The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

From the Publisher

I am not my illness. "Girl with Anxiety," "Trauma of the Week" -- no. I hate stuff like that. Everyone, everyone has their issue. But the one thing my illness did make me realize is how necessary it is to ignore the dangers of living in order to live. And how much trouble you can get into if you can't.

Jade DeLuna is too young to die. She knows this, and yet she can't quite believe it, especially when the terrifying thoughts, loss of breath, and dizzy feelings come. Since being diagnosed with Panic Disorder, she's trying her best to stay calm, and visiting the elephants at the nearby zoo seems to help. That's why Jade keeps the live zoo webcam on in her room, and that's where she first sees the boy in the red jacket. A boy who stops to watch the elephants. A boy carrying a baby.

His name is Sebastian, and he is raising his son alone. Jade is drawn into Sebastian's cozy life with his son and his activist grandmother on their Seattle houseboat, and before she knows it, she's in love. With this boy who has lived through harder times than anyone she knows. This boy with a past.

Jade knows the situation is beyond complicated, but she hasn't felt this safe in a long time. She owes it all to Sebastian, her boy with the great heart. Her boy who is hiding a terrible secret. A secret that will force Jade to decide between what is right, and what feels right.

Master storyteller Deb Caletti has once again created characters so real, you will be breathless with anticipation as their riveting story unfolds.

Publishers Weekly

When 17-year-old Jade sees a curly-haired boy on a zoo Web camera—a boy with a baby on his back—she gets that "little feeling of knowing, this fuzzy, gnawing sense that someone will become a major something in your life." After she volunteers to work with the elephants, she meets and falls in love with Sebastian, and is quickly drawn into his complicated life—including his dangerous secret. Jade's life has its own complexities, such as a "missing in action" father, and a mother who is overly involved in Jade's high school. Caletti's (Wild Roses) multilayered novel interweaves many plot points; the fascinating anecdotes about animal behavior that begin each chapter ground the story, as does the guidance of Jade's gentle counselor. Some characters do not fully come alive, such as the brokenhearted elephant keeper Damian, who mourns the pachyderm he left behind in India. (Readers will likely take to Damian regardless, and appreciate his part in teaching Jade that she is like her name, "One of the strongest materials. Stronger than steel.") The author offers a rather unflinching look at realistically complicated lives; readers will root for Jade as she begins to learn that she can't "put things into separate compartments: right, wrong, good, bad"—especially when it comes to the people she loves. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)

Children's Literature

On the day her parents leave for a second honeymoon in Hawaii, Jade thinks she's going to die—her heart pounds painfully in her chest and she fights for breath—just before the macaroni and cheese dinner becomes history. Three years later, a high school senior, Jade is still taking medication for her anxiety/panic attacks, still seeing a psychologist, has learned some strategies to cope, but is still scared of lots of things, like going away to college. It calms her to watch the elephants on the zoo cam, where one day she sees the boy in the red coat with the baby in his backpack and she is hooked. Jade's own family is slowly coming apart as she becomes part of two new families—the elephant family at the zoo where she now volunteers, and the red-jacket boy's, which has to be kept a secret. This story of a young woman growing up, falling in love (with a boy, a baby, the elephants), and learning to renegotiate all the important relationships in her life is told with such heart and in such resonant language that the reader wants to meet and know these characters in real life. Jade struggles with some of the same troubling issues faced by other young adults, including peer pressure, parental demands, and her own fear and uncertainty about making the right decisions. Everything about this book is well done—character development, setting, pacing of the story, writing style—Caletti is a master of the art.

