Secret of the Storm, page 6
I swear Albert winks just before he launches himself, a furry black missile shooting across the room. He hits me dead center of my chest, falling directly into my cradled arms and pushing his tiny cold nose into my forehead. “That was dangerous!” I admonish. “How did you get up there, anyway?”
But Albert is not telling. He settles in, kneading my forearm with his sharp little claws, and starts to purr. Okay. Maybe this flying thing is something cats do. What do I know, anyway?
“Hello, little guy,” I say, settling down on my bed. “Did you have an exciting day jumping on things? I got an A on my math test. Good, right? And it wasn’t an easy one. Because sometimes they are. And then there was the lunch thing. Where do I even begin that story?” Usually after I start talking, I imagine what I sound like to whoever is listening, and it is never good. That’s why I keep my mouth shut. But Albert gazes up at me with complete understanding. Maybe I don’t sound like such a dope to him. I press on.
“So Joe wanted to have lunch with me.” Does Albert perk up at Joe’s name? Does he remember him? “And I said I’d see him in the cafeteria, but I never committed to sitting with him.” But I did sit with him. And I told him I’d get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and come back. Oh boy. “Anyway, Mia, that’s my best friend—I think? Or she used to be? Anyway, she invited me to sit with her and her new friends, and I really want them to like me, so I did, but then Joe got mad at me, and, well, we’re not even friends! Which means, does he even have the right to be mad at me? I don’t know! And then I ran into Mia outside City Hall, where I watched Miss Asher’s friend-slash-not-friend, Sheldon Slack, get into it with the mayor over whether or not she believed Lewiston has a federal-level-of-interest weather situation. Way weird.”
Albert grumbles. I guess he doesn’t believe Sheldon Slack any more than Mayor Diaz did. “But wait, it gets better! Mia invited me to a sleepover! With the girls! But then Joe didn’t come to do his volunteer hours, and I really wanted to tell him about Slack because of the video this morning. Wait, did I tell you about the video?”
I’m giving myself whiplash as the words pour out. I try to fill Albert in on the backstory, how uneasy it has been with Mia since she upgraded friends and how I long for her to choose me again, even if that longing makes me feel bad. And I tell him about Miss Asher and the library and Joe and the black hole and the humiliating moment in science class when I made the mistake of asking about them. Albert is a very good listener. Oh, wait. He’s asleep.
I settle him onto my pillow and creep down to the kitchen to get a snack. There are slim pickings, but it feels like a win to find a half-full bag of slightly stale potato chips behind a box of cereal. Salt and vinegar. Even better! I wonder if cats eat chips. Another thing I should find out. I know that if dogs eat grapes or chocolate, it makes them sick, and I don’t want to slip anything to Albert that will hurt him. I should ask Joe.
Joe. He keeps popping into my head. I should have at least explained why I didn’t come back to sit with him. Right? Shouldn’t I have? Why is this so confusing? Probably because I’m starving and nothing makes sense.
I’m about to dig into the bag when the doorbell makes me jump two feet in the air and spill half the chips on the floor.
“Not okay!” I bark. Stale chips are one thing. Stale chips covered in dust bunnies are another. Besides, no one ever comes to our house. I rush to the living room windows, peering out to see who it is.
And there stands Joe Robinson.
Chapter 11 THE TRANSITIVE PROPERTY OF LOST THINGS
JOE RINGS AGAIN and my mother appears, bleary eyed, pulling on a bathrobe with frayed cuffs. “Who’s here?” she asks anxiously. On the rare occasion someone comes to our house and rings the doorbell, Mom always reacts in the same way, like something big is happening and her stress meter is deep in the red. She told me once that every time she hears the doorbell, she thinks it might be Dad, here to tell us that it was all a big misunderstanding, that he is right as rain, just got lost or something. When I said that I thought if that were the case, he’d just use his key, she started crying, and I went outside to sit on the driveway.
“It’s my friend,” I reply. This should surprise her, as the last friend who came here was Mia, and that was ages ago. I wait for her questions about who it is and how long have we been friends and all that mom stuff, but instead her shoulders slump and her face goes blank. She mutters something and drifts down the hallway back to her bedroom. This kind of moment usually causes that lumpy thing in my throat, but right now I’m too busy wondering what Joe is doing here. Do I let him in? Do I pretend I’m not here?
