There was nothing in the world more boring than grooming an entire flock of wild turkeys with tweezers. The cerulean warblers were already in the judging room, perched on the Non-Game Birds table in the Master Division, and my dad was going over the ibex one last time with a penlight, a fine-toothed comb, and a can of compressed air. Last time we were here, he’d talked to me while I’d helped groom the competition mounts, making jokes and teaching me tricks for how to fix each tiny imperfection. But today he was so focused on the animals that it was like I wasn’t even here. Between this morning’s talks and workshops and Dad’s epic networking session last night, we’d barely spoken since yesterday afternoon. He’d left me alone in the room before I’d even had time to suggest my people-watching-and-burger-eating plan.
“Dad,” I said, but he just kept humming tunelessly to himself as he fluffed and sprayed. I tapped his shoulder. “Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“Remember two years ago when that guy entered the sculpture for the Interpretive Division that was half bison and half VW Bug?” Mom and I had stuck our heads into the judging room about five times a day to giggle at the bison-car. We had named it Sven, for some reason.
“Mmm.” Dad lifted the ibex’s tail and inspected it with the penlight.
“Did you see the guy go by earlier with the giant steampunk bear with all the clockwork in its face? So weird.”
“Mmm,” Dad said again. I wasn’t sure he was even processing the things I was saying.
I sighed. “I think the turkeys are done. Do you want to check them?”
That finally got through to him. “In a few minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “The trade show’s open. Head over to the Van Dyke booth and pick up all the glass eyes I need before they sell out, okay?” He pulled a handwritten list out of his jacket pocket. “Be sure to get the AFE2 series for the hartebeest eyes, not the AFE series. Get the less-dilated pupil for the cheetah eyes, and the bobcat eyes should be the sixteen-by-twenty-one millimeter. All the rest are self-explanatory. I’ll meet you over there and pay for everything after these guys are installed in the judging room.”
I shoved the list into my back pocket without looking at it. “Yeah, okay.” I hung around for another minute, waiting for a thank you—I’d done a really good job on the turkeys, and even if he wasn’t going to bond with me, a tiny bit of praise for my assistant skills would’ve been nice. But Dad just went right back to the ibex, so I left him alone.
I picked my way through the grooming area extra-carefully—tensions ran high before judging started, and I didn’t want to risk bumping into someone’s mount. I passed a woman crying over a detached antelope ear and a man grooming a scarily convincing saber-tooth tiger he’d made for the Re-Creations category. There were three wolf heads stuck to a pole by their tongues, which their owner was spritzing with fake animal spit called Jaw Juice to make them look extra wet and shiny. Near the end of the hall, a middle-aged woman in bifocals and a glittery kitten shirt was grooming her wild boars, one of which was on top of the other. As I walked by, she winked at me and whispered, “They’re doing the dirty.” I gave her a tight smile and sped up.
The trade show floor was already surprisingly crowded. A group of small children ran past me, dressed in matching shirts that read, PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals, and I wondered how many of them would grow up to be vegetarians. The Van Dyke booths were right at the front, their giant sign flanked by yellow polyurethane deer and bear manikins waiting to be covered in pelts.
And there, next to the sign, sorting through a bin of glass eyes, was Jeremy. Finally—a chance to interact with someone who didn’t think harmless socializing was grounds for a lecture about professionalism.
Jeremy was absorbed in the eyes, so I crept up behind him, my sneakers silent on the hideous teal-and-red-swirled carpet. There was a box of pale gold sheep eyes with horizontal pupils near the front of the booth, so I grabbed two of them and held them up in front of my own eyes. When I was inches from his back, I growled, “Judge Jeremy Warren, I presume?”
Jeremy whipped around, and a few eyes flew out of his hand and pinged across the booth. The Van Dyke representative glared at us over his giant handlebar mustache.
“Oh my god, you scared me,” Jeremy said. “My, Callie, what creepy eyes you have.”
“The better to creep on you with, my dear,” I said, and he laughed. I dropped the sheep eyes back into their bin. “What’re you looking for? Or are you just browsing?”
Jeremy opened his hand and showed me a bunch of cat eyes. “I’m doing a big restoration project for the Field Museum. A tiger, a cheetah, and two of the lynxes need work.”
“The Field Museum? Wow, congratulations. That’s a big deal.”
“Yeah. I feel a little out of my depth, honestly. The tiger’s so faded that I have to hand-paint the entire thing. Your dad recommended Luscious Mango hair dye. This whole thing would be a piece of cake for him.”
“But they picked you. I’m sure you’re going to do great.”
