I wish I were an Arctic tern. Terns, black-crowned birds with elegant white wings, have the longest regular migration of any bird species and fly over twelve thousand miles, from the Mendenhall Glacier to the southern oceans, every winter. If I could do that, I’d be somewhere over the Atlantic right now, hauling ass to escape Kai and my impending close-up.
Instead, I’m huddled over my computer, conducting a frantic Google search for “how to fake appendicitis.” I’m midway through a helpful checklist probably written by a high school kid trying to get out of algebra when my fellow junior keeper Lottie pops her head into my office.
“Please tell me you have a hair straightener,” she says, her tone desperate. “If you let me borrow it, I’ll take your deep-cleaning shifts for two weeks.”
It’s a tempting offer, but the only beauty products I keep at work are a hairbrush for overnight stays and a half-melted tube of ChapStick. The best heat tools in the world couldn’t stop my hair from poofing up at the first hint of humidity, so I’ve learned to wear a ponytail all summer.
“This is all I’ve got.” I offer the brush to Lottie, who steps into my office and starts combing out her shoulder-length locks.
“Thank you, Lucy. I just can’t believe that shooting got moved up to today.” She runs her fingers through her bangs. “How am I supposed to look half decent on TV when I didn’t even use dry shampoo this morning? If Phil had warned us there might be cameras around this early in the week, I’d have done a skincare routine yesterday instead of spending three hours on a photoshoot for Ernest.”
Ernest, Lottie’s pet hedgehog and her pride and joy, has twelve thousand Instagram followers and a paid partnership with Pete’s Pet Supplies Inc. Every week, she shares elaborate themed photoshoots of the little guy, and last week’s welcome-to-summer post, where Ernest lounged by a Barbie pool in a tiny sun hat, went viral on TikTok.
“What’s this week’s theme?” I ask, watching Lottie wage a tense battle with her bangs. At barely five feet tall, with soft waves of sandy blond hair and brown eyes as big as craters, she’s like one of Trudy’s Precious Moments figurines blown up to adult proportions.
“Ernest Goes to Summer Camp.” She winces as she brushes out a knot. “It sounded fun in theory, but do you have any idea how long it takes to make a lanyard for a hedgehog? And don’t get me started on the mini campfire. Ernest does not like open flame.”
Not sure how to respond, I go back to reading checklist item number five: Complain about pain near your belly button, then in the lower abdomen. But my concentration is broken again when Jack, the third member of our trio, follows Lottie into my office.
“No luck with the straightener?” he asks, granting himself the liberty of grabbing a Diet Coke from my mini fridge. With his burly frame, muscular neck, and horn-rimmed glasses, he looks like an Olympic powerlifter who moonlights as a college professor. “I’ve got baby powder in my locker. You can try that as a substitute for dry shampoo.”
“Maybe.” Frowning, Lottie grabs a fine-tip Sharpie from my desk and holds it up to the light. “Think this could work as eyeliner?”
Jack and I reach for the Sharpie, and he manages to wrench it out of her grasp first. “No, Lottie! Get a hold of yourself.”
“Sorry,” she says. “I just can’t believe I’m going to meet Kai Bridges looking like a mess.”
Jack reaches up to scratch the top of his bald head, and my office is so small that he bumps the back of my chair in the process. I let out an exasperated sigh, wishing I could focus on rehearsing a fake medical emergency in peace.
“Kai’s not that big of a deal,” I grumble, not sure if I’m trying to comfort Lottie or myself. “I know his show is popular, but it’s not like Jesus Christ himself is coming to Ape House. I think we all need to relax.”
I’m the opposite of relaxed—the pit sweat marks under my arms are probably visible from a mile away—and Lottie looks at me skeptically.
“You must not have seen the BuzzFeed article ‘25 Pics of Kai Bridges Guaranteed to Make You Weak in the Knees,’ ” she says. “It’s a must read.”
“Is it wrong that I’m more excited to meet Kai than I would be to meet Jesus?” Jack asks, popping open the soda tab. “I might go to hell for saying this, but Kai seems like more fun. And he’s got a killer accent.”
Based on my experience, Kai’s about as fun as a Pap smear, and it’s obvious that he exaggerates his accent for his show.
“And what would your fiancé say about that?” I ask, wincing as Lottie accidentally elbows me in the back of the head.
Jack laughs. “Patrick would say the same thing I’d tell him if he ever ran into Jason Momoa: Go for it, babe. You only live once.”
“I actually think we live several times,” Lottie says. She grabs a red marker from my desk and examines it, probably wondering if she can use it as lipstick. “You know, like reincarnation. I think I was a peasant washerwoman in my former life.”
I’d like to be reincarnated as a European hornet so I can sting Kai and anyone who fawns over his ridiculous BuzzFeed pics. I grab the marker from Lottie and tap my desk in frustration. “Would you guys mind giving me some privacy, please? I’m on the verge of losing my shit here.”
“Oh, Lucy, I’m sorry,” Lottie says, setting the brush down and patting my back in sympathy. “I didn’t even think about your stage fright.”
She was at the presentation I did for Ohio State students on gorilla enrichment, when I tried to describe the paintings a group of elementary school kids made for a pregnant gorilla’s baby shower. I mixed up shower and art and instead said shart, and Lottie felt so bad that she baked me two batches of rocky road cookies.
Jack gives me a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Phil’s email said today is just practice getting comfortable with the cameras,” he assures me. “Try not to stress.”
“You’ll be great,” Lottie promises. “You’re an expert on our zoo, and everybody knows it. Soon Kai will, too.”
“Thanks, guys.” I snap my laptop shut, not wanting them to catch a glimpse of my checklist of fakery. I get along with Jack and Lottie, but they’re my colleagues, not my friends. They’re nice enough to invite me over for game nights and out for Thirsty Thursday karaoke, but I rarely go. For one thing, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re pity invites—they’d feel bad leaving out poor, work-obsessed Lucy, who got dumped by her boyfriend and has nine Instagram followers, one of whom is her preteen half sister—and they don’t really want me to come anyway. After all, I’m one of those freaks who like to talk about work outside of work, and I once seriously killed the vibe at Jack’s backyard BBQ when I cried about a dying vervet monkey.
But the major reason I don’t confide in Jack and Lottie is that no matter how many bar trivia nights they invite me to or leftover cookies they bring me after lunch outings to Subway, they’re still my competitors. We’re all candidates for the senior keeper job, and I can’t stop myself from thinking that behind their comforting shoulder pats and soothing words, they’re grateful that when it comes to public speaking, I’m a total train wreck.
We all know why they’ve each appeared in a half-dozen news clips and I’ve appeared in zero, and it’s no secret why Phil assigns me to oversee the interns’ scut work while the rest of the team mingles with donors at ZooClue Mystery Dinner fundraisers. Jack and Lottie must know as well as I do that as soon as Kai points a camera at me, it’s game over for my promotion dreams.
“We’ll leave you to your work,” Jack says, glancing at my laptop in a way that tells me he saw my appendicitis plan. “But if you feel like stress-eating gummy bears, you know where to find us.”
He shuffles out of my office, and Lottie waves and trails after him. I wish I were like her, more worried about gaining followers for my hedgehog than humiliating myself on camera. I wish I had the easy friendliness that lets Jack be buddies with everyone from CEO Shira Woodrow to Poppet the lemur.
I wish I weren’t quite so very me.