida, so I wasn’t feeling hot at all.
Then I stood up, flung my arms out wide, and declared, “Let’s mosey, Scooter!”
Mosey was the perfect word for Scooter’s style. Another one was ponderous , as if she had to think through every step. But that was okay, because this was what I was doing right now.
“Live in the moment,” I encouraged myself. “Take your time. Follow Scooter’s lead.”
When I learned tortoises didn’t swim, I was shocked. But they liked to walk in shallow water when it was hot out like the rest of us, so Scooter liked the very edge of the river. Just dipped her prehistoric toes in, so to speak. Whatever, she looked happy as shit, like those videos of Chihuahuas in life jackets living their best lives, trying to eat water.
We took a break from the water so I could eat the snacks I’d brought and gulp a ton of water. I hadn’t expected how easily I got dehydrated here. I’d read about it before I moved, and everyone had made jokes about it, but I thought they were exaggerating. Like, Ooh, in this elevation we actually have to drink eight cups of water a day . Great brag, Colorado. I made fun of the whole state to myself when I first got here.
But it was a true story.
And now I kind of thought it was awesome. Water was boring, but it wasn’t the worst.
When Scooter started moseying along the short grass between the river and the concrete path, I went along, telling her about all my friends back home. Arguably it was kind of pathetic, talking to a tortoise and barely moving, especially while I was regaling said tortoise with our hijinks on trips to Smathers Beach on Key West. But the excursion was cheering me up, just like I’d hoped.
“Scooter, do you want me to sing ‘Turtle Songs of North America’ by the very informative, very funny band They Might Be Giants?” I enticed her. “I thought so!”