The Lizard Tail

I was born with a reptilian tail.

My mother was not injured during the delivery, so I am told, but two nurses fainted, and the doctor begged my parents to let him write a journal article about me. My parents declined, and instead, they left me at the hospital.

Imagine if they had let the doctor write that article about me, maybe then I would have been the famous "Lizard Boy," and everyone would have loved me. Or at least, I wouldn't have to keep my tail cramped inside my pants all the time. It hurts a lot and makes a lot of recess pretty un-fun.

I don't have adoptive parents like some kids get. I don't think I'll ever get parents like that. I just live at a house with a bunch of other kids that no one really wants. But I don't usually stay at the same house for more than a year because the foster parents get sick of having me around. I guess they think I'm boring. I've seen the other kids that live there. Some of them have been there for yearssss. They aren't boring.

Take my foster brother Sam for instance. He only speaks half Chinese and half English. You can never really understand everything he says, and I'm pretty sure that the Chinese he's speaking isn't even real Chinese. Because the English he speaks isn't real English. But that's what makes him interesting. My foster parents can spend lots of time helping him. I can't really be helped. My tail is just there. Everything else about me is normal.

Today, I have a meeting with a new parent. But just one. I've never even heard of that happening. It's always two parents. Sometimes a mom and a dad, sometimes two dads, or sometimes two moms, but never just one parent. Sometimes it's people who are old enough to be grandparents, but it's still always two adults. Not just some guy.

That's what the social worker lady said. Her name is Miss Lacey, and she said, "a man would like to adopt you," she said. "He is very interested in having a child, a son, to take care of. Wouldn't that be nice?" she said. I guess it would be nice. I hope he doesn't want to put me in a cage though and send me to a circus or a zoo. One guy just seems weird. Maybe if it was one mom, it wouldn't seem as weird. Some kids at school just have a mom. But I don't know anyone with just a dad.

I got to leave school early today to meet him. His name is Mr. Hefty, which is a bad name for him because he is very small. He's maybe as big as I will be by the end of next year. I've seen the fifth graders on the playground. This guy could be a fifth grader if he didn't have a beard. It's a pretty cool beard though because it's really long, and he stuck stuff in it, like Legos and sticks and some buttons. I don't think Miss Lacey liked the look of it though. I guess they had only talked on the phone.

Mr. Hefty said that he would like to take me home to come live with him. He said he wanted to have kids, but he never found the right woman. There was a man, "back in the day," he said, and he thought maybe he was the one, but that didn't work out either. Miss Lacey was smiling when he was talking, but I don't think it was a happy smile.

"Miss Lacey told me about your tail," Mr. Hefty said, "And I want you to know, I think it's pretty cool. I'm okay with it."

I shrugged. No one ever liked it. I didn't even like it. It was always getting in the way. Some of my foster parents tried to get it removed, but the doctors said they weren't sure how to do it because it grows itself back. We found that out when one of my foster sisters slammed it in a door because she said it was scary. It hurt so much. I cried. I didn't want to cry, but I did. And when I tried to pull it out, the end of it ripped off. There was blood everywhere. It felt like fire. But then it just started growing back like one of those anoles you see everywhere outside.

Mr. Hefty cleared the background check, and even though I could tell that Miss Lacey did not want to be able to ask me if I wanted to go home with him, she had to. She said, "If you don't want to be Mr. Hefty's son, just let me know. And if you're scared to tell me, you can even tell your foster parents the Judeses to tell me. And Mr. Hefty won't be able to get mad at you or find you or anything like that. It's okay to wait for someone else."

Mr. Hefty wasn't in her office when she told me all that. It was just me and Mr. and Mrs. Judes. I took a deep breath in and thought about it. The Judeses were okay people but I hated having to share a bedroom with three other boys. And Mr. Hefty said he lived on a farm in New Jersey, so I would have to leave Florida.

I really liked Florida. I also had never been to anywhere outside of Florida. But I did not like my school in Florida, and I didn't have any friends there, so it didn't seem like it would matter if I moved to New Jersey. I had never seen a farm before either. One time, we had a petting zoo come to school, and I got to pet a baby goat. Baby goats are pretty funny because they run around like maniacs and jump off stuff like ninjas. 

I could tell all the adults in the room were really worried about something. Something to do with Mr. Hefty and me going to live with him, but none of them would say anything about it. They wouldn't tell me what they were scared of. So I just decided that it had to be something to do with him living in New Jersey. I had never met anyone from New Jersey, but lots of people in Florida talk about how New Jersey people are mean and crazy and the only good thing they ever did was bring Wawa to Florida.

Wawa's are pretty great. I like their milkshake machine and the soft pretzels stuffed with cheese.

