She looks at me from the back of the cage. She’s not howling or rubbing her face against the bars, like some of the other animals. She looks like a snake, ready to strike.
But she doesn’t look like anything that was ever human.
“What are you?” I say. “Lila?”
That makes her stand up and come to the front of the bars.
She meows once, plaintively. A shudder runs through me that’s part terror and part revulsion.
A girl can’t be a cat.
Unbidden the memory of the last time I saw Lila rises. I can smell the blood. I can feel the smile pulling at my mouth when I look down at her body. Even if that memory’s false, it feels real. This—the idea that she’s alive, that I can still save her—feels like playing pretend. Like lying to myself. Like losing my mind.
Her mismatched green and blue eyes are very like Lila’s, though. And she’s looking up at me. And even though I might be going crazy, even though it feels impossible, I’m certain it’s her.
I turn, and she yowls again and again, but I make myself ignore her and walk out of the animal housing area. I go up to the desk, where a heavyset woman in a schnauzer-print sweatshirt is telling some guy where to hang flyers promising a reward for his missing ball python.
“I’d like to adopt the white cat,” I tell her.
She slides me a form. It asks me for the name and address of my veterinarian, how long I’ve lived at my current address, and whether I approve of declawing. I put down the answers that I think they want to hear and I leave the vet part blank. My hands are shaking and I feel the way I did after my father’s car accident, when time seemed to move differently for me than for other people. It’s too fast and too slow, and all I can think is that if I walk out of here with the cat, then I’ll be able to sit and wait for time to catch up with itself again.
“This is your birthday?” she asks me, tapping the paper.
I nod.
“You’re only seventeen.” She points to where it says in bold print at the top of the page:
Must be 18 to adopt.
I just stare at the words. Normally I pay attention to things like that. I prepare. Map out the variables. But instead I’m sucking air like a fish.
“You don’t understand,” I say, and I watch a frown pinch her brows. “That didn’t come out right. That’s my cat—I mean, the one I wanted to adopt. Someone must have brought her here, but she’s really mine.”
“She didn’t come in with a collar,” she says. “Or tags.”
I laugh uneasily, caught. “She’s always catching it on something.”
“Kid, that cat was a stray living in a barn. It came in only a couple of hours ago, and if someone was feeding it, they weren’t feeding it much or for long.”
“She was living in a barn,” I say. “But now she lives with me.”
The woman shakes her head. “I don’t know what happened, but I can guess. You didn’t get permission to bring that cat home and your parents sent it to a shelter. Irresponsible—”
“That’s not what happened.” I wonder what she’d do if I told her what I thought
had
happened. I almost laugh.
The bell in the front jingles as a couple with a kid walk in the door. The schnauzer-shirted woman turns toward them with a smile.
“We’re here to get a puppy!” shouts the little girl. All around her mouth looks sticky. Her gloves are smeared with brown stains.
“Wait,” I say desperately. “Please.”
The woman gives me a quick, pitying look. “Come back when you convince one of your parents to give you permission. Like this kid.”
I take a deep breath. “Are you working here tomorrow?” I ask her.
She puts a hand on her hip, annoyed now, probably more angry because she briefly felt sorry for me, but I don’t care. “No, but the guy on tomorrow is gonna tell you the same thing. Get a parent.”
I nod, but I’m not really listening anymore, because my head is full of the sound of Lila shrieking from behind bars. Crying and crying with no one coming.
My dad taught me this trick to calm down. Like, before I was going into a house to steal something or if the police were questioning me. He said to imagine that I was on a beach and concentrate on the sounds of clear blue water lapping at my feet. The feel of the sand beneath toes. Take deep breaths of sea air.
It doesn’t work.
Sam picks up on the second ring. “I’m at play practice,” he says in a near-whisper. “Stavrakis is giving me the stink eye. Talk fast.”
I have very little to offer Sam. I’m trusting him despite myself, and I know trust isn’t worth much. I don’t even know if he’ll want it. “I really need your help.”
“Are you okay? You sound serious.”
I make myself laugh. “I have to spring a cat out of the Rumelt Animal Shelter. Think of it as a prison break.”
