"Okay," Gina said. "This is it. Ready to explore a new world?"
Helen didn't answer; when Gina turned her head to ask her what was wrong, she saw that the girl had curled up on the passenger seat of Mrs. Virdon's car - technically the car of the institute she was working for - and was staring out of the side window.
"Hey," Gina said gently, "the parking lot isn't really that interesting. Come on, I need to stretch my legs." They had driven all the way out to Jacksonville, because Helen had discovered that the zoo had a new exhibit that simulated landing on an alien planet and exploring the animals there, and had wanted to visit there at all costs.
And now that they were finally here, she had gone into strike. Although Gina had a pretty good idea about the reason.
She decided to ignore Helen's bad mood for now; once they were through the gate, there would be enough sights - and ice cream - to distract her from the fact that this was a goodbye gift from Gina, before she'd leave for California.
But Helen's mood didn't lift at the aviary, nor did she show any interest in the snakes and lizards in the reptile house, or in the leopards, or the lions, or the giraffes.
"You know," Gina said while they were resting for a moment on a platform in the huge central tree that was overlooking the trail of the Great Apes Loop, "you're spoiling this day for yourself. We've already seen a third of the zoo - well, I've seen it. All that you've looked at are your shoes."
"I'm not spoiling anything," Helen muttered, staring stubbornly at her feet. "You are."
"I drove you all the way out here," Gina protested. "I thought we'd be having a blast with the alien animals - and our own animals - and with-"
"Why do you have to go away?" Helen finally raised her head and glared up at her. "You could go to a college here, like Chris!"
"Chris doesn't go to any college," Gina said curtly. She didn't want to discuss this, least of all with a seven year old child.
"I'll come back often and visit you," she tried to console Helen. "Or you can come visit me - your mom can bring you to the airport here, and I'll be waiting for you at the airport there. How about that?"
Helen heaved a sigh, and slung herself over the railing like a wet rag. Gina resisted the urge to grab her waistband to keep her from falling down to the gorillas.
"But I'll be all alone in the meantime," Helen complained, head still upside-down. "Or I'll get a babysitter who is a jerk. Can't you stay, please, please, please, please..."
"I already registered," Gina said, unnerved, and plucked her from the railing. "Please, Lennie, can't we just enjoy this day and talk about something else? How's... how's Chris doing?"
She hadn't seen Chris since prom night. At first it had been her who had ignored his calls, until he didn't call anymore, and she had calmed down; but now it was he who ignored her calls, and Gina felt pissed off and morose in turn.
Helen shrugged. "I dunno. He's always with professor Hasslein, or in his room." Chris' room was strictly off-limits to Helen, as Gina had often enough witnessed when the girl had tried to enter despite her brother's orders.
"I went into his room last week," Helen confided in her. "When he wasn't home."
Gina raised her brows. "What did you want in there? You know you'll get in trouble if he finds out."
Helen nodded, a bit embarrassed. "I just wanted the planetarium. I wanted to look at where Dad had gone."
Gina bit back a groan. Please, God, just one day with these people when Mr. Virdon doesn't get mentioned!
"And I couldn't put it back, because Chris came home early," Helen continued, "and I thought he'd yell at me again, but he didn't say anything! I think he didn't even notice that it was gone." She chewed on her lip for a moment. "I still have it..." she said finally. "And Chris still hasn't said anything to me. You know what I think?"
She didn't wait for Gina's answer. "I think he doesn't know because he never looks at it anymore."
"That could be," Gina agreed. "He works a lot, he probably doesn't have much time for these things anymore."
Helen scrunched up her face. "But it was Daddy's last Christmas present for him! The last Christmas they ever had!"
"Maybe it makes him sad to look at it, then," Gina suggested. She threw a glance into the jungle around them, hoping for a gorilla to show up and present her with a distraction for Helen.
"Maybe..." Helen said slowly.
Still no gorilla in sight. Gina desperately cast for something to steer this conversation away from the Virdon family drama.
"I wish Daddy would've been here to give me something for Christmas, too," Helen said quietly. "I'd never stop looking at it."
"I'm sure he would've given that planetarium to both of you, Lennie," Gina said helplessly. "So it's his Christmas present to you, too. - Oh look," she pointed at the trees behind Helen. "There they are!"
For a while, they pretended to watch the group of gorillas that had come into sight, but Helen's attention was clearly elsewhere, and Gina anxiously waited for the girl's next comment.
"Do you think he'd have liked me... at least a little?" Helen finally asked, and Gina was torn between pity for her, and relief that the thought that had tormented her was finally out in the open.
"Of course he'd have liked you," she said. "And not a little, a lot! He loved you before you were even born!"
