Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  When I sat down, Grams said, “There you are!” Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a small rectangular box. It was white with a gold ribbon, and she slid it across the table to me, saying, “This is from your mother and me. We really hope you like it… and will wear it.”

  I looked from Grams to my mother and back again. Then I checked across the dining room to the Acosta table. Heather was up to her ears in tissue paper, but I didn't care. I liked my little box with the gold ribbon. And I liked that Heather wouldn't know I was opening a gift—there was no way I wanted her to know we shared a birthday.

  I rattled the box a little, trying to figure out what it was. If my mom was involved, it was probably some sort of dainty jewelry. But if Grams was behind it, it was probably something more practical.

  “Just open it!” my mom said with a laugh.

  So I did. And what was inside was the most amazing thing—a softball watch. The minute hand was a bat, the hour hand was a ball, and a baseball diamond connected the 12, 3, 6, and 9.

  “This is so cool!” I said, strapping it on. “I love this!”

  Grams clapped her hands and said, “I knew you would!” and since I could tell it was her idea, I gave her the biggest smooch ever on her cheek. She kissed me back and said, “I'm hoping it'll help get you home on time.”

  I laughed. “It's gotta help.”

  I showed it off to Hudson, who said, “A home-run watch—very nice!”

  Then I noticed that my mother was looking kind of hurt. And since the watch was supposedly from her, too, I said, “Thank you, too, Mom.” I held my wrist out to her. “Isn't it cool?”

  She smiled and sort of shook her head. “I don't know how you can tell time with that, but I'm glad you like it.”

  So for a moment there, I was just actually liking my birthday. But then a bunch of waiters and waitresses marched through the tables singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…,” and I froze. Could they know it was my birthday? Yes! Hudson had mentioned it when we were seated. But… maybe not. The waiter had barely paid attention.

  I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw that they weren't headed for our table—they were going to Heather's. And when they put the piece of cake in front of her, she looked my way to make sure I'd noticed that she was queen for the day. And—this is how relieved I was—I actually acknowledged by giving her a little smile and a wave.

  But all of a sudden the waiters start singing again, and that's when I see that they've got another piece of cake.

  Everything warps into slow motion. Their bodies moving toward me, their voices distorted and stretched out as they sing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…”

  My heart starts racing, and I want to charge out of there, but it's too late—the waiters are already at our table.

  I check the Acostas, and sure enough, they're looking at us. And although Casey seems puzzled in an amused sort of way, Heather's chin has dropped to her chest and her eyes are as big as baseballs. And then, when the waiters put the cake down in front of me, she actually shoots out of her seat and screams, “No!”

  Her mother yanks her down and has some frantic conversation with her that spreads to Mr. Acosta and then to Casey. And even though Mr. Acosta's shrugging like, What's the big deal? and Casey's grinning like the pages of Mad magazine are coming to life in front of him, Heather and her mother are looking downright savage.

  I wanted to shout at Heather, Hey! I don't like this any better than you! But inside I knew—no matter what I said, no matter what I did—in the end, there'd be no escaping her.

  Heather didn't come after me right then. But I knew there'd be fallout, probably at school. Not that it was my fault that we had the same birthday. Actually, I was having trouble believing we were born on the same day, too, but when I said so in the car, Hudson told me, “It's not as strange a coincidence as you might think. It takes only twenty-three people in a room to create a fifty-fifty chance of two sharing the same birthday.”

  “No way!” I said.

  “But it's true,” he said. “And considering the number of people having brunch there today, plus the fact that a lot of people go to the Santa Martina Inn to celebrate special occasions, I'm surprised there weren't more.”

  “I wouldn't care about sharing my birthday with anyone else … but Heather?”

  He shook his head. “I'll admit, that's one unlucky coincidence.”

