“Shoo!” Vee whispered. Where was its mother? It was too little to be by itself. Was one of those Dumpster cats its mother?
The kitten studied her from a safer distance. Vee’s right leg was going to sleep, and she moved it. The kitten showed its teeth and hissed—a tiny bit of fur with huge white fangs. Vee snorted. Tough wasn’t going to work for this kitten. Then she thought of those fangs sinking into her ankle that was within biting range of the little feline. It could happen.
A heavily accented voice cut into Vee’s concentration. The moment she took her gaze off the kitten, it pounced nearer.
“Go away,” Vee whispered. The kitten arched its back and twitched its tail. Vee’s eyes crinkled into slits, and she smothered a giggle.
A harsh voice broke in. “What good are kots vit disease and no homes? The Helpful City Festival is in almost one month. They vill not vant to see kots vit no home like this.” All the V-sounding words made Vee dizzy. Crab-crawling a bit forward, Vee leaned to the left and saw a tall, spare man talking to a woman. Where had she seen her before? Medium height, silvery hair. She could be a million old ladies. She stood holding an aluminum pie pan. The Dumpster cats were watching from the lid, tails lashing.
The curious kitten darted forward and bumped Vee’s hand then bounced away, back humped.
“Hey, I didn’t tell you to come to me,” Vee muttered to the kitten, trying to listen to the two people argue.
The woman—Vee knew she’d seen her up close before, but where?—straightened. “We started the problem. Idiots won’t spay and neuter their pets. Dump them when it’s not convenient anymore. They don’t necessarily have disease, Hermann. Someone must save the kitties.”
He interrupted. “No point to feeding the kots. Animal Control gonna get rid of them before the festival in about a month. The judges don’t vant to see kots in a city that’s supposed to help people.”
“Hermann, you ninny. Helpful means helpful wherever there’s a need. This parking lot is their home. These cats need a place.”
Place. That cat-feeding woman now had Vee’s attention. How could a Dumpster surrounded by ouchy prickly lettuce be an acceptable place to live?
“Der crazy in der head, Gladys. Nobody vants to help cats vit don’t belong to nobody.”
“If you think Animal Control is going to haul off these cats, you better think again. Not while I’m alive.” The woman’s voice was fierce. Hermann grumbled under his breath.
Once again a smooth softness flowed across Vee. She absently pushed away the kitten. For such a young kitten without its mother, it seemed pretty brave. She glanced down. The kitten sat about three feet away, eyeballing a fluffy caterpillar waving its antenna, marching its creepy bazillion feet halfway across Vee’s hand.
For the second time that day, she shrieked, “Beetle!” and, with her backpack banging off one arm, leaped to her feet, then staggered through the prickly lettuce and into the parking lot. To her left, Hermann and Gladys stepped out from behind the Dumpster.
“What is the matter vit you?” the man snapped. “What are you doing in these bushes?” Did he think Vee had on purpose skidded on a slimy pear, face-planted into prickly lettuce, and had a creepy caterpillar crawl over her hand? She shuddered, scratching her hand vigorously.
The Cat Woman glared. “Are you trying to haul off my cats?” She turned a withering glance on Hermann. “Are you making children do your dirty work these days?”
Time to exit. Flinging her head up, trying to ignore the man and woman and march off with dignity, she got as far as the head fling. The S.A.V.E. Squad and C. P. stood on the library steps, their mouths hanging open.
Out of the corner of her eye, the curious kitten and the other cats shot past her, across the parking lot, loping left toward the lake. The curious kitten hopped to a stop, looked back, and made eye contact with Vee. Then it was gone. Vee felt curiously disappointed. Oh, the beetling day that wouldn’t end!
Esther’s voice sounded across the parking lot, high, loud, and accusing. Vee only heard bits. Hands on hips, “—never told us!” Esther said, ignoring that Vee had just emerged bloody, limping, and getting yelled at by two senior citizens.
Tell her what? Vee continued her painful approach. Her face ramped up sharper stings, and she gingerly patted the scratches. “I—I was tying my shoes, and a caterpillar ran over my hand.” Wow. That was feeble—a word on the language arts vocab list.