Fortunately, Joe has plans. As I stand stock-still behind the closed door, he yells, “Cassie! Let me in! I know you are standing right there! I want to see Albert, and by the transitive property of lost things found, he partially belongs to me.” Huh? “Don’t make me stand here and scream, because I totally will.”
Right. That would be bad. I pull open the door, and in steps Joe. I’m surprised at the relief I feel that he is here. Maybe he doesn’t hate me. Maybe I haven’t spoiled everything. The first thing I should do is apologize for abandoning him in the cafeteria. I should just open my mouth and say I’m sorry, because I think I really am. But he doesn’t give me much of an opening. He’s here for the kitten.
“Where is Albert?” he demands, skinny arms crossed against his chest, prepared to do battle if necessary.
“In my room,” I say.
“I want to see him,” he says with a sniff. “I want to make sure he’s okay.”
“He’s fine,” I reply.
“I don’t know that I trust you,” Joe says. Okay. I deserve that.
“Come on,” I say, gesturing for him to follow. “This way.”
“Great,” he replies. “And I’ll take those.” In a flash he snatches the potato chip bag from my hand. “Ugh. Stale.”
“Well, give them back, then.”
“No way.”
Fine. I push open my door, making room so Joe can enter first. “Is something on fire?” he asks, sniffing the air.
“Well, actually…”
“It’s kind of gross. Where is he?”
“Here, kitty-kins!” I call. “Come on, fuzzy face, dumpling, cutie pants, Mr. Adorableness.”
Joe stares at me, aghast. “What did you call him?”
“Kitty-kins. Fuzzy face. Dumpling. Cutie pants. And Mr. Adorableness.”
“Poor Albert,” Joe moans. Followed by “Ouch!” Albert, stealthy under an overturned laundry basket, stretches out a paw and whacks Joe in the ankle. “Bad kitty!” As if to prove Joe’s point, Albert squeezes from beneath the basket and launches himself at Joe’s shoelaces. Joe starts jumping around as if he is being attacked by murder hornets or something. “Stop that, you furry menace!”
I descend into a fit of giggles. “He’s barely five inches tall.”
“He’s shredding my shoelaces! I’ve already ruined one pair of shoes this week! Get him off me!” Albert clings to Joe’s shoe like a burr to a wool sock. Miss Asher once told me that cats have a sixth sense about who doesn’t like them. She said that is the person whose lap the cat will immediately try to occupy.
Before things get really out of hand, I untangle the kitten from Joe’s shoes and clutch him to my chest. Not happy about giving up the shoelaces, he scrunches up his face and glowers.
And his eyes turn bloodred.
A jolt of electricity rushes through me. “Joe,” I whisper. “Look.”
Joe, fixing his shoelaces, waves me off. “Busy,” he says.
“Joe,” I repeat. “Albert’s eyes.”
Something in my tone gets Joe’s attention. Beside me, he takes one look at Albert’s eyes glowing like red marbles and leaps back as if scorched. “What the heck?”
Is it just a trick of the light? Could that be all? Albert’s needlelike claws dig into my skin. I think he growls. Outside, the sky darkens. A slender funnel cloud forms over the street. Rain beats on the roof. The tiny twister picks up speed and expands. The tree across the street bends under the pressure.
“It’s happening again,” I whisper. Joe nods, focus fixed on the window. Albert’s claws dig deeper. His red eyes flicker like flames.
“Albert!” I yell, startling the kitten and Joe. “Cut it out. Enough!” Albert gives me a terse little meow, shakes his head, and suddenly the glowing red eyes are back to mossy green. The twister evaporates, fading into small wisps of fog and clouds. The sky brightens. But the tree across the street has been stripped of all its remaining fall leaves.
I stroke Albert between the ears while Joe does his best impression of a boy who is about to hyperventilate. “Did you see that?” he gasps. Yes. I did. All of it. Although I kind of wish I hadn’t. I stand across the room, clutching my cat and waiting for Joe to say something, because right now the noise in my head is pretty loud.