“Thanks.” He smiled, then retrieved his fallen eyes and handed his credit card to Mustache Man. “Do you need any eyes?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a list. Will you wait for me?”
“If it’s quick, yeah. Then I have to head over to Skin It Yourself! and pick up some frozen raccoons.”
I pulled my dad’s instructions out of my pocket, expecting only the three items he’d mentioned, but the list was way longer than that. Ten pairs BioOptix II whitetail deer, 30mm, light; six pairs coyote, 16/21mm; turkey, ten pairs each 12mm, 13mm, 14mm; three pairs AFE2 black bear, 18/22mm. There were at least forty items, all printed in letters as tiny and neat as the stitches my dad used to sew up his birds. It would take me forever to find all this stuff.
“Can we meet up after you get the raccoons?” I asked. “This might actually take a while.”
Mustache Man handed Jeremy his receipt, and he carefully folded it into his wallet. “Probably not. I’ve got a judges’ meeting, and there are still a couple of things I need to do to prepare for it. And then judging starts at eight and goes until late. I’m sorry.”
This might be my only opportunity to catch up with Jeremy without my dad looming over us, and there was no way I was going to pass it up to hang around the Van Dyke booth. “Okay,” I said. “Just give me one second.”
I stepped up to the representative and flashed him my prettiest smile. “Hi. I’m Hamish Buchannan’s assistant. He loves working with Van Dyke products; he buys from you exclusively.” I had no idea if that was true, but Mustache Man started looking a little friendlier, so I held out the list. “Mr. Buchannan would like to place a large order. Would you mind packing up these items for me? I’ll be back to get them in a little while.”
“Sure thing,” the guy said, and for the first time in eight hours, I was free.
“What are the raccoons for?” I asked as Jeremy and I headed across the trade show floor.
“I’m doing a hands-on skinning demonstration for kids on Friday. You would’ve been all over that when you were little, huh?”
“Totally. Remember when we used to race to see who could flesh out possums faster?” I asked.
“How could I possibly forget the shame of losing to a third grader?”
I laughed. Openly talking about taxidermy with someone I liked and respected was such a weird experience. All my friends at home thought my dad’s job was gross, and I’d stopped inviting people to my house altogether after The Fateful Seventh-Grade Sleepover. Emma Perkowitz had walked into the spare bedroom, reached for the light switch, and accidentally grabbed the snout of the warthog head mounted on the wall. She had screamed like she’d touched a hot stove for a solid five minutes, and it only took another half hour for all the rest of the girls to fake sick and call their parents.
“So, you’re your dad’s proper assistant now, huh?” Jeremy asked. “That’s really impressive, at your age. He must be proud.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think he even notices me most of the time. He hands me a task, I do it, I hand it back. He rarely even says thank you. It’s not like it was before—” I suddenly remembered that Jeremy didn’t know about Mom, and I broke off just in time. “Before … when you were around,” I finished lamely.
“You should take the silence as a compliment. It probably means you don’t need a lot of instruction. He barely left me alone for one second during my internship.”
“Maybe. I guess.” Most of the noise in the studio back then didn’t come from my dad critiquing Jeremy’s work; it came from the three of us shout-singing along to Bruce Springsteen. But he didn’t seem to remember that, so I didn’t remind him.
“Do you think you’ll continue with it in college?” Jeremy asked. “Study zoology or anatomy or something? You must be pretty into it if you’re putting in all that time.”
Part of me wanted to tell Jeremy the truth—that since my mom left, the studio was the only place my dad seemed to see me at all; that I only kept working there because I didn’t want to exist in a completely separate world from him. But that seemed pathetic.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I actually want to work in radio. Like, at NPR, maybe.” I suddenly felt shy. The last time I’d tried to run this idea by my dad, he’d brushed it off like it was just a phase or a hobby, not a real goal.
But Jeremy said, “Ooh, that would be awesome. You have a good voice for radio.”
“I do? Thanks. I never thought about doing the actual broadcasting, but I think I could be good at the behind-the-scenes stuff. Like being a producer, maybe.”
“Definitely. That would be cool, too. I bet you’d be good at either.”
We walked by a booth that specialized in animal teeth, one that sold artificial throats and tongues, and one offering discounts on freeze-drying your deceased pets. Farther down were two booths staffed by middle-aged guys who looked like twins; one was selling odor remover, and the other was selling bottles of deer, coyote, and fox urine. Near the end of the row was the Bug to the Bone Skull Cleaning Service, where a sealed terrarium full of dermestid beetles were eating away at the remaining flesh of what looked like it had once been a ferret.
