MB Short Story: Tad Cooper Must Go Free

Ever since what Sally internally referred to as the “Pencil Nose Thing,” Elliot had changed. He didn’t take the bus home with her anymore; instead, either Mr. or Mrs. Wiseman would pick him up directly from school. Her best friend was also no longer available to play as often—instead, he was at the hospital, where Elliot said the doctors made him spend hours lying inside a buzzing box. Usually, Sally didn’t really notice her best friend’s emotions—like most seven-year-olds, she excelled at ignoring the needs of others, even when those needs were psychically broadcast. But Elliot always felt sad, and a little scared, when he talked about his appointments, and that made Sally feel sad and scared too.

She wasn’t quite certain why the Pencil Nose Thing was such a big deal: Elliot hadn’t been the one whose brain hurt for hours after, that had been Sally. She didn’t mind, though. Having her head hurt was fine since it meant that she could protect Elliot. Her dads said that Elliot’s parents were worried that someone else would try to make Elliot do something, but that didn’t make sense either. After all, Sally planned to always be there to warn him. She’d always planned on staying by Elliot’s side anyway, so she didn’t get why the adults kept making such a big fuss or why Elliot no longer smiled as often. As far as Sally was concerned, nothing had really changed.

It was only when Mr. Davalos introduced their new class pet that Sally knew with certainty that something needed to be done. Their classmates had crowded around Tad Cooper’s tank, giggling. Elliot, however, had taken a single look at the iguana’s glass enclosure and shivered. Sally had felt a wave of sadness come from him then, so strong that she almost broke down in tears herself even though, as a third grader, she was now too mature to cry all the time. But Elliot’s sadness had hurt.

Sally didn’t concern herself with figuring out the root of her friend’s pain; the reason didn’t matter. If she had spent a few minutes pondering the issue, she might have concluded that the lizard, trapped in a glass box without any control over his life, reminded Elliot of his current situation. But Sally wasn’t one to waste time contemplating an issue. To her, the problem was simple: Elliot was hurting, and for some reason their new class pet made him hurt more. There was only one solution.

Tad Cooper must go free.

Because then, Elliot would smile again.

Her circle of potential accomplices was rather limited. Her dads would claim that, as a lizard, Tad Cooper was Mr. Davalos’s property. Elliot’s brother, Nick, who sometimes came to walk Elliot home, was too much of a dingus jerkface to ever help. And Sally’s only friend beside Elliot, a girl who she’d gone to summer camp with last year, lived in Kentucky. Which left only Elliot himself to assist in her heist.

“Why are we doing this?” Elliot whispered.

Instead of following the rest of the class to recess, they’d doubled back and now were waiting behind the arts closet in the hallway. Mr. Davalos was still inside the classroom. But Sally had spent all morning thinking really, really hard and she’d managed to get a vision of when he’d leave. Her head still ached from the effort—Sally had never attempted to control her visions before, usually dedicating all her energy to preventing them from ever happening. But the pain was worth it if it meant that her plan would be successful.

Sally glanced at Elliot from the corner of her eye. She couldn’t admit the reason that Tad Cooper needed to go free, of course. After the way all the adults had been acting, Elliot would be upset if he thought she was treating him differently as well. It was definitely the right move, though. Sally had felt a flicker of joy from him after she’d first suggested that they liberate the iguana, and he’d agreed without needing to be persuaded. It wasn’t quite a smile, not yet, but it was better than the jacket of sadness he’d worn over the past few weeks.

“We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do,” Sally lied. “We’re . . .” She paused, struggling to recall a phrase that her dads had recently taught her, before concluding triumphantly, “We’re freedom fighters!”

“Oh.” Elliot’s lips curved up, in a way that looked like a smile but that Sally knew still really wasn’t. “That’s cool, I guess. Freedom fighters.”

Sally nodded resolutely. “That’s right. And as freedom fighters, it’s our job to free Tad Cooper.”