“This cat is at least ninety-eight percent weird,” Joe says flatly.
“No, he’s not,” I shoot back.
“Did you somehow miss those glowing eyes?” Joe yells. “That is not normal. They were, like, ruby red and sparking!”
“They were not sparking!” Why was I even feeling bad about not treating Joe like a friend should? We aren’t friends! We don’t agree on anything!
He scans my room, taking deep breaths, regrouping. “And he never should have survived the dumpster in the first place! And why does it smell like fire in here? Burned plastic or something. Like when we found him.”
Albert buries his head in my armpit, the cat version of covering your ears, like he doesn’t approve of the arguing. Okay. So maybe I am forced to admit he is a little weird. Joe picks up on my hesitation. He narrows his gaze. “What are you not telling me?”
“About that,” I say. “Do you think cats can spontaneously combust?”
Joe runs a hand through his hair. “You had better explain,” he says. And so I tell Joe how Albert was suddenly smoking yesterday when I brought him home, and how he was on top of my closet door, and I point out the weird burn marks that are now all over my room. “And you have already smelled the smell. And sometimes he looks at me as if he is just so lost, like desperately sad or something. I mean, what if he’s sick or there is something wrong with him?” My heart constricts at the thought I might lose Albert, and suddenly I’m just this side of crying.
Pacing the small space of my room, plowing right through the mountain of laundry, Joe pulls out his phone, thumbs flying. I half expect him to run right into the wall.
“Cats with glowing red eyes,” he mutters. “Cats spontaneously combusting. Cats causing massive weather disruptions. Nope. Nothing. What? Oh, no way, he doesn’t have that. Ugh. Gross. Forget it. The internet does not know what I’m talking about.” He jams the phone back in his pocket and immediately starts running his hands over his hair again. Maybe this is what he does when he’s thinking. Or his head is just itchy. I settle into my desk chair and wait patiently, a now-sleeping Albert nestled in my lap.
“Okay,” Joe says finally. “I have a theory. Actually I have about five theories, but let’s start with the first one, which is Albert escaped from a secret government lab that was experimenting on cats, trying to make them into weapons or something. The CIA did this thing once where they tried to turn a cat into a listening device. They called it Acoustic Kitty. I’m not even kidding. Anyway, Albert got away and hid out in the dumpster and the storm was a coincidence because, like, global warming and everything, but Albert survived because he’s not normal.” He looks at me expectantly. “What do you think?”
“That’s your theory?” I reply.
“I give that one about a seventy percent chance of being right. My next one is probably closer to fifty percent. Want to hear it?”
“Can I say no?”
He ignores me. “Remember Superman and how he came from a disintegrating planet and his parents put him in an egg spaceship and sent him to Earth because he was going to die otherwise?”
“No. Not a fan.”
“Whatever. Maybe Albert was sent here from another disintegrating planet and he has superpowers and we need to figure them out. The storms are related to accessing his superpowers.” This is hopeless. We are doomed. “Fine. Maybe we should just take him to a veterinarian and ask if he is okay.”
Veterinarians cost money, and I don’t have any. The trial period would end abruptly if Mom suspected Albert was sick. And he doesn’t seem sick. Other than the weird stuff, as Joe so graciously put it, he seems just fine, strong and healthy and hungry and all the things he’s supposed to be.
“I don’t think I can afford the vet,” I say quietly.
Joe eyeballs the sleeping kitten. “Maybe we should ask Miss Asher what she thinks. She knows everything.” This is true. Miss Asher is the smartest person I know. And if she doesn’t have an answer, she can for sure help us find one.
I can tell by Joe’s expression that he has already made up his mind that Albert is either a secret government experiment gone awry or some tiny furry Superman, but his Miss Asher reasoning is sound. Plus, you can trust Miss Asher not to freak out if you tell her something strange. She’s good that way. We agree to go to the library tomorrow immediately after school.
Joe sits on my grungy carpet and teases Albert with the bouncing reflection from his watch face while telling me some ridiculous story about how he intends to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge with a wingsuit, if only he can get someone to sell him one. And give him a lift to the bridge.
