by Laura Ruby
“Yes,” said The Professor, wondering how the man had found out about it. He sighed. “You want to know when it happened, I suppose.”
“I already know when it happened. I need to know where and I need to know who. And,” he said, turning the notebook back to face The Professor. “I need to know now.”
“Who? I don’t know who it is,” said The Professor. “How would I know that until she shows herself? Er, I mean, until she doesn’t show herself, rather. As for where, I can’t be sure…”
“You can’t?” said Sweetcheeks. Using his thumb and forefinger, he lifted the tiny kitten from The Professor’s map. “Look on this map, John. A star!”
“Oh, that?” said The Professor. “You mustn’t pay attention to that. That map marks the sites of vampire nests around the city, that’s all.”
“Vampires? Tsk, tsk, Professor. I would think that you would be able to come up with something more creative than that.” Sweetcheeks took the map, folded it, and slipped it into his breast pocket. “That takes care of where. Now I need to know who.”
“I’m telling you, that map is meaningless to you.”
“I think The Professor needs a little encouragement, don’t you Mr. John?”
Uh oh, signed the Answer Hand.
“But…” stammered The Professor.
“Please,” said Sweetcheeks. “I know that you’re a genius. Everyone knows that. I also know that given the proper motivation, you’ll find a way to get the information I need, won’t he, Mr. John?”
The big man smiled with his baby teeth, and clasped the silver tab of his zipper, drawing downward ever so slowly.
The Professor had been correct.
Not pleasant. Not pleasant at all.
Chapter One
The Girl Who Wasn’t There
Gurl had no idea what made her do it. One minute, she was surrounded by a sea of snoring girls, staring at the broken lock on the dirty window. The next minute, she was racing through the city like an ostrich on fire.
She ran many blocks before she stopped, shocked at herself. She — Gurl the gutless, Gurl the helpless, Gurl the useless — had escaped from Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless, even if it was only for the night. In front of her, the city snaked out like an amusement park. Gurl drank in as much as she could: the glittering lights of the buildings, the laughter of the people floating by, the bleating horns of the taxis, the scent of car exhaust tinged with tomato sauce.
It was this last that drew her to the section of the city called Little Italy, to Luigi’s restaurant. She loitered in front of it, catching her breath as she watched the diners inside sip wine and twirl spaghetti onto their forks. People-watching was her favorite thing to do, and she was very good at it. It seemed to Gurl that everyone was either a watcher or a doer, and the watchers were greatly outnumbered. However, there were benefits to watching. For example, inside Luigi’s, a couple drifted from their table, forgetting a package of leftovers that was then scooped up by the busboy.
Gurl ran around the restaurant to the alley behind, crouched next to the garbage cans and waited for the busboy to come out with the evening’s trash. Someone kicked a can down a nearby sidewalk and its tinny clang echoed in the alley. “You wanna mess? You wanna mess?” she heard. “Yeah, boyee, let’s mess!” The voices got louder as a bunch of teenagers flew by the alleyway, throwing long shadows on the greasy pavement. Gurl smiled to herself. The noise was a part of the music of the city, and she could listen to it all night long if she wanted.
Gurl leaned her head back against the brick and looked up at the sky, plush and gray like a dome of fur, brightened by the lights from the skyscrapers and billboards. An occasional Wing darted high overhead, looping and weaving around the buildings, but it was nothing like daytime. In the daytime, people hopped and bounced and flew all over the place, even if they could only get an inch or two off the ground. Just one more reason to enjoy the dark. Only a few showy Wings rather than thousands of them, thrilled with their own stupid tricks.
Airheads, the whole bunch. She was not jealous of them, she told herself. Not one little bit.
