by Kara LaReau
My mom had just finished filming the spaghetti and meatballs (and my dad and the twins, who were wearing fake moustaches and waving little Italian flags) when the doorbell rang. It was Carl and his dad. Mr. Weems looked just like Carl, except bigger, and older, and bald. Both of them even wore the same scowl.
“I don’t know if your daughter mentioned her run-in with my son yesterday,” Mr. Weems said. “But now it seems one of Carl’s rats is missing. We believe that your cat is the culprit.”
“When I got home, Chunk was gone,” Carl explained, sniffling. “There was blood in the cage, and the door was open.”
“I don’t understand,” my father said.
“We don’t have a cat,” my mother said.
They looked at each other. Then they looked at me.
There was nothing left to do but come clean. I took a deep breath.
“His name is Bert,” I said, finally. “I found him. He’s been sleeping under the rhododendron bush. And he didn’t hurt anyone! Well, maybe a couple of small animals and bugs around the neighborhood, but never anyone’s pets. And he did defend me and Danny against Carl yesterday, but only because Carl was making fun of us. Danny even filmed it all — he has proof! Bert wouldn’t hurt Chunk!”
The more I tried to defend Bert, the guiltier he sounded. My parents’ eyes were wide. Carl sniffled some more and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Mr. Weems looked at my parents and scowled again.
“Go to your room,” my mother said.
“But —” I said.
“Right now,” said my father.
I curled up on my bed and waited for my parents to finish talking to Carl and his dad. This was the most trouble I’d ever been in, and that was including the time I tried to give myself bangs when I was six.
Soon, there was a faint knocking at my door, and a familiar giggling.
“Mellie, we come in?” Emmett whispered.
“I guess so,” I said. “I just can’t come out.”
Immediately, the twins scrambled up on my bed with me. We used to play in my room all the time, before my parents decided to make them viral video stars. That seemed like such a long time ago.
“Where your books? Where your fun art stuff?” Emmett asked.
“Where Mr. Peepers?” added Ezra.
“It’s all . . . put away,” I said. I didn’t want to tell them about Mr. Peepers’s gruesome beheading, along with all my other stuffed animals.
“Where the kitty?” asked Ezra.
“Hiding in here?” Emmett said, looking around.
“No,” I said. “I don’t know where he is.”
“You going to jail?” Emmett asked, his eyes wide.
The twins liked to put all of their stuffed animals underneath an overturned laundry basket and call it jail. It was one of their favorite games.
“Probably not,” I said. “But I am in a lot of trouble.”
“Twubble! Twubble!” Ezra repeated, clapping his hands.
“It’s not as fun as it sounds, kiddo,” I said.
An hour went by. I could hear the twins running up and down the hall after their bath, as Mom and Dad attempted to get them into bed. I distracted myself by looking over my cat report. Mr. James was right; it was very informative. And my drawing of a cat wasn’t half bad. I flipped through the photos on my phone, of Bert sleeping in my lap and rubbing against my fingers. Could he really have done something to Chunk?
When my parents finally came in, my mother’s face was bright red, the way it gets when she’s really angry, and my father wouldn’t even look me in the eye. He just kept shaking his head. I needed to talk fast.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Bert,” I blurted. “But I was worried you’d say I couldn’t keep him. He only stays in my room for a few hours after school, and he likes being out at night, so it’s barely like having a pet at all. You guys didn’t even notice, and it’s been over a week!”
“You lied to us, Mellie,” my dad said. “We trusted you.”
“If you’d just look at these photos of him, you’d see how special he is,” I said, holding out my phone.
“Mellie, that cat is not a pet. It’s a feral animal,” my mom said.
“But if you’d just look —” I tried to say.
“It could have attacked the twins!” my mom said, raising her voice. Her face was really red now. I noticed she didn’t seem very worried about a feral animal attacking me.
“Things are going to have to change around here,” my dad said, taking the phone from me.
“Your free-range days are over, young lady,” my mom said. “From now on, you are coming straight home after school.”
“But what about Danny?” I asked.
“You can spend time with Danny, but only here at our house, so we can keep an eye on you,” Mom said.
I thought about all the fun stuff Danny and I did together on our own: our adventures all over Lambert, our projects and experiments, Danny’s movies. Hanging out at his house and eating leftovers. All of the things we wouldn’t be able to do in my boring house with my parents and the twins always around. But then I had another thought.
“What about Bert?” I asked.
“If we see that cat in the neighborhood again, we’re going to have to call animal control,” my mom said.
“In the meantime, you need to stay away from it,” my dad said.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
“But Bert would never hurt me! We like being together. And we look out for each other,” I tried to explain. “It’s like we’re family.”
“We’re your family,” my mother reminded me. “And we’re looking out for you, too.”
“And we like being with you,” my dad added.
“Not unless I want to be on camera, which I don’t!” I cried.
My parents looked at each other.
“We didn’t realize you hated the blog so much,” my father said.
“I don’t hate it,” I said. “It’s just all the time, with all those costumes and props and songs.”
