Secret of the Storm, page 8
But none of this explains the steam. Great, billowing clouds of it are coming off the bowl as if the water inside is at a slow boil.
Joe grips the doorjamb. “There is no way that he can be agitating the water fast enough to create steam,” he hisses. “It’s just physically… impossible.”
Yet all these things that can’t happen keep happening. The storms, the scorching dumpster, the spontaneous combustion, the red eyes, a bowl of boiling water. Outside, the wind builds.
“Do you think he’s causing the storms?” I ask, understanding my question is completely out of left field. He’s a tiny kitten! Not some dark lord of the weather!
I take a step closer, and Albert finally notices us. Leaping up, he springs in our direction, clearly delighted we are here. I scoop him up, half expecting his body to burn my hands, but all I feel is damp fur. Joe rushes to the bowl to inspect it, forehead creased in concentration. Albert nuzzles my neck with wet whiskers and purrs while my heart races double time. I glance around the room, looking for more burn marks or other oddities, and my eyes fall on the half-open closet door.
It’s not a pristine-white door. There are scuff marks along the bottom and dings in the paint. There is also the faded outline of a hand turkey I drew in purple marker back when I was in second grade. But now there is something else there too. It’s a symbol, scratched into the door about six inches off the floor. In front of the door on the carpet are what look to be a few tiny iridescent seashells, like mini versions of the abalone shells Dad and Mom and me used to collect on the beach. And I am sure neither of these things was here this morning.
“Joe,” I say, gesturing. “Look at that.”
“I’m already looking,” he says. “Tell me you carved that with a fork when you were five and got in trouble.”
I shake my head. “It’s new.”
“As in you are seeing it with fresh eyes?” Joe asks hopefully.
“As in it was not here this morning,” I hiss. “Neither were those shells or whatever.”
Joe nudges them with his toe. “Scales,” he mutters. “They look like scales.”
“What?”
“Never mind. This is just great. The glowing, steaming, weather-manipulating kitten is also an artist? A feline cave painter?”
In my arms, Albert wiggles as if thrilled his skill is appreciated. I giggle. I can’t help it. It just rises out of me like soda from a shaken can.
“Why are you laughing?” Joe asks. “Don’t laugh. This is not funny. I mean, what is next? Unicorns falling from the sky?” Oh, he had to go and say “unicorns,” which right now is the funniest word I have ever heard in my whole life.
Joe narrows his gaze, a second away from scolding me. “This is a serious situation, Cassie. Get a grip.”
I hold up a hand, tears sliding down my cheeks. “Okay. I know. I’m sorry. I’m good. What do you think it is?”
We get up right close to the scratching. Albert looks from me to Joe and back to me again, like he is waiting for feedback on his work. The image, about eight inches in diameter, is a double circle. The inner circle has detail that makes it look like a flat planet Earth. In the space between the inner and outer circles is a series of stars. I run my fingers over it, feeling the grooves and bumps.
“I don’t know what it is,” Joe responds. Pulling out his phone, he snaps a bunch of pictures, close up and at different angles. “Do you suppose someone broke in here and did it while we were at school? But wait, wouldn’t your mom have heard them?”
I shrug. “Probably not.” Definitely not. When Mom downs a couple of those pills, our house could be swept up in a tornado and she would not wake up. It’s another thing that used to scare me but I am now used to.
“Symbols are pretty universal,” Joe says, scratching his head. “Like, you see the same ones across cultures and things. It’s hardwired into our brains or something. Let me do some research and see if I can find out anything about this one. I’m starting to lose track of all the mysteries we are supposed to be solving.”
“The weather. The kitten. The symbol,” I say.
He glares at me. “I didn’t really mean I forgot. I’m going to go home and get to work.”
Patting Albert on the head, Joe coos at him in a way that is embarrassing enough that I close my eyes and wait for it to be over. When he’s gone, I put one of the small scales or whatever it is on the tip of my finger and study it. It changes color as I move it around in the light, from black to swirly purple and blue to multiple shades of gray to dark green. It’s beautiful, almost like a jewel. Still holding the scale, I spend another five minutes staring at the symbol on the closet door. It doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just a bunch of lines. But it was done with intent, so it is meant to be something.