Children's Literature

Author of a National Book Award finalist (Honey, Baby, Sweetheart), Deb Caletti unites the unique and the commonplace in her latest coming-of-age novel. Jade DeLuna struggles to navigate the changing landscape of her relationships with her family and friends during her senior year of high school, while also dealing with panic disorder. This debilitating condition causes her to fear anything new and question her own instincts about what is good for her, and what is dangerous. To calm herself, she visits the zoo and becomes so fascinated by the elephants—and so disgusted with the smallness of her own life—she becomes a volunteer at the elephant house. Thus begins Jade's education in animal behavior, and she gradually forms bonds with both the elephants and the people who work at the zoo. When she meets Sebastian, a young father raising his son alone, Jade's heart wars with her head as she learns how complicated life can be in spite of her caution. With intelligent yet emotion-drenched prose, Caletti expertly weaves a story of humor and pathos featuring a cast of unforgettable, multi-faceted human and animal characters. Along the way, she offers gentle lessons in compassion, growth, and change, and the power of love in its many forms.

VOYA

Panic attacks are what Jade DeLuna knows best, although medication and an understanding therapist have recently helped her to cope more successfully. Because she has always found elephants relaxing, she spends her more anxious moments gazing at the elephants at the local zoo on their Web cam. She observes a young man, noting that he visits often, sometimes with a toddler in a backpack and often late at night, without him. Jade feels that she needs to meet him, so she decides to volunteer at the zoo in the elephant enclosure. She is an immediate success with both the elephant trainer and the elephants because of her gentle nature, and she meets Sebastian and Bo, the boy and the toddler. Soon Jade learns that Sebastian's life is very complicated, maybe too complicated for someone trying to overcome anxiety disorder. But as Jade discovers, sometimes love takes a person in directions one might never have anticipated. Caletti masterfully creates her character and setting with highly crafted, straight-to-the heart prose. Jade, unsure of herself and her feelings except when she is interacting with the elephants, is someone whom teen readers will recognize. This interaction anchors the book and Jade's increasing confidence and comfort with the world. Sensitive readers will deeply connect with Sebastian's love for his son, Jade's love for the elephants, and the loss of love that her parents are experiencing. Caletti is not for every reader, but the right readers will feel every word in this book.

KLIATT

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, January, 2007: Caletti, author of carefully written YA novels such as Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, a finalist for the National Book Award, gives us an unusual story about a brilliant teenager named Jade, a senior in high school. Part of the nature of Jade is that she suffers from debilitating panic attacks, helped by medication, but baffling and confusing. One of her coping mechanisms is to focus on the web cam coverage of the elephant house at the local zoo, keeping watch over the marvelous creatures. Eventually she volunteers at the zoo and bonds with the elephant keeper, Damian Rama. As Jade monitors the web cam from her own room and also spends time with the elephants at the zoo, she notices that a young man with a small child frequently comes to observe the elephants. Eventually Jade meets Sebastian and his little son and their friendship turns into a love affair. But, Sebastian is hiding a secret that will change their plans for the future, and the secret raises ethical considerations that are difficult to resolve. To meet these challenges, Jade needs to overcome her own fears and allow herself to take some risks. In telling about Jade and Sebastian, Caletti pushes her readers to consider these same moral choices, and perhaps to realize that sometimes there are no correct answers in life. In and around the story about humans is the story of the elephants, especially Jum, a young elephant who was left behind in Asia by Damian Rama, the elephant keeper, who says to Jade, "When you raise an animal, you love it like your own child. I know her thoughts, her needs. She wonders where I am, and I can't bear it." So Damian, likeSebastian, leaves Jade to care for a small creature he loves. But Damian reassures her, "You are not vulnerable any more…you are living up to your name." And Damian Rama is right: Jade is stronger, and when spring comes in a new year, she can finally conquer her own fear of change. Reviewer: Claire Rosser

School Library Journal

Gr 9 & Up - Seventeen-year-old Jade DeLuna suffers from panic attacks brought on by realizations of her own mortality. In addition to therapy and prescribed medication, she finds relief from her condition by taking care of elephants at a local zoo in Seattle. When she meets Sebastian, a handsome boy with a 15-month-old son, she falls in love with him and becomes immersed in his world. In addition to dealing with her anxiety and keeping her relationship with Sebastian secret, Jade must also come to terms with her parents' deteriorating marriage, her friends drifting apart, and an A.P.-heavy course load. Told from her perspective, the novel contains intense passages about loneliness, death, and human relationships intercut with seemingly factual information about the physical and emotional lives of elephants. Frequent remarks about the similarities between humans and animals often feel redundant, and the plot is more entertaining than Jade's animal anecdotes. Despite this, the novel takes on an interesting perspective that is not often shown in books-that teen parents can form meaningful and loving relationships with their peers.-Marie C. Hansen, New York Public Library