We finally arrived at Skin It Yourself!, where Jeremy bought three large frozen raccoons. “Can you hang on to one of these for me?” he asked the guy manning the booth. “I can’t carry them all at once. I’ll come back for the third one after my meeting.”
“I can help you take them upstairs now,” I said.
“Really?” Jeremy asked. “That would save me a ton of time. Your dad doesn’t need your help with anything else?”
“I don’t think he’ll be done for a little while. He was still finishing up with the ibex when I left. I should have time to run upstairs and pick up the eyes at the Van Dyke booth before he gets here.”
“Wow, that would be so great. Thanks, Cal.”
We headed toward the trade show exit, stopping every once in a while so Jeremy could say hi to friends and colleagues. Even though I hadn’t seen him in years, we’d known each other so long that being with him felt incredibly easy. Having him here reminded me of a time when my family was whole and happy, and I finally relaxed for the first time since I’d gotten here.
And then we passed the Van Dyke booth, and I almost ran smack into my dad.
“Hey, Hamish,” Jeremy said. He raised one of his raccoon bags in the approximation of a wave.
“Hi,” my dad said, and then he turned to me, his face stony. “Callie, where were you? And where you are going?”
“I was helping Jeremy,” I said. “I’m just going to carry this raccoon up to his room, and then I’ll be right back, okay? The Van Dyke rep is packing up your eyes—I gave him the list.”
His eyebrows scrunched into that furrowed V-shape I had seen all too many times. “I asked you to pack them up for me.”
“I’m sure he’s doing a much better job than I would’ve. They should be ready in a minute.”
My dad sighed like he was carrying the weight of the world. “That’s not the point. The Van Dyke employee doesn’t need the practice. You do. Why am I paying you to assist me if you’re just going to wander off and socialize?”
His words hit me like a slap. Dad reprimanding me when I messed up was nothing new, but I hadn’t even done anything wrong this time. Not to mention that he was embarrassing me in front of Jeremy and all the other Van Dyke customers. I felt my cheeks go pink.
“I’m not socializing,” I said quietly. “I’m just helping a friend for a few minutes.”
“I’m really sorry about this, Hamish,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t know you needed her.”
“Don’t be silly. This isn’t your fault. I’m sure she told you she wasn’t busy.” Dad turned back to me. “Callie, I brought you here because it’s a great opportunity for you to learn, but you’re not going to get anything out of it if you don’t take some initiative. This convention only comes around once every two years. I need you to do the work I ask of you, and when that work is done, you should be familiarizing yourself with new materials and techniques. That’s what the trade show is here for.”
“I’ve been in sessions with you since ten a.m.,” I said. “I’ve been learning all day. And the turkeys looked good, right?”
“What?”
“The turkeys. I did a good job grooming them, didn’t I?”
“Yes, they looked good. But doing something right doesn’t give you license to slack off.”
Jeremy took a step back; he looked intensely uncomfortable. “You know what, I’m going to take the raccoons myself. Thanks for offering to help, Callie, but I can handle it.”
“But you can’t carry all these at once, and you don’t have time to make two trips before your meeting,” I said.
Jeremy looked back and forth between my dad and me like he had no idea what to do, and Dad finally sighed. “Just go. But from now on, make sure I don’t need you before you run off to help someone else, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I just wanted to get out of this room as quickly as possible. “Come on,” I said to Jeremy.
We left the trade show and headed toward the bridge to the hotel in silence. “You really don’t have to carry that all the way upstairs,” he said when we got to the elevators. “I’ll figure something out. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m in trouble anyway. It kind of feels like I’m always in trouble.”
“Yeah, but maybe—”
A little kid dressed in a tiny pleather catsuit came barreling out of nowhere, shrieking at the top of her lungs, and dashed right in front of Jeremy. He stopped short, and we both stared. A woman who must’ve been her mom chased after her, wielding a can of hairspray. “Beige, if you don’t get back here this instant, there will be no dessert tonight!” she shouted.
I watched until they were out of sight around the corner, and then I said, “Um … what the holy hell was that?”
Jeremy blinked. “I think there’s one of those baby beauty pageant things going on in D-wing.”
Sure enough, there were a couple more little kids in the hotel lobby, all dressed in sparkles and lace. Every one of them had ringlets so perfect they didn’t even look real. Then one kid reached up and scratched—under her hair.
“The toddlers are wearing wigs,” I whispered to Jeremy.
“That kid was named Beige,” he whispered back, and we both burst into horrified laughter.