“Why were you tying your shoes in the bushes?” Esther asked, fists still firmly planted on her pudgy hips.
Vee sighed. In a last effort to get at least some part of her plan in action, she yanked the ATP from her pocket and gasped, “I’ve got to get home before I get in trouble.”
Aneta flipped her long blond hair over one shoulder and hunched her shoulders. Easily the tallest of the four girls—and everyone was taller than C. P.—she stood like she was proud of being tall. “But we did not tell about our first day of school like we said. And C. P….”
Already edging away from the group, every scratched part of her in full sting, Vee wanted to know, Why has nobody asked why my face is bleeding? Or my hands? Or why I have a full-blown bloody shred across my knee?
Sunny spun in a circle. “Oh yeah. The C. P. thing is crazy. Who would have thought that?”
C. P. swiveled his head from Vee to Sunny. “Hey,” he said, swallowing something. “Why would it be so crazy that I would transfer into Moby Perkins’ smart kids’ class?”
Vee stopped backing away. Zizzle! In her damaged condition, she thought her hearing must be going.
Esther stepped forward, peered, and then gasped. “You’re bleeding!”
Just. Get. Home. That’s all she wanted to do. Anything to get home to her mother who could begin to make some sense of the world’s worst first day of school. It would be even better if it were Mom and Dad together to help her. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Bill at Mom’s house and Heather at Dad’s. As in Bill and Heather, their new spouses.
“What is it with you and bugs?” C. P. had finished the caramel or whatever and was picking up his backpack. “First the beetle in school today and now—”
“How did you know about the beetle?” The words shot out.
Sunny led Vee over to the steps and prodded her shoulder. “Sit down. You look like you got in a fight with a cat.”
“How did you know about the cat?” She sat. It had been watching her. Rather than creepy, it was—special.
C. P. wandered off. The girls clustered around Vee. She looked over her shoulder. Hermann walked down the parking lot to the senior citizen door and entered.
“Who’s the grouchy guy?” Esther asked, plopping down next to Vee. With the next question, she had already forgotten him. “How come you didn’t tell us C. P. was going to be in your accelerated class at school?”
Beetle.
Chapter 4
The Not-Dad and the Big Stuff
Bill turned from the kitchen sink, holding two gigantic sopping potatoes in his paw-like hands.
“Hi,” Vee said, standing in the doorway, her wounds pulsing “ow” with each heartbeat. “Where’s Mom?”
Bill was a diesel mechanic, so his hands were much rougher than Dad’s. Dad shook hands a lot at the business meetings he had with people who gave him money to build all his businesses. “Your mom called. It’s you and me tonight for dinner. She’s showing a house she thinks they might make an offer on.” His dark brows went up as his wide mouth made a crazy expression. “Here’s hoping, huh?”
Vee forced a smile.
Number One Hope of Realtors: They might make an offer.
Number One Reality: They hardly ever did when you thought they would.
“Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I’m, uh, going to do my homework.”
Again the eyebrows shot toward the dark, curly hair that fell over his deeply tanned forehead. “On the first day of school?”
“Oh.” She bit her lip. Her prickly lettuce rash—or this
beetling day—was pushing her to cry.
“Anything you want to talk about—like how was your first day and why do you look like you’ve been in a fight?”
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Bill. He was just … not her father. Her father was taking the Twin Terrors to their soccer games and buying them tokens at Pizza Crazy. The last Dad Weekend, she’d had to go to two soccer games, hold coats, and cut up oranges. The Twin Terrors and their stinky feet had made her glad to return to Bill’s quiet house.
Bill was trying hard to be whatever he was supposed to be in this new family blend. Trouble was, it was aawwwkward. Was he supposed to be a dad replacement? Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be like a dad at all. She sometimes mixed up the conversations her parents and their new-ish spouses had had with her. “I’m not trying to replace your—insert ‘mother’ or ‘father’ here—I just want you to be part of our new life.”