I’m lost in it when Albert grows impatient and tugs my shoelaces. He’s hungry and bored, and I’m not paying enough attention to him.
“Hey,” I say, bringing him to eye level. “What’s the thing on the door? Did you do that? Are you making the storms?” He cocks his head this way and that, as if following my words. I half expect him to open his little mouth and answer, recognizing that would be amazing but also terrifying. It’s okay for animals to talk in Disney movies and all, but this is real life!
Jumping down, Albert saunters out of my room, headed for the kitchen. In just a few days, he is completely at ease and has the routine down. It’s dinnertime, which is almost as marvelous as breakfast time. When I don’t immediately follow, he returns to my door and meows in complaint.
“Coming!” I say, scurrying after him.
While I heat up some leftover pasta and sauce, I spoon a little bit of kibble and canned cat food in his bowl and mix it together. Impatient, Albert tries to push aside my hand and jam his head into the bowl.
“Just wait,” I instruct. He grumbles at me. When the microwave pings, I take my bowl and his bowl and a glass of water to the table. We sit across from each other. Albert scarfs down his food in about thirty seconds and looks at me with relief and desire. He’s no longer starving, but he would like some more, please.
“You eat too fast,” I say. “Do you even taste your food? No, I don’t think you do.” Albert sticks his nose into my bowl but decides red sauce is not for him. “Sorry. But that’s what’s on the menu for tonight. I’ll give you a little more food if you promise to eat it slowly.”
Does he nod? I think he nods. I add another tablespoon of kibble to his bowl, and, obviously delighted, he plows right in. This time he’s done in twenty seconds and, again, eyes me expectantly. Gone is the lost look I thought I kept catching glimpses of.
“Forget it,” I say. “No more.” Instead of arguing, he crams his entire head into the water glass, his speck of a pink tongue darting into the water and lapping it up. “Don’t get stuck.”
But I could watch him drink water from my glass all day. In truth, I can barely remember my life before he was in it.
Chapter 15 THE SLEEPOVER
FOR ABOUT TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, nothing weird happens, as in Albert doesn’t glow or steam or spontaneously catch on fire. There are no more storms. He’s just a regular kitten obsessed with knocking pencils off my desk and leaping onto my head when I’m lying in bed reading. He complains bitterly when I carry him around in the pocket of my hoodie and complains bitterly when I don’t. Cats, it seems, are never satisfied. Joe told me that cats share 95.6 percent of their DNA with lions, and the only thing keeping Albert from eating me is his size. But I don’t think so. We’re friends, and eating your friends is not polite.
At school on Friday, I volunteer to help Mrs. Holmes clean lab equipment during lunch. It means I get extra credit, but more importantly, it means I don’t have to go to the cafeteria and get stuck between blowing off Joe and hurting his feelings and making Mia so mad, she uninvites me to the sleepover. Honestly, pet friends are much easier to manage.
After the last bell, I leave school through a side entrance so as to avoid any conversations with anyone. Joe is nowhere to be seen. I wonder if he’s still deep in his research. I could see him going down a rabbit hole and forgetting to eat and drink and stuff. I bolt directly home to prepare for Mia’s.
Albert follows me around my room as I fill a duffel bag with sleepover things—my rolled-up sleeping bag, toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush I won’t use. I jam a pillow in there too. When I used to sleep over at Mia’s all the time, I kept a pillow in her closet, but I’m not counting on it still being there.
After burrowing into the duffel and sniffing the sleeping bag, Albert gives a plaintive wail, as if he has figured out I’m leaving him. When I accepted Mia’s invitation, I was just thinking about myself and how happy I was to be let back in. I did not consider Albert’s feelings at all, and he is not pleased. He positions himself on top of the duffel and gives me a challenging glare, daring me to move him.