I decided that going with Mr. Hefty would be nice. The worst that could happen would that he would return me back to the adoption agency and then I would get sent to the Judeses again or to a new foster home. I was used to moving around a lot.

Miss Lacey asked me three times between leaving her office and getting into Mr. Hefty's car if I was sure I was okay with this. I told her, "yea." Mr. Hefty smiled, he said, "Don't worry. We'll have a great time together, and I'll take good care of him."

We drove to New Jersey from Florida because Mr. Hefty said he didn't want to deal with airport security and my tail. I never had been on a plane before, but apparently it's really hard to get on one. But it was probably better, because Mr. Hefty had a real big, heavy box in the trunk of his car and a bunch of other small bags and boxes, so there might not have been enough room on the plane for all his stuff. Planes seem pretty small. I know they are bigger than what you see in the sky, but they can't be too big otherwise they couldn't stay in the air.

When we got to North Carolina, Mr. Hefty called a guy on the phone who met us down a dirt road and took some of the bags and boxes. The guy gave Mr. Hefty some money and thanked him.

"Why'd you sell that guy your stuff?" I asked as we pulled back onto the main highway.

"Well, because it's not stuff he can get down here. There's plenty of it in Jersey, but not here in the Carolinas."

"What sort of stuff was it?"

Mr. Hefty seemed to be thinking about a good way to tell me his answer. He probably should have done more thinking before he told me.

"Blood," he said. He looked at me from the rear-view mirror. 

Suddenly, his beard didn't seem cool. It seemed creepy and weird. Like his eyes which were a different color now. An evil sort of color. 

I undid my seat belt as fast as possible and lunged for the door handle to try and jump out of the car. Tuck and roll, that's what they did in the movies.

Mr. Hefty veered off the road and slammed the car brakes. I sprung out the door and raced towards the woods, but it's hard to run fast when you've got a 30 inch long tail crammed down the back of your pants. Mr. Hefty grabbed me by the shoulder before the first tree branches touched my head. He wasn't that much bigger than me, and I tried to fight him off, but then I blacked out.

I woke up in the darkness. I realized instantly where I was. In a box, in his car, still driving to New Jersey. Had other kids been crammed into the other boxes and bags? Maybe they had been handcuffed and had their mouths duct-taped. I thrashed around, but there was no way to get out. The top of the box was locked shut. I just had to wait. Wait until we arrived at his farm, and he chopped me up into little bits because the truth was the boxes he had sold to that guy in North Carolina were too small to be kids. But they were just the right size to pieces of kids. Kid parts for sale. Ears a buck a bag. Fingers three for fifty cents. Kid blood five dollars a quart.

I peed in the box. I didn't want to but we had been driving for hours. I felt like a baby, but I thought my bladder was going to explode. I sniffled in the dark. This was all because of my stupid lizard tail. If I had been interesting like other kids, then I would have nice, normal parents. But instead of me being interesting, just my tail was. I wondered how much lizard kid tail would sell for? 

Then I realized, I wouldn't be dying when we got to the farm in New Jersey. This wasn't a farm with goats, no it was probably a farm full of other kids with lizard tails, and since the tails grew back Mr. Hefty would keep us alive and just sell off bits of our tails, and some of the blood that splurted out when he chopped them off. Then they'd grow back and he'd do it again. 

That would be my life now. I cried and shot gunk out of my nose and screamed until my voice was gone. I was so thirsty. My stupid tail was cramped up against my leg and the pointy triangle parts were stabbing into my skin. I wished I was dead.

---

It's been three weeks since I arrived to the farm in New Jersey with Mr. Hefty. It turns out he does not harvest lizard kids for their tails or any kids for that matter for their blood. He is a butcher though. He hunts deer and sells their blood to vampires who are vegetarians. Then he sells the venison meat to regular human people. On his farm, he mostly raises vegetables and some chickens, but just for their eggs, and sheep just for the wool. He sells the deer bones to little old ladies to make stock with for soup.

He said I can call him dad or pop if I want, or I can just call him by his first name, which is Winslow. None of those options were really especially appealing, so I just call him Mr. Hefty. He doesn't seem to mind, and he even let me get a pet goat. I named the goat Winslow though, because it's a good goat name. He does really funny flips off the hay bales.

Mr. Hefty made me special pants with reinforced holes in the back that don't show my butt or even my underwear, but still let my tail come out. And I get to go to school with a bunch of other half-demon kids from the other local farms.

That's apparently what I am. A half-demon. Mr. Hefty isn't sure exactly what kind, but since he's half dwarf, I figure he at least knows what he's talking about. 

Tomorrow, we're going to meet Mr. Leeds, people call him the "Jersey Devil." I guess that's why people in Florida don't like people from Jersey. They're all part demon.