Love & Care

Chapter 11

To get to the street I had to walk over the parking lot. Tons of students ran to the cars of their parents or to the busses that were parked on the other side.
I continued to walk on the side walk when I suddenly heard someone call.
"Alex." I didn't turn around as it was a quite common name and I was more than sure that it wasn't meant.
"Alexandra." I stopped and turned my head a bit. This name didn't include all of the boys named Alex. But I didn't see anyone who seemed to be looking at me.
"Sunshine." I heard someone yell. No I turned around completely. Very far in the back there was a familiar car and a small brunette waving.
Was that Selena? Why was she here?  I started to walk in the direction and she stopped waving but I was pretty sure that it was her.
I reached the car and Selena smiled at me. "Hey Sunshine." For the first time that day I smiled.
Before she gave me any indication that she wanted to hug me I hugged her hiding my face in her neck.
I felt her putting her arms around me and drawing circles on my back. Just like I thought during lunchtime I felt safe.
"Is everything alright sunshine?" She still held me. I nodded on her shoulder. "Yeah. I just have a bad day and really needed a hug." I mumbled back. Still not wanting to let go of her. "Oh I'm sorry to hear that sunshine." She gave me kiss on the forehead before slowly pulling away. Her arms still around my waist. "Are you better now?" I nodded.
"Good. Now come on we've had an idea what to do today." She said while opening the door to the back of the car and climbing in herself before pulling me to sit next to her.
"Hey Alex." "Hey Taylor. How did you know I'm here and when school ends?" Selena handed me my homework book. We got it in the beginning of the school year from the school and it had the schools logo on it and of course my timetable.
"You forgot it in my room yesterday. Didn't you miss it today?" Selena asked. I shook my head. "Thanks for bringing it to me." "Now where do your sisters go to school? Let's pick them up." Taylor said from the front.
"Uhm Laylas school is right down the street." Taylor nodded and started to drive. Not even two minutes later we stopped in front of Laylas school. I wanted to get out and get her but Taylor was faster than me. "I'll get her."
She got out of the car and looked around the parking lot before waving someone.
I saw Layla coming over. She was smiling and Taylor hugged her before both of them got in the car. Both of them in the front.
"Hey Layla." Both Selena and I greeted her. "Hey Sel, hey lexi." She smiled at both of us.
"How was your day?" I asked just like we always did.
"Good I got an A on my class test in spanish and an B+ in math." I smiled at her really proud.
"I'm so proud of you."
"Me too." Taylor said and Selena nodded smiling. "Where can we find our little princess?" Taylor said looking at us.
"You drive at the next option right and than down the street. It's the colorful house. She'll probably wait already." Layla said.
Taylor started driving while I felt Selena putting an arm around me. I put my head on her shoulder and she started to play with my hair.
We held in front of Maya's Kindergarden. "I'll get her" Layla said and got of the car. Taylor got out as well and got something out of the trunk before walking to the door on Selena's other side.
An booster seat. In pink of course. Maya's going to love it. "You didn't have to buy one." I mumbled against Selena. "I have the feeling that we will spend a lot of time together and it's safer for her." She said quiet while continuing to stroke my hair.
Eventhough she didn't know what happened she comforted me so much.
Taylor had finished setting the boaster seat up and Maya and Layla were walking towards the car together.
"Come here princess." Taylor opened her arms and hugged Maya before sitting her down in the boaster seat and buckling her in.
"What's this?" Maya looked irritated. "It's a boaster seat princess it's to make sure you're safe when we're driving." Maya nodded and kept quiet. If she had something about the fact that she never had seen one of those things that wouldn't have been good.
Now that we all were sitting in the car buckeled up Layla spoke up.
"Where are we going?" Taylor smiled. "It's a surprise. We figured you'd have the afternoon off Alex as nothing was mentioned in your homework book. So we decided to spend the day with you three and do something fun." "And how long will we drive?"
"About 45 minutes." Taylor answered her.
"Can we play music?" Maya asked from the back and soon enough music filled the car which led to everyone in the car except me and the brunette next to me singing along. She'd just continued to play with my hair and hold me as if she knew that I needed it.