“Come on, smoochie face,” I say soothingly. “It’s just a night. I’ll be back early in the morning, and then I can spend all day with you. I’ll leave you some extra treats. You can sleep in the pile of smelly socks if you want.”
He turns his back, indicating he does not accept my bribes. I’m supposed to be at Mia’s by five o’clock. She lives on the presidential streets, which are as fancy as the national park streets but a little bit older and in the opposite direction. It will take me thirty minutes to walk to Kennedy Drive, lugging my bag and holding an umbrella to keep everything from getting soaked. And asking Mom for a ride is out of the question. She has not been behind the wheel since Dad died.
I really have to get going. Albert watches closely, ears tilted forward, inviting me to offer something better, something worthy of his letting me go for an entire night. He’s being annoying, but it is nice to be wanted, anyway. I sit down on the floor next to him and stroke his head.
“I promise I will never leave you again,” I say finally. “It will be me and you forever. Is that enough? When I get home tomorrow, we will play with your feather toy and you can have extra food. Okay? Are we good? Can I go now? If you come downstairs with me, I’ll give you an early dinner. What do you say?”
I know on some level it is bananas to talk to him, but I can’t shake the sense he understands me. With a swish of his tail, he hops off the duffel bag and saunters out the door, ready for me to make good on that early-dinner promise.
I arrive at Mia’s last. Despite my best efforts to shelter under the umbrella, I’m still a little bit soggy and my toes are cold. Mrs. Wilson greets me with a hug and the same sad face all adults who knew my dad throw my way. Well, not all. Miss Asher has never once given me the adult sad face.
“We haven’t seen you in so long,” Mrs. Wilson coos. “Come on in. The girls are in the family room.” The presidential street houses have big kitchens and big family rooms, as if the families who live in them want to spend a lot of time together. There is a house over on Eisenhower Street that has a garden my dad envied, with a fountain, carefully placed boulders, and a butterfly bush that seems to burst to life whenever a ray of sunshine manages to find it.
Stop it, Cassie! You’re at Mia’s! Get it together! Don’t think about butterfly bushes!
I leave my bag in the hallway and make my way to the family room. Tucked into the deep, velvet sectional sofa are Mia, Sadie, Lila, and Ruth, heads together over Lila’s phone, giggling. When Mia finally looks up, she registers surprise, and for a hot, horrible moment, I think that maybe I wasn’t really invited and showing up here was a huge, humiliating mistake.
But the surprise passes, replaced by something chillier. Disgust? I glance down at my hoodie, stained with water but otherwise clean. Sure, my hair is a mess, but I walked here and it was windy like it is all the time now. Still, my stomach begins to clench, and I acutely miss Albert. I wish he were here. Or I were there with him.
I can’t stand here like a dork all day staring at them, so I take a few tentative steps and sit on the edge of the sofa, not too close, on the periphery, but not looming, either. I remember the first time Mia and I watched Mamma Mia! right in this very spot, belting out the ABBA songs and twirling around the room, dancing along with the movie stars. I never worried about my hair or hoodies then.
“What are you guys doing?” I ask, appalled at how squeaky my voice is.
Lila, with her back to me, says, “Watching this video Marcus posted on social media. Oh my god, it’s so funny. I’m just dying.” Sadie giggles, and Ruth asks Lila to play it again. Mia is quiet but smiling. She leans back, making space for me to come closer. I have to maneuver around Sadie’s outstretched green cowboy boots to see the small screen.
“Turn up the volume,” Ruth demands. I expect to see a kid doing stupid tricks on a skateboard and landing on his head. Or a dog eating peanut butter. Or a cat riding a Roomba. Or even a parrot who learned all the curse words.
But no.
It’s Joe.
The realization hits me like a bucket of cold water over the head. He’s in school, pacing an empty hallway in front of the lockers, muttering to himself and gesturing with his hands as if he is part of a full-on conversation, except he is alone. Adrenaline floods my system. My hands squeeze into fists and my vision narrows. Lila turns up the volume.
It’s hard to hear what Joe is saying. I can tell he is working out a problem, something complicated, probably having to do with the symbol or the weather or Albert. And I know this because this is how he does it. But no one else knows that. The kids filming giggle and snort.