Five Names for the Stepdad:
1. Replacement Dad
2. Next-Dad
3. Not-Dad
4. Mom’s Special Friend
5. Bill
Another sigh. Who had what spot in the family was just so … weird these days. A spot in the Accelerated Learning Center was the only safe thing. Oops. Bill was looking at her. Had she been standing there with her mouth puckered up like a baby about to cry? Her backpack slid off her shoulder, bouncing on her knee with the lettuce rash. “Ow. No thanks. It was—just school. You know.”
“Not much I don’t. I dropped out before I graduated.” He gestured with the dripping potatoes. “I’m better with my hands working on the big rigs.” He grinned the all-out smile that her mom said made her stomach wobble. TMI, Mom. “I washed my hands after work. You’re safe.”
As she headed for the stairs, Bill’s deep voice followed behind her. “Your mom says potatoes take about an hour and a half for these big ones. After that we’re on our own for what to put on them.”
She called back, “Okay,” and slogged down the hall to her room. After placing her backpack in the oversized chocolate-colored beanbag in the corner by the window, she pulled off the long-sleeved peasant blouse that had been way too hot for the first day of school and pulled a T-shirt over her head. Grimacing, she peeled the capris off her bloody knee. Those pants would take some explaining to Mom. After pulling on shorts—carefully—she hobbled to the bathroom, washed her knees and hands—yelping between clenched teeth—and then bandaged the knees.
All the while, she thought of the curious kitten. Where did it sleep? She hoped not in the Dumpster. Once the ordeal of the knees was complete, she stiff-legged it back to her room and the beanbag. She pulled the backpack out of it and flopped down. A little kitten would love a beanbag like this. It would be like an entire planet to the small feline.
“You,” she told herself severely, “do not have time to worry about wild cats. Do not be lazy. Ramp up your want-to.” That was one of Dad’s favorite lines. Heaving herself out of the beanbag and taking a quick glance at her room to make sure everything was in its place, she decided a snack before baked potatoes was necessary.
Downstairs, the kitchen island was littered with the contents of the fridge. Bill’s head was deep within it.
“What are you doing?”
He sighed, backing out and straightening. “Looking for stuff to put on potatoes. Nutritional stuff for a healthy dinner. Your mother said.”
She squinted a disbelieving look up at his six feet. “Like how much stuff do you want?” She shot a glance at the counter. “I don’t think they grow potatoes big enough to hold all this.”
Bill’s laugh was as full as his smile. It began back in his throat, rolled up and out in a rich laugh that made you feel like you’d said something funny. And smart.
Taking the two steps to the island, she surveyed the piles. “Okay, let’s start with what you don’t need.”
He closed the fridge door and sat on a stool across from her. He swept his arm magnanimously. “Go ahead. This counter looks like my workshop in the garage.”
Vee had to agree, having peeked in the door once. She folded her arms and surveyed the excess. “I’d start with getting rid of the jar of peaches.”
More Bill laughter. A tiny smile refused to hide inside Vee’s face.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me credit for that one. I just forgot to put it back in the fridge when I was after the pineapple.”
The plastic container on the counter held pineapple tidbits left over from the cottage cheese and pineapple her mom ate every day for lunch. “You’re going to put pineapple on a baked potato?”
Bill nodded, pulling another container toward the pineapple. “I was thinking that the potato could be like a pizza crust and we’d load pizza-topping-type stuff on it.” He leaned forward over the leftover broccoli, the plastic bag of pepperoni, the hummus, a bunch of green onion, a red and green pepper, and a jar of olives and pulled the Canadian bacon package next to the pineapple. “See? A Hawaiian special potato. Whaddaya think?”
“I think there’s a reason Mom cooks.” She pushed the pineapple away, kept the Canadian bacon, and then pointed. “I’ll eat that with butter and sour cream. And green onions. I’ll put everything else back.”
“Works for me!” Bill’s face relaxed. “I think your mom would be cool with that.”
Cool with that. Her dad never said that. Bill sometimes sounded like a kid. Wasn’t he supposed to be the grown-up?
With Bill’s head back in the fridge, Vee handed him the rejected potato toppings.