Somehow I fell asleep and woke up from Selena shaking me a bit. "Sunshine we are almost there wake up." I sat up suddenly feeling cold because I wasn't in Selenas arms anymore.
I brought my hands up to my face and rubbed my eyes. "Did you have a nice nap?" She asked with a small smile. I nodded. "Thanks for letting me sleep and I'm sorry I fell asleep on you." "Don't apologize sunshine. First of all you needed the sleep and I didn't mind. Second you were really adorable." I blushed at this making her smile wider.
"Look out guys. Maybe you can guess where we are going." Taylor said making all of us look outside. On our right side there was a lot of green. Like a park or something but with a really big fence to separate it from the street. Then we came to a parking lot and there was a gate with two pyramids.
Nashville Zoo at Grasmere
"You're taking us to the zoo?" Layla asked them.
"Yep." Taylor said while turning the motor off.
"Whats a zoo?" Maya asked. Selena smiled sadly. "It's a place where you can see a lot of animals." I explained to her my mind was still sleepy but I knew I didn't have the money with me to pay.
"But I don't have money with me." I said making both Selena and Taylor laugh. "We basically kidnapped you guys. You think we'd let you pay." Taylor asked smiling.
"Thank you." I mumbled looking down.
Together the five us walked to the entry and Taylor paid for us. Inside the zoo there immediately were two bird territoires.
One of them belonged to a blue bird called hyacinth macaw. A type of parrot and the other one the Stanley crane.
The macaws were really cool. Maya loved that they were blue.
"They look like flying smurfs." She explained while we continued walking.
She was jumping up and down as we walked further into the park. To our left there were islands with white monkey like animals. Layla had sprinted forward to read the information.
"Those are Gibbons." She said excited.
She read to the rest of us. Well mostly Maya as she was trying to read what was written on the information board.
"Gibbons are not monkeys, but are considered lesser apes due in part to their lack of a tail and ability to walk bipedally on their back legs. Gibbons move through the trees by a process called brachiation which involves swinging using only their arms. Gibbons live in a family unit of an adult male and female and their offspring. The adult female is the dominant member of the group. White-cheeked gibbons are born blonde to camouflage with their mother and then turn black as juveniles. Females finally turn back to a blonde color at sexual maturity while the males stay black. So they are no monkeys. Do you think there are monkeys here?" She looked at Taylor who had the map in her hand. "Yes there are. Do you like monkeys?" Layla nodded. "They are my favourite animals."
Selena had picked Maya up so she could have a better look at the Gibbons.
"What are your favourite animals?" She asked Maya and me. "Cats. Do you think we'll see big cats?" Maya asked her with big eyes and Selena nodded.
"I like birds especially owls." I answered still looking at the animals in front of us.
On our right there was a playground called Jungle Gym and as soon as Selena had put Maya down she raced towards it so I tried to jog after her. With the little problem that my lower abdomen still hurt and even walking meant a lot of pain so running not so good, but luckily noone noticed my pain.
"It's okay let her okay we'll just sit down in the small imbiss next to it and eat something." Selena said and put an arm around me.
"You don't have to invite us for food. We had lunch." She shrugged and pulled me with her to the imbiss.
"What do you want?" She asked me.
I just shrugged. "I'll take a hot chocolate." She said and Taylor who walked with Layla nodded. "Me too. Layla do you want something?" "Can I have a hot chocolate as well?" Selena nodded. "I guess we'll get one for Maya too. Have you settled on something or should I just order five hot chocolates?" I nodded making her sigh but she went up to the counter and ordered anyway.
We sat down at on of the tables. Luckily they had blankets laying on the chairs so I curled myself up in the blanket.
"I'll get Maya." Layla said when the waitress brought the hot chocolate she ran to the playground where sister was playing and came back with her.
When they arrived we all started drinking our hot chocolate.
After we finished we went to were according to the map the historical Grasmere house &farm was. On our way there was a carousel. As soon as Maya saw it she looked first excited than guilty and lastly sad.
