The Best Laid Plans

By Rosemarie DiCristo

I admit I screamed the words: “If there ever was a time to speak up when the minister says that bit about why this couple shouldn’t be joined together in holy matrimony, it was to tell him you’d turn into a rat on our honeymoon!”

“I thought that was just for the people in the pews,” Nick squeaked at me, whiskers quivering. His tail wrapped around my wrist, because, yes, my formerly six-foot-two husband now sat in a brand-new rat form, cupped in my hands. His usual daffy grin still glimmered in his eyes. “Or, like, very bad soap operas.”

“Not funny,” I screeched.

“Besides,” he said in a tiny but still-familiar Nick voice, “the firstborn son doesn’t always turn into a rat at midnight on his twenty-first birthday. Sometimes it skips a generation.” His mouth parted in what I think he meant to be a smile. “Dad, for instance, is fully human. But Great-uncle Vince? CDC lab rat.”

“I don’t care about your stupid relatives!” I tossed him onto the hotel bed. “I’m married to a rat!”

He splayed his paws in an effort to stop bouncing. “In a way, it’s your fault.”

“What?”

He slapped his paws over his ears. “You’re the one who insisted my birthday would make the perfect winter wedding. If we’d waited until June, you’d have had plenty of time to break it off the second I turned rat.” His voice cracked. “That’s why I didn’t say anything, Stacie. I love you like crazy, but I knew you’d leave me once you discovered our family curse.”

Except… I loved Nick like crazy, too.

I swallowed hard. It was 12:45 a.m. I’d screamed in terror when Nick first transformed, then I’d begged and prayed that I was hallucinating, that I’d had too much champagne, that Nick would somehow revert… But no, here we were, trying to make sense of one unassailable fact: I, Stacie Lidsky Caruso, a human, was married to Nick Caruso, a rat.

“We’ve known each other since preschool, Nick. Couldn’t you just once in all those years…”

“Don’t you think I wanted to? But how could I lose the seven-year-old who threw up with me when we ate all our Halloween candy at once, or the ten-year-old who took my spot in Little League because she was a zillion times better? I still adore the thirteen-year-old with the mouthful of braces who turned into a sixteen-year-old with a knockout smile. And the seventeen-year-old with a 1600 SAT score. That’s perfect, Stacie. You’re perfect.”

“Hey, we threw up together on the Tilt-O-Whirl just last spring. Plus, you’re zillions of times better at hockey.”

But now you’re a rat.

I didn’t have to say it. Nick saw it in my eyes.

“Good grief,” I said, “it’s 2007. Can’t your uncle… the CDC… find a cure?”

“For a curse?” Silence. Then Nick’s voice turned bright. “Three good things: you’re an only child, your parents are dead, and your only cousin moved to Australia.”

“That’s good?”

“Think of the humiliation if your family saw you married to me. Then again, in-laws often consider their sons-in-law to be rats.” He sighed. “I know. Not funny.”

“Why can I understand you?” The thought struck me abruptly. “Or can everyone hear your voice?”

He shook his head. “Everyone else hears rat squeaks. Except for Mom and Dad.”

“So, because we’re married…”

“No, because of our bond.”

I must’ve looked blank, because he added, “Love, Stacie. Only someone who truly loves me can hear me.”

Love…

“But a life together is impossible,” he said. “We’ll get a divorce. No, an annulment, I suppose.”

“Wait.”

His rat eyes, still so much like Nick’s, shimmered with hope.

“Let me think.” I scooped him into my hands again.

His brown fur was sleek and well-groomed, his body lithe and strong. He actually was one fine-looking rat, whereas he was a pretty ordinary-looking human. Not that I’m a great beauty…

Ugh. What the heck was I thinking? Nick was a rat. I was married to a rat.

“Call Dad.” His voice sounded urgent. “He’s expecting this. We’ve got a nice setup in the basement. A rat maze with tunnels, rat balls, a rat hammock, the best exercise wheel money can buy… It’s where I’ll stay, nights and weekends.”

I couldn’t help asking, “Where will you be during the day?”

“Dad knows an animal trainer. I’ll be in movies, on TV. I hear they’re casting a live-action Charlotte’s Web.”

“Can I be your agent?”

He blinked at me.

“You have a finished basement. I’ll live with you, take care of you, be with you every second of every day. I love you, Nick. And we did say for better or worse.”

Yeah. Not funny. But he licked my hands wildly, as if he were showering me with kisses.

“If only I could kiss you back,” I sobbed. “If only we could truly be married. How’d your family get cursed? Is it too late to include the orphan wife of the firstborn son?”

Nick pulled back to gaze at me. “Do you mean that?”

“With everything that’s in me.”

“Then kiss me.”

“You mean…”

“Just do it. You’ll see.”

I cupped him in both hands, leaning toward his pointy little face. Then, quickly, before I thought too much about how gross it was, I kissed him.

“Unh!” Pain wracked my body. I doubled over. Then, suddenly, I was eye-to-eye with Nick.

I glanced down. I had rat paws. I glanced back. A tail. I scurried and leapt until I could gaze in the dresser mirror. Yep. A rat looked back at me.

Nick leaped up beside me. “You’ve got twenty-four hours to change your mind.”

“Some wise fella recently said I was perfect. But not without you.” I took his paw. “About that trainer. Last year, Flushed Away was released. Is it too soon for a live-action version?”

“Nope!”

By the way, Leonard Maltin loved me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rats are highly intelligent animals, vastly underrated and wrongly feared. Even so, Rosemarie DiCristo definitely wouldn’t want one running around her apartment, and if the love of her life turned into one, she’d have to think hard about how to respond. One thing she’s sure of: her delight at publishing another story in Havok.

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