“Talking to his invisible friend?” one asks.
“Only kind he’s got,” the other adds.
“Except that girl in the cafeteria. The loser one.”
Me. He means me. I’m the loser girl. My cheeks flame hot. Mia looks down at her empty lap. Sadie eyes me. I don’t know what to do. The noise in my head is so loud, a roar, and the only word I can hang on to is “Albert.” I say it over and over like a mantra.
Albert. Albert. Albert. Albert.
And I swear I hear a voice respond.
Coming, Cassie.
Chapter 16 SLEEPOVER, INTERRUPTED
FROZEN ON THE SOFA, I can feel my heart thrashing against my ribs, and I can barely inhale. Ruth watches me, eyes narrowed, waiting for a reaction. This isn’t fun if they don’t get something out of it. Lila hits play again. The video starts all over. If only I could figure out a way to leave, short of running out the door and making everything worse. The realization that Mia invited me to this sleepover so they could make fun of me dawns like a red-hot sun.
In the kitchen, adjacent to the family room, Mrs. Wilson hums as she puts frozen pizzas in the oven. She says, “Now, I hope everyone over there is being kind. Kindness matters. Pizza in about a half hour.”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Ruth suggests. Mia nudges me to get up. Somehow my legs move, and I follow the girls up the stairs to Mia’s room, with its acres of pink carpet and lace curtains and a queen-sized bed like she’s a grown-up already. She has two closets full of clothes, tags still dangling from many of them, and a mirrored white vanity table with a padded chair. The table is scattered with tubes and pencils and bottles of makeup.
There was a time when Mia was not interested in clothes and makeup, when we’d stay up most of the night learning card tricks from a book I had and giggling at how bad we were at them. Or we’d climb the trees in Community Park and hope no one caught us. But that is not now.
The four girls throw themselves on the expansive bed like it’s a habit, as if they have done this a million times. I linger in the doorway. Shame squeezes into a tight little ball in the pit of my stomach, growing dense and heavy. What do I do? What would Joe do? I didn’t see how many views the video had gotten, but I’m sure Lila has played it a dozen times just by herself. Are there videos of me somewhere on there, too, taken when I wasn’t paying attention, picking my nose or pulling my underwear out of my butt or whatever?
I wish I didn’t exist. Because if I didn’t, I would not be here. Simple.
The girls roll around on the bed, giggling and watching videos, and maybe I don’t exist, because they are acting as if I am not in the room. A flare of anger erupts in my chest, not at them, but at me. How could I be so stupid? Did I really think Mia was coming back to me? For the first time since I walked in the door, my eyes well up.
Oh, I can’t cry, not here. They will film it and broadcast it to the world, and my humiliation will bloom, leaving me forever in its shadow.
A sudden clap of thunder shakes the house. For the first time, Lila looks up from her phone. “Is this another one of those stupid storms?” she asks. “They are totally annoying.”
“Ugh. Agree,” replies Ruth. “They make my hair frizzy.”
Beyond the bedroom window, rain comes down hard. The trees whip. The house trembles under the assault of heavy hail. As a bolt of lightning flashes, I catch the outline of something outside the window, balanced on the sill.
It can’t be. Impossible.
I cover the distance to the window in three giant steps and heave it open with my shoulder. “Albert!”
Balanced outside the window, drenched and trembling, is my kitten, his eyes glowing red and fierce. I swipe him up and hold him tightly to my chest. What is he doing here? How did he get here? What is going on?
This, of course, finally pulls the attention of Mia, Sadie, Ruth, and Lila away from the phone. They stare at me as if I have sprouted another head.
“What is that?” Mia points a polished fingernail at me.
“My kitten,” I stammer.
“You don’t have a kitten,” she says, lips pursed. They seem unimpressed that he materialized on the second-story windowsill, out of nowhere, during a weather anomaly. They are asking the wrong questions!
“I do,” I respond. “I just got him. His name is Albert.” This cannot be happening. Can. Not.