“We thought you wanted some space. That’s why we’ve been letting you go out on your own,” my mother said.
“I know,” I said. “I like doing my own thing, sometimes.”
“Well, ‘doing your own thing’ doesn’t mean you can just bring an animal into the house. Bert might seem nice to you, but he could be sick,” my father said. He took my phone from my mom and starting flipping through the photos. “He looks like . . . he’s been through a lot.”
“He could have rabies, or some other disease that’s not safe for him to be around people,” my mother said. “Especially if he’s been exhibiting aggressive behavior.”
“Bert didn’t do anything to Chunk,” I said. The more I said it, the more I felt pretty sure it was true.
“Well, he did scare Carl enough to knock him off his bike,” my father said. “And that’s serious.”
That was true. And if Carl didn’t fall off his bike, Chunk and Zoomer’s cage wouldn’t have hit the ground. Maybe something happened to Chunk when he fell. Maybe when the cage hit the ground, it loosened the cage door.
“Oh,” I said.
“The most important thing is for you to apologize to Carl,” my father said.
“And then?” I said. “Can I go back to free-ranging?”
“We’ll see,” my mom said. “For now, work on staying out of trouble.” They let me go downstairs after that to eat my spaghetti and meatballs, which I took as a promising sign.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Usually I can make myself tired by reading, but leafing through The Cat Book just made things worse. All the photos of the cats in the book seemed nothing like Bert. They all looked normal and frisky and cute as they did normal cat things, like playing with balls of yarn or eating out of a cat bowl or stretching out on a sunny windowsill. They weren’t killing small animals and insects and eating their heads, or attacking boys . . . and possibly rats.
I remembered the way the oth
er kids in class reacted that day during my presentation, when they saw my photos of Bert. If he didn’t really look or act like a normal cat, maybe he wasn’t.
Maybe Danny had been right all along. Maybe Bert was really . . . ZomBert.
And then I had the worst thought of all.
Maybe by rescuing Bert, and bringing him back to life, I’d unleashed a monster. Whatever he’d done to Chunk — and whatever he might do next — was all my fault.
That was it. I got out of bed and grabbed my jacket and my flashlight. I crept downstairs and out the back door, and then I got on my bike and started pedaling. I tried not to think about what Mom and Dad would do if they found out I’d left the house. Though they said my free-range days were over — they didn’t say anything about going out at night. And anyway, I was on a mission, one I hoped they’d understand.
I’m going to find Bert, I thought. And when I find him, I’m going to call YummCo Animal Pals, so they can bring him in. They’ll know what’s wrong with him . . . hopefully.
I’d never been out so late before; it was colder than I thought it would be. I zipped up my hoodie to keep out the chill as I rode to Danny’s. He and his mom live on the second floor of a three-family house. It took me a while to find the right-size pebbles, and to aim them so they’d hit his bedroom window. When I got my third bull’s-eye, his light finally went on.
“Mellie?” he said, peering out. His hair was sticking up on one side and flat on the other.
“I need your help,” I said. “I have to find Bert.”
“Right now? What time is it?” he asked.
“Right now,” I said. “Carl and his dad came over to my house tonight. Chunk is missing, and they’re blaming Bert.”
“What? Do you really think Bert did something to Chunk?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But something isn’t right about him.”
“My mom will kill me,” Danny said.
“And my parents will kill me. They’ve already grounded me and confiscated my phone because they don’t trust me, for not telling them about Bert,” I said. “But if he really is a zombie, it’s my responsibility to bring him in.”
Danny and I looked at each other. Finally, he nodded.
“I’ll be out in five minutes,” he said.
The streets of Lambert seemed quiet. Too quiet. All I could hear was the sound of my and Danny’s pedaling. We checked around Danny’s neighborhood, then mine, calling Bert’s name and using our flashlights to inspect every potential hiding place. Then we went around our school and the high school and the town hall. No sign of Bert.
“Let’s try the Green,” Danny suggested.
The Green is the park at the center of town; Main Street cuts right through it. It was when we turned the corner onto Main Street that we saw them: brown-and-green YummCo delivery vans, all parked in front of the Super YummCo Superstore.
“They must be loading up for tomorrow’s deliveries,” Danny suggested.
And then we saw the lights. All across the Green, YummCo workers were walking with bright flashlights. At least, I assumed they were YummCo workers. They weren’t wearing their trademark green-and-brown uniforms. Instead, they were wearing white coveralls with bright-green rubber gloves and boots, and their heads were covered with hooded breathing masks attached to oxygen tanks.
“Those are hazmat suits,” Danny whispered. “As in ‘hazardous materials.’”
“What do you think they’re looking for?” I asked.
“Whatever it is, it isn’t good,” Danny replied.
“We should go,” I whispered. Danny nodded, and we both turned back.
That’s when I dropped my flashlight. It landed on the street with a clatter.
Suddenly, one of the workers’ flashlights was on both of us, and everyone seemed to be looking our way. Two of them started coming toward us.
“Let’s get out of here!” Danny shouted.