It does the trick. He laughs. “Whose cat?”
“My cat. What do you think? That I break out the cats of strangers?”
“Let me guess, she was framed. She’s innocent.”
“Just like everybody else in prison.” I think of Mom. The laugh bubbles up my throat all wrong: sarcastic, harsh. “Good, so tomorrow?” I say, once I’ve managed to stop.
“Yeah, it’s him,” I hear Sam say, but his voice is smothered, like maybe his hand is over the phone. “You want to come?” He says something else, too, but I can’t hear it.
“Sam!” I say, hitting my hand on the dashboard.
“Hey, Cassel.” It’s Daneca, talking softly. Daneca with her hemp and her causes and her never noticing that I avoid her. “What’s all this about a cat? Sam says you need some help.”
“I just need one person,” I tell her. The last thing I want is to have to pull this off with Daneca looking over my shoulder.
“Sam says he could use a ride.”
“What’s wrong with his car?” Sam drives a hearse, which apparently are gas guzzlers, so to be environmentally responsible, he’s converted it to run on grease. The inside of it always smells pleasantly of fried food.
“Not sure,” she says.
I guess I don’t have a lot of choices. I bite the inside of my cheek and grate out the words. “That would be great, then. You’re a real pal, Daneca.”
I hang up the phone before I can be more obnoxious, my mind occupied with imagining how I can possibly pay the debt
I am going to owe them. If all friendships are negotiations of power, I’ve totally lost this negotiation.
Grandad is furious when I get home. He starts yelling at me when I walk through the door. Stupid crap about taking the car without permission and how this is my house and I should be the one taking care of it. He has a lot to say about how old and infirm he is, which just makes me laugh, and me laughing makes him yell louder.
“Just
shut up
!” I shout, and walk up to my room.
He doesn’t say a thing.
Let’s go with the cat being Lila. Just for another minute, even if you think I’ve lost it. Just to try and figure some things out.
Someone made her that way.
And that someone is working with my brothers.
And that someone must be a transformation worker, which makes him (or her) one of the most powerful workers in America.
Which means I’m screwed. I can’t fight that.
The Magritte poster taped above me shows the back of a well-groomed nineteenth-century man looking into the mirror on his mantle, but the reflection in the mirror is the well-groomed back of his head. When I bought it, I liked that you could never see the man’s face, but now when I look at it, I wonder if he has one.
My phone rings at around ten that night. It’s Sam, and when I pick it up, I can hear he’s drunk.
“Come out,” he says, manic and slurring. “I’m at a party.”
“I’m tired,” I say. I have been staring at the same cracked patch of plaster for hours. I don’t feel like getting up.
“Come on,” he says. “I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you.”
I roll onto my side. “What do you mean?”
“These guys love me now that I’m their bookie.” He laughs. “Gavin Perry just offered me a beer! You did this for me, man, and I’m not going to forget it. Tomorrow we’re going to get back your cat, and then—”
“Okay. Where are you?” It’s kind of funny that he thinks he owes me anything when he’s been doing stuff for me left and right. I push myself off the bed.
After all, there’s no point in staying here. All I’m doing is thinking of Lila as a cat, stuck in a cage and crying until her throat is raw, or wearing my own memories thin with scrutinizing.
He gives me an address. It’s Zoe Papadopoulos’s place. I’ve been there before. Her parents travel for their jobs, meaning that she hosts a lot of parties.
Grandad is asleep in front of the television. On the news I see Governor Patton, who has been a big proponent of proposition two, the thing that’s supposed to force everybody to get tested to ascertain who’s a worker and who’s not. Patton is going on and on about how he believes that workers should come forward in support of his proposition so that they can let the world know that they are the good, law-abiding citizens they claim to be. He says no one ever needs to know what’s on the paper, except the individual. At this time he has no plans
to propose any legislation that gives the government access to those private medical records. Right.
Grandad snores.
I pick up the keys and go.
Zoe’s house is in one of the new developments in Neshanic Station, on a stretch of several acres with woods attached. It’s huge, and when I get there, the driveway is clogged with cars. The massive double doors are flung wide open, and there’s a girl I don’t know laughing hysterically on the front porch, leaning against a fat Corinthian column with a bottle of red wine in her hand.
