Free Nell by Nancy Thayer Page A

the floor, writing serious instructions about rat care. How strange people’s lives were.
    Clary spent the night with them before going back to New Jersey, and it was a successful visit, with much laughter. Jeremy and Hannah kissed Clary good night when they went to bed and again when she left. They looked at Clary with earnest faces as she admonished them to be good to the rats: “Be nice to the rats, and they will be the best pets you’ve ever had,” she said seriously as she bent to kiss them goodbye. Her face was as earnest as theirs. She was such an elegant, regal-looking young woman; she looked like a queen handing over a charge. Nell knew there was nothing for her to do but to survive with the rats, to remind the children to feed them, love them, let them out for exercise, clean their cage. This was not what she would have chosen to bring these three people together, but it was what had presented itself, and she tried to be grateful for it. The important thing was that now Clary and Jeremy and Hannah were in touch, had a mutual interest.
    So she lived with the rats. She made rules. One week Jeremy got the cage and the responsibilities in his room and the next week Hannah got it. She kept an eye on the children’s friends and limited the amount of visitors, reminding the children that too many eager little hands might harm or frighten the rats. She vetoed the children’s plan to sell tickets to other children to see the rats. She doled out dry sticks of spaghetti to her children so that the rats would not get long teeth, and she told them yes, she thought it was adorable how the little rats sat up in the cage and reached out their skinny little hands to grab for the noodles. When both her children spent the night at friends’ houses, she fed the rats herself, although she could not bring herself to let them out for exercise. She tapped on the cage, went “Chee-chee-chee,” to the rats, just as Clary had said. She stuck her own hand down into the cage to drop the pellets and the apple slices and the spaghetti. “Here, little rats,” she said. “Here’s your D-Con.”
    The rats seemed to thrive. Then one evening Hannah stuck her hand in to pick up her rat and the rat lunged and bit her hand. Hannah ran to Nell, crying. Nell put medicine on the small bite and read Clary’s instructions aloud to Hannah: Rat bites were cleaner than human bites. These rats were lab rats with no disease, no germs. If by any chance at all one of the rats got scared and bit, they were not to worry, it would be a clean bite. Rat mouths were much cleaner than human mouths. Nell tried to be reassured by Clary’s instructions.
    But the next day, when Jeremy reached in to pick up his rat, Hannah’s rat bit him. Nell put medicine on his wound.
    “We’ve got to go ‘Chee-chee-chee’ more,” she said to her children.
    “But I did, Mom, I did!” Jeremy protested.
    “Well, do it more !” Nell said. “This rat is obviously scared.” That evening, however, both children were reluctant to stick their hands in the cage. Nell found an old pair of gardening gloves and put one on. She tapped on the cage, went “Chee-chee-chee,” then spoke to the rats in her sweetest, kindest, most soothing voice. When she stuck her hand into the cage to drop the dry noodles, the gray and white rat rose up on its hind legs and, as fast as a snake striking, lunged at Nell’s hand. It snatched at her hand with its long scrawny fingers and bit.
    “That does it,” Nell said, jerking her hand away, shaking with disgust and fear even though the rat had not been able to get through the gardening glove. “This rat is going.”
    “Mom, we can’t kill it,” Jeremy said. “That’s not fair. Maybe it’s just a cowardly rat. Maybe it’s just sensitive.”
    “I don’t care what its psychological problems are,” Nell said. “We are not keeping this rat any longer. I will not have this rat biting any other person.”
    Jeremy made a fuss, but Hannah,