"What's up princess?" Taylor said and picked her up.
"Nothin'" she hid her face in Taylors neck. "Do you want to ride the carousel?" Taylor asked her. She shook her head. "Are you sure? I'm sure that there's a Pegasus that looks for a princess to ride on it." She was right one of the things on the carousel was a white Pegasus with wings. Maya looked up her eyes searching for the winged horse when she found it she smiled a bit before it fell a bit.
"But I don't have money." Maya said before curling up in Taylors arm.
"I think every princess should have the chance to ride on a Pegasus so come on let's go." She walked to the carousel with Maya and talked to the man on the counter before setting Maya down. She immediately sprinted to the Pegasus.
"Layla do you want to? Sorry Alex you're to old according to their rules." She said looking at me and my sister. Layla hestiated but nodded. She climbed on the elephant and soon after the ride started.
Taylor started taking pictures everytime we could see them.
"Thank you for doing this." I said looking at my laughing sisters.
"We've never been at a zoo and I've never had the money to take them to fair or let them ride a carousel."
"It's alright Lexi." She answered taking me by surprise, because the only persons calling me this name were my sisters and Jason.
When the carousel stopped Maya ran towards us. "Did you see it. I flew on a Pegasus. Did you see it?" Hey eyes were sparkling and her smile was bigger than ever before.
Now that the ride was finished we went to the farm animals like sheep's and some kind of cows. Maya enjoyed that all of the sheep's had names and she tried to tell them apart before we started to walk the small way from the carousel back. From the carousel we went left and went to the 'africa area'. We first saw hogs. But none of us liked them so we quickly went our way.
Next were the rhinoceros. Maya liked them and asked Taylor to take picture which she of course did and than came the giraffes.
"They are soooo tall. Why are they so tall Lexi?" Maya looked at me. "They eat the leaves from the high branches on the trees so they need long necks to reach them." She nodded and turned back to the animals. "Do you think you can ride a giraffe?" She suddenly asked. "I don't know May. But maybe we can look the next time when we are in the library." She nodded again.
"Let's go I think we're close to the Tigers." Layla said. We took a different way and walked past zebras, ostrich's and antelopes.
"Hey May. Did you know that antelopes are really, really fast?" She shook her head. "But cheetahs are faster right?" She looked at me. "Yes they are the fastest animals on land." I smiled at my baby sister.
Next came the meerkats. Both Taylor and Selena took pictures. One of the meerkats, probably a scout, was looking around and changing its position every view seconds so it looked like it was actually enjoying the photoshoot.
"Maybe it's a model?" Layla said laughing. Taylor grinned "I'll name her Karlie." Selena started laughing but the three of us didn't get the joke.
"Karlie is a friend of ours. She works as a model." Taylor explained between two laughing fits.
While they were still laughing we went to were the kangeroos were.
"Look one has it's baby in the bag." Layla pointed to one of the kangeroos excited. And she was right. There was a cute kangeroo baby looking out of the bag.
We stayed to look at the kangeroos for a while.
On the ground in front of the enclosure were boxes were you could hop from on to another of course we all took our turn playing kangeroo.
We continued our way to the turtles.
"Just like in a Turtles Tale." Layla said and I nodded.
We had seen the movie with our granny in the cinema around 7 or 8, years ago.
"There are Tigers. Can we go there now?" Maya was jumping up and down. Five minutes later we were sitting on a bench and looking through glass at beautiful tigers.
Maya was standing as near as possible. "They are so big and beautiful." She was amazed by them.
"Can we keep one?" She asked looking at me.
I shook my head laughing at her.
"No May. I don't think a tiger is an appropriate pet." "But Jasmine had a tiger." She said. Taylor started laughing. "Maybe you should talk to Jasmine about that sometime." Maya nodded.
"I guess I should."
"Guys I think we should go it's getting cold." Layla said rubbing her arms and we nodded. "Come May. Let's go."
"Bye Tiger."
We walked down Maya hopping in front of us happily when we came to Pudu enclosure. While we were reading the information Maya and Selena went over to the next animals.
