I Heard Animals' Voices novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Goldfish Said Lie

Derrick's POV

She didn't slam anything, which was worse.

Tierney stood up from the edge of the pool, wiped her palms on her jeans, and walked up the path to the staff gate without a word.

I stayed on the bench.

The last time I followed someone who was upset with me, I was nine, and the someone was my mother.

She had believed me, and nobody warns you about that part.

I told my teacher the class hamster was homesick, and my teacher called my mother, and my mother sat in the car outside the school and cried because she thought I was telling the truth.

A believing mother had no plan for that, so she signed the form for the children's clinic.

For two weeks a man with a clipboard asked me what the neighbor's dog was saying, and I told him, because I was nine.

It was the goldfish in the lobby tank who set me straight.

"Say you made it up," it told me, through the glass, while my mother filled in the paperwork. "Say it every time. They love it."

I said I made it up, and the man with the clipboard patted my head and let me go home.

It was the best advice I ever got, and it came from a fish with a chipped fin.

I had followed it for seventeen years.

"Quiet One," said Mabel, from her rock.

"Not now."

"I want it noted that I only repeated what I was given."

"You repeated a rock."

"It was a good rock," said Mabel. "Everyone at the back agreed."

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