The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook (15 page)

I glance at the Villain for some sign that he recognizes Zook. Of course, he's already seen Zook because he and my
mom picked him up from the vet last night. So he's had plenty of time to compose himself.

Right now, the Villain's all business. “Let's begin,” he says.

Beside our living room bookshelf is this giant tattered chair covered in brown corduroy that can easily hold two people, maybe three if two of the people aren't that big. It's always been a TV chair and a scratching post for Zook. But now it's turned into a kind of hospital chair. Zook's in my lap, lying on my sweatshirt. I'm sitting close to the chair's arm, which is like a barricade, so Zook can't squirm away. The Villain is squeezed beside me, and Freddy beside him.

The Villain whispers, “Good boy, good boy” as he's petting Zook. Then suddenly, he reaches over and lifts up the scruff of Zook's coat between Zook's shoulder blades. With his other hand, he jabs in the needle.

“EE-OWEY!” howls Zook.

Fred and I jump.

“Doesn't hurt him,” says the Villain calmly.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “Maybe he doesn't need any more fluids, now that he's home with us. He's been doing OK today.”

The Villain takes my hand so I can feel where the needle is. He puts his hand over mine. “See? It's just Zook's coat,
not his flesh. Now, keep your hand on the needle so it doesn't get pulled out.”

“How long's this going to take?” my mother asks.

“About ten minutes,” says the Villain.

“We'll go make the pancakes,” says my mom. She and Gramma Dee leave the three of us sitting in the chair.

“Now watch the fluid in the bag,” the Villain says. “It will slowly go down as the fluid drips through the tubing into Zook.” He points to a line on the bag. “When the fluid gets to this line, he's had enough.” He pushes a little wheel on a small box attached to the tubing, and I see the fluid slowly begin to go down.

The Villain still has his hand over mine because Zook is squirming. He begins to sing a really dumb song in his soft Marvin Gaye voice, over and over.

I bought me a cat and the cat pleased me.
I fed my cat under yonder tree.
Cat goes fiddle-i-fee, fiddle-i-fee.

Freddy starts singing that dumb song with him. I'm sure he doesn't even know what “yonder” means, but Freddy doesn't care. Soon Zook stops squirming.

“How's it going?” Gramma Dee pokes her head out from the kitchen.

“Good,” says the Villain. “We're almost done.” We watch the bag. The Villain's hand over mine is warm. He smells like coffee.

“Oona, listen to me,” says the Villain quietly. “I give you my word. This will help Zook. I promise.”

His promise feels like a gift. Sitting beside the Villain, his warm hand over mine, I want to believe him so much! I stop thinking about clues of villainry and anyway, I can't find any at this moment. Even if the Villain is the greatest actor in the world, I don't care. All I want is Zook to feel better. I even start singing that dumb song, too.

When the fluid gets to the line, the Villain lifts my hand and pries the needle from Zook's coat. “There,” he says.

I once saw a TV show where a doctor cured a baby by opening up her chest to get to her heart, a procedure no one in the world had ever done before. It was a long time ago, in the 1940s. The baby's lips were blue because there was a blockage somewhere and her blood didn't have enough oxygen in it. So the doctor stitched one of her heart arteries to another artery. That way blood with enough oxygen in it could get to her lungs. Suddenly, the baby's face glowed, her
lips and cheeks pink and healthy-looking! Really, it was like a miracle. Everyone in the TV operating room cheered, and so did I. I will never forget that show.

I'm not saying Zook's procedure is just as dramatic, because first of all, that was a television show and they used all those special effects and everything. And second of all, this is not the first time in the world anyone has ever given a cat fluids. Still, it feels dramatic. Zook jumps off my lap, looking perkier than he's looked in quite a while. Fit as a fiddle, actually.

“Breakfast's ready,” calls my mom.

The pancakes smell good.

“This stuff expensive?” I ask, pointing to the big cardboard box filled with more bags of fluid and tubing.

The Villain shrugs.

“How about I contribute my dancing money?” I say. I'm thinking that what we have here is our very own cat rescue society.

The Villain smiles, shaking his head no.

“Great idea!” yells my mom from the kitchen.

That's another weird talent of my mom's: hearing things through walls when I'm on the other side.

oday, just as we get to the schoolyard, I notice that Riya is wearing one green sock and one purple-and-pink striped sock. Riya is very careful about what she wears, so I don't think this is a mistake. I myself am wearing two white socks. It's the only color my mom buys for us because it's easy to make a pair again if one sock is swallowed up by our building's washing machine. My mom says that every new washing machine comes with two things: a free box of soap and a monster deep down in the machine's bowels with a huge craving for smelly socks. Yum.

White socks happen to match my O'Leary's shirt—not that I care that much about matching.

“I think what you did at the vet took a lot of
chutzpah
,” says Riya.

Riya has complimented me before on my
chutzpah
, which means “nerve.” She learned the Yiddish word from her grandmother, who learned it from Gramma Dee.

The thing is, I haven't told her anything about what happened at the vet.

“Wait a minute. How do you know what I did at the vet?” I ask. “I wanted to keep that story private for a while.” Because I'm still pondering a few things. Why exactly I did it, for instance.

“Oh,” says Riya. She gives me a quick look, guilty around the edges. Then she looks down at her socks. “Wasn't it you who told me? Oh. Right. It was my
didu
.”