"Guys it's alligators." Maya said running back to us and while Layla and her ran back to Selena, Taylor and I walked slowly to them.
"They haven't been this happy and excited for a while." I said to her.
"Lexi I told it's alright. Don't think about thanking me or Selena again. We wanted to do this. We want to see you guys happy and we got a bunch of cute pictures." She said showing me a picture of Maya on the Pegasus and one were Layla and Maya tried playing kangeroo mother and baby while jumping from the boxes painted on the ground.
I smiled at this. "They are so adorable." Taylor nodded. "But you are just as adorable." She said grinning and showing me a picture me carrying Maya like a baby kaola and one were I was asleep on Selena in the car. I blushed making her laugh.
"Look the alligators. They are so cool." Maya seemed to like pretty much every animal we passed. She may have loved the Tigers but all of the others were just as good.
We were lucky to be in time for the feeding so we actually got a few good pictures and saw them moving a lot.
The next thing we entered was a house called 'Expedition Peru: Trek of the Andean Bear'. In the enclosure were Andean bears, Cotton Top Tamarins and a small extra enclosure for guinea-pigs.
It was quite warm in the building so we stayed for a bit looking at the animals.
Somehow Maya convinced one of the workers to let her pet on of the guinea-pigs. So after playing a bit with the guinea-pigs we left the warm house again to finish our round through the zoo.
We walked through something called bamboo path. Where we saw a lot of lemurs much to Laylas pleasure and there was a small house where you could both see the red panda and a clouded leopard. The leopard let Maya to jump up and down and almost falling over cause he was really near to the glass.
After we passed the last lemur of this part we came to the cougars. Maya ran towards the enclosure.
She was to small and couldn't see anything due to the height of the wall.
When we arrived I simply picked her up so she could look over the wall at the animals.
"I think the monkeys are the next." Layla said her eyes were sparkling and she seemed really excited.
When we had almost reached the monkey enclosure we saw a worker standing there next to a box with climbing harnesses.
"Anyone wants to climb over to the monkey house?" Layla went over and talked to him than she came back.
"It's free. Lex can we do it?" I sighed. "If the others are okay with it." Taylor and Selena were beaming. "Go I want pictures of you climbing with the monkeys." Taylor grinned.
"I want to." Maya said pouting. "Maya you're to little. Your hands won't reach the rope." I explained which left her pouting. "What do you think we'll go look at the monkeys while your sisters balance on the rope and Taylor takes pictures. Maybe you'll see them." Selena picked the pouting kid up and started walking to the monkey enclosure.
Layla and I went back to the guy.
"Here are harnesses you just click them in there." He showed us on Laylas harness. "And than you just balance on the rope to the other side."
Luckily there was a rope for the hands on one side. He clicked Layla into the safety rope. Seemingly a wire rope.
She took a step on the rope and grabbed the rope. After she made five steps he clicked me in and I started following her.
When we had reached the middle I could hear Taylor yell.
"Can you stay there and look over here?" We both looked at her. I took one of my hands of the ropes for the hand and put it behind Laylas back. She did the same.
"She's acting like a crazy mom or aunt." Layla mumbled. I nodded but continued to smile.
After a bit she gave us a thumbs up and we continued our way to the other side.
When I reached the platform the man had already walked over and clicked Layla out before taking her harness.
Than he clicked me out. I quickly got out of the harness and it to him.
"Thank you so much." Layla said and smiled. "Yeah thank you that was amazing." I agreed. He smiled. "It was nice meeting you. Have a nice day." He went back to the starting point.
Taylor was standing there as well. "You did so good. I'm proud of you two." She hugged both of us before we entered the monkey house.
Inside it was warm again a nice change after having your hands out in  the cold this long.
"This was awesome guys. We could see you from here." Maya and Selena greeted us at the door both of them hugging us as Maya was still on Selena's arm.
While we all took or time and finished after about fiveteen minutes Layla read every information there was and looked at all of the apes and monkeys she could see. She was so happy and excited to see them.
