Write Before Your Eyes

by Lisa Williams Kline

  Jen bent to look through the car window at Gracie. “What do you mean? Give me my freaking car.” Obviously, Jen could not see the cat either.

  Dylan pressed on the accelerator. Thankfully, the car did not die again and he started to drive off.

  “Wait! Okay, okay.”

  “You have to agree, or we’ll leave you,” Dylan said.

  “This is crazy,” said Jen. “But fine. I’ll drop you off.”

  “And you have to wait for us.”

  “No way, I’m not sitting around—”

  Dylan started driving away again, so jerkily that Gracie thought her teeth might fall out.

  “Fine! I’ll wait.”

  Dylan jumped out of the driver’s seat and Gracie told him to navigate, which she knew he’d prefer to sitting next to the cat, and she got in the back.

  “I thought you had a date with the Fridge,” Gracie said, as Jen slammed the car door.

  “I did.” Jen accidentally hit the horn as she used her shirttail to wipe the lip gloss from her lips. “Let me know if you see him walking around here. I sorta lost him.”

  “How do you lose a date as big as the Fridge?” Dylan asked innocently.

  “Shut up! I don’t want to talk about it.” And Jen turned on “Nice to Know You” by Incubus full blast.

  “I’m prone to car sickness,” Dylan said. “I must insist you drive within the speed limit.”

  Jen responded by jamming the Mustang into fourth and peeling off down the road, leaving gray dust swirling through the cornstalks in the moonlight.

  “Or not,” Dylan added weakly, grabbing the armrest.

  Gracie’s head throbbed on the left side as if someone had poked it with a knitting needle, and her knees kept jumping involuntarily, the way they did when the doctor checked her reflexes. She tried not to look at the cat, but when she felt something warm and soft tickling her arm, she barely let her eyes slide over and almost screamed. The tip of the cat’s tail brushed her arm rhythmically, like her mom’s fingers when she used to tuck Gracie in. Gracie took a shaky breath and slid a few inches away on the seat.

  There was no sign of the Fridge. He seemed to have vanished. Ten minutes later they jerked to a stop in an old residential neighborhood where all the houses were one story, built of white clapboard with green shutters. Dylan folded up the map.

  “This is it. Cut the lights,” he told Jen.

  “Hey, bite me, Brainy Boy. I’m getting pretty tired of you telling me what to do,” Jen replied. But she turned them off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Oh my gosh, that’s my dad’s car,” Dylan whispered, pointing to a maroon SUV parked in front of Dr. Gaston’s house.

  “They must be working on Dr. Gaston’s case.” Gracie glanced at the cat, whose ears sprang to sharp points. “Why don’t you wait here while we get the journal?”

  Mind if I come along?

  “Don’t you trust us?” Gracie said.

  Why should I?

  “Who in the heck are you talking to, Gracie?” Jen pressed a thumb and forefinger over her eyelids. “I swear, you and Dylan are so weird. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be seen with you two? Hurry up and get out of the car, okay? And don’t keep me waiting long.”

  Gracie opened the door. The cat jumped out lightly behind her. Its tail brushed the side of her leg. “Dylan, what’s our plan?”

  “The usual,” Dylan said with a conviction that Gracie admired quite a bit.

  “Right. The usual.” She shut the car door, drew a shaky breath, and skulked behind Dylan through the side yard. Dylan reached out and took her hand. They didn’t speak, knowing that the Cheshire cat, padding along behind, its tail like a periscope, would hear everything.

  Dr. Gaston, like many people who own cats, had left his garage door slightly open so that his pets could go in and out. Gracie and Dylan, both being on the skinny side, were able to lie down flat and shimmy underneath. The Cheshire cat’s stomach was a tight fit, and Gracie watched with amazement as he magically changed himself to cardboard width and squeezed under with ease.

  Inside the garage, ribbons of blue light from a streetlamp shone through the door’s narrow window onto the dusty roof of the gray Taurus. Gracie’s heart beat faster. A tarp-covered riding lawn mower and a pink girls’ bicycle stood in the corner, and beach chairs and a weed eater hung on the wall. It sure didn’t look like a criminal’s garage, though what did a criminal’s garage look like?