  When we got to the Highrise we all thanked him high and low for taking us out, and he was real polite to everyone, but as my mom and Grams went up the walkway to the front door, he pulled me aside and said, “I am sorry, Sammy. I thought the Santa Martina Inn would be a special treat. But I'm afraid it—”

  “Hudson, no! It was great. And I'm sorry I got so spastic about Heather.” I toed the ground. “And so riled about my mother…”

  “Your mother is trying to be nice, Sammy.”

  “I know. I know.” I looked up at him. “And you should have seen me last night. I was so mature you'd have been puffing with pride.”

  “It felt good, didn't it?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it's hard work.”

  He laughed and said, “So true,” then told me to come visit him sometime soon.

  “Will do!” I said, and headed around the building to the fire escape.

  Now, by the time I got to the fifth-floor landing, I'd actually convinced myself that even though she's lied to me and deceived me and hidden things from me, I could be nice to my mother. For my own sake, if not for hers. Only then, just as I'm opening the fire-escape door, I hear her scream, and Grams shout, “Lana, close the door!” And suddenly Dorito is streaking my way.

  At first I thought he was racing toward me because he was happy to see me. But then I see that he's got another mouse in his mouth. And before I can stop him, he shoots between my legs and ditches it out the door.

  “Dorito!” I shout, but he doesn't stop. He charges down the fire escape like he's done it all his life. And I'm racing after him shouting, “Dorito, no! Dorito!” but he ignores me. And then I hear Grams above me crying, “Oh no! There he goes!”

  I look out across the lawn and there's Dorito, streaking toward Broadway. “No …no …no …,” I whimper. “Dorito, please … not the street!”

  But he goes straight for the street. Right into the street. And even though I don't want to watch, I do. Tires squeal, horns honk, Dorito zigzags, and I can almost not believe it—he makes it to the other side. Then, cool as can be, he starts strutting up the sidewalk toward Wesler Street.

  I fly down the rest of the stairs and charge after him. And by the time I get across the street, Holly's in front of the Pup Parlor, asking, “What's going on?”

  “Dorito! He got away!”

  She runs with me up to Wesler, saying, “I knew it had to be something big—you making a scene like that on the fire escape.” She eyes me. “In a pink sweater.”

  “You could hear me? Up in your apartment?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says, then adds, “Well, the window was open.”

  “Maaaan.”

  “Forget it. No one around here's going to think about it. Or care.” Then she says, “I take it wishing you a happy birthday would be sorta stupid?”

  “Don't remind me!” I almost told her about Heather, but I decided to save it. I had to concentrate on finding Dorito.

  When we got to the corner of Broadway and Wesler, we looked around, then hung a left, even though Dorito was nowhere in sight.

  “How'd he get out?” Holly asked.

  “We were coming home from brunch, and I think my mother freaked out when she saw he had a mouse.” I checked down an alley. “And then he charged past me as I was coming in the fire escape!”

  We ran up the block, then agreed to split up, Holly going north, me going south around the neighboring blocks. When we met up again, we were both totally out of breath. “Maaaan!” I wailed. “Where'd he go?”

  We headed back toward
Broadway, and inside I was totally panicked. What if I couldn't find him? What if he got hit by a car?

  What if he wound up in a trash can, slimed and shocked out of his mind?

  “Holly, we've got to find him!”

  “I know,” Holly said, and I could tell she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Does he have tags?”

  “No! He never leaves the apartment!”

  “Uh-oh.” We were on a corner, looking up and down both streets. “He could be in a tree, he could be down an alley, he could be in someone's backyard. He could be anywhere!”

  “I know,” I said, and it felt like someone had put a tourniquet around my heart.

  We searched the neighborhoods again. We kitty-kitty-kittyed down alleys, around porches, up trees. We asked people on the street if they'd seen a big orange cat. No one had.

  And after we'd been looking for hours, I spotted someone down the block kitty-kitty-kittying her way toward us. She was wearing a ball cap. Blue jeans. Red high-tops.

  I stopped in my tracks and stared.

  Holly stopped, too. “Who's that?”

  It came out sort of a gasp when I said, “Grams.”