By the time the elevator arrived, Jeremy and I were wiping tears from our eyes. Two teenage girls with badges for the fandom convention got in with us. One of them had a whole bunch of colored ribbons stuck to the bottom of her badge, one of which sported a tagline I recognized: Someday, your worst memory could be your best story.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you listen to A Thousand Words?”
Her eyes lit up. “Yeah! Do you?”
“It’s my favorite! I listened to it almost the entire twelve-hour drive here.” I turned to Jeremy. “It’s this really cool podcast. You should check it out.”
“You’re coming to the workshop tomorrow, right?” asked the girl.
“The what?”
“They’re going to explain their whole process, all the behind-the-scenes stuff, and answer questions and everything! And they’re going to broadcast the whole thing live on their website. Haven’t you heard them talking about it on the last couple of episodes?”
She was right—the hosts of A Thousand Words had been talking about a live show at something called WTFcon for weeks. “Oh my god, I didn’t realize that was here!” I said. “Maybe I could get away for a few hours? How hard do you think it would be to sneak in? I’m not registered for WTFcon.”
“Aw, that sucks—they’re actually been pretty strict about checking badges. Are you here for the drumming thing?”
“No, the taxidermy championships,” I said.
“Eew,” the girl said, and she and her friend both giggled.
It shouldn’t have mattered to me—I was never going to see them again—but it still gave me seventh grade flashbacks. I dropped my eyes to the floor. When the elevator opened on fourteen and Jeremy said, “This is us, Callie,” I gave the girls an awkward half wave and followed him out. I was relieved when the doors closed.
Jeremy unlocked room 1418 and let me go in ahead of him. My mom and I always used to unpack all our stuff when we stayed in hotels to make the space feel more like ours, but aside from a suit hanging in the closet, a pair of shoes on the floor, and a laptop and binder on the desk, his room looked untouched. Jeremy started loading the raccoons into the mini-fridge he’d brought, and I pulled open the curtains, revealing an air shaft and the side of an office building.
“Nice view,” I said.
“Oh yeah. I’ve got some seriously classy accommodations.”
“Well, you are super important. All those master turkey-stuffers are counting on you.” I sat down on his bed, which was covered in the same ugly fleur-de-lis spread as mine.
Jeremy shut the fridge. “You should probably get back downstairs.”
“Ugh, don’t make me.” I flopped backward onto the mattress. “Can you believe how crazy-controlling and uptight my dad was being? I was literally with him the entire day, and then I do a nice thing for someone else for ten minutes, and he completely flips out! It’s not like I was sneaking away to buy drugs or something. I thought he brought me to this convention because he actually wanted me here, and he’s been so rude to me the whole time. Did you know he yelled at me after we saw you at registration yesterday because I was ‘mocking him in front of a judge’? As if you’re going to take points off his turkeys because I made a dumb joke. You made a dumb joke, too! I’m sure he didn’t think you were being unprofessional.”
Jeremy smiled, but it looked a little pained. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you think you could maybe say something to him? Tell him I’m actually working really hard and he should be nice to me? We used to have so much fun at these things, and this time … well, you saw.”
Jeremy rubbed his hand over his close-cropped hair; I’d forgotten how he always used to do that when he was embarrassed or uncomfortable. “This is between you and your dad, Cal. I really can’t get involved.”
“But he actually listens to you. You’re like family.”
“That’s kind of what he’s saying, though, right? I can’t be family right now because I’m judging his work. I have to stay impartial. It sucks that you guys are fighting, but I can’t be in the middle of it.”
I shouldn’t really have expected him to stick up for me, but it still stung a little. “Fine,” I said. “I get it. But can I just stay here for, like, ten more minutes while you prep for your meeting? I won’t bug you, and I promise I’ll go back downstairs when you have to leave. But I just need a little more time away from him.”
Jeremy sighed. “Listen, I want to hang out, too. But now isn’t a good time, and I’m not going to hide you. I really am sorry, but you’ve got to go deal with this, okay?”
There was this sinking feeling in my stomach, like a gaping pit was opening up and swallowing my organs one by one. I’d had such high hopes for this convention, and nothing was going right, and I wasn’t even allowed to complain about how nothing was going right to the one person I thought was on my side. I was on my own, just like always.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“Come on,” said Jeremy. “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”
The door shut behind us with a final-sounding slam, and as we walked down the hall side by side, all I could think of was the A Thousand Words ribbon on the WTFcon girl’s badge.
Someday, your worst memory could be your best story.
Maybe that was true. But right now, everything just sucked.