Kate DiCamillo: The Tiger Rising

“We can’t do nothing about it,” Rob said.

“We could let him go,” said Sistine. “We could set him free.” She put her hands on her hips. It was a gesture that Rob had already come to recognize and be wary of.

“We can’t,” he said. “There’s all them locks.”

“We can saw through them.”

“Naw,” said Rob. The mere thought of letting the tiger go made his legs itch like crazy.

“We have to set him free,” Sistine said, her voice loud and certain.

“Nuh-uh,” said Rob. “It ain’t our tiger to let go.”

“It’s our tiger to save,” Sistine said fiercely.

The tiger stopped pacing. He pricked his ears back and forth, looking somewhere past Sistine and Rob.

“Shhh,” said Rob.

The tiger cocked his head. All three of them listened.

“It’s a car,” said Rob. “A car’s coming. It’s Beauchamp. We got to go. Come on.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the woods. She ran with him. She let him hold on to her hand. It was an impossibly small and bony hand, as delicate as the skeleton of a baby bird.

They ran together, and Rob felt his heart move inside him — not from fear or exertion but from something else. It was as if his soul had grown and was pushing everything up higher in his body. It was an oddly familiar feeling, but he couldn’t remember what it was called.

“Is he behind us?” Sistine asked breathlessly.

Rob shrugged; it was hard to move his shoulders up and down and keep hold of Sistine’s hand at the same time.

Sistine said, “Stop shrugging your shoulders at me. I hate it. I hate the way you shrug all the time.”

And that made Rob remember Willie May saying that when he shrugged he looked like a skinny bird trying to fly. It struck him as funny now. He laughed out loud at the thought of it. And without asking him what he was laughing about, without dropping his hand, without stopping, Sistine laughed, too.

Then Rob remembered the name of the feeling that was pushing up inside him, filling him full to overflowing. It was happiness. That was what it was called.

By the time they made it back to the motel parking lot, it was dark outside, and they were both laughing so hard that they could barely walk.

“Rob?” said his father. He was standing at the door to their room. The blue-gray light from inside seeped out around him.

“Yes, sir,” said Rob. He dropped Sistine’s hand. He stood up straight.

“Where you been?”

“Out in the woods.”

“Did you finish up all them jobs I told you to do?”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob.

“Who you got with you?” his father said, squinting into the darkness.

Sistine drew herself up tall.

“This is Sistine,” said Rob.

“Uh-huh,” said his father, still squinting. “You live around here?” he asked.

“For now,” said Sistine.

“Your parents know you’re out here?”

“I was going to call my mother,” said Sistine.

“There’s a pay phone down in the laundry room,” said Rob’s father.

“In the laundry room?” Sistine repeated, her voice full of disbelief. She put her hands on her hips.

“We don’t got a phone in the room,” Rob said to her softly.

“Good grief,” said Sistine. “Well, can I have some change at least?”

Rob’s father reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He balanced the money in the palm of his hand, as if he was preparing to do a magic trick, and Rob stepped forward and took the coins from him and handed them to Sistine.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’ll find it. Thank you very much.”

“Rob,” his father said as Sistine marched away, swinging her arms, “what’s that girl doing in your clothes?”

“She had on a dress,” Rob said. “It was too pretty to wear out in the woods.”

“Come on in here,” his father commanded. “Let’s get that medicine on your legs.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rob. He walked toward the room slowly. His happiness had evaporated. His legs itched. And the motel room, he knew, would be as dark as a cave, lit only by the gray light of the TV.

When his mother was alive, the world had seemed full of light. The Christmas before she died, she had strung the outside of their house, in Jacksonville, with hundreds of white lights. Every night, the house lit up like a constellation, and they were all inside it together, the three of them. And they were happy.

Rob remembered, and as he remembered, he stepped into the motel room. He shook his head and scolded himself for opening his suitcase. Just thinking about all the things that were gone now seemed to make the darkness darker.

Rob sat out on the curb in front of the motel room and waited for Sistine to come back from using the phone. He had her green dress wrapped up in a grocery bag. He had tried to fold the dress up neatly, but folding a dress turned out to be an impossible task and he finally gave up. Now he held the bag out and away from him, so that the grease from the medicine on his legs would not stain it.

He was relieved when Sistine finally walked toward him out of the darkness. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi.” She sat down on the steps next to him. “How come you don’t have a phone?”

Rob shrugged. “Ain’t got nobody to call, I guess.”

“My mother’s coming to get me,” Sistine said.

Rob nodded. “Here’s your dress.” He handed her the bag.

Sistine took it and then tilted her head to look up at the sky. Rob looked up, too. The clouds had shifted, and there were clear patches where the stars shone through.

“I can see the Big Dipper,” Sistine said. “I like looking up at things. So do my mom and dad. That’s how they met. They were both looking up at the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and they weren’t watching where they were going and they bumped into each other. That’s why I’m named Sistine.”

“I like your name,” said Rob shyly.

“I’ve seen the Sistine ceiling, too,” she said. “They took me last year. Before Bridgette. When they were still in love.”

“Does it look like the pictures?” Rob asked.

“Better,” said Sistine. “It’s like — I don’t know — it’s like looking at fireworks, kind of.”

“Oh,” said Rob.

“Maybe we could go to Italy sometime. And I could show you.”

“That would be all right,” said Rob. He smiled into the darkness.

“That tiger can’t look up at the stars,” said Sistine, her voice getting hard. “He’s got that piece of wood over his head. He can’t look up at all. We’ve got to let him go.”

Rob was silent. He was hoping that if he didn’t answer her, she might go back to talking about the Sistine ceiling.

“How did your mother die?” she asked suddenly.

Rob sighed. He knew there was no point in trying not to answer. “Cancer,” he said.

“What was her name?”

“I ain’t supposed to talk about her,” said Rob, closing his eyes to the stars and concentrating instead on his suitcase, working to keep it closed.

“Why not?” asked Sistine.

“Because. My dad says it don’t do no good to talk about it. He says she’s gone and she ain’t coming back. That’s why we moved here from Jacksonville. Because everybody always wanted to talk about her. We moved down here to get on with things.”

There was the crunch of gravel. Rob opened his eyes in time to see the headlights of a car sweep over them.

“That’s my mother,” said Sistine. She stood up. “Quick,” she said. “Tell me your mother’s name.”

Rob shook his head.

“Say it,” she demanded.