But at some point we finished and walked back outside down some stairs taking a look at Tapirs and the porcupines.
Than the flamingos. "Oh my god. They are pink. They are pink." My baby sister squealed and ran closer to the animals.
"I think they are pink because they eat a special type of shrimp that is colored pink." Selena suddenly said. Maya just nodded but than turned her head. "Could I become pink by eating it?" Her face was so serious like it was most important to become pink that all of us others started laughing. "No princess I don't think so." Selena said still laughing.
Maya pouted and started walking further away. We followed until suddenly she stopped.
There was the 'Critter Encounters.'
Maya looked at us. "Can we go in?"
We all nodded yes and the next fiveteen minutes were spend with petting goats, sheeps, Alpakas and some more animals.
After we finally got Maya to leave this place Selena led us up a way over a bridge.
"It's a little detour but we still need to see owls am I right?" She winked at me making me blush and she was right there they were.
The owls that where there where the common barn owl and the snowy owls.
And as it was a little after 5pm it was still a time were everyone who wanted could hold an owl and take a picture, of course in exchange for money. The most people we had seen since we entered the park were standing there but all to focused on holding an owl than us.
"Alex do you want to do this?" Taylor asked me. "It's okay I don't have to. We can just continue." "Do you want to do it yes or no?" As I didn't answer Layla rolled her eyes and answered for me. "She wants to but she doesn't want to bother us and she doesn't want to spend your money." "Layla!" I exclaimed while turning red.
Selena took my hand as Maya had asked Taylor to carry her.
"Come sunshine. You'll get a picture with an owl." And with that she pulled me closer to the owls.
We waited almost fiveteen minutes before it was our turn.
Selena paid. It was $10. You could buy so much more useful things with that.
I got an glove made of leather to protect my hand and arm from the claws. "You have to keep your arm still. Don't move to much." The man said and put a little bit food in the glove and whistled for the snowy owl to come over.
It landed on my arm. Internally I was freaking out. My absolute favourite animal was sitting on my arm.
"You can pet it. Just don't go against the grain." He said and I slowly started to pet the snowy owl. The feathers felt so soft.
"Can you look over here for a second." I heard Selena ask. She was taking pictures of course she was.
I was beaming at her.
After a few minutes I had to hand the owl back.
"Thank you so much. This was amazing."
"It's alright sunshine." She smiled at me. "Just seeing you smile like that shows me it was totally worth it."
We walked back to the others and Selena immediately showed them the pictures of me petting the snowy owl.
"Those are beautiful pictures." Taylor smiled and Layla nodded.
"Well there's only one more thing to see and that's the snakes. Layla said she's afraid of them. Maya's almost asleep and I'm not very fond of snakes either so should we just skip them?" Taylor asked.
I nodded. "Snakes are scary." Layla said. "I'm okay with it than let's go back to the exit."
Back at the entry Selena and Taylor pull is in the gift shop.
"You can all choose one thing." She said before setting Maya down. I looked at her. "That's really not necessary. You already spent so much money on us today." I argued with them. "We want to spoil you. So go look for something." Both my sisters started to look around the shop.
I just walked around.
Maya walked back to Taylor go show her a stuffed tiger. "Can I have this one? I don't have a cuddly friend." She said and I could see Taylor tearing up.
"Of course princess." she said and picked her up again. "How will you name him?" "Rajah. Just like Jasmine's Tiger." Maya said smiling. "That's a good name." Taylor nodded.
Layla walked passed me with a monkey themed puzzle.
"Is this alright?" She asked the two of them who nodded.
I went back as well. "I really don't want anything." I said. Selena just rolled her eyes. "Tay I'll pay why don't you guys wait outside." Taylor looked at her weirdly but nodded and went outside with us.
A few minutes later Selena came outside with the puzzle inside a paper bag and the stuffed tiger.
We walked back to the car and got in just like we did on the way there.
After we had buckled in Selena pulled me in her arms again. "I know you didn't want anything but I figured you could also use a cuddly friend." She whispered and handed me white owl stuffie.
I felt myself blushing and tearing up.
"Thank you so much."
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