Animals

The alarms went off and, even if the days didn’t weight on her like they did with most people, she still had a hard time deciding to finally get out of bed. The girl threw the sheets to a side and swung her legs to the opposite side of the bed to sit up, she stretched her arms over her head as an inaudible yawn escaped her lips, her eyes were begging to close again and she rubbed the back of her hands against them roughly.

The floor was cold underneath her feet as she walked to the door of her bedroom, she cracked open the door deciding she needed a coffee before she could do anything else. The apartment was dark but she knew her way around it perfectly, she found the switch to the light and turned it on, frowning at the contrast it made with the previous state of the place. Penelope poured the coffee powder into the machine along with some water and turned it on, she walked to the glass door that opened to the small balcony and threw open the curtains to let some natural light flood the small living room and kitchen.

As she waited for the coffee to be ready she opened the door and walked outside to the balcony, resting her elbows on the rail and glancing at the city underneath her. After a few minutes, she walked back to the kitchen and poured some coffee into a mug as she heard some noises coming from the other bedroom in her apartment, letting her know her roommate had decided to join the world of the living.

A door clicked and soon Craig showed up in the kitchen running a hand through his messy wet hair. Penelope frowned at the sight of him already dressed in black pants, a button up shirt and a tie ready for work; she grabbed the jug of coffee and shook it slightly offering it to him. Craig smiled and opened one of the cupboards; he took a large thermos and handed it to her.

“Why the big rush?” she asked.

He yawned and ran a hand along his face trying to wake himself up. “Just got a call from Dan, he says he needs me because we´re just about done with the case and he wants to get all things ready for the trial.”

“Well,” the girl chuckled as she handed him the thermos, “you wanted to be a lawyer.”

“I know, right?” he laughed as well, “what a mistake.”

Penelope laughed too shaking her head as she grabbed some bread from the cupboard and placed a piece in the toaster. She heard some noises coming from the hallway and she frowned before looking at her friend. All it took was for her to see the slight cringe he made for her to realize what was happening and she opened her eyes wider.

“You have a girl in there!” she accused.

He hissed at her. “Shh! Lower your voice, will ya?”

The girl shook her head with a chuckle. “Oh, are you worried she´ll wake up before you leave?”

“Just because I´m in a hurry.”

But the girl narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “You didn’t even get call from Dan, did you?”

Craig rolled his eyes. “Of course I did, I wouldn’t be leaving this early if I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t leave you to handle her if it wasn’t necessary.”

Penelope was unable to suppress a scoff and she shook her head chuckling. They both knew that was a flat out lie; he had done it many times, having to go to do something and leaving Penelope with a girl she didn’t even know, and a very angry girl that is.

“Well you can´t do it again, Craig,” she told him disapprovingly, “I have to go to school and I don´t have time to take care of you little girlfriends.”

“Oh c´mon, Penny!” he whined. “I really need to go, I can´t stay.”

The girl shook her head again. “I don’t care, I have things to do as well and you keep doing this; you keep leaving me to deal with your one night stands. You can just call Dan and tell him you´ll be a little late today, he´s a good boss, I´m sure he won’t mind.”

Craig looked up at her from the thermos of coffee he was still stirring. “I can´t, not today. I told you, this is the last meeting before we close the case and it´s important.” He closed the thermos and walked to her. “Please just tell her I had to leave and that I´m sorry. I´ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“You know I won´t let you get away from that, right?”

He grinned knowing she had already given up. “I know.”

Penelope narrowed her green eyes as him. “And it´ll have to be something big, I´ve made you too many favors.”

“Whatever you want, it´s yours,” he replied getting ready to leave.

She took a sip from her coffee watching him as he walked to the door before saying. “And she better wake up soon, or else I´ll have to paste a post-it to her forehead explaining that she has to wait for you to get home and I´ll lock her in here before leaving.”

Craig looked over his shoulder and frowned comically at her, with a half-smile tugging at the end of his lips. “Or… you could just wake her up.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “I guess that´s an option too.”

“Yeah, I´d go with that one if I were you.” He grinned and opened the door, but before he closed it he added, “Thank you for doing this, I owe you. You should start thinking about how I´m going to pay you back, be creative.”

She shot him a smirk. “Oh, I will.”

The door closed with a firm ‘click’ and Penelope stared at it for a moment still wondering how it was that she always gave in to Craig´s requests. Granted, it was the same way the other way around; every time she asked for something it was almost impossible for him to say no. But that was the way they worked and probably one of the main reasons why they had managed to keep such a long and real friendship.

She turned around and saw her forgotten bread still in the toaster, so she walked towards the fridge and took out some butter and jelly and she smeared them on the bread before taking a large bite.