Kirkus Reviews

For Jade, prone to panic attacks that consume her, watching the elephant cam from the nearby zoo offers peace. But when she becomes smitten with a boy she sees also watching the elephants, Jade finds herself shaken out of her complacent and often narrow life. As she cleans elephant feet and learns valuable lessons from the head keeper about love and family, Jade continues watching for the boy. When she meets him, a lovely romance ensues-until Sebastian's past (and the mother of his young son) comes forward to complicate things. Suddenly, Jade must take control of herself and make some difficult decisions. Smart, engaging (and occasionally awkward) first-person narration, genuinely complex relationships and strong secondary characters (Sebastian's activist grandmother; Jade's falling-apart parents) combine to make this a sure hit for fans of Sarah Dessen. The naturalist element evident in the zoo scenes is an added and original bonus. All in all, a pleasure. (Fiction. YA)

Product Details

• ISBN: 1416910069
  
• ISBN-13: 9781416910060
• Format: Paperback, 288pp
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
• Pub. Date: March 2008
• Edition Description: Reprint
• Sales Rank: 23,105
• Age Range: Young Adult

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Chapter One

Humans may watch animals, but animals also watch humans. The Australian Lyrebird not only observes humans, but from its forest perch, imitates them, as well. It's been known to make the sound of trains, horns, motors, alarms, and even chainsaws...

-- Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

When you live one and a half blocks away from a zoo like I do, you can hear the baboons screeching after it gets dark. It can scare the crap out of you when you're not used to it, as I found out one night right after we moved in. I thought a woman was being strangled. I actually screamed, and my mom came running in my room and so did my dad, wearing these hideous boxers with Santas on them, which meant he'd gotten to the bottom of his underwear drawer. Even Oliver stumbled in, half asleep in his football pajamas, with his eyes squinched from the light my parents flicked on.

The conversation went something like this:

Dad: God, Jade. Zoo animals! Baboons, for Christ's sake.

Mom: I knew we should never have moved to the city.

Oliver (peering at Dad with a dazed expression): Isn't it August?

I was told once, though, that we really would have something to fear if there ever were a big earthquake, like they're always saying is going to happen at any moment here in Seattle. Then we'd be living in the most dangerous part of the city. See, all the electrical fences are, well, electrical, and so if the power went out for any length of time there'd be lions and tigers (and bears, oh my) running loose, panicked and hungry. You hear a lot of false facts around the zoo -- you've got the husbands incorrectlycorrecting wives ("No, ha ha. Only the males have tusks, honey"), and you've got those annoying eight-year-olds you can find at nearly any exhibit, who know entirely too much about mole rats, for example, and who can't wait for the chance to insert their superior knowledge into any overheard conversation ("Actually, those teeth are his incisors, and they're used for protection against his greatest enemy, the rufous-beaked snake"). But this bit of frightening trivia came from one of the Woodland Park zookeepers, so I knew it was true.

That's one of the reasons I have the live zoo webcam on in my room to begin with, and why I see the boy that day. I don't mean I keep it on to be on alert for disaster or anything like that, but because I find it calming to watch the elephants. I also take this medicine that sometimes revs me up a little at night, and they're good company when no one else is awake. Besides, elephants are just cool. They've got all the range of human emotion, from jealousy and love to rage and depression and playfulness. They have one-night stands and then kick the guy out. They get pissed off at their friends and relatives or the people who care for them, and hold a grudge until they get a sincere apology. They are there for each other during all the phases of their lives. A baby is born, and they help it into the world, trumpeting and stamping their feet in celebration. A family member dies, and they bury the body with sticks and then mourn with terrible cries, sometimes returning years later to revisit the bones and touch them lovingly with their trunks. They're just this group of normally abnormal creatures going through the ups and downs of life with big hearts, mood swings, and huge, swingy-assed togetherness.

