Zoofari

Zoofari

Amanda Bybee

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Amanda Bybee

Cover Art: Reynaldo Abesamis Jr.

All-rights-reserved

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, businesses, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Petting Zoo

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15: Enrichment

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28: SF Zoofari

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

About Amanda Bybee

Connect with Amanda Bybee

Coming soon to all retailers

Chapter 1: The Petting Zoo

Rachel had to wait with her younger brother at the petting zoo for their mom to come from work and get him at break time. She’d stand sulking, rolling her dark eyes, made-up like a raccoon, and twirling her straight, long, chocolate brown hair, until she almost got a curl, but the wet fog, being so close to the beach, dampened everything. Rachel hated the responsibility of picking up her brother, Tony, from second grade, six whole blocks from Jackson High. And having to take him to the zoo each day, after her last class, was even worse.

But the fact was, her mom couldn’t do it and there was no dad in the picture. He had split after he had learned about his son’s disability. Her dad went back to Italy where he and her mom had met. Tony had a profound hearing loss. Rachel’s mom needed someone trustworthy who could communicate clearly with him. She worked at Luigi’s, an Italian restaurant, owned by Luigi himself, across Sloat Avenue from the zoo. She couldn’t get away from work. Even though their mom worked all the time, they always seemed to be low on money. Rachel’s big dream was to somehow earn and save enough to go to Italy on her own to find her dad.

It was a chore for Rachel having to wait at a petting zoo, a stinky one, like taking out garbage. Her brother had been poopy enough when he was little; her mom even made her change his diapers, when he was smaller, and now she had to endure these smelly animals. The half hour would lag as Tony ran amuck in the pen with the goats, ponies, sheep, llamas and whatever else turned up. On days when she was lucky enough that Tony would consent, they could drop into to the zoo café that was located halfway between the barnyard and Africa. It was a clean hut with different animal patterns, of spots, stripes on every wall. The ceiling was painted black with tiny stars, the floor was bamboo. Rachel would get herself a latte on her mom’s tab.

Her saving grace was that she might run into Spence, the hot zoo keeper. He was six feet tall with messy black hair and had eyes that seemed to change like a mood ring from stony hazel to hurricane blue. There was something about the fact that he could literally tame large beasts. If only he could tame little ones too like Tony. This day had been exceptionally nippy, Rachel glad she could tear Tony away from the farm animals, when she saw Spence in line at the Café Zoofari for his pick-me-up.

Hi Spence, said Rachel down the line a few people from him.

He didn’t even notice her as he was laughing with Jaime. She noticed Jaime holding onto Spence’s arm. What did he see in Jaime? thought Rachel. Then Rachel laughed to herself. Jaime couldn’t even read the menu. Rachel thought she was rid of her when Jaime went to a different school last year. The girls had been in junior high together, back when Jaime lost her mom and was out of school for the longest month, and now they were in the same high school. Rachel felt sorry for her losing her mom so young, but Spence had flirted with Rachel before in the café.

She certainly didn’t appreciate the extra special treatment Jaime got because she was legally blind. Jaime wasn’t even blind; Rachel knew Jaime could see what was going on a lot of the time. She just couldn’t read print and that’s what made her legal. She knew all this because of her legally deaf brother, and all that was given to him. Rachel wished never to become disabled, but being able to do everything seemed – in her universe - to mean that she wasn’t able to get anything.

"Well, Rachel said to herself aloud to Tony, I can see that Spence is pre-occupied today and I need a pick –me-up." She ordered herself a latte, and rushed back holding in one hand her brother’s squirming wrist, her drink in the other.

Finally, their mom came rushing Tony back to her work and off Rachel’s hands. Rachel would at least have a couple of hours to herself. Amped with caffeine, she decided to walk home to their Sunset District house. Tomorrow she wouldn’t have to deal with seeing Spence or Jaime, or any animals after school because she had her community service downtown in an office.

****

The next day found Rachel and Jaime in Biology class together. Usually Jaime had an earlier lab section with the same teacher, but her lab partner, who did the note-taking and sometimes signed the role sheet for Jaime, was absent. So today, she attended the ten o’clock class paired with Rachel. They were assigned to test their PH levels. Jaime first took a swab from her cheek with a Q-tip. This tested your chemical balance of hydrogen. The lower numbers meant the more acidic you were. The higher, the more alkaline you were with a range from 1-7.

Rachel, wearing her signature low cut bright top, fanned her chest, and asked loudly playing to the room Is this a pheromone test? She had recently learned that pheromones were a person’s individually unique scent. She’d also learned they were a person’s sex scent.

Rachel swabbed her cheek, dabbed the litmus paper with her saliva, and casually quizzed Jaime about Spence while the sample showed, upon comparison, that Rachel’s PH was more acidic.

Does Spence have a girlfriend? she asked.