  “Your grandmother? Are you sure? It doesn't look anything like her.”

  For a second the tourniquet loosened and a bubble of happiness floated through my heart. I'd surprised Grams with the high-tops and jeans, but I'd kind of given up hope that she'd ever wear them. I guess to some people jeans and high-tops are like pink angora sweaters are to me. But there she was, looking high and low for my cat, ready to put those high-tops into action if she spotted Dorito.

  “Grams!” I called, and waved as we ran her way.

  “Any sign of him?” she asked, and I could tell she was really worried.

  Holly and I shook our heads. “We've looked everywhere.”

  “We'll find him,” Grams said, but she looked like she was about to cry. “Your mother feels just awful about this.”

  “Is she out looking, too?”

  Grams shook her head. “Her bus left about an hour ago.”

  “Wait a minute—she's gone? She lets my cat out and leaves?”

  “You knew she had to leave, Samantha.”

  I squinted a little and shook my head. “Why do you always stick up for her?”

  “I don't always stick up for her….”

  “Yes, you do!”

  She frowned a minute, then looked me square in the eye. “Well, when you're not around, I always stick up for you.”

  “Why don't you ever do that when I am around?”

  She sort of shrugged. “You seem to do a pretty good job of it yourself.”

  “No, I don't!”

  “Hey,” Holly said, getting us back on track. “Do you think we should start putting up some posters?”

  I hesitated. Putting up posters seemed so … desperate. “You think so? Already?”

  “I can't think of what else to do,” Holly said. “The Humane Society's not open, and neither is the pound. Would he be able to find his way home?”

  “I have no idea.” I turned to Grams. “What do you think?”

  Grams shook her head. “I wouldn't count on it. Posters would probably be a good idea, but I don't think we have a picture.”

  Holly said, “Well, how about if I make it just MISSING: SPECKLED ORANGE CAT and your phone number. It's better than nothing.”

  “And Dorito's front right paw is white,” I said. “Put that in.”

  Holly nodded. “Okay. I'll go home and print up some flyers, you two keep looking. Meet me back at the Pup Parlor in about half an hour. If you haven't found him, we'll put up the posters.” She started to take off but stopped. “You want to offer a reward?”

  I looked at Grams, wondering if she'd want to ante up, but then I remembered. “Forty bucks!” I dug the twenties out of my pocket. “It's not a lot, but at least it's something.”

  “I'm on it,” Holly said, and took off running.

  “So,” Grams said as we started walking. “Where'd you get the forty dollars?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Samantha?”

  “Uh… can I tell you about that later? It's kind of a long story and I'd really like to concentrate on finding Dorito.”

  She didn't look real pleased with that, but she finally nodded and said, “Okay”

  We didn't move as fast as Holly and I had, but Grams was a more careful looker. She stopped and talked to people. She checked between houses. Under parked cars. Behind hedges. We kitty-kitty-kittyed until our tongues couldn't kitty anymore.

  But by the time we were due back at the Pup Parlor, we'd seen no sign of Dorito, and I was getting the sinking feeling that I would never see my cat again.

  Meg and Vera needed Holly's help, so Grams and I went around with the flyers on our own. And you'd think that putting up flyers would go quick—a little tape, a quick staple—you'd have the town plastered in no time. Trouble is, people complained.

  Grams was around the corner taping a flyer to a newspaper stand when T.J. came out of Maynard's and ripped down the flyer I'd just stapled to a phone pole. “Put another one up and I'll call the cops,” he snarled.

  “The cops? Teej—I'm missing my cat!”

  “Cat-schmat,” he said.

  Now, if it had just been T.J., I'd have said, Stupid, heartless jerk. But other people told us, “Hey, that's illegal.”

  I asked, “Why?” and was told, “It just is.”

  Well. Since I don't consider that to be a very good answer, we put them up anyway. And believe me, Grams fretted plenty. At one point she said, “I don't know about this, Samantha. I don't want to wind up in jail.”