When we moved into our brick townhouse in Hawthorne Square by the zoo during my first year of high school, I had this plan that I'd go there every day to watch the gorillas and take notes about their behavior. I'd notice things no one else had, make some amazing discovery. I had this romantic idea of being Diane Fossey/Jane Goodall/Joy Adamson. I liked the idea of bouncy, open-air Jeeps and I liked the outfits with all the pockets, only I didn't really want to live in Africa and be shot by poachers/get malaria/get stabbed to death. Bars between gorillas and me sounded reasonable.

I went over to the zoo and brought this little foldout chair Dad used for all of Oliver's soccer and baseball and basketball games, and I sat and watched the gorillas a few times. The only problem was, it felt more like they were watching me. They gave me the creeps. The male was the worst. His name is Vip, which sounds like some breezy nickname a bunch of Ivy Leaguers might give their jock buddy, but Vip was more like those freaky men you see at the downtown bus stops. The ones who silently watch you walk past and whose eyes you can still feel on you a block later. Vip would hold this stalk of bark in his Naugahyde hand, chewing slowly, keeping his gaze firmly on me. I'd move, and just his eyes would follow me, same as those paintings in haunted-house movies. If that wasn't bad enough, Vip was also involved in a tempestuous love triangle. A while back, Vip got gorilla Amanda pregnant, and when she lost the baby, he ditched her for Jumoke. He got her pregnant too, and after Jumoke had the baby, Amanda went nuts and stole it and the authorities had to intervene. It was like a bad episode of All My Primates.

So I moved on to the elephants, and as soon as I saw Chai and baby Hansa and Bamboo and Tombi and Flora, I couldn't get enough of them. Baby Hansa's goofy fluff of hair is enough to hook you all by itself. They are all just so peaceful and funny that they get into your heart. When you look in their eyes, you see sweet thoughts. And then there's Onyx, too, of course. One notched ear, somber face. Always off by herself in a way that makes you feel sad for her.

I didn't even need the little soccer chair, because there's a nice bench right by the elephants. I went once a week for a few months, but after a while I got busy with school and it was winter, and so I decided to just watch them from home most of the time. There are two live webcams for the elephants, one inside the elephant house and one in their outdoor environment, so even when the elephants were brought in at night, I could see them. Twenty-four hours a day, the cam is on, for the pachyderm obsessed. I got in the habit of just leaving the screen up when I wasn't using my computer to write a paper or to IM my friends. Now I switch back and forth between the cams so I can always see what's going on, even if the gang is just standing around sleeping.

I never did really write anything in my "research notebook" (how embarrassing -- I even wrote that on the front); making some great discovery about elephant behavior kind of went in the big-ideas-that-fizzled-out department of my brain. But the elephants got to be a regular part of my life. Watching them isn't always thrilling and action packed, but I don't care. See, what I really like is that no matter what high-stress thing is going on in my world or in the world as a whole (Christmas, SATs, natural disasters, plane crashes, having to give a speech and being worried to death I might puke), there are the elephants, doing their thing. Just being themselves. Eating, walking around. They aren't having Christmas, or giving a speech, or stressing over horrible things in the news. They're just having another regular elephant day. Not worrying, only being.

That's why the elephant site is up on my computer right then, when I see the boy. I am stretched out on my bed and the elephants are cruising around on the screen, but I'm not even really watching them. My room's on the second floor of our townhouse, and if you lie there and look out the window, all you see is sky -- this square of glass filled with moving sky, like a cloud lava lamp. Sometimes it's pink and orange and purples, unreal colors, and other times it's backlit white cotton candy, and other times it's just a sea of slow-moving monochrome. I'm just lying there thinking lazy, hazy cloudlike thoughts when I sit up and the computer catches my eye. The outdoor cam is on, which includes a view of the elephants' sprawling natural habitat. Chai is there with baby Hansa, and they are both rooting around in a pile of hay. But what I see is a flash of color, red, and I stop, same as a fish stops at the flash of a lure underwater.

