Cat in the Flock (Dreamslippers Book 1)

by Lisa Brunette

  And then it happened. She felt Hope's feelings again. Longing. She felt an intense longing, in both her heart and... between her legs.

  But she would not open that locker-room door. She kept her hand on it, as much to steel herself from opening the door as to feel a connection to the man she knew was on the other side. With her free hand, she fingered the gold cross. She was saving herself for P.J., for their wedding night. Once God had joined them together in spirit, they would join their bodies together. Hope was strong; she could wait for this. It would be the most beautiful night of her life. It would be worth the wait. She quelled the fire between her legs, forced herself to think of that wedding night and all that it meant.

  Cat pulled herself out of Hope's consciousness again, gasping. The longing was so intense that she could barely stand it. Thankfully, Hope awakened at that moment, groaning the way a lover might groan. Cat stifled her own groan and realized she was fully aroused. Her nipples were hard, her heart was on fire, and between her legs, she was wet. Hope's bunk was across the aisle from Cat's; she could see the girl roll onto her side, her breathing calm. It hit Cat suddenly that their dormitory-style sleeping arrangements definitely curtailed privacy, and probably by design. With no expense spared in other areas of the campus, it seemed odd that the girls were packed in here like sardines. But it did have the intended result of discouraging any activities a girl might want to engage in privately, such as the one Cat felt an urge to engage in now. It had been a couple weeks already since she'd seen Lee.

  She'd had no contact with him since the exchange of text messages the morning of the dream, and he still didn't know she was in St. Louis. He'd be returning to Seattle soon, but they hadn't made specific plans to see each other.

  Thinking of Lee was not helping her calm down her arousal response and fall back to sleep. She glanced at the clock. It was 5 a.m. She had another hour before she was expected to rise and shower. She might as well put it to good use.

  She got up and splashed cold water on her face but didn't bother to change out of her pajamas. She felt in her pocket for her talisman, which she'd taken to carrying with her at all times: the glittery pink barrette left behind in the condo building the night Cat lost Ruth and her mother.

  In her careful wanderings about the campus, Cat had found Larry Price's office, which wasn't even locked. The Plantation ministry didn't believe in locked doors. A person could wander about the place freely. It seemed they had nothing to hide.

  She padded on bare feet to Price's office. She'd opened his door before, been surprised to find it unlocked, but hadn't had the chance to explore. This time, she stepped inside.

  The place was spotless. If there had been blood splatter on the walls here, it had been thoroughly scrubbed out of existence. The office smelled of pine-scented cleaner and bleach. A seating area to the right was arranged around a gas fireplace, the mantelpiece adorned with carefully placed pictures in silver frames. There was one of Jim, Anita, and what appeared to be a past incarnation of the Teen Scripture Squad. There was another of Jim, Larry, and some of the other men in the ministry's leadership; Cat recognized Rev. Chambers, as well as Tina's handsome father. Above the fireplace was a large counted cross-stitch bearing this Bible verse:

  Guard what God has entrusted to you.

  Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you

  with their so-called knowledge.

  (1 Timothy 6:20)

  Cat read through the quote a few times. It was certainly a clarion call to ignore opposition, and for a church with such a strong, conservative position, it wasn't surprising that a church leader would choose to foreground it.

  There was a door at the back of the office that she realized must lead to Larry's private rooms, but this door was bolted shut. There was no way for her to open it. She searched for a key but didn't find one.

  His desk was in an alcove off to the side, his chair facing the window, which was a ceiling-to-floor glass wall overlooking the ministry garden. Instinctively, Cat sat down at the desk. From there she could see a fountain in the center of the garden. Aesthetically, the fountain seemed out of place in the conservative grandeur of the ministry overall, with its clean white lines and glowing metal surfaces. In contrast, the fountain resembled a rock formation that seemed vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't quite place it. It was comprised of several tiers of silver boulders, hollowed out in the middle and tipped forward so that water would cascade from one to the next. Partially covered with a tarp and unfinished, the sculpture was nonetheless clearly intended to be a fountain. She could see that water would rush from the center of the topmost boulder and whirl through the bowls of the other rocks before splashing to the base and disappearing.