Going to college was not Penelope´s favorite thing to do, in fact, she was more than happy to just stay home until she had to go to work. But she had to finish college if she wanted a degree, and to do that she had to take a shower and get ready, which she didn’t want to do if there was a stranger sleeping in Craig´s bed. As she finished eating her breakfast, Penelope kept thinking of different ways in which she could wake the girl up, most times the girls were pretty embarrassed of being in Craig´s room to begin with, so it wasn’t too hard to get them to leave.

It seemed as though luck was on her side, though, because just as she was washing her mug of coffee, she heard the sound of a door open and the faint footsteps people make when they´re walking barefoot. She turned around just in time to see the blonde girl emerge from the hallway with nothing but Craig´s T-shirt over her colorful underwear.

“Who are you?” the girl asked.

That was normal, most girls got nervous that maybe their one night stand had a girlfriend. So Penny smiled a small awkward smile and said, “I´m Penelope.”

The girl raised one eyebrow. “Yes, and who are you?”

Penelope´s green eyes narrowed slightly and the girl rude tone before raising her eyebrows. “I think I just answered that.”

“I mean, what are you doing in Craig´s apartment?” she shot back with a look of annoyance.

“I live here,” Penny replied with a shrug of her shoulders, “he´s my roommate.”

The blonde´s blue eyes traveled Penelope from head to toe, clearly not liking the short pajama shorts she was wearing or the loose T-shirt she was pairing them up with. The expression on the girl´s face made Penny normal cool mood shift into an angry and annoyed one that didn’t let her think too well. Usually girls were embarrassed to be caught after a one night stand, but this girl was behaving as if Penelope should be the embarrassed one to be seen in her own house doing absolutely nothing abnormal.

“So where is he?” the girl finally asked.

“He had to leave,” Penny answered as she ran a cloth along her mug to dry it, “he had a meeting at work.”

The girl quirked an eyebrow. “So he just left?”

Penny shrugged with a smile. “It was an important meeting.”

“Did he say anything?”

She opened the cupboard and placed the mug inside before closing it again and leaning her back against the counter. “He asked me to tell you that he had fun last night and that he hopes you have a great life.”

A loud scoff abandoned the blonde´s lips. “He wouldn’t say that.”

Penelope laughed. “You met him last night, I´m sure you know him very well.”

“We met last Wednesday, not last night.”

“Oh, so you´ve known him for a week. Even better, you should be very reassured.” Penelope pushed herself from the counter and cross her arms across her chest. “Unfortunately for both of us, I have to go to class, so I´m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

The girl wasn’t pleased. “I think I rather wait for him here.”

“I think that´s not an option,” Penny chuckled. “Look, I have to take a shower and leave and I don’t feel comfortable doing so with a stranger in my house. So please, put some clothes on and get going.”

It didn’t take another word for the girl to turn around and return to Craig´s room, she closed the door behind and Penny was finally able to breathe out and try to eliminate the unattractive expression that had taken over her face. She decided to stay in the kitchen until the girl was ready to leave, and she drummed her fingers against the surface of the island in the kitchen until the girl reappeared on the hallway making her way towards the front door.

“You are very rude, that´s probably why Craig never mentioned you,” she said just as Penny reached her at the door.

“I´m sure that´s why,” Penelope replied before waving her hand. “Have a nice day.”

The girl turned to leave and Penny closed the door, leaning her back against it, she glanced at the clock that flashed on the microwave and she noticed she was already running late for school. She sighed and pushed herself forward hoping she would make it in time.

* * *

School was as uneventful as ever, there was never anything impressive about her time at the San Diego State University; there were too much people around the corridors but her own classes didn’t have that many students in them. Not many people wanted to study zoology and the ones that did weren’t exactly the ones she felt eager to socialize with. Penelope didn’t really feel eager to socialize with any type of people, to be fair, but her classmates, even the ones who weren’t taking the same classes as herself, always made her patience run low with how much drama they enjoyed to bring to the school life.

Needless to say, she was glad when her last class of the day was over just after noon and she was able to leave the campus to go to work. Most people didn’t like to work, or they didn’t enjoy the work they currently had, but Penelope had been in love with her job since she was fifteen years old and she always looked forward for the time to get there.

The streets of San Diego were slow and the drive to her job wasn’t exactly a short one. Her windows were rolled down even if the air of the city as humid and slightly hot, she was used to the city and she was more than used to being outdoors. She tried to calm her stress about traffic with the music that came out of the speakers of her car as she sang along, but she was more than glad to see the San Diego Zoo´s sign in front of her. She parked her car in the reserved area for employees and walked to the front gates.