The red -- it's a jacket. A boy's jacket. When the outdoor cam is on, you can see part of the viewing area, too, and the people walking through it. At first it's this great big voyeuristic thrill to realize you can see people who are right there, right then, people who are unaware that you're watching them from your bedroom. There's probably even some law that the zoo is breaking that they don't know about. But trust me, the people get boring soon enough. It's like when you read blogs and you get this snooping-in-diaries kind of rush, until you realize that all they talk about is how they should write more often. People's patterns of behavior are so predictable. At the zoo, they stay in front of the elephants for about twelve seconds, point to different things, take a photo, move on. The most excitement you get is some kid trying to climb over the fence or couples who are obviously arguing.

But this time, the red jacket compels me to watch. And I see this guy, and he has a baby in a backpack. The thing is, he's young. He can't be more than a year or two older than I am, although I'm pathetic at guessing age, height, and distance, and still can't grasp the how-many-quarts-in-a-liter type question, in spite of the fact that I'm usually a neurotic overachiever. So maybe he's not so young, but I'm sure he is. And that brings up a bunch of questions: Is he babysitting this kid? Is it his huge-age-difference brother? It can't be his, can it?

The boy turns sideways so that the baby can see the elephants better. Baby? Or would you call him a toddler? I can't tell -- somewhere in between, maybe. The boy is talking to the baby, I can see. The baby looks happy. Here is what I notice. There is an ease between them, a calm, same as with zebras grazing in a herd, or swallows flying in a neat triangle. Nature has given them a rightness with each other.

My friend Hannah, who I've known since I first moved to Seattle, would say I am interested in the boy on the screen only because he's cute. Hannah, though, seemed to wake up one day late in junior year with a guy obsession so intense that it transformed her from this reasonable, sane person into a male-seeking missile. God, sorry if this is crude, but she had begun to remind me of those baboons that flaunt their red butts around when they're in heat. Talking to her lately, it goes like this:

Me: How did you do on the test? I couldn't think of anything to write on that second essay question.

Hannah: God, Jason Espanero is hot.

Me: I don't think it's fair to give an essay question based on a footnote no one even read.

Hannah: He must work out.

Me: I heard on the news that a fiery comet is about to crash into the earth and kill us all sometime this afternoon.

Hannah: He's just got the sweetest ass.

It is true that the guy on the screen's cute -- tousled, curly brown hair, tall and thin, shy-looking -- but that's not what keeps me watching. What keeps me there are the questions, his story. It's The Airport Game: Who are those people in those seats over there? Why are they going to San Francisco? Are they married? She's reading a poetry book, he's writing in a journal. Married literature professors? Writers? Weekend fling?

The boy doesn't take a photo and move on. Already, he is not following a predictable path. He stands there for a long time. The baby wears this blue cloth hat with a brim over his little blond head. The boy leans down over the rail, crosses his arms in front of himself. The baby likes this, pats the boy's head, though the boy is probably leaning only to relieve the weight of the backpack. The boy watches Hansa and Chai, and then Hansa wanders off. Still, he stands with his arms crossed, staring and thinking. What is on his mind? His too-youthful marriage? His nephew/brother on his back? The college courses he is taking in between the nanny job?

Finally, the boy stands straight again. Arches his back to stretch. I realize I have just done the same, as if I can feel the weight of that backpack. You pass a bunch of people in a day -- people in their cars, in the grocery store, waiting for their coffee at an espresso stand. You look at apartment buildings and streets, the comings and goings, elevators crawling up and down, and each person has their own story going on right then, with its cast of characters; they've got their own frustrations and their happiness and the things they're looking forward to and dreading. And sometimes you wonder if you've crossed paths with any of them before without knowing it, or will one day cross their path again. But sometimes, too, you have this little feeling of knowing, this fuzzy, gnawing sense that someone will become a major something in your life. You just know that theirs will be a life you will enter and become part of. I feel that sense, that knowing, when I look at this boy and this baby. It is a sense of the significant.

