Put Me Back Together(2)

“I got it!” said One.

He held a small orange cat up by its scruff as his buddies scrambled to their feet. They all looked tickled. The cat looked pissed as hell. When Three leaned in to look at him, he took a swipe at his nose and missed by millimeters.

“He’s a mean little guy,” said Three. “Quick, get the bottle!”

I looked at the three boys, the howling cat, and the bottle, and that was when I surprised myself.

I stepped into the lot.

“What’re you doing to that cat?” I demanded.

They all spun around, Three almost losing his balance again. Two dropped his bottle. It was possible I’d yelled a little.

“We’re gonna get him drunk!” One announced gleefully, just as the cat wiggled out of his grasp and hightailed it back into the bushes. The other two swore and crouched down to find him again.

“Like hell you are!” I said.

Shoving my way past One, I stepped right over Two and placed my foot into the closest bush, the one that was too small for the cat to hide in. As soon as I smashed the branches down, the cat shot out between Three’s legs, making him fall over for real this time. The rest of us chased after the cat, but I grabbed him first, mainly because they were sloppily drunk and couldn’t run in a straight line to save their lives. I stuck him inside my jacket, zipping it closed over his fur, and folded my arms to hold him in there. I could feel him shivering against me, his heart beating rat-a-tat-tat.

“Aww, come on,” One whined. “Give him back!”

“There’s no way in hell I’m giving him back to you,” I said. “He’s frozen and terrified. He’s too small to be outside in this weather.”

“We weren’t going to hurt him,” Two said, stepping forward, his massive chest exactly level with my eyes. He was standing a little too close for comfort, and I took a step back.

He said, “Just let me see his little head. I want to pet him.”


I didn’t like the dark look in his eye, or the way he was towering over me.

“Not on your life,” I said.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed One coming up on my right side. As soon as Three picked himself up out of the snow, they’d have me cornered with my back to the fence. My heartbeat began to quicken as I took them all in. Suddenly they didn’t seem quite so harmless or quite so drunk. Moments like this, guys like this, always reminded me of Brandon. Suddenly it was six years ago and I was thirteen again, peering into a boy’s face, wondering what kind of violence might explode out of him. As much as I’d tried to change my life, to fix it, to control it, I was still that same girl, perpetually taken by surprise.

Not that I was going to let anything like that happen to me again.

“Listen, you little f*ckers—” I began, but I was quickly interrupted by a smooth voice coming out of the darkness to my left.

“Hey, fellas,” the voice said. “What’s the trouble?”

As he stepped into the light of the streetlamp, I realized it was the guy who’d been standing over at the other end of the lot by himself. I’d forgotten all about him. His tone was calm and friendly, as if trouble wasn’t something he expected to find, or, if he did, it wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t handle. I frowned a little at him. People who felt that comfortable in their own skin made me nervous, though that didn’t stop me from taking a small step in his direction. Mr. Calm and Collected was immensely preferable to the three menacing drunkards.

The reaction of Drunk Idiots One, Two, and Three was fascinating. They each tried to arrange themselves into a casual pose, while at the same time standing up straighter. One even put his hands behind his back, like his military commander had just walked in. They looked like Huey, Dewey, and Louie when Uncle Donald had just caught them red-handed. Turning back to Mr. Calm and Collected, I felt a flash of recognition. Wasn’t he important around campus, something to do with sports? It all started to make sense now. He was like their God.

“Hey, man,” said Two. “What’s up? Haven’t seen you around much lately.”

“Yeah, where you been?” said Three. “You missed George’s party.”

“Did I?” he said, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance over their heads. I noticed that, though he was not as alarmingly broad as One, he was taller than him. “I was just waiting for my girl here.”

He turned to me and flashed his dimples, which were so pronounced they were almost distracting. I stared at them, still frowning.

Tipping his head toward me, he said in a quiet voice, “You’re late, you know.”

Suddenly all four of them were looking at me, waiting for a reply. “Well, there was ice cream,” I blurted, flustered, “and then there was the cat, and…”

He put his arm around my shoulders and I had to resist the urge to take a big step away from him, reminding myself that he was the nice one. He was helping me out. Warmth flowed through his coat and into my side. I pressed my lips together to stifle a nervous giggle, which came out as a squawky gurgle instead. Basically, I sounded like a drowning seagull. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone besides Emily had been this close to me.

“Did he get out again?” he said, concern creasing his forehead.

Then he turned to his moronic disciples. “Thanks for helping her find him, guys,” he said. “She loves that kitty. She’d have been heartbroken if he’d been hit by a car or drenched in beer by some heartless thug.”