"But he didn't know me then," Helen argued.
"And if he'd known you, he'd loved you a bit more every day," Gina assured her.
"I dunno," Helen murmured, her gaze fixed at her toes again. "Chris knows me, and he hates me a bit more every day..."
"That's nonsense," Gina said firmly. "Chris doesn't hate you."
"He said he'd exchange me for Daddy any day," Helen mumbled.
"He... when did he say that?" Gina asked, aghast.
Helen shrugged. "I dunno. But he said it."
Gina was at a loss for words for a moment. "People say stupid things sometimes," she said at last. "When they are angry, or sad. I'm sure he didn't mean it. C'mon, this is our day at the zoo! Let's see what the guide can tell us about the gorillas down there!"
She dragged Helen towards the information booth and plopped a VR set over the girl's head before Helen could protest. She watched her for a moment, until she was certain that Helen didn't rip off the helmet again, and then allowed herself to slump against a post and rub her eyes. The exhaustion was mental, not physical, but she felt as if she had run uphill for hours.
It would be good to put some distance between herself and the Virdons. Gina fervently wished she could take Helen with her.
"Aren't you going to use this?"
Gina started and turned around to face the owner of that new voice behind her. For a moment, she had the eerie impression that Chris had somehow turned up at the zoo to surprise her - but the man smiling at her had a broader face, and was stockier than Chris. Still, she smiled back automatically, and raised the VR helmet she had been holding. "Yes, in a moment... or did you want to..."
The young man held up his hands. "No, no, go ahead - I already took the tour." He flashed a grin at her. "I just like listening to the nice woman in there."
Gina laughed with him and moved to put on the helmet.
"I don't understand why they aren't using VR instead of live animals," the man said, and Gina politely hesitated. "You know, instead of using it on top of them. They could close this prison and repatriate the inmates."
"This isn't a prison," Gina said with a slight laugh.
"No?" The man was still smiling at her, but his gaze held a challenge now. "The animals can't choose where to go, they can't choose their partners, they are condemned to sit on display for our entertainment. All the education that zoos claim to provide, can be provided much better by virtual reality." He gestured at her helmet. "Instead we keep destroying their natural habitats in the wild, and drive them to extinction. Don't you think that's a tiny bit hypocritical?"
"But they breed endangered species in the zoos," Gina protested weakly. She felt vaguely harassed by this guy - just her luck to fall victim to some activist.
On the other hand, she was going to study biology. Shouldn't she confront herself with these things?
"Yes, they breed animals in zoos," the man agreed and leaned casually against the railing. "Because baby giraffes and baby otters and baby kangaroos - " he pointed behind himself - "and baby gorillas are so cute. But to really make a difference for an endangered species, you'd need hundreds of animals, to keep the gene pool sufficiently big. Everything else will just produce inbreeding, and the result wouldn't be able to survive in the wild... provided there was a habitat left to resettle them in."
He had a point, Gina admitted to herself.
"Now, to avoid inbreeding, the zoos shuttle the animals around the globe," the guy continued. "Or they stock up with animals caught in the wild, which is a drain on those populations. Nope..." he gazed thoughtfully into the canopy above them, "I'm not sold on this rebreeding program thing."
"No, you're right," Gina heard herself say. "If you really think about it, it doesn't make much sense."
The guy glanced at her with a mischievous smile. "I was right about you - I saw you standing there, and said to myself, this woman looks like she's got a sharp mind." He pushed away from the railing and offered her his hand. "My name's Alexander, Alec for short."
"Gina," Gina said, and shook his hand. "And are you usually prowling these grounds in search for sharp women to convert to your movement?"
Alec slapped his hand against his chest with a shocked expression on his face. "Movement? What movement?"
"Oh, come on," Gina said, torn between annoyance and amusement. "I'm waiting for you to whip out the pamphlet ever since you started calling the zoo a prison."
Alec chuckled and shook his head. "No pamphlets. But I can give you the link to our website, if you're interested."
"'Our' website?" Gina said with raised brows. "So there is a movement?"
"Not really," Alec said ruefully. "More like people who seek to inspire each other." He offered her a business card, and Gina accepted it gingerly. It had no logo, no image, no name - just a web address...
"The coalition, hm? I'll... have a look," she said to Alec, who pursed his lips and nodded. Gina wondered how many people he hit up each day, and how many really looked up his website. For all she knew, he could be a lone nutjob... or the recruiter for a cult.
Maybe she'd access his website from a library computer.
"Well, it was nice meeting you, Alec," she said, and carefully tucked the card into her purse, "but we need to get going. Helen here wanted to see the alien animals exhibition, and..."