He stands and the baby does something that makes me laugh. He grabs a chunk of the boy's hair in each of his hands, yanks the boy's head back. Man, that has to hurt. Oh, ouch. But the baby thinks it is a real crack-up, and starts to laugh. He puts his open mouth down to the boy's head in some baby version of a kiss.

The boy's head is tilted to the sky. He reaches his arms back and unclenches the baby's fingers from his hair. But once he is free, he keeps his chin pointed up, just keeps staring up above. He watches the backlit cotton candy clouds in a lava-lamp sky, and it is then I am sure this is a story I'll be part of.Copyright © 2007 by Deb Caletti

Read a Sample Chapter

The Nature of Jade

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing

Humans may watch animals, but animals also watch humans. The Australian Lyrebird not only observes humans, but from its forest perch, imitates them, as well. It's been known to make the sound of trains, horns, motors, alarms, and even chainsaws...

-- Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

When you live one and a half blocks away from a zoo like I do, you can hear the baboons screeching after it gets dark. It can scare the crap out of you when you're not used to it, as I found out one night right after we moved in. I thought a woman was being strangled. I actually screamed, and my mom came running in my room and so did my dad, wearing these hideous boxers with Santas on them, which meant he'd gotten to the bottom of his underwear drawer. Even Oliver stumbled in, half asleep in his football pajamas, with his eyes squinched from the light my parents flicked on.

The conversation went something like this:

Dad: God, Jade. Zoo animals! Baboons, for Christ's sake.

Mom: I knew we should never have moved to the city.

Oliver (peering at Dad with a dazed expression): Isn't it August?

I was told once, though, that we really would have something to fearif there ever were a big earthquake, like they're always saying is going to happen at any moment here in Seattle. Then we'd be living in the most dangerous part of the city. See, all the electrical fences are, well, electrical, and so if the power went out for any length of time there'd be lions and tigers (and bears, oh my) running loose, panicked and hungry. You hear a lot of false facts around the zoo -- you've got the husbands incorrectly correcting wives ("No, ha ha. Only the males have tusks, honey"), and you've got those annoying eight-year-olds you can find at nearly any exhibit, who know entirely too much about mole rats, for example, and who can't wait for the chance to insert their superior knowledge into any overheard conversation ("Actually, those teeth are his incisors, and they're used for protection against his greatest enemy, the rufous-beaked snake"). But this bit of frightening trivia came from one of the Woodland Park zookeepers, so I knew it was true.

That's one of the reasons I have the live zoo webcam on in my room to begin with, and why I see the boy that day. I don't mean I keep it on to be on alert for disaster or anything like that, but because I find it calming to watch the elephants. I also take this medicine that sometimes revs me up a little at night, and they're good company when no one else is awake. Besides, elephants are just cool. They've got all the range of human emotion, from jealousy and love to rage and depression and playfulness. They have one-night stands and then kick the guy out. They get pissed off at their friends and relatives or the people who care for them, and hold a grudge until they get a sincere apology. They are there for each other during all the phases of their lives. A baby is born, and they help it into the world, trumpeting and stamping their feet in celebration. A family member dies, and they bury the body with sticks and then mourn with terrible cries, sometimes returning years later to revisit the bones and touch them lovingly with their trunks. They're just this group of normally abnormal creatures going through the ups and downs of life with big hearts, mood swings, and huge, swingy-assed togetherness.

When we moved into our brick townhouse in Hawthorne Square by the zoo during my first year of high school, I had this plan that I'd go there every day to watch the gorillas and take notes about their behavior. I'd notice things no one else had, make some amazing discovery. I had this romantic idea of being Diane Fossey/Jane Goodall/Joy Adamson. I liked the idea of bouncy, open-air Jeeps and I liked the outfits with all the pockets, only I didn't really want to live in Africa and be shot by poachers/get malaria/get stabbed to death. Bars between gorillas and me sounded reasonable.