But even Joe’s outrageous stories don’t help me focus. Now that I am thinking there is something potentially wrong with Albert, I can’t concentrate on anything. I even forget to mention seeing Slack earlier with the mayor. In that dumpster, I promised Albert that I would keep him safe no matter what. I’m determined to do just that. Whatever it takes, I will not let any harm come to him.
Chapter 12 SHELDON SLACK IS EVERYWHERE
THE NEXT DAY, I hang out in the school library during lunch period, pretending to be super absorbed in a new novel that Miss Asher gave me last week. I’m much too stressed out about Albert to go through another cafeteria rodeo like yesterday. I can’t even find time to worry about Mia and her gang of terrifying gal pals and how I might screw up the sleepover, which feels a little bit like an audition. But I still leave Joe waiting outside school until I am sure Mia has gone and won’t see me walking with him.
Joe kicks a pine cone up and down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets. His baseball cap is askew. When I realize he thinks I’m a no-show, feelings of guilt roil my stomach. I pick up my pace. “Hey, Joe!”
His eyes find me and he grins. “There you are.”
“Sorry,” I say. “My locker jammed.”
But on some level I know that he knows I was waiting out Mia. Suddenly I have the urge to tell him that if I did have a time machine and could coast along on the timeless event horizon of a black hole, I would go back to yesterday, pick up my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and sit with him. Right? Isn’t that what I’d do, given a second chance?
“Whatever,” Joe says, waving me off. “Has anything else strange happened with Albert? Since yesterday, I mean?”
“No.” Well, actually, there was a moment when Albert was chasing his tail and moving so fast, like impossibly fast, that he actually disappeared into a continuous blur. A fur-blur? And when he stopped, he wasn’t even panting. I, however, was breathless. I don’t share this with Joe because I’m worried that one more piece of evidence supporting his theory that Albert is a covert CIA spy device or an alien superhero will push him over the edge.
The number of people outside of City Hall has grown since yesterday, to maybe thirty, and there is no news van in sight. What are they doing here? If Lewiston has a hot spot, which it doesn’t, this is not it.
“Cassie, is that…?” Joe points to a man clutching a stack of flyers and surrounded by a group of people.
The puffy orange jacket! Sheldon Slack! Again! The bags under his eyes could hold a month’s worth of luggage. “He was here yesterday,” I say, “arguing with the mayor.”
Joe is aghast. “And you just kind of forgot to mention it to me?”
“Well,” I say, in my own defense, “you were mad at me because of the whole, you know, cafeteria thing. And I’m sorry about that. I… I’m just sorry is all.”
Wow. Apologizing really can make a person feel better. It is as if someone emptied a few bricks out of my backpack. But Joe is not impressed. “Yeah. Yeah. Fine. That’s great and all, but you should have told me you saw him. I mean, what are the chances?”
“Pretty good,” I reply. “I see him every time I turn around.”
Joe, pushing through the crowd to get closer to Slack, ignores me. “What’s he saying? Can you hear him?”
In the middle of the crowd, Slack hands out flyers, blocky black lettering on fluorescent yellow paper, and tells a story. I will give him credit: His audience, though small, is attentive. They hang on his every word.
“These mosaic storms,” he explains, “are extreme microbursts with wind and hail and tornadoes and lightning. They come in clusters. They are highly irregular. The last one to occur here was thirteen years ago. Before that it was fifty years.”
His face clouds, seemingly momentarily lost in memory. But the restlessness of the crowd brings him back. They want to know if his story has a point, or are they just standing here in the drizzle for nothing? Joe pushes closer and snags a flyer. I can’t take my eyes off Slack.
“Quite by accident, my high school best friend and I stumbled upon some research that linked these mosaic storms to the appearance of… dragons.”
He said dragons again! Just like in the video! What is going on here?
“There is a story,” Slack continues. “Do you want to hear it?”
A murmur ripples through the crowd. I expect the onlookers to react indignantly. Don’t insult our intelligence with tales of dragons! But they don’t. Instead they wait silently for his story.