  “Jail? Come on, Grams. They're not gonna lock you up for posting flyers about a cat.”

  “But what if they fine me? I can't afford a fine!”

  “Grams, they're not gonna fine you.”

  “But I'm asking for it, aren't I? My phone number's right on the poster!”

  “Proof that you didn't know any better.”

  So Grams was pretty nervous about it, but we went ahead anyway.

  Now, the West Side is a weird combination of residential and industrial. So in one block you've got houses, and the next you've got businesses that make ice. Or that rebuild engines. Or box broccoli. And who knows what came first, the houses or the jobs? All I know is that it's always weird walking through the West Side. You never know what you're going to come up against. And since the streets are laid out funny—some are diagonal, some wind around and then just dead-end, some take you right into gang territory—well, it's easy to get lost. And scared.

  And it's one thing being in the heart of the West Side by yourself or with your friends—when you're thirteen, you can run. But now I was there with my grandmother, and high-tops or not, running was not an option.

  Grams must've been a little nervous about it, too, because as I was taping a flyer to the wall of a brickyard, she looked around and said, “I think we should make our way home after this one, Samantha.”

  But when I finished anchoring the paper to the wall, a man came out of the building next door. He didn't startle me or anything, but I did do a double take, and he did a double take, because we knew each other.

  Kind of.

  I gave a little nod, and he called, “Hey, chiquita” as he locked the door.

  I read the sign above the door—Kustom Heat and Air. “You work here, too?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I work everywhere and at all times. How else you supposed to get ahead?” He stuck his hand out to Grams. “Tornado Tony, at your service, ma'am. No job's too big, no job's too small. I'm quick, I'm fast, I'm cheap. If you got a mess, I'm your man!”

  Grams laughed and said, “Pleased to meet you. But I'm afraid I don't have any work for you, if that's what you're after.” She handed him a flyer and said, “But here's a way to earn some easy cash.”

  “What's this?” He read the flyer and said, “No picture?”

  I shook my head. “I don't have one.
”

  “This your cat?”

  I nodded. “His name's Dorito. And I'm really worried about him because he's never been out in the wild before.”

  “Oh, he'll be all right,” he said. “Cats've got nine lives and all that.”

  “You don't understand! There's a cat killer on the loose! He's—”

  “Wait a minute—a cat killer?”

  “Well, that's what this cat lady over on Cypress says. And at first I thought she was nuts, because she's got like a gazillion cats, but then Holly—you know the girl at the Pup Parlor?”

  “Sure.”

  “She and I found a bunch of dead cats yesterday.”

  He was sort of squinting at me. “You found a bunch of dead cats? Where?”

  “In trash cans! All over town. And since tomorrow's trash day—at least for around here, right?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, if some crazy cat killer gets ahold of Dorito and trashes him, how will I ever know? He'll get hauled off to the landfill and bulldozed with Pampers and cardboard boxes and half-eaten Twinkies! He'll be—”

  “Shhh-shhh-shhh!” Grams says, putting her arm around me. “We'll find him—we will!”

  Tony looks at the flyer again. “Well, seeing how I work twenty-four-seven, and seeing how I know this neighborhood and everybody in it like the back of my hand, I'll ask around and keep my eyes open.”

  Grams tells him, “That's very nice of you,” and as Tony heads up the street toward his van, he says, “You'll find him, chiquita!” Then he laughs and calls, “Or should I say Triple-T?” and gets in his van.

  “Triple-T?” Grams asks. “What's that about?”

  I shrug. “You know that forty bucks?”

  “Yes…”

  “Well, I won it.”

  So I tell her about my adventure in the ring. And it's a good thing I didn't add details—like about following the Bulldog or getting flushed out by El Gato—because I'd barely made it through telling her about taking the back bump when she said, “Wait—did you bet with those men?”

  “Well, I didn't bet with them. They bet on me.”

  “And they gave you a cut?”

  “Right.”