Treading Water Read Online Free

Dr. Mac for a minute as Maggie, Zoe, and I turn off the lights and restack the magazines. I’ll be back tomorrow morning for our weekly Saturday Vet Volunteers meeting.
    â€œSee you tomorrow,” Maggie says as I head out the door with Mom. “I still want to hear about the Photography Club’s invitation. I promise I’ll be at that one!”
    I wave to the cousins. The high school students wanted to see more of me, my photos, and my photographic techniques. They invited me back for another presentation. They didn’t ask for Maggie, but I ought to bring her anyway. But not Zoe. Zoe would be distracted by all the high school boys. And I would be definitely distracted by boy-crazy Zoe. I wonder if the Photography Club would let me join them?

Chapter Three
    S unita unlocks the clinic door for me and relocks it behind me. The clinic won’t open for an hour and a half. Sunita is always the first one here for our meetings. She’s the most organized of all the Vet Volunteers. She takes meeting notes even though Dr. Mac has always said it wasn’t necessary.
    â€œIt helps me listen better,” is Sunita’s reasoning. I’m glad she takes notes. Sometimes I need to go back and read them, especially if I was a little busy taking photos of the other Vet Volunteers or our patients.
    I usually bring my camera wherever I go. There is so much to see, and sometimes I see it all better through my viewfinder. Maybe it is a little like Sunita’s note taking; taking pictures helps me focus on the details of what I’m really looking at. But that’s likely to be whatever is around me and not always whatever it is that Dr. Mac, or Dr. Gabe, is saying.
    Dr. Gabe is the other vet in Dr. Mac’s practice. Dr. Gabe mostly handles the stable calls. Stable calls aren’t just for horses. It’s what we call all vet visits to farms and even to my family’s wildlife rehab center. Large animals are usually involved: horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats. But a stable call can be for a newborn lamb, which is about the size of a cat, or for birds, like the eagle that my parents kept in our critter barn until he was healed. Dr. Gabe is often at our Vet Volunteers’ meetings, but not always. So far, nobody is here today except Sunita and me.
    â€œDr. Mac filled me in on your ducklings,” Sunita says, picking up a clipboard. I like that she called them my ducklings.
    â€œDo you think you’ll keep them, or even one?” she asks. “Would Poe Crow be jealous?”
    Edgar Allan Poe, my pet crow, has been with me for a while now. He was shot by a hunter, and we rehabilitated him at the center. But he can’t fly anymore, and that means he wouldn’t survive in the wild. So I was allowed to keep him. Poe comes with me almost everywhere. He even rides with me on my bike. I’ve never met anyone else with a pet crow.
    But I know—after a lifetime with my parents—that, with the exception of Poe, none of the animals we care for are mine.
    â€œI’d love to keep the ducklings,” I tell Sunita. “But when they’re all better, we have to release them back into the wild or find safe places—sanctuaries—for them to live.”
    Sunita nods. “I just thought that maybe this time would be different.”
    â€œI wish. As cute as they are, and as much as I would love to raise and keep them, I know it’s not in the cards,” I say. “What is it with cute animals? When we release them, Mom and Dad seem so happy and I always feel sad.”
    Sunita nods again. She is such an understanding friend. “You always have your pictures, at least.”
    â€œYou’re right,” I say. “I’ll be sure to get some good ones of the ducklings. I should probably snap some fresh shots of Poe, too. I can add them to my high school wildlife presentation. Maybe I’ll even bring him along. Do you think I’d have to get