Charlie, one of the guards in duty, greeted her as she passed him by and showed him her employee card. She smiled at him and kept on walking along the wide trails of the zoo with her sunglasses covering her eyes and her IPod headphones plugged in her ears. Penny was so immersed in the music she was silently singing along to that it took her a few seconds to notice she was not walking alone anymore.

“Hey, Steve,” she said as she pulled one headphone out of her left hear.

The teenager smiled at her. “Hey, Penny, how are you?”

She grinned at him as they continued to walk. “I´m good, how about you? How was school?”

“Ugh, awful.” He made a face. “I can’t wait to graduate high school.”

Penelope chuckled. “Every high school student always says the same, but let me tell you, college isn’t that much better.”

Steve shot her a look and threw his head back in a mockingly dramatic way. “Don´t ruin my hopes, Pen. My only real motivation is going to college.”

“In that case, I take it back. College is awesome.”

He laughed. “That´s much better. I mean, high school in not that bad, I don’t mind the classes. The people, that´s what I can’t stand; there´s just so much drama.”

“Well, you´re wrong if you think there´s less drama in college,” she told him as they finally neared the employees office. “People don’t actually grow up from eighteen to nineteen, the girls are the same overdramatic attention seekers and the guys are the same players who don’t really care about anything but being the soul of the party. With a few exceptions obviously.”

Steve pulled open the door and extended a hand signaling her to pass first. “Well that sucks, I´m sick of such stupid and meaningless people.”

“There will always be stupid meaningless people, Steve,” she said with a shrug, “whether is high school, college, work or any other possible scenario. The point is to not pay attention to them.”

“Hey, guys,” Tammy, the receptionist greeted them when they reached her. “How are you?”

“Good,” they both answered as they passed their employee card through the machine that marked their arrival.

She was about to say something else, when all three of them became immediately quite in response to the screaming that was coming from up the stairs. It was clearly someone having a fight with Rob, the zoo´s manager, things like that didn’t happen very often; Rob was a very well-liked boss. Even if Penelope or either of the other two people there would´ve wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation, it would´ve been impossible because, as loud as they were, they seemed to be finishing their argument because a few seconds later there was the loud slamming of a door followed by rushed footsteps.

And then Lance, another employee, appeared in the staircase and paid no mind to them as he stormed passed them in an angry blur. Steve stared at him as he walked out the office and shook his head. “He´s so strange.”

Tammy nodded but decided to ignore the whole situation to avoid the incorrect gossip that was sure to follow. Instead, she turned to Penny with a smile. “Penelope, Lorraine was looking for you, she´s at Meg´s cage.”

The girl smiled and nodded. “Okay, I´ll be right there. Bye, Steve.”

Steve waved at her as he made his way to his position at one of the souvenirs stores while Penelope started walking all the way to the Forest area where the tigers were, it took her a while to get there, but once she was there she saw Lorraine looking at the tigers from the other side of the grating that separates them from the clients that observe the animals.

“Hi,” Penny waved from a small distance.

Lorraine turned to her and grinned. “Finally, I´ve been waiting for forever.”

The girl laughed as she reached Lorraine and shook her head. “Well, I am perfectly on time, if remember correctly this is the time were my job starts.”

“I know, I know,” Lo said waving a hand loosely, “but I cannot, for the life of me, feed Connor and Chris, Meg won’t let me.”

Penelope chuckled and glanced at the tigers. They were normally pretty calm; they were used to most of the keepers of the zoo. But every once in a while Meg, the tiger mother, got over protective and won´t let many people get close. It was in times like these that Lorraine suffered her task of feeding the tigers and called Penny to do it for her, which didn’t bother Penny at all, because she loved the easiness with which she could feed the animals in comparison to some of the senior zoo keepers.

“Can you please go in,” Lo asked, “I´m starving and I still have to feed some other animals.”

“Yeah, I´ll do it, just go feed the birds and I´ll meet you at the cafeteria,” Penelope said as she walked to the back of the cage where the food was waiting.

She grabbed the food buckets and opened the back door going in quickly before closing it at her back. Meg was sitting just besides her two cubs and she opened her jaws and showed her teeth at the sight of Penny, the cubs were a different story, though; they were still young and playful and liked the company. Penelope crouched and waited for them to approach her, once they did she pet them behind the ears and saw that both of they went straight for the buckets of food. She grabbed one of them and walked towards Meg carefully, in case the mother was still in her protective state.

She wasn’t, though, and she allowed Penny to get close enough to give her the food, and as the girl watch the three animals interact and eat letting her pet them every once in a while she felt the happiness and peace she always felt when she did her job. A type of happiness that she rarely found when she was not surrounded by the zoo animals.