The words died in her throat when she turned around to gesture at Helen. The VR helmet was dangling from its cord, the flashing lights at its side indicating that the guided tour was still running.
Helen was nowhere to be seen.
"Where is she?" Gina whipped her head around, frantically scanning the crowds that were wandering the trail tubes to and from their platform. She couldn't spot Helen anywhere. How long had she been gone? She had only talked with Alec for a few minutes!
"I didn't see her sneak away, either," Alec was saying. "I'm sorry... I'll help you find her, okay? You go this way, I go back this trail..." He looked at her, stopped, and gripped her upper arms. "I'm sure she just got bored and went to see... what did you say?... the alien animals exhibition."
"Yes!" Gina said, relieved. "That's why she wanted to come here in the first place."
But Helen wasn't in the alien animal exhibition, nor was she in the giraffe overlook, or the play park, or the penguin exhibit. Gina was sure she had scoured the entire zoo a dozen times by then, rattled by visions of having to tell Mrs. Virdon that she had lost her baby daughter, vowing never to have children herself, and memories of every crime show she had ever watched, and all the heinous things that pedophiles and serial killers did to their victims. The longer she searched in vain, the tighter her chest became, until she felt that she was choking on unshed tears of terror. I've lost her! I lost Helen in the zoo! I was distracted for just one minute! One minute!
She even suspected Alec to distract her on purpose, so that his accomplices could snatch Helen behind her back. But he turned up again, zoo security in tow, and continued to turn up every stone with her. Gina told herself that suspecting him of embellishing his own cover by staying at her side was just her own paranoia speaking.
One of the security people finally found Helen in the parking lot, curled up on the backseat of their car, and sleeping - or pretending to sleep. Her exaggerated yawn and stretch when she saw Gina stumbling across the parking lot towards her made Gina suspect it was the latter, but she was too relieved to slap her.
Instead, she hugged Helen so tightly that the girl began to squirm in her embrace. Gina felt lightheaded; all those hours she had held back her tears - crying meant that Helen was truly gone, and if she shed a single tear, she'd never find her again - but now that she was allowed to cry, the tears wouldn't come.
She crouched down before Helen and shook her. "Why did you do this? Can you even imagine what I went through in the last two hours? What were you thinking?"
Helen shrugged, and stubbornly stared at the ground. "I dunno."
Gina swallowed hard. "Go back into the car. We're going home. I'm not in the mood for alien animals anymore."
The security people had left by the time Gina had fastened Helen's seat belt and closed the door, but Alec was still standing on the parking lot, looking slightly lost. Gina slowly walked over to him. Her feet hurt like hell.
"I sent them off," Alec said with a slight smile. "Are you okay?"
Gina nodded. Alec regarded her for a long moment; then he took a step towards her and drew her into a hug. Gina stumbled into his embrace, too surprised to protest.
"I'm sorry you had such a shitty day," Alec said. "You're gonna be alright. Just let the autopilot drive, okay?"
She nodded against his chest, and suddenly, the tears did come. Here I am, a sarcastic part of her commented, standing on a parking lot, crying into the shirt of a stranger. But the bigger part of her was just too exhausted, and too rattled, to care.
They hadn't even driven more than twenty miles when Gina told the computer to stop at a McDonalds. "Just to be clear," she said to Helen. "We're not here for milkshakes. I swear, we're not moving again until you told me why you ran away."
Helen just stared out of the window, exuding an aura of hurt and accusation.
"So it was my fault, somehow?" Gina said, when it became clear that Helen wouldn't answer. "What did I do? Was it because I talked to that guy? I was just being polite, you know?"
"It's not that..." Helen mumbled.
"Then what is it? I was dying in there! This was the worst day of my life!"
"I just wanted to go home." Helen turned around to look at her. "Can we go home now, please?"
"We didn't even get to see the alien animals," Gina said, stunned. "You wanted to see them, remember? We had to drive all the way out here, just for that exhibition."
"Yes, but... I don't care anymore," Helen said with a shrug.
Something had happened in that little skull, Gina was absolutely sure of that. During those hours of her panicked search, Helen had been sitting in this car, thinking...
... but she had no idea what Helen had been thinking about. And Gina knew the Virdon siblings well enough to know that Helen wouldn't tell her, even if she threatened to stay in the McDonald's parking lot all night. If Chris and Helen shared anything, it was their stubbornness. Mrs. Virdon swore that they had inherited that trait from their father.
With a sigh, Gina restarted the car. "And what do you care about instead?" she asked against her better judgment.
Helen stared into the darkening sky.
"Chris," she said.