  “This is perfect,” Dylan said. “If he didn’t lock the car, we can retrieve the journal and get out of here with no problem whatsoever.”

  Gracie peered through the Taurus’s back window, still open, where the journal had flown, and scanned the leather seat. No journal. “Crap! It’s not there.”

  Maybe it fell on the floor.

  Gracie didn’t answer the cat but opened the car door as quietly as she could and felt around on the seat and on the floor of the car with her hands. She found two golf balls, an umbrella, a bunch of papers, and a book titled You Have to Go to School, You’re the Principal.

  Still no journal.

  “He took it inside,” she said. “Which means he found it.” She stood and closed the car door very, very carefully, freezing when it softly clicked shut.

  “Not to worry,” Dylan said. “No grown-up could ever figure out how that journal works.”

  We must go in and get it.

  Gracie began to feel really annoyed with the cat. “I realize that.”

  “How inconvenient not to be invisible any longer,” said Dylan.

  “Good grief, Dylan, there’s just no making you happy.” Gracie tiptoed up the three wooden stairs that led into the house and put her hand on the doorknob. “Do you think there’s an alarm system?”

  Very, very slowly, she turned the knob and pushed the door open an inch. An ear-splitting alarm loud enough to scramble her brain rocketed through the air.

  “I believe so,” Dylan said.

  Gracie’s heart nearly exploded in her chest.

  Hide! I’ll be the decoy. Then try to get in.

  The cat’s advice made sense. Gracie and Dylan dove under the tarp covering the lawn mower just as someone flung the door open and turned on the light. The alarm stopped, leaving Gracie’s ears ringing. Peeking from under the tarp, Gracie saw the cat, now looking like an ordinary tomcat, racing around the Taurus, yowling and clawing the garage door.

  “Oh my gosh, I can see him now,” Dylan whispered, peeking out under the tarp.

  “I guess he can let people see or not see him at will,” Gracie said.

  “Just a stray tomcat stuck in the garage,” Dr. Gaston announced with some relief. He pressed the door opener, but as he headed over to shoo the cat out, it ran under the car. Dylan’s dad came into the garage.

  “He’s hiding under the car,” Dr. Gaston said. “Sometimes I think these alarm systems are more trouble than they’re worth. Here, kitty, kitty.”

  Both men got down on their hands and knees, trying to see the cat. A hair-raising growl came from beneath the car.

  “Now!” Gracie whispered, and while the cat hissed and spat at the two men, she and Dylan slipped out from under the tarp and crawled out of the garage into a small mudroom with a washer and dryer. Just beyond was the kitchen.

  “Yeoww!” Dr. Gaston shouted from the garage. “Watch his claws.”

  As Gracie and Dylan raced through the family room, searching for the journal, they heard Dylan’s dad say, “I suggest we get back to work. Leave the garage door open, and perhaps he’ll run away.”

  Papers and files were scattered on the coffee table, as well as two cups of coffee, pens, and someone’s reading glasses.

  No journal.

  “Now what?” Gracie said. “They’re coming back.”

  Gracie and Dylan shut themselves in the front-hall coat closet just as the two men came back into the room. Crouched together in the dark, they tried to still their breathing. Gracie’s heart pounded like a ba
ss drum in the marching band. Dylan’s hand found hers.

  “Are you really going to give it back to the cat?” Dylan whispered. “After all this?”

  Gracie felt heat rising to her face and was glad it was dark inside the closet.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just get it back first,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.

  They fell silent and listened to the men’s conversation.

  “Your arraignment tomorrow will be routine, though there will likely be media there, so I’d like to suggest that we arrive early and go in through a side entrance in hopes of avoiding reporters.”

  Gracie pushed the door open a tiny crack, and she and Dylan could see Dr. Gaston’s profile and the back of his father’s head.

  “Whatever you say, Paul. I appreciate you taking my case.” Dr. Gaston pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat. “I don’t know how I’ll ever make your rate.”

  “Let’s not worry about that now. You’ve done a lot for me,” said Dylan’s dad. “Where is Sandra, by the way? I’d like her to be present tomorrow. It will be very important for your wife to stand behind you and help present a united front to the public eye.”