I went over to the zoo and brought this little foldout chair Dad used for all of Oliver's soccer and baseball and basketball games, and I sat and watched the gorillas a few times. The only problem was, it felt more like they were watching me. They gave me the creeps. The male was the worst. His name is Vip, which sounds like some breezy nickname a bunch of Ivy Leaguers might give their jock buddy, but Vip was more like those freaky men you see at the downtown bus stops. The ones who silently watch you walk past and whose eyes you can still feel on you a block later. Vip would hold this stalk of bark in his Naugahyde hand, chewing slowly, keeping his gaze firmly on me. I'd move, and just his eyes would follow me, same as those paintings in haunted-house movies. If that wasn't bad enough, Vip was also involved in a tempestuous love triangle. A while back, Vip got gorilla Amanda pregnant, and when she lost the baby, he ditched her for Jumoke. He got her pregnant too, and after Jumoke had the baby, Amanda went nuts and stole it and the authorities had to intervene. It was like a bad episode of All My Primates.

So I moved on to the elephants, and as soon as I saw Chai and baby Hansa and Bamboo and Tombi and Flora, I couldn't get enough of them. Baby Hansa's goofy fluff of hair is enough to hook you all by itself. They are all just so peaceful and funny that they get into your heart. When you look in their eyes, you see sweet thoughts. And then there's Onyx, too, of course. One notched ear, somber face. Always off by herself in a way that makes you feel sad for her.

I didn't even need the little soccer chair, because there's a nice bench right by the elephants. I went once a week for a few months, but after a while I got busy with school and it was winter, and so I decided to just watch them from home most of the time. There are two live webcams for the elephants, one inside the elephant house and one in their outdoor environment, so even when the elephants were brought in at night, I could see them. Twenty-four hours a day, the cam is on, for the pachyderm obsessed. I got in the habit of just leaving the screen up when I wasn't using my computer to write a paper or to IM my friends. Now I switch back and forth between the cams so I can always see what's going on, even if the gang is just standing around sleeping.

I never did really write anything in my "research notebook" (how embarrassing -- I even wrote that on the front); making some great discovery about elephant behavior kind of went in the big-ideas-that-fizzled-out department of my brain. But the elephants got to be a regular part of my life. Watching them isn't always thrilling and action packed, but I don't care. See, what I really like is that no matter what high-stress thing is going on in my world or in the world as a whole (Christmas, SATs, natural disasters, plane crashes, having to give a speech and being worried to death I might puke), there are the elephants, doing their thing. Just being themselves. Eating, walking around. They aren't having Christmas, or giving a speech, or stressing over horrible things in the news. They're just having another regular elephant day. Not worrying, only being.

That's why the elephant site is up on my computer right then, when I see the boy. I am stretched out on my bed and the elephants are cruising around on the screen, but I'm not even really watching them. My room's on the second floor of our townhouse, and if you lie there and look out the window, all you see is sky -- this square of glass filled with moving sky, like a cloud lava lamp. Sometimes it's pink and orange and purples, unreal colors, and other times it's backlit white cotton candy, and other times it's just a sea of slow-moving monochrome. I'm just lying there thinking lazy, hazy cloudlike thoughts when I sit up and the computer catches my eye. The outdoor cam is on, which includes a view of the elephants' sprawling natural habitat. Chai is there with baby Hansa, and they are both rooting around in a pile of hay. But what I see is a flash of color, red, and I stop, same as a fish stops at the flash of a lure underwater.

The red -- it's a jacket. A boy's jacket. When the outdoor cam is on, you can see part of the viewing area, too, and the people walking through it. At first it's this great big voyeuristic thrill to realize you can see people who are right there, right then, people who are unaware that you're watching them from your bedroom. There's probably even some law that the zoo is breaking that they don't know about. But trust me, the people get boring soon enough. It's like when you read blogs and you get this snooping-in-diaries kind of rush, until you realize that all they talk about is how they should write more often. People's patterns of behavior are so predictable. At the zoo, they stay in front of the elephants for about twelve seconds, point to different things, take a photo, move on. The most excitement you get is some kid trying to climb over the fence or couples who are obviously arguing.