Elliot nodded back. Something about his demeaner had changed—he seemed certain now, less scared. Sally felt a thrill run up her spine. They really were freedom fighters, weren’t they? After all, how could anyone, even a lizard, enjoy spending his hours cooped up in a small box when he could be exploring the great outdoors? Climbing trees, eating bugs, doing . . . whatever it was that lizards did. Sally was still mostly doing this for Elliot’s sake. But now, she was also doing it for Tad Cooper.

Altruistic, her dads would describe it.

Sally and Elliot pressed up against the wall as the classroom door opened and Mr. Davalos emerged. Sally always giggled when she got nervous, and Elliot, predicting this, placed his hand over her mouth so that they wouldn’t be caught. She placed her hand over Elliot’s mouth, too, just so she didn’t feel like she was the only liability on their team.

When they could no longer hear Mr. Davalos’s footsteps, they lowered their hands, gasping for breath.

“That was so close!” Elliot exclaimed, even though Mr. Davalos had given no sign of being aware of their presence.

“We almost got caught!” Sally eagerly agreed. She shivered—her dads had claimed that freedom fighters often put themselves in danger, and now she had experienced that peril herself.

Elliot pulled at the doorknob to the classroom. He frowned. “It’s locked.”

Sally couldn’t help but lift her chin with pride; between her and Elliot, it wasn’t often that she got to be the clever one. She fished into her back pocket and pulled out a keyring—Mr. Davalos’s keyring, to be precise, which she’d swiped off his desk when he’d been busy helping Lucy Fletcher with a math question. It took them a few tries to figure out which key fit, but eventually they managed to get the door open.

“The classroom looks bigger when it’s just us here,” Elliot noted.

“Us and Tad Cooper,” Sally reminded him.

The lizard in question didn’t react, but Sally figured that was only because he didn’t realize that they’d come to save him (and that she’d hopefully save Elliot in the process).

“Guard the door,” she instructed Elliot. “If anyone comes, the codeword is ‘rainbow.’”

“Why do we need a codeword?” Elliot asked. “Won’t you hear the door open?”

Sally rolled her eyes. “All freedom fighters have codewords.”

Elliot nodded as if that made perfect sense (which, to a third grader, it did). He stood by the door on his tiptoes in order to peer through its narrow window. Meanwhile, Sally made her way over to Tad Cooper’s terrarium and gingerly unlocked the screen doors.

The iguana didn’t move, apparently unwilling to assist in his own escape. Holding her breath, Sally slid one hand under his scaly belly and lifted him off his log. One of his eyes stared directly at her.

She swallowed, suddenly remember Mr. Davalos’s warning that the iguana never be handled unless their teacher was also in the room. “Do iguanas bite?” she asked Elliot.

Elliot mulled over her question while pressing his nose against the door’s window. “Godzilla bites,” was his reply. “I think Godzilla is based off an iguana.”

Sally gulped. She’d been afraid of that.

“Rainbow!” Elliot hissed. “Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!” He grabbed her arm—the one not holding Tad Cooper—and yanked her down beneath Mr. Davalos’s desk. Through the inch-wide crack between floor and desk, they saw a pair of brown leather loafers enter the room.

“Ms. Wiseman, I’m doing everything I can to work around your son’s condition,” Mr. Davalos said. “But our elementary school has nineteen Ment students—two of them in Elliot’s grade. I simply wonder if it wouldn’t be better for him to attend a smaller institution. For his own sake.”

Sally felt Elliot stiffen besides her. Mr. Davalos must be on the phone with Elliot’s mom, and he seemed to be suggesting that Elliot switch schools.

“Elliot is a likeable kid,” their teacher continued. “I’m sure that he’d be able to make other friends.” He paused, listening to the person on the other end of the phone, then raised his voice. “What’s disruptive is . . .”

Sally had heard enough. More importantly, she could tell that Elliot had heard enough from the sadness and worry that spilled out of him. No longer caring if she got bitten, she clutched Tad Cooper to her chest and grabbed Elliot’s hand with her free hand.