  “Sandra’s taken the children and gone to her mother’s.”

  “That’s extremely unfortunate. Does your wife believe you to be guilty?” Dylan’s dad put down his coffee cup very carefully. Gracie realized she was holding her breath to hear the answer.

  “My daughter was sick, and her medication wasn’t covered by insurance.” Dr. Gaston took off his glasses, and then squeezed the bridge of his nose as if it pained him terribly. “Once she recovered, we worked out a payment schedule with the hospital, but we were still struggling. Sandra took a second job working nights at a department store to help pay down the hospital bills. So I believe she thinks I became desperate and took the money from the school account.”

  Gracie listened, waiting for Dylan’s dad to ask the next logical question: “Well, did you?” But he didn’t.

  “It’s a shame she doesn’t have more faith in you,” said Dylan’s dad, standing. “But that won’t prevent us from mounting an effective defense, Larry. As I said, I’ll pick you up in the morning. Wear a suit, and if it’s a cheap one, all the better. All that will happen tomorrow is that I will inform the judge that you intend to plead not guilty, and your court dates will be scheduled. Then we can begin to prepare your case.”

  Mr. McWilliams put his coat on.

  “I’m not giving it back!” Gracie whispered to Dylan. “I have to write something about Dr. Gaston, I have to help him.”

  “Gracie, it sounds like he’s guilty.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. Besides, even if he is guilty, he was just trying to pay hospital bills.”

  “Just playing devil’s advocate here, but wouldn’t what he did still be wrong?”

  “I just have to help him.” Gracie peeked out the door slit as Dylan’s dad gathered his belongings. He picked up a pile of papers and the blue of the journal flashed there.

  “There it is!” She grabbed Dylan’s arm.

  “And thanks for giving this back to me,” Dylan’s dad added, picking up the journal. “I found it on the golf course, and there are some entries in it that I wanted to read to my wife. I don’t think Dylan has any idea how much I’ve talked with you about him not fitting in at school, with his high IQ. And I don’t want him to know. It’s better if he doesn’t think I’m worried. I haven’t a clue how this got in your car, but I think a girl who goes to school with him wrote it and it eases my mind. It appears that he’s in better shape than I thought. He has a girlfriend—in fact, more than one, which I see as very positive. Listen to this.”

  And he opened the journal and read:

  “Dylan and Gracie had been good friends for two years. They told each other everything. Gradually their relationship blossomed into more than a friendship. Dylan started liking Gracie and thinking about her all the time.”

  Gracie felt her heart squeeze to a stop. She almost choked. Oh, God, why did I ever write that?

  Dylan dropped Gracie’s hand. Gracie reached for him, but felt nothing. Her heart beat double-time. “Dylan?” she whispered. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “At any rate,” Dylan’s dad continued, “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

  The door of the closet slammed against the wall and Dylan raced across the hall and out the front door.

  “Dylan!” Gracie dashed into the hall after him, vaguely hearing Mr. McWilliams yell, “Who’s that?”

  A misting rain had begun to fall, and a streetlight at the corner of Dr. Gaston’s driveway shone on the wet asphalt. Gracie stood on the front porch and strained her eyes looking for Dylan.

  “Please stop!” She ran into Dr. Gaston’s front yard. “I can explain!” She heard faint footsteps, but had no idea which way he’d gone. An empty black feeling began to spread behind her eyes, and she struggled to breathe evenly.

  Jen beeped the horn. “Gracie, come on! While we’re young!”

  Gracie held up a finger for one minute, and raced back inside Dr. Gaston’s house. Both men stood in the front hall, with their mouths open.

  “Gracie Rawley?” Dr. Gaston said. “Did you…break into my house?” His face sagged with shock and sorrow. “Of all the students at Chesterville Middle, I never thought you’d do something like this.”

  “Something of mine was taken,” Gracie said. She was shaking all over, but she pressed on. “Please give me that journal back,” she said to Dylan’s dad.

  “I suspected this might belong to you.” Dylan’s dad closed the journal and handed it to Gracie. It flashed through Gracie’s head that she’d just stood up to the ex-principal of her school as well as the town’s most intimidating lawyer, but there was no time to reflect on that.

