Page 99 of The Rut in the Road

“How can you talk to me?” I asked him, not expecting an answer.

He squeaked.

I supposed I deserved that.

I sighed, then got up and went to pull a container of peas out of the fridge. I could usually encourage Victor to do things with peas.

Not that I knew what I needed him to do.

I took the peas back to the kitchen table.

“Okay,” I said to the rat. “I need to feel what you feel. No idea if that makes any sense to your little rat brain, but that’s what’s going on. So.” I held up a pea. “Do you want this?”

I deliberately didn’t hold it outtohim because that would make it clear that it was his food, not my food. He understood what “no” meant.

Or maybe he just understood when I thoughtnoat him?

I had no idea how any of this worked.

Victor’s tiny eyes stared at the pea. He sniffed the air. Then he looked at me. Then back at the pea.

Want.

I half-fell back in my chair. “Holy shit.”

Victor cocked his head at me.

Want?It was… confused?

I was definitely confused.

I held the pea out. “Go ahead,” I told him, feeling awed.

Happy.

He scurried forward the few steps needed to take the pea out of my fingers and stuff it in his cheeks.

I swallowed. I could talk—sort of—to Victor.

And if I could talk to him, maybe I could… The fact that I might be able to control him felt… dirty.

“Hey, Victor.”

The rat looked up at me, chewing. That was weird. Rats weren’t supposed to know their own names, were they? Especially not random city rats. Because Victor was definitelynota pet rat.

Maybe that meant he was responding to my emotions. That he had more access to me than I did to him.

“I—want to try something,” I told him, still speaking softly. “I want to try making you do things—if that’s okay with you?”

Want?He looked at the small container of peas.

“How about I trade you peas for this… experiment?”

Content.

This was so weird. Because it’s not like I gotwordsfrom him. The same way that I didn’t really get words from Grace or Zane’s toys, or, at least, not yet, anyway. Except not, because people’s emotions had layers that Victor’s really didn’t.

I tried using Archie’s exercises, mixed a little bit with some of what Mason and I had been working on. Feeling for the existence of another being. Looking for its soul.