Page 24 of Crocodile Tears
“Yep.” Deacon bobbed his chin in reply to Cody because his hands were filled with a grumpy toucan.
“Eeyore, you ready?”
“I am, dickhead,” I sang back with a smile.
Deacon was right. I was an excellent actress.
“Alright...and action.” Cody pointed at Deacon with a finger gun, as if he were some big shot cinematographer and not a guy filming on his iPhone.
Deacon plastered on that smoldering smile, and I fought every cell in my body not to frown and instead fawn like every girl waiting outside the zoo gates.
“Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow,” he started, and I snorted.
Cody grimaced. “Okay, we'll try that one more time.”
“Why are you laughing?” Deacon muttered from the corner of his mouth.
“You just sound absurd. ‘Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow,’” I mocked in a low voice, laughter rolling out of me. “I'm a grade A asshole who makes animals go extinct, but look at my biceps in this too tight T-shirt and my sexy face.”
“You think I have a sexy face?”
I shot him a look. “You ran straight past the point of that statement, didn't you?”
I extracted a grape from my treat pouch and put it on Deacon’s hand so that Eddie would double his efforts to attack him. Unfortunately, Eddie managed to grab the treat without doing any major physical harm.
“Kids,” Cody snapped. “Go again. Cranky pants, don't laugh this time.”
“You got it, jerkface.”
Cody pointed at us again, and I thrust my hands into my pockets so I could clench them without the camera seeing.
Deacon started over. “Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow, joined by Lucky Role Conservation Trust’s interim director, Dove Lachlan, and this”—he lifted Eddie toward the camera—"is Eddie. Eddie has just come from the vet hospital for his annual checkup and we're releasing him back into his enclosure. Isn’t that right, Eddie?” Eddie clicked his beak as if on command.Traitor. “If you want even more wildlife news and to make a difference to more critically endangered animals, make sure to subscribe to our socials and join the conservation trust’s newsletter.”
We had a newsletter? And social media handles already? Wow. The devil worked hard but Cody Novak worked harder.
I had to give it to Deacon too. He nailed that, unscripted, on the first take. Deacon looked back at me in confirmation that he could release Eddie, and I gave him a nod.
“Fly free, Eddie,” Deacon said, which I thought might be hamming it up a littletoomuch, but I kept my face trained into pleasant neutrality.
Deacon threw Eddie into the air and posed with a smile like the poster boy action hero he was. And Eddie lifted skyward, wings still tucked.
I watched the toucan’s wings. Still tucked. Still tucked. Still tucked.
Any minute now, I thought as the toucan loaf launched upward. Any minute Eddie would open his wings and majestically fly off . . . except he didn't.
Eddie reached the apex of his toss and, wings still freaking tucked, started to plummet back toward the ground.
“Shit,” Deacon said at the same time as I shouted, “Fuck!”
We both scrambled forward, hands out as if we could catch the bird like a football with a giant beak, but we were both too far away. We watched in horror as the stupid bird fell down, down, down to Earth.
Rightbefore Eddie collided with the ground, his wings spread and he took flight. The dramatic little piece of shit. Deacon and I both let out exasperated sighs of relief . . . just as Eddie flew smack dab into the chain-link fence and got his beak stuck in a hole.
“Holy crap!” I shouted, running forward and extracting the toucan from the fence. “You are seriously trying to give us all heart attacks today, aren’t you?”
Fortunately, the second I retracted Eddie, he ruffled his feathers and flew up to a perch unharmed, searching for more grapes, as if he hadn’t just made all of our cortisol levels shoot through the roof.
"I swear to God you are a bad omen,” I grumbled at Deacon.