  “Thank you.” Gracie took the journal and sprinted through the fine rain across the grassy yard, now dark and slick, and jumped into the car with Jen. The Cheshire cat loped heavily across the front yard in their direction. For the first time in her life, she was glad that Jen drove like a maniac.

  “Fly!” she yelled.

  “No problem.” Jen, grinning, peeled off, barely missing Dylan’s dad’s car. Gracie looked back as the cat bolted across the yard and down the street after them. The way he ran was otherworldly, as if his stout body were stretching and stretching until he looked like a greyhound with a cat’s head.

  “Faster!” Gracie shouted at Jen. Jen pressed her foot to the floor and they careered out of the cul-de-sac. “Did you see which way Dylan went?”

  “He ran toward the entrance to the neighborhood. What the heck happened?” Jen said.

  Gracie sighed. “He got mad.”

  “Why?”

  “I like him, but he doesn’t like me.”

  Jen actually looked sympathetic. “Sucks for you.” She sped down a tree-lined street, and Gracie leaned her head out the window, calling Dylan. After they’d gone down a second street, Gracie glanced back and saw the Cheshire cat streaking through a side yard, closing in on them. Now the Cheshire cat seemed to be running in fast motion. Her heart lurched. Where the heck was Dylan? He wasn’t that fast a runner. She hated to give up, but what choice did they have? “Jen, we have to get out of here, now.”

  “No problem!” And Jen gunned for the interstate, cranking Brand New all the way up.

  Gracie looked over her shoulder to check for the cat and Dylan one more time, then pulled out the journal. She smoothed her fingers over it. She’d only been without it for a few hours, but it seemed like a lifetime. Carefully, she examined it to see if it had been damaged in any way. It looked okay. She took out a pen and began to scribble as fast as she could.

  The truth was revealed and justice was done in Dr. Gaston’s case.

  That ought to take care of that. She glanced at Jen, low in her seat, her eyes on the road. They headed down the ramp to the interstate and she felt a soft bump behind her, turned, and nearly screamed. Crouched on t
op of the trunk, peering with his kaleidoscope eyes through the back window, was the Cheshire cat. He’d caught them!

  “Jen, drive faster!”

  “Who do you think I am, Jeff Gordon?” Jen pressed on the accelerator.

  “And whatever you do, don’t open the window.”

  Gracie realized that no matter how fast they drove, the Cheshire cat could run faster. Maybe he could even fly. There was no escaping him.

  Gracie began to scribble as fast as she could.

  Sean’s feelings for Jen became his true feelings again and remained that way.

  She drew a deep breath. She felt her throat thicken when she thought about what she had to write next, but she knew she had to do it. She glanced back at the cat on the trunk of the car, now hissing at her, its fur whipping in the furious wind, and she clicked her pen twice and wrote:

  Dylan’s feelings for Gracie became his true feelings again and remained that way.

  “Gracie, what are you writing? And why are you crying?” Jen looked at Gracie, nearly rear-ending someone on the highway before she swerved around them.

  “Nothing,” Gracie said. Her heart was racing out of control. She had a feeling that Dylan never wanted to see her again, and it made her feel dark and hopeless inside. She still had to write about Dad, but it seemed as though everything that had happened was coming down on her all at once now, and she started shaking. The cat, pressed against the car’s back window, gave an eerie growl. It looked as though he were putting one of his paws right through the window, as if the glass of the window had turned to Jell-O. Gracie’s hand was shaking and she could hardly write.

  Could she stab him with her pen? Then she froze. It had suddenly occurred to her: She could simply write the Cheshire cat out of existence! Why didn’t she think of that before? She could write away her worst fear! Gritting her teeth, she scribbled, struggling to hold her hand still:

  The Cheshire cat left Gracie alone and went back where he came from.

  She looked back at him and suddenly, like a helium balloon, he whooshed from the window of the car high up into the air, shrank to the size of a star, and blinked out.

  “Oh my gosh! I got rid of him! He’s gone!” She almost collapsed with relief onto the floor of the car.