A Boy Called Bat: Chapters 1–8

“Bat” was what almost everyone called Bixby Alexander Tam, for a couple of reasons: first, because the initials of his name — B, A, and T — spelled Bat.
But there were maybe other reasons. Bat’s sensitive hearing, for one. He didn’t like loud sounds.

There was also the way he sometimes flapped his hands, when he was nervous or excited or thinking about something interesting. Some of the kids at school seemed to think that was hilarious.

In the rest of their small house, Bat’s mom and sister knew to put anything that needed to go to Bat’s room in one of three baskets: his clean laundry basket, his book basket, and his miscellaneous stuff basket.

Mom was a veterinarian, which was what Bat intended to be, too, one day.

His room always made him feel better. It had a roll-down bamboo window shade and a fine closet full of shelves and a pull-out trundle in case someday a friend came to spend the night.

Bat felt like looking through his animal encyclopedia, which he often did after school, so he pulled it down from the bookshelf and dropped comfortably onto his beanbag.

Bat asked, “Did you go to the grocery store and get more vanilla yogurt?”
“I didn’t have time,” Mom said.
That was the last straw. Mom was late and Bat was worried and now NO VANILLA YOGURT.

Bat watched as Mom shifted the towel in her arms. A nose peeked out — a tiny pink nose — and then two slanted-closed eyes, a forehead covered in downy fuzz, little ears still curled tight against its head.

“It’s a kit,” Bat said, enchanted by the tiny creature, wanting so badly to hold it. “A baby skunk.”

Bat realized that he didn’t know a lot about skunks. He knew they sprayed a stinky smell to protect themselves, and he knew they were mammals, and he knew they were omnivores because they ate bugs and smaller animals and plants, too.

“What a good little baby,” Mom crooned, pressing more formula into his mouth.

“We can help raise the kit this month as a family, as long as you keep on doing all the regular stuff, too. School and Dad’s and homework and everything. If the skunk kit is too big of a distraction, then I can get Laurence to take him home in the evenings.”

There were sixteen eyelets on each of his shoes, Bat counted. Eight on the left side, eight on the right side. That made thirty-two eyelets.

Mr. Grayson knew that Bat didn’t like to get wet, so even though the Saw Whet school philosophy said that students should go outside rain or shine or snow, he asked Bat, “Would you like to spend recess helping me clean Babycakes’s enclosure?”

“Probably Israel was just being nice,” Bat interjected, “to make you feel better about bringing cream cheese sandwiches to school every day. He probably didn’t really want your sandwich.”