“So what happened that makes you look like you’ve run through a barbed-wire fence?” His voice sounded muffled deep in the recesses of the side-by-side fridge. “Oh. Your mom got a phone message from the school.”
The retest, the curious kitten, Hermann and the Cat Woman, C. P., the service-learning project. For a moment, she wavered. Trust Bill with a beetling day? The next thought bopped the first one away. It was between her and Mom. Bill didn’t fit in the spot for this problem. Laughing over dinner, yes, but not the big stuff.
Chapter 5
Have I Got a Deal for You
The sound of the garage door closing awoke Vee the next morning. Her first thought was the curious kitten. What did a Dumpster cat eat for breakfast? Maybe it was better if she didn’t know. She rolled over to check her alarm clock. Ye-ow! Her tattered hands and knees protested loudly. Managing to roll to an upright position, she checked the clock: 6 a.m. Good. She’d have time to talk to her mother before she left for work. If the plan she’d made right before she fell asleep worked, Vee would not be heading for regular sixth grade.
After her Tuesday morning ritual of showering and conditioning her hair, she dried it and styled it into pigtails. She pulled on a pair of capris and a short-sleeve, long-waisted blouse she’d set out on the beanbag last night then slid everything she’d need into her backpack.
1. Tell Mom the Plan.
2. Guidance counselor says Yes to the Plan.
3. Catch up on yesterday’s math class work.
4. Keep want-to ramped up (eek!).
5. Tell girls the Plan.
“Mom? …” On her way downstairs, she listened. “Oh, Mumseyyyyy!”
From the last step, she spotted the sheet of lined paper on the island counter. Oh, beetle. Her mother was gone already? She was glad her mom was one of the top Realtors in Oakton, but couldn’t the beetling houses wait at least until her mother heard the Plan?
“Hey, little girl,” her mother’s scribbly handwriting ran. “So sorry, baby, about the regular sixth grade. I’ll be home early, and we’ll go over your plans for the service-learning project the school mentioned. Bunches of hugs, Mumsey.” Her mom always signed her notes “Mumsey.”
Slapping her head with one hand, Vee hustled to the fridge. Service-learning project. She remembered now that Mr. Tuttle had been talking about it when the guidance counselor hauled her off. She snagged a carton of yogurt, an apple, and a string cheese from the second shelf that she had conv
inced her mother and Bill should be her school lunch and after-school snack shelf. Closing the door with her foot, she added it to her backpack. Then, with the thought of the curious kitten peeking out at her yesterday, she grabbed a mini can of tuna with the pop-top lid her mom sometimes ate. Into the pack it went. “A little extra treat for you, curious kitten,” she said to nobody.
Another moment and she’d neatly printed her response to her mother and was out the door for school.
Dear Mumsey,
TOP THREE THINGS FOR YOU to do TODAY
1. Talk to your daughter.
2. Talk to your daughter.
3. Talk to your daughter.
Love, Vee, who doesn’t want to go to the BEETLING NORMAL SIXTH GRADE.
P.S. Beetling isn’t a swear word. It’s an interjection. I learned it in the ALC. See how important it is for me to stay in there? I need to talk to you!
The ALC seemed noisier this morning than the previous day. Fewer kids sat by themselves trying to look like they liked sitting by themselves. More were falling backward into the tub, laughing, sitting talking in the window seats, and generally no longer uneasy about a new school year.
Luckies.
The moment Mr. Tuttle closed the leader-citizen class, Vee dashed to the front of the room.
“Can I have a pass to the guidance office?”
He straightened from digging through the piles on his desk. “Can I help you with anything, Vee?”
She shook her head. “It’s about yesterday.”
For a moment he frowned, as though her yesterday hadn’t registered on his radar. Then his face saddened. “I’ll be sad to see you go, Vee.”
“I’m not going,” she said, taking the pass he handed her. “I have a plan.”
She didn’t even care if someone saw her running in the halls. She knocked on the office door. No answer. She knocked again and tried the handle. Locked. Good thing she’d come prepared with notebook and pen. She wrote:
The Great Cat Caper Page 2