Which, I guess, is another thing her grandmother learned from Gramma Dee.

There's a little cluster of kids by the basketball net, as always, doing layups. The first thing I notice is that most of them are wearing socks that don't match, even some of the boys.

Riya notices me noticing. “Over the weekend a few of us decided to start a fad,” she explains. “We want to see how fast it will catch on throughout the whole school. Maybe the
whole city!” Then she adds quickly, tossing her hair, “I didn't think you'd be interested.”

She's right, of course. A girl who wears a Raiders sweatshirt all the time, moving on to an O'Leary's T-shirt only a few days ago, isn't going to be thinking about her socks. Anyway, it's a dumb fad. A done-before, ho-hum, no-point fad.

Still, I would have liked a chance to say no.

Leo calls out, “Hey, Oona! 'Napped any cats lately?” His left sock is white, the right one blue with yellow peace signs all over it, which I'm guessing he borrowed from one of his parents.

Somebody else says (I can't tell who because I'm looking at Riya who is NOT looking at me), “Pizza delivery? Over here!”

I was going to yell out something red-whoppery, such as needing to go straight to work at O'Leary's in my uniform right after school. But then I figured, why even bother responding to immaturity? There was more snickering all around about cat-napping, etc., etc. Of course they heard it through the grapevine, just like in that song. Phonevine, actually, and textvine, and e-vine, stretching from Gramma Dee to Soma to Riya and beyond.

I walk away. I vow NEVER to speak to Riya again.

This morning the Rowdies, who include most of the sock people, are in fine form. They're talking, shuffling their feet, looking inside their desks for stuff. I try to concentrate because Mr. Fry, as usual, has something interesting to say. He is talking about a Theory of Noticing, although he doesn't call it a theory, exactly.

“Galileo saw things that made him believe that the Earth orbits around the Sun, rather than the other way around,” Mr. Fry says. “Even when people arrested him and made him take that theory back, he still said, ‘But it moves!'”

Somebody in the back of the room burps, and it could have been a not-on-purpose burp, but of course that burp is the funniest thing the Rowdies have ever heard.

“And scientists have long noticed that the east coast of South America seems to fit together with the west coast of Africa, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that someone broke up. And other scientists thought that theory was absolutely ridiculous. ‘Continents drifting apart,' they said, ‘ha, ha!'”

“Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! Ho, ho, ho!” go the Rowdies under their breaths.

“That's how great thinkers come up with theories,” Mr. Fry continues. “They observe things, but they don't always observe the same things others do, especially when others
are observing the obvious, but wrong, things. And I hope that you youngsters are creative in your observations, too.”

Jigsaw puzzle continents!

I sit up straight in my seat. My mouth falls open, because I have just heard one of the wisest things a teacher has ever said! Except maybe Mr. Fry shouldn't use the word “youngsters.” That always sets off the Rowdies.

I look around to see if everyone else is as excited about Mr. Fry's Noticing-the-Obvious-but-Wrong-Things Theory. Nobody is, as far as I can see. They're talking to one another or
hee-hee-hee
ing or, because it's almost recess, staring up at the clock. I feel bad for Mr. Fry with his kind, kind eyes and wet hair. To my surprise, tears roll out of my own eyes, and then a whole lot of really loud caps roll out of my mouth.

“EVERYBODY PIPE DOWN!” I shout. “PLEASE!”

There is a stunned silence, and things do quiet down a bit, especially when Riya says, “Yeah!” from across the room. I look over at her and we have an eye-conversation, the kind that usually happens between siblings or true loves or meant-to-be-cousins. Her eyes say,
Hey, I get it
. My eyes say,
Thank you, best friend of mine. I'm not angry at you anymore
. And then the bell rings.

During recess, Mr. Fry and I have another ten-minute father figure session.

“Well,” says Mr. Fry, shutting the classroom door. He sits on his desk, pulling himself up with a little grunt.

He doesn't really have to do that for me, sit on his desk and look so scrunched up and uncomfortable, trying to be friendly and cool. In my mind Mr. Fry is already nice, even if he's not cool. I do notice that one of his socks is blue and the other sock is black, although in his case it was probably because of bad lighting when he got dressed. I'm positive he wasn't part of that dumb fad grapevine.

“Well,” says Mr. Fry again. “Thank you for that intervention. Feeling better?”

I wasn't expecting a thank-you! I nod my head. “I just wanted everyone to hear the wise things you were saying.”

“Well. You were quite dramatic, I must say,” says Mr. Fry, and he grins. Mr. Fry is handsome when he grins, which isn't very often. He smiles, but that's a whole different thing from grinning—ever notice?

Mr. Fry isn't wearing a wedding ring. Some married people don't. “Mr. Fry, are you married?” I ask.

Mr. Fry blushes faintly. “No,” he says. “Not yet.”

It sounds like he already has someone in his life, and I am glad for him. “I was just curious,” I say.

“Well,” says Mr. Fry.

After a while, the school bell rings. Mr. Fry slides off the desk and says, “By the way, I like your shirt. I haven't had O'Leary's pizza myself yet. Supremo, eh?”

“I highly recommend it,” I say.

Riya and I walk home together after school.

“I was hoping that my mom and Mr. Fry would go out for tea sometime,” I say. “But now I think it would be weird for my mom to be good friends with my teacher.”