The metal door of the restaurant opened and the busboy hopped out, swinging two garbage bags. Even with the garbage bags, the busboy was trying to fly. He jumped straight up, but the weight of the bags and his obvious lack of talent ensured that his feet lifted no more than a yard from the ground. Gurl muffled a giggle with the back of her hand as the busboy jumped his way over to the dumpster, looking very much like a giant, ungainly frog. He opened the dumpster and tossed the trash bags inside. Then he turned and leapt into the air, this time clearing the top of the dumpster before landing. Gurl was sure the busboy — only a few years older than Gurl herself — had hopes of being a great Wing, dreams of joining a Wing team or maybe competing in the citywide festival and taking home the Golden Eagle. She wondered when he would realize that his dream was just that, a dream. When he would see that most of his life would be spent scuttling closer to the earth.
The busboy dropped in a crouch, panting. He looked around, to the left and to the right. Gurl stiffened, keeping herself completely still behind the garbage cans that hid her. He squinted, staring at something. A mouse, running alongside the brick. The busboy jumped up again, crashing to the ground in front of the mouse. It gave a tiny squeal and ran the other way. The busboy did it again, jumping and crashing, terrifying the little animal, laughing as he did. Gurl waited until he sprang up a third time before reaching out from her hiding place, snatching up the mouse and tucking it into her sleeve.
The busboy landed, his grin turning to a frown, wondering where his victim had gone. Then, shrugging, he veered around and went back into the restaurant, slamming the door behind him.
Gurl rested her hand on the pavement. The mouse crawled out from the safety of her sleeve and ran into the darkness. “Bye,” said Gurl, watching as it disappeared through a hole in the brick. She supposed she was lucky that the busboy hadn’t seen her, but then again, she was not the type of girl that people noticed — she was too thin, too pale, too quiet. Sometimes people looked right through as if she weren’t there at all, their eyes sliding off her as if she were made of something too slippery to see. Nobody, nowhere. When she was little, it made her feel lonely. Now, she only felt grateful.
She stretched and walked over to the dumpster. After throwing open the lid, she dug around until she found what she was looking for: four foil-wrapped packages of leftovers. Ravioli, lasagna, salad and a huge hunk of gooey chocolate cake.
If only other kids from Hope House for the Homeless and Hopeless were here, watching, maybe they wouldn’t think so little of her. But they, like everyone else, believed flying was their ticket to fame and fortune, and thought Gurl was horribly afflicted, maybe even contagious. Mrs. Terwiliger, the Matron of Hope House, had taken her to a specialist once. First, he thumped at her knees with a rubber mallet to check her reflexes. He had her breathe in and out very quickly, hyperventilating, to see if the added oxygen might lift her off the floor like a soap bubble. Then he strapped her into a white quilted jacket with huge feather wings, and had her run around the office flapping her arms. Finally, he said: “Not everyone can, you know, and most don’t do it well. In any case, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” As a consolation, he gave Gurl a red and white beanie with a propeller on the top. Mrs. Terwiliger told the other kids that people had different talents and they should celebrate them all. “Leadfoot!” the kids yelled, as soon as Mrs. Terwiliger left the room. “Freak!”
Gurl smiled bitterly to herself. If they were such big deals, why hadn’t they noticed the broken lock? Why hadn’t they thought to sneak out of Hope House at night? Why weren’t they having dinner at Luigi’s? No, this was hers and hers alone. No man is an island, Mrs. Terwiliger had told her. One must learn to get along. But this sparkling city was an island, and it got along fine, didn’t it?
Just as she plucked up a pocket of ravioli with her fingers, she heard a sound, one she had heard only on TV.
“Meow.”
She turned, sure that someone was playing a trick on her. But it was no trick. A cat, as plush and gray as the sky above, padded down the alleyway and sat just a few feet from her.
Gurl dropped her ravioli, gaping. She’d seen pictures of cats in books and magazines of course, but they were rare. Still, Gurl couldn’t imagine where this one came from. Perhaps it was lost? But how could it be? Nobody let a cat outside; they could get hurt or sick or worse. Plus, there was the matter of people’s regular pets: birds. If people saw a cat, especially without a leash, they’d call the police. What if it attacked an old lady’s budgie or a businessman’s parrot?