  Her bare foot kicked over a wastebasket under the heavy oak desk. Peering beneath it, Cat saw a mishmash of crumpled receipts, gum wrappers, and staples that had been pulled out of a document with a staple remover. She dropped down on all fours and went through the papers. She sniffed the gum wrapper: cinnamon. There was a receipt for gas that included a car wash, several slips from the same coffee shop listing a latte with a shot of caramel syrup. And there it was: a receipt for drinks at a bar. It bore a double-D logo but no bar name. Perhaps that was meant to preserve discretion for the clientele, but Cat recognized the logo from the garish pink-and-silver billboards advertising across southern Illinois and Missouri. It was Diamond Dick's, the strip club. There had been several rounds of drinks for several drinkers, as the order came to $77.

  "Why are you going through Larry's trash?" The voice was incredulous and accusatory. The voice was Rev. Chambers'.

  Cat froze. She looked up through the legs of the desk and saw the man's reflection in the glass. She palmed the Diamond Dick's receipt in her left hand and picked at the pulled-out staples with her right. They were stuck into the carpet.

  "This must look pretty weird, huh?" Cat said. She sat up on her knees and twisted around to look at him, a staple between her fingers. "I'm prying used staples off the ground." With her other hand, she stuffed the receipt in the pocket of her pajamas, next to Ruth's barrette.

  "Pardon me, miss?" His suspicion was a bit disarmed, but he tapped his cane on the floor for emphasis, and that unnerved her.

  "I know I shouldn't have come in here, but the girls said this is where that guy killed himself. I guess I couldn't help my curiosity. I wanted to see where it happened. I sat down here at the desk and kicked over the trashcan. It was full of staples. Used ones. They're impossibly stuck into the carpeting."

  His face softened some, but Cat could see he was still on guard.

  "Didn't anyone ever tell you that curiosity killed the cat?" he said rhetorically.

  Cat allowed herself to chuckle.

  "Young lady, death—whether it's the death of the man who once occupied this office or the death of an overly curious feline—is most assuredly no laughing matter."

  "It is if your name is Cat," she said boldly.

  "Cat, you say? Well, what kind of name is that? I'd say it's a common noun, not a proper one."

  "It's short for Cathedral," she said, sitting back on her haunches on the floor. "My mother got religion in her thirties, when she had me. I'm sort of the commemorative Catholic baby."

  "And a papist at that. In Larry's office. Such a thing shouldn't be condoned." He stepped over to one of the sofa chairs and sat down with grace, his hands balancing on the gleaming eagle atop his cane. He watched Cat pick up staples as if the sight pleased him immensely.

  "You seem a bit, ah, older than the other girls," he said, setting Cat's alarm bells off in more than one way. First of all, she felt like her cover was being blown. Second of all, was he flirting with her? She suddenly felt self-conscious of her body, kneeling there before him in her pajamas. She wasn't even wearing a bra.

  There was an awkward silence as Cat tried to think of something appropriate to say. "I'm sorry," she finally muttered. "I shouldn't have come in here."

  "No,"
said Rev. Chambers. "You shouldn't have."

  "Who did the cross-stitch?" Cat asked, pointing to the one above the fireplace and trying to sound upbeat. "It's very nice."

  "You know something about cross-stitch?" he asked, looking dubious. "Most high-school girls think it's too old-fashioned. There's little appreciation for the domestic arts nowadays, a woman's rightful work in the home."

  "My mother taught me," Cat said. "I've never done one that big, though. It looks like whoever stitched it didn't use a pattern."

  He smiled appreciatively. "Oh, I'm sure ol' Anita marked out the pattern herself. She'd make a good wife for the right man, if she weren't married to the church."

  "She sounds like a nun," Cat said, standing up. She threw the staples into the trashcan.