Spence? You know Spence? ....from the zoo?

Yeah, the hot, white African guy, said Rachel.

Uh, I don’t know if he has one or not.

Couldn’t you just find out, for me? Rachel asked. I’ll be your lab partner. I can check both our names off all our tests and you won’t even have to do any lab, she pleaded. You could meet me and Stephanie in the cafeteria. We’ll show you the ropes! Jaime had never had an invite to hang out with Stephanie and Rachel, the two most popular girls at Jackson.

It was feeling a little stuffy for Jaime and she was wishing the class would get a move on marking this test off with the floating clipboard, so she could go. She knew they shouldn’t take that kind of advantage of their biology teacher’s experimental grading. And Science was one of her favorite subjects. But Jaime also knew that Rachel had tons of friends. Jaime was new to this high school and needed people to know she wasn’t some sort of a freak. She’d overheard a pack of lost friends calling her last year’s school the ‘Stevie Wonder School.’

Well…I guess I could, she relented.

Chapter 2

Even though Spence Farnsworth was only 21, he knew a thing or two about Zoology. He had finished his college Bachelor in Science Degree and was nearly done with his Master’s Degree. He had organized his work program responsibilities efficiently around his own academic needs. Spence was qualified as Jaime Needham’s supervisor during her proposed three year internship as a Giraffe Keeper at the San Francisco Zoo. She was provided additional assistance from Miss Ladow, her special district Teacher for the Visually Impaired.

Just remember, the basic brown-haired, amber-eyed, Miss Ladow, had told him. Jaime is very capable and independent. And she has more experience with animals than any sophomore I had ever known of, until I learned about your teenage years in Africa!

Jaime’s teacher and job coach was reminding Spence that Jaime’s job coach down in southern California had courageously allowed her to go out into the open lands of San Diego’s zoo to study the free-roaming animals in their one hundred acre park. The park was designed to duplicate natural environments of each select species in specific areas. There Jaime had been placed with the giraffes, at her request.

Miss Ladow explained to Spence that Jaime’s mother had been a veterinary pharmacist and that Jaime had been up close and personal with wildlife, as Spence had. He knew that simply feeding giraffes would not be enough for Jaime to do. She just needed to learn her role in their care giving. She would need to prove to her employers that she could be a responsible and dependable keeper. Once she proved she could keep them, they might keep her. This would most likely happen slowly over time, as they watched her progress.

Spence was impressed with Jaime’s background and with her work. He had had the chance to meet Jaime’s mother once at a convention. He thought Jaime looked just like her mother; about the same height, and the same strawberry-blonde hair, he remembered. She had been a well-known figure in naturopathic veterinary medicine, who had died in a mining excavation only a couple of years ago. It was a sad story. Tracy Needham, Jaime’s mother, had gone to South Africa to procure a 30-carat diamond, which ten years of research had proven that the magnetic properties could prevent extinction of certain species’ native to Africa. Something happened to the elevator she was in and she never made it out of the mine.

Although impressed with Jaime’s history, he still wasn’t used to walking alongside a person who couldn’t see well. And Jaime happened to be an especially physically attractive young person with long limbs, thick hair she wore in a high braid, and the kind of effortless smile that couldn’t be faked. The color of her eyes was olive green, that mysterious color usually a combination of parental genes.

She did have a noticeable eye thing; something kind of distracting. He’d only noticed it last week when she’d turned her head to the right to speak to him, and her left eye focused forward, while her right eye looked into his eyes. It was at first surprising, but notably innocently cute and kind of sexy, like a glimpse of a crooked smile with some overlapped teeth. She seemed to have the kind of personality that could blossom into beauty once you put down your guard of limitations. He knew he really didn’t have the time to be analyzing the looks of any high school student. Though bewildering women tended to gravitate to him, he was more captured by science, specifically with expanding his knowledge of ways for better understandings to exist between people and animals.

****

Next time, I shouldn’t have Spence guide me. I can get around here fine in the daylight. It really doesn’t start getting dark until 5:30, Jaime thought. Under the half-light of an imminent storm cloud, they were walking together with Jaime holding her hand just above the bend of his elbow, away from the savanna, the size of a school yard, down the humpy pathway that led out of the Africa Region. Jaime carried her white cane folded up in her backpack in case she was outside after dark, when she would need it.

In a couple more months it would be daylight savings time, when clocks would be set forward one hour, which would mean the daylight hours would last longer. She wouldn’t have to worry about turning into a ‘blind bat,’ with a cane then. She had learned that most bats aren’t totally blind, but they naturally follow sound wave frequencies better, not only relying only on their bad vision. As a child, she would call herself the Blind Bat and pretend her cane was her magic third eye. The cane could take her all the places she’d never been before. But often there was this isolating feeling of having to pass for normal. Without the cane, people couldn’t really tell that she couldn’t see –unless she had to read something. She could