The cat regarded her with queer green eyes that glowed in the dark of the alley. “Who belongs to you?” Gurl murmured. Cats chose their owners rather than the other way around, everyone knew that. This cat surely had an owner, someone who liked exotic animals, someone who worked in a zoo maybe. Gurl glanced around at the buildings that rose along either side of the alley. There were lights in some of the windows, but Gurl saw no worried faces in them, heard no frantic calls.
“Meow,” the cat said, and took a few steps closer.
“Hey,” said Gurl. “Are you hungry?” She looked at the food in the tins and nudged the one with the lasagna. The cat sniffed, then began to eat in big gulps.
“You are hungry, aren’t you?” Gurl said. “Well, you and me both.” Keeping her eyes on the cat, she reached out and grabbed the tin of cake. Gurl ate like the cat did, in huge greedy bites.
The cat finished everything in the tin, right down to the noodles. Then it did something totally unexpected. It walked over to Gurl, reached up with a gray paw and patted Gurl’s cheek, once, twice, three times. Gurl’s eyes opened wide. “No, no, no!” she said. “I can’t take care of you! I’m just an orphan.”
“Meow,” said the cat. It yawned, climbed into her lap, and began to make an odd rumbling sound. She’s purring, thought Gurl, who had read about it but never experienced it.
Gurl stared down at the cat. What was she supposed to do now? Where would she possibly keep it? What would she feed it? She shifted her weight and her arm brushed against the cat’s leg. So soft. Hesitantly, Gurl ran a gentle finger between the cat’s ears, the way she would pet a friendly bird. The cat closed its eyes and sighed, pressing its head into her palm.
Just then, the back door of the restaurant flew open and the cat sprang from Gurl’s lap. The busboy marched out the open door carrying another bag of garbage.
“Ho!” he said. Gurl froze, wishing with all her being that she were nothing more than one of the bricks in the wall. A queer shiver went through her.
But the busboy didn’t even glance in her direction. With his foot, he prodded the opened tins of food. Then he saw the cat standing there, back arched and tail spiked. “What the heck? Where did you come from?”
“Meow,” the cat said.
“Meow is right,” said the busboy. “Here, kitty.”
Since she was so close to him, Gurl could see that his brown eyes were hard and shiny, his smile cold. But why wasn’t he looking at her? Why was he acting as if he couldn’t see her? She was sitting right in front of him, right out in the open! But maybe he was just ignoring her like everyone else. The thought made her angry and she reached out for the cat.
What was wrong with her hands?
She could see them, but just barely. It was as if she were wearing gloves exactly the colors and textures of the alley itself, the black of the pavement, the red of the brick, the pink and white of the graffiti. And when she moved them, they changed to match the background. She touched her face, feeling the heat of her skin beneath her fingertips. If her hands looked like this, what did her face look like?
The busboy bent towards the cat. “Come on, now,” he said. “I know someone who’d pay a lot of money to get a load of you.” He lunged for the cat, grabbing it by its front paws. The cat howled. “Shut up, you stupid thing,” the busboy said. The animal hissed, clawing with its back legs.
“Ow!” the busboy yelled, but didn’t let go. Carrying the wildly gyrating cat, he took one huge leap over to a garbage can on the other side of the alley, and threw the cat inside. He quickly slammed the cover down and held it. The garbage can bucked and bounced and the busboy kicked it. “Shut up!” he yelled.
Gurl was furious, but she didn’t know what to do. The busboy wasn’t big, but he was probably stronger than she was. And he could fly, even if he couldn’t do it that well. She unfolded her legs and saw they were exactly like her hands, nearly invisible. If he couldn’t see her, then…
The busboy kicked the garbage can again, and the terrified mewls of the cat were too much for Gurl to bear. Though she had never done anything like it before, though she thought her heart would burst like a water balloon, she crept behind the busboy. Grabbing the waistband of his pants, she yanked upwards as hard as she could.
The busboy never flew higher than he did that moment, and never would again. Gurl tossed open the garbage can and the cat vaulted into her arms, instantly becoming the color of the air, the color of nothing. The two of them, Gurl and cat, raced from the alley, just as if they had wings of their own.