I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder again. I knew they were after us; I heard the van’s tires screeching, and then I saw the beam of its headlights. I don’t know how I managed to pedal, I was so scared. When I finally turned around to look, the van was right on our tail. It was close enough that I could see the man and the woman in the front seat staring right at us.
“We should split up!” Danny shouted. “Meet back at my house!”
“Okay!” I shouted back, as he took a left past the pet store. I took a right. Unfortunately, the van was still following me, and I was headed right for the Super YummCo parking lot, where the rest of the hazmat crew was waiting. At the last minute, I turned so sharply I nearly fell off my bike. I pedaled through backstreets and into the town cemetery, where I jumped off my bike and hid it in some bushes. Then I crouched behind the biggest thing I could find, which was actually a monument to Nathaniel Lambert, the founder of our town. I stayed there for what seemed like hours, while I listened to the van driving around, looking for me.
That’s when I saw what looked like a little gray shadow, slipping though the bars of the cemetery fence and heading toward the factory.
“Bert?” I whispered into the darkness. “Come here, boy! It’s me, Mellie!”
In response, all I heard was the van, which sounded like it was driving away. Finally, I stood up and looked around. All was quiet again. Just past the cemetery was the YummCo factory; on the hilltop overlooking the factory and the rest of the town, I could see the dark outline of the Yumms’ mansion. One window of the mansion was lit, like an open eye. I shuddered.
You really need to get a grip, I told myself. And I needed to get to Danny’s. As I looked back at the mansion one last time, I could hear the faraway chiming of the clock at the Lambert town hall. It was midnight. That’s when creepy things are supposed to happen, according to Danny. But I already had creepy things happening to me. They’d been happening ever since Bert entered my life. And now I was hiding in a cemetery in the middle of the night — could it get any creepier? I was afraid to find out.
Just to be safe, I waited another ten minutes before I pulled my bike out and rode to Danny’s. I’d never been so grateful to see him sitting on the front steps of his building.
“I was just about to call the police,” he admitted. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” I said. “Though my bike needs a serious cleaning.”
“That was crazy,” Danny said, shaking his head. “Do you think they saw our faces?”
“I looked at him. “Probably not. Bike helmets make everyone look the same.” I said. “Why do you think they chased us?”
“Well, we did seem pretty suspicious,” Danny noted. “And if something hazardous spilled out there, they wouldn’t want anyone wandering around unprotected.”
“I wonder if it has to do with the salmonella outbreak you heard about from your mom?” I said.
“I’ll ask her tomorrow morning,” said Danny, yawning. “If it does, it will be great for my presentation.”
“You should probably go back to bed, so you don’t fall asleep in the middle of your presentation,” I said.
“True,” Danny said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Sorry we didn’t find Bert.”
I was sorry we didn’t find him, too. But the more I thought about it later, after I sneaked back into my house and into bed, the more I wondered if Bert just didn’t want to be found. And if he was really a zombie, maybe it was better for everyone if he just stayed away.
The van screeched to a halt on a dark side street. Kari got out of the passenger seat and slammed the door. Greg followed suit.
“Ugh!” she said, throwing down her hazmat mask. “I can’t believe you let them get away!”
“They were going pretty fast,” Greg reminded her. “And it’s much easier to navigate these streets on bikes.”
“Wait till the Big Boss hears about this,” Kari said. “You are so fired.”
“Please don’t say that I screwed up again. I really need this job,” Greg pleaded.
/> “You’ve been a disaster at this job from the beginning. You just never saw the signs,” Kari said, smirking.
Greg leaned against a tree and sighed. And then something beneath his hand crumpled. He looked down at the tree trunk, and at a piece of paper taped to it. When he pulled off the paper and got a closer look at it, his eyes widened.
“Hey,” he said, showing it to Kari. “How’s this for a sign?”
When I left for school the next morning, there were no “presents” waiting for me. Bert was still missing, I was exhausted, and my parents still seemed suspicious. If they only knew.
“So, you actually saw Bert — at the cemetery?” Danny asked.
“I don’t know if I really saw him,” I admitted. “It was dark. And I was tired. Not as tired as I am now, but still.”
“I wish I had been in the cemetery with you,” he said. “I would’ve had my phone. I could have gotten some killer footage.”
I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Danny to think about turning my stressful situation into a horror movie.
“My mom said that the whole salmonella thing was cleaned up weeks ago,” Danny informed me between yawns. “So there’s no telling what those YummCo workers were doing out there, or why they’d chase us like that.”
“And Bert still hasn’t come back home.” I said.
“Maybe he knew everyone was mad at him, for what he did to Chunk,” Danny said.
“Everyone should be mad at me. It’s all my fault,” I explained. “I was the one who brought Bert home in the first place, and made him think I was his family. If I wasn’t yelling at Carl, Bert wouldn’t have thought I needed defending. And then he wouldn’t have . . . done whatever he did to Chunk.”
“If Carl wasn’t being a jerk to us, you wouldn’t have needed to yell at him,” Danny pointed out.