“What are you celebrating?” I ask her.
“Celebrating,” she repeats, like she doesn’t understand the word. Then a slow smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “Life!”
I can’t even force a smile in return. My skin itches to be elsewhere. To be breaking into the animal shelter. To be
doing something
. The wait is the worst part of the con, the long stretch of hours before things start to happen. That’s when nerves get the best of people.
I walk inside, willing my nerves not to get the best of me.
The living room is lit with candles that have burned down, so that melting wax pools on furniture. Only a few kids are there, sitting on the floor and drinking beer. A sophomore says something, and they all look over at me.
It took two and a half years to get people to forget what was different about me, and only fifteen minutes to get them to remember. My puny and pathetic social life is about to get worse.
I give them a nod and wonder if Sam’s at least taking bets
on the rumors about me. He’d better.
In the kitchen a bunch of seniors are gathered around Harvey Silverman, who’s downing a pyramid of shots. Outside, by the pool, I see most of the rest of the partygoers. It’s too cold to swim, but a couple of fully clothed people are anyway, their lips blue in the patio lights.
“Cassel Sharpe,” Audrey says, looping her arm through mine. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Audrey’s eyes are glassy, her smile vague. She still looks lovely. She glances toward Greg Harmsford leaning against a bookshelf, talking with two girls from the field hockey team. I wonder if they came to the party together.
“Just like always,” she says, looking back at me. “Watching from the shadows. Observing everybody. Judging us.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I say. I don’t know how to explain how afraid I am of being judged.
“I liked when you were my boyfriend,” she says, and leans her head against my shoulder, maybe out of habit, maybe because she’s drunk. It’s enough like tenderness for me to pretend. “I liked you watching me.”
I resist the urge to promise her that if she tells me all the things I did right, I’ll do them again.
“Didn’t you like it when I was your girlfriend?” she asks, her voice gone so soft that it’s mostly breath.
“You’re the one who broke it off,” I tell her, but my voice has dropped low, and the words come out like a caress. I don’t care about what I’m saying. I only care about keeping her here, talking with me. She makes me feel like it’s possible to slip out of my old life and into hers, where everything is easy and
honest.
“I’m not over you,” she says. “I don’t think.”
“Oh,” I say, and then I lean in and kiss her.
I don’t think. Don’t think.
I just mash my mouth against hers. She tastes like tequila. It’s an awful kiss, too full of grief and frustration and the knowledge that I am screwing everything up and don’t know how to do anything but screw things up worse.
She reaches up her hands and touches my shoulders gently. She doesn’t push me away. Her fingers curl against the nape of my neck, which tickles a little and makes me smile against her lips. I slow down. Better. She sighs into my mouth.
I let my fingers trace her collarbone, dip into the hollow of her neck. I want to kiss her there. I want to let my mouth and tongue follow the road map of freckles across her milky skin.
“Hey,” Greg says. “Get off her.”
Audrey stumbles back, nearly into Greg. I feel like I’ve come up out of such deep water that I have the bends. I forgot that we’re at a party.
“You’re drunk,” Greg tells her, and grabs hold of her upper arm. Audrey sways a little unsteadily.
My fingers curl into fists. I want to shove him against the wall. I want to break open my knuckles on his face. I look at Audrey for a signal. I tell myself that if she looks scared or even angry, I am going to hurt him.
She’s looking down, though, her face turned away from me. All that rage curdles into self-loathing.
“What are you even doing here?” Greg says. “I thought the dean finally figured out that you’re a criminal and kicked you out.”
“I didn’t think this was an official school-sponsored event,” I say.
“Nobody wants you around, working their girlfriends.” His smile is smug. “You and I both know that’s the only way you can get a date.”
I think of Maura, and my sight narrows. It’s like I’m looking at Greg through a tunnel of blackness. My fists clench so tightly that I can feel my nails through the leather of my gloves. I hit him, hard, sending him sprawling on the wooden floor. My foot is digging into his ribs before Rahul Pathak grabs me around the waist and pulls me away from him.