But this time, the red jacket compels me to watch. And I see this guy, and he has a baby in a backpack. The thing is, he's young. He can't be more than a year or two older than I am, although I'm pathetic at guessing age, height, and distance, and still can't grasp the how-many-quarts-in-a-liter type question, in spite of the fact that I'm usually a neurotic overachiever. So maybe he's not so young, but I'm sure he is. And that brings up a bunch of questions: Is he babysitting this kid? Is it his huge-age-difference brother? It can't be his, can it?

The boy turns sideways so that the baby can see the elephants better. Baby? Or would you call him a toddler? I can't tell -- somewhere in between, maybe. The boy is talking to the baby, I can see. The baby looks happy. Here is what I notice. There is an ease between them, a calm, same as with zebras grazing in a herd, or swallows flying in a neat triangle. Nature has given them a rightness with each other.

My friend Hannah, who I've known since I first moved to Seattle, would say I am interested in the boy on the screen only because he's cute. Hannah, though, seemed to wake up one day late in junior year with a guy obsession so intense that it transformed her from this reasonable, sane person into a male-seeking missile. God, sorry if this is crude, but she had begun to remind me of those baboons that flaunt their red butts around when they're in heat. Talking to her lately, it goes like this:

Me: How did you do on the test? I couldn't think of anything to write on that second essay question.

Hannah: God, Jason Espanero is hot.

Me: I don't think it's fair to give an essay question based on a footnote no one even read.

Hannah: He must work out.

Me: I heard on the news that a fiery comet is about to crash into the earth and kill us all sometime this afternoon.

Hannah: He's just got the sweetest ass.

It is true that the guy on the screen's cute -- tousled, curly brown hair, tall and thin, shy-looking -- but that's not what keeps me watching. What keeps me there are the questions, his story. It's The Airport Game: Who are those people in those seats over there? Why are they going to San Francisco? Are they married? She's reading a poetry book, he's writing in a journal. Married literature professors? Writers? Weekend fling?

The boy doesn't take a photo and move on. Already, he is not following a predictable path. He stands there for a long time. The baby wears this blue cloth hat with a brim over his little blond head. The boy leans down over the rail, crosses his arms in front of himself. The baby likes this, pats the boy's head, though the boy is probably leaning only to relieve the weight of the backpack. The boy watches Hansa and Chai, and then Hansa wanders off. Still, he stands with his arms crossed, staring and thinking. What is on his mind? His too-youthful marriage? His nephew/brother on his back? The college courses he is taking in between the nanny job?

Finally, the boy stands straight again. Arches his back to stretch. I realize I have just done the same, as if I can feel the weight of that backpack. You pass a bunch of people in a day -- people in their cars, in the grocery store, waiting for their coffee at an espresso stand. You look at apartment buildings and streets, the comings and goings, elevators crawling up and down, and each person has their own story going on right then, with its cast of characters; they've got their own frustrations and their happiness and the things they're looking forward to and dreading. And sometimes you wonder if you've crossed paths with any of them before without knowing it, or will one day cross their path again. But sometimes, too, you have this little feeling of knowing, this fuzzy, gnawing sense that someone will become a major something in your life. You just know that theirs will be a life you will enter and become part of. I feel that sense, that knowing, when I look at this boy and this baby. It is a sense of the significant.

He stands and the baby does something that makes me laugh. He grabs a chunk of the boy's hair in each of his hands, yanks the boy's head back. Man, that has to hurt. Oh, ouch. But the baby thinks it is a real crack-up, and starts to laugh. He puts his open mouth down to the boy's head in some baby version of a kiss.

The boy's head is tilted to the sky. He reaches his arms back and unclenches the baby's fingers from his hair. But once he is free, he keeps his chin pointed up, just keeps staring up above. He watches the backlit cotton candy clouds in a lava-lamp sky, and it is then I am sure this is a story I'll be part of.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Deb Caletti

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti Copyright © 2007 by Deb Caletti. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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