“On rainbow,” she whispered to her best friend. “One, two, three . . . Rainbow!”

Without waiting for Elliot to agree to the plan, she raced from the room, Elliot tripping behind her due to her grip on his arm. She ignored Mr. Davalos’s cry of surprise, barreling onwards through the door and down the hall. Sally wasn’t tall, nor was she a particularly good runner (although Elliot still picked her during P.E.), but she ran with a speed fueled by determination. Helping Tad Cooper escape wasn’t enough; she needed to help Elliot escape as well, before his parents sent him to another school and she never saw him again.

She couldn’t protect Elliot if he went to another school.

She tightened her grip on Elliot’s hand and charged, head-first, through the open doors that lead out onto the playground. She could feel Elliot’s confusion, mixed with the adrenaline high that came with running from the law. They kept running, Mr. Davalos’s shout following in their stead, until they reached the edge of the soccer field, at which point, Sally set down the petrified iguana in the grass.

Tad Cooper didn’t budge.

A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that Mr. Davalos was only a short distance away.

“Be free, Tad Cooper!” she shouted, nudging the lizard towards the gap in the gate. She’d throw him over the fence herself, but she wasn’t sure whether iguanas landed on their feet like cats. Instead, all she could do was nudge him towards the fence, its wire gaps perfectly sized to accommodate a lizard escape route.

Tad Cooper blinked at her.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to go?” Elliot suggested, panting from being dragged halfway across school grounds. His heavy breaths were interrupted by a wet hiccup. Sally stopped pushing at the iguana and turned to face her best friend, whose eyes now sparkled with tears.

She opened her arms, and Elliot fell into them, sobbing. He didn’t say anything else, but Sally knew. Elliot didn’t want to go either.

At that instant, Sally finally realized why the Pencil Nose Thing was such a big idea. As hard as it was to imagine, there might come a time when she and Elliot parted. And even if they stayed together, the fact that Elliot needed her to stay safe . . . that stunk. It stunk in the way that Sally’s visions of the future stunk. She’d been so happy to finally pay back Elliot for keeping her nightmares at bay, she’d never paused to realize that she didn’t want him to need her the same way that she needed him. She wanted Elliot to be able to choose.

According to her dads, choice was what freedom fighting was all about.

Still hugging Elliot close, Sally looked down at the iguana. “Do you want to stay with us, Tad Cooper?”

Tad Cooper didn’t say yes, but he also didn’t move towards the fence. With Mr. Davalos nearly upon them, Sally need to decide which was truly important.

Tad Cooper’s freedom?

Or Elliot’s?

* * * *

Matteo paced back and forth in Sally’s bedroom, his cheeks bright red. Not from anger—although he wanted his daughter to think that he was angry given that she’d just been suspended from school for a week—but because he’d spent the last twenty minutes attempting not to laugh.

“Sweetie, you understand that your actions were wrong, right?” he asked.

Sally crossed her arms and stared mulishly out the window. Matteo sighed and sat down beside her on the bed, hugging her narrow shoulders.

“When you stole Mr. Davalos’s pet—”

“I told you!” Sally exploded. “We didn’t steal Tad Cooper. I librated him.”

“Liberated,” her father corrected. “In order to make Elliot smile. That part, I understand. But why did you threaten to throw the iguana over the fence?”

“So that Mr. Davalos would let Elliot stay in class.”

Matteo blinked. He opened his mouth . . . and then closed it. Exactly how was one supposed to react when their seven-year-old daughter informed them that she’d blackmailed her teacher with the life of an iguana? The parenting books hadn’t covered that bit, and Matteo wasn’t certain whether he should be proud or concerned.

"The animal could've been hurt," he settled on saying.

“I wouldn’t have really thrown Tad Coooper,” Sally grumbled. “But Mr. Davalos didn’t know that.”

Proud, Matteo decided. Definitely proud.

*For those wondering about the iguana's name, I'd highly suggest watching the TV show "Galavant"