by Sally Warner
Her voice broke, saying these last words.
EllRay shook his head. “Nobody ‘needs a kitten,’” he informed his little sister. “Kittens aren’t like food. They’re not like air. They’re not like water.”
“I needed one,” Alfie insisted.
“Well, you’re gonna have to go tell Mom and Dad about it,” he announced.
“What, now?” Alfie asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “You already waited too long. It’s not gonna get any better the longer you wait. Just go downstairs and get it over with,” he advised.
“I know! I’ll bring Princess with me,” Alfie said, inspired. Who could resist a kitten?
“Nope. Bad idea,” EllRay said. “Believe me on this one, Alf. Look, I’ll babysit it for you while you go downstairs and confess.”
“Princess,” Alfie murmured. “She’s a girl, not an ‘it,’ and her name is Princess, EllRay. You can at least say her name.”
“Okay. Princess,” EllRay said. “Hand her over and get going.”
“Really?” Alfie asked, her voice small. “All by myself?”
“Really,” EllRay said, but then his voice softened, seeing the look on her face. “Just tell them what you did and why you did it, Alfie,” he suggested. “And then go ahead and take the consequences. You gotta come clean.”
That basically meant “confess and take your punishment,” Alfie knew.
Only she didn’t want any punishment. Who did? Ever?
She just wanted Princess!
“Go on,” EllRay said, impatient now.
But there was sympathy in his eyes.
“All right. I’m going,” Alfie told him. “Only don’t let them take her away, no matter how mad they get. Okay? Promise?”
“Just go,” EllRay said.
15
Coming Clean
“Excuse me. Hi,” Alfie said, feeling awkward as she drifted into the family room a few minutes later. This was after the world’s slowest walk downstairs.
Her heart was pounding.
Her parents didn’t even have the TV on, she noticed, surprised. Instead, they were each stretched out on the sectional, reading. And the strange thought suddenly occurred to Alfie that maybe Sunday night was special for them, too.
“What’s up, Cricket?” her dad asked, lowering the book he was reading. “Trouble in game-land?”
“Not exactly,” Alfie said, perching on a nearby chair. It was as if she were visiting strangers.
What had she been thinking, bringing Princess home without permission like that?
Well, she’d been thinking that Operation Kittycat would make it easier for her to start a new school year with a maybe-scary new teacher, that’s what, Alfie told herself.
With a cute new mark on an almost-clean whiteboard.
It would be easier to meet new kids in class if she had something to talk about, for once.
And it would be easier on the days that things went wrong, too—because with a kitty, she would have something good to come home to. Something to cuddle and talk with. Something to take care of. Something to love.
Of course, things hadn’t exactly worked out the way she had imagined, Alfie confessed to herself.
For example, her closet now smelled. Bad.
And her room was “a shambles,” as her mother would say.
And her desk—brand-new school supplies arranged just so—was a mess, thanks to Princess’s curtain acrobatics, and her wild ways in general.
Princess was more whirlwind than kitten, it seemed.
Yet she, Alfie Jakes, was truly in love with that crazy kitten. What if she had to give her kitty back to the Sobels?
She needed Princess, and Princess needed her.
“‘Not exactly?’” her mother echoed. “Then what is it, exactly?” she asked, setting down her book with obvious reluctance.
“I—I made a little mistake,” Alfie managed to say, but then she stopped. Sneaking Princess home hadn’t really been a mistake, she reminded herself. That is, it had been wrong, so it was a mistake in that way. But she’d done it on purpose.
And it was a big mistake, not a little one.
The thing was, though, breaking this family rule had seemed worth getting into any amount of trouble for—when she did it.
But now she had to pay the price.
“Can you be a bit more clear?” Alfie’s dad asked, sitting up straighter on the sofa and planting his feet on the floor.
Uh-oh, Alfie thought, her heat pounding even harder than before. But she had better get it over with, like EllRay said. “We have a kitten,” she announced, staring down at the floor.
A brief but electric silence seemed to fill the family room. “You mean you want a kitten,” Alfie’s mom finally said. “And you’d like to talk about that, even though you know the reason against it.”
“Which isn’t even true,” Alfie blurted out before she could stop herself.
“What part of it isn’t true?” her mom asked, frowning.
“The whole thing. The being-allergic part,” Alfie said. “Because I’m not, and I can prove it. We’ve had a kitty living in this house for three whole days! And look, no runny nose. I call her Princess,” she added, as if this excellent name might be the random detail that would win over her gaping parents.
Mrs. Jakes looked confused. “Do you mean like a pretend kitty?” she asked. “Because the ‘No Pets’ rule doesn’t apply to imaginary animals, sweetie.”
And of course Alfie jumped right in. “But what if one of our family rules is a bad rule?” she asked, daring to look her mom in the eye for the first time since coming downstairs. “What if it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s just plain wrong?”
“Then we talk about changing it,” Alfie’s father said in his deepest, most rumbly voice. “We have a family meeting and discuss it. We mull it over. We think about it.”
“Forever and ever,” Alfie said. “Only there wasn’t time, Dad. Because if I didn’t bring Princess home, the wrong person would have taken her. A mean person, maybe. Or a criminal.”
“Warren,” Alfie’s mother said. “I think she’s talking about a real cat.”
“A kitten,” Alfie corrected her. “A baby, Mom. A helpless little baby.”
“Where did you get it?” her dad asked, but Alfie didn’t answer. She wanted to keep the Sobels out of this, especially her new friend Hanni.
“It had to be from Hanni’s house,” Mom-the-Mind-Reader said, thinking about it. “That’s the only place Alfie has been recently.”
“But this wasn’t Hanni’s fault,” Alfie was quick to say. “She didn’t know I didn’t have permission to bring Princess home. The Sobels didn’t know about the rule.”
“Wait a minute,” her dad said, holding his hand up in the air. “You’re really telling us that you decided to pick and choose among our family rules, Alfie? All on your own, without any discussion? As if you were at some restaurant buffet, and you could simply select the rules you liked and ignore the ones you didn’t?”
Tears were pricking at Alfie’s eyes. Her dad sounded really mad at her! And for a goofy reason, too. He was talking about how wrong she was about the rules, not how right she was about the kitten. “I wouldn’t exactly put it that way,” she began in a wobbly voice.
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” her father said.
By now, Alfie was just trying not to cry. Tears were not going to save Princess.
“Where is this cat?” Alfie’s mother asked.
“Kitten,” Alfie corrected her, and then wished she hadn’t. “She’s upstairs with EllRay. And she’s had her shots and everything. I need her, Mom.”
“EllRay knew about this?” Mr. Jakes asked.
“No!” Alfie said, frantic to keep her big brother out of trouble. “He didn’t know, I promise. I only t
old him tonight because I had to.”
“And just where has the kitten been living all this time?” her mother asked.
“In my bedroom.”
“The one with the Privacy, Please! sign on the door?” her mom asked in an icy voice. “The room I allowed you to keep private all summer because you promised you could keep it clean without me checking on it all the time? That bedroom?”
“Uh-huh,” Alfie mumbled, nodding as she stared at the floor.
One hot tear was now making its way down her cheek, but she was determined to hide it.
“Well, obviously we’ll have to take another look at that decision,” her mother said, getting to her feet and heading toward the hall. “But for now, I’m going upstairs to take a look at just how bad this situation really is.”
“No, wait,” Alfie cried, springing across the room like the cricket she used to be