Don’t Let Me Go(46)

“Who, the cat?”

“No, Mr. Lafferty. Pay attention.”

“But you said the cat was Mr. Lafferty.”

“I know you’re just doing that on purpose, Billy. I know you’re not even confused for real.”

“Try this one on for size. You overhear someone talking about how Mr. Lafferty died. And just for a minute, you think, Oh, no! My cat!”

“Hmm,” Grace said. She pressed her ear to the cat’s side again, because she wanted that nice tummy feeling back. “Maybe you’re right. But I already told him his name was Mr. Lafferty, and I don’t want to go and break a promise to him first thing, so I guess his name is Mr. Lafferty the Cat. Why are you looking at me that way?”

“It’s kind of long.”

“Let me ask him if he minds.” She pressed her ear to his rumbling side again. “He says he doesn’t mind. So. Can he stay here?”

“I don’t know, baby girl. I’m afraid of animals.”

“You’re afraid of everything!” Grace blurted out, exasperated.

Then, as soon as it left her mouth, she could tell she’d hurt Billy’s feelings, and she felt bad.

“That was cold,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

She wanted to go on to say, “I didn’t mean it.” But she sort of had meant it. She still agreed with it. She just knew now that she shouldn’t have said it out loud.

“Really, I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Can I just leave him here while I go upstairs to Mr. Lafferty the Man’s apartment, so I can get Mr. Lafferty the Cat’s litter box and look for cat food?”

Billy hadn’t finished looking hurt yet.

“I guess so,” he said.

Grace let the cat down on to the couch, and Billy jumped up and backed all the way over to the window, which seemed like overdoing it, even for Billy. After all, Mr. Lafferty the Cat wasn’t even a very big cat.

Grace ran to the door.

“I figured out something really important,” she said, her hand already on the knob. “I can’t tell you everything about it now because I’m in a hurry, but it’s about how people should all have somebody, and about how nobody should have nobody, and about how, now that I figured it out, things are going to be a lot different around here. We’ll have to have another meeting.”

Then she threw open the door and raced out into the hall, slamming the door behind her.

Not three steps later, a hand stopped her forward progress. The hand just came out of nowhere, and slapped over her mouth so she couldn’t yell, and then another hand grabbed around her waist, and then she was on her way down to the basement apartment whether she wanted to go or not.

Which she didn’t.

She squirmed, and she even kicked backwards, but the kick missed.

She wanted to yell. She tried to scream, to say, “Help! I’m being stolen!” but the hand over her mouth was too tight.

It wasn’t until she was inside her basement apartment that she found out she’d been stolen by her own mom.





Billy



“We’re getting impatient,” Billy announced.

It didn’t sound noticeably different from Billy’s daily comments to himself. But, in this instance, he was talking to Mr. Lafferty the Cat, who looked directly into Billy’s eyes when he spoke, unnerving him.

Mr. Lafferty the Cat was curled on Billy’s couch, settled, but not asleep. Staring at Billy. For just a moment, Billy dared to stare back. He had interesting markings, that cat, with a line of color change right down the middle of his face. Like a mime, Billy decided. Like a showman in makeup.

Maybe we have something in common after all, Billy thought, but he did not say any of that out loud, for fear the cat would hear it as some type of invitation.

Billy had already tried to sit down once, in his big stuffed chair, because the couch was alarmingly…taken. But Mr. Lafferty the Cat had been inexplicably drawn to that move, and he had frightened Billy by jumping on to the arm of the chair and then trying to sit on his lap. So now Billy just stood, his back against the sliding-glass door, which felt shockingly cool. From his vantage point, he could see the kitchen clock, which he’d been watching with even greater than usual compulsivity.

“How can it take her an hour to go get your litter box and food? Unless she has to rummage around in all the cupboards looking for cat food. But still. An hour. Do you think she got distracted by something?”

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Lafferty the Cat appeared to have no answers. No opinions.

? ? ?

Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes after Grace had left on her cat-food run, someone knocked on Billy’s door.

“Grace?” he said, running to answer it.

Mr. Lafferty the Cat jumped down and crouched on the rug, ready to run under the furniture if anything else alarmed him.

It had been Rayleen’s signal knock, and Billy knew it. But he called Grace’s name anyway, because he wanted it to be Grace. She could be imitating the knock. Kids imitated.

He undid the locks and threw the door open wide.

It was only Rayleen.

“Oh. It’s only you,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too. I’m thinking I need Grace back now.”