  "We don't keep brides of Christ here," he said, using his cane to stand up. "And we don't tolerate nosy little girls who are too big for their britches. And I mean that in more than one sense." As he said that last part, his eyes appraised Cat up and down.

  She had no choice but to gulp back her natural inclination to tell him to go fuck himself. Instead, she cast her eyes downward, muttered "Yes, sir," and left the office.

  That afternoon, she was still burning with anger toward Rev. Chambers as she sat in the back of the ministry classroom, listening to Anita.

  "College will be a very exciting time in your lives. You'll learn so much about the world and about yourselves. But you will also be met with the greatest temptations of your lives, especially those of you who aren't planning to attend bible colleges." Anita paused and cast a glance at Cat, as well as at a few of the other girls in the back of the room. "One of the goals of our precollege teen program is to adequately prepare you to meet these challenges with all the blessings of Christ in your hearts."

  Cat glanced around the room. The girls were all nodding in agreement with Anita. She thought about her own four years at college, at a Catholic Jesuit university. Had she encountered the greatest temptations of her life? She supposed that was true in some sense, yes. There had been marijuana and other recreational drugs if she wanted them, and one-night stands if she wanted those, too. Alcohol was easy to come by. And of course there was the temptation of the education itself, which could have led her to atheism. But it hadn't. Her religious studies teachers encouraged her to question her faith, but they had all been priests who believed that questioning one's faith only strengthened it. As for the other temptations, well, Cat came out of her four years in college with a degree and full honors, and she was neither drug- nor sex-addicted, and she still believed in God.

  But she would have to quell these thoughts if she didn't want to blow her cover. Anita was staring at her just then, so she put an open, beatific smile on her face.

  "Today's Bible lesson is about love and marriage," Anita announced. "It's about walking the path with Christ in your hearts. It's about being pure, body and soul." Anita passed out a piece of paper on which were listed several Bible verses. On the back was a Purity Pledge.

  "I know you're all eager to pledge your purity," she said. "But this is Bible study, so let's start with the lesson."

  Anita asked Hope to read a passage from 1 Corinthians: "Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."

  Hope read in a clear, measured inflection. Cat couldn't help but flash back to her dream, the sexual arousal it produced.

  "What does this passage mean?" Anita asked. Several hands shot up.

  But Hope still had the floor. "Fornication is a sin," she declared.

  "That's part of it, yes," Anita said. "Anyone else?"

  Several hands were still in the air, but Anita was looking at Cat. It was clearly her moment to step up.

  "All the other sins don't have an effect on the sinner's body," Cat observed. "But fornication does. It's like committing a crime against your own body."

  Anita's face broke into a wide, surprised smile. "Yes," she beamed. "Exactly. Well done, Cat."

  After a few more rounds interpreting various Bible verses dealing with the subjects of purity, lust, and setting an example for others, it was time for the Purity Pledge. There were several provisions to the pledge, ranging from "I will always dress in a manner that honors the sanctity of my body and shields me from tempting others" to "I will only commit to a man who shares my commitment to God."

  Just to show Anita that she was undergoing an authentically challenging transition, Cat took issue with that last one, asking if she would ever be allowed to marry a Catholic man. "If he's raised in a faith, it shouldn't matter which one," she pointed out. The room went silent. It was Wendy who took her on.

  "How will you worship together if you're going to different churches?" she asked. "You can't build a life together in Christ if you're not practicing together. You'll be talking about Jesus, and he'll be talking about Mary. You know how the Catholics obsess over Mary."

  The girls all giggled at that one. Hope spoke up next. "If you met someone you loved, you could spend some time at each other's churches, talk about how you want to build your Christian lives, and then decide how you'll do that."

  "That's great advice for Cat," Anita said. "Thank you, Hope. Now let's all sign the pledge."

  Cat signed it, no more questions asked. At the end of class, Anita announced there would be a Purity Ball, a father-daughter ball, which would give the girls in the precollege program a chance to honor their fathers for "warring on behalf of their purity." Cat sighed inwardly. Oh, her father was going to love this one.

  They were all treated to ice cream after signing the pledge, as a reward, Cat supposed. They took their cones out to the garden to watch the setting sun. Wendy was at a bench by herself trying to tame a rapidly melting chocolate cone, and Cat sat down next to her. "I noticed something today," Cat said. "The Purity Pledge. It didn't mention being a virgin."

  "Yeah, that's Anita for you," said Wendy between licks, her signature glittery orange nail polish getting covered in chocolate drips. "She's pretty smart. By the time you're getting ready for college, there's a good chance you're no longer a virgin. She figures it's better to focus on purity. Then it's not a lost cause if you've already stepped over that line. I mean, look at me. I'm not a virgin, but I'm pure as the driven snow these days." She grinned, a bit of chocolate ice cream in the corners of her mouth.

  Cat offered her a napkin. Everyone else had wandered off to watch a group of guys from the boys' dorm playing volleyball on the lawn. Cat lowered her voice anyway, leaning in toward Wendy. "Are the church fathers pure? What I mean is, would any of them hang out at Diamond Dick's?"

  Wendy looked at her hard. "Of course not," she whispered.

  Cat reached into her pocket where she'd stowed the receipt she found in Larry's wastebasket waiting for just this moment with Wendy. It was a risk to confide in Wendy, even just this little bit, but it was a calculated one. "I knocked over Larry's trashcan on accident this morning. This fell out."

  Wendy's face registered shock and disappointment the moment she saw the Diamond Dick's logo, which she would of course recognize because of her mother. "No," she said. "She can't be right. No." She shook her head. "Damn it," she hissed, tossing the receipt into Cat's lap.

  "Who can't be right? What's the matter, Wendy?"

  Wendy got up, stalked over to a trashcan and tossed her half-eaten ice cream cone inside. "Thanks for ruining my appetite," she said, and walked away.

  Cat ran after her, falling in step as Wendy kept walking. "Wait. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shown you that. After you told me your mom—"

  "—is a liar," Wendy cut her off and kept walking. "Who says things just to hurt me. It's like a hobby for her."

  "I'm sorry," said Cat.

  Wendy stopped walkin
g and turned to Cat. "Well, your receipt says my mom was right. I thought she was just jealous... of how much I love this church. She hates the fosters, never says anything good about them, and talks down the Plantation Church every chance she gets. One day she... Oh, it's awful the way she did it. 'You think those guys at that Jesus freak show are any different?' she said. 'Well, they're not. Those good ol' boys hang out at Diamond Dick's all the time. They're some of the best customers, if you know what I mean.'"

  Tears were running down Wendy's face. Her hands were clenched into fists. "I thought she just said it to hurt me," she sobbed. "I thought she made it up."

  Cat felt terrible. She was getting the information she needed, but she'd had to hurt Wendy in the process. She hugged Wendy, not sure whether or not Wendy would welcome the gesture. The girl was hesitant at first and then let go in Cat's arms. She wept, and Cat figured there was more that was coming out than just this one slight. It seemed as if years of frustration and heartache were bottled up inside Wendy.

  "I'm sorry," Cat repeated. "I'm so sorry."

  When Wendy had calmed down, Cat gave her another napkin to use to wipe her face. "It's just a receipt for drinks," Cat said softly. "He could have gone there for any number of reasons."

  "Men only go to Diamond Dick's for one reason," Wendy retorted. "But it's okay. I get it. Larry was a guy. And he wasn't married. Whatever. So he went to a strip club. Big deal. He was just a hypocrite, that's all. So maybe I'm glad he killed himself. Maybe that was God's way of punishing him."

  "Maybe he went there for other reasons," Cat offered. "And just because he was at the club doesn't mean he paid for sex. Some guys just go for the strip show, right? It's not such a bad thing."

  "I guess," Wendy said.

  Cat hesitated, unsure whether or not she could push Wendy any further. "Would it help to find out?" she asked hesitantly. "We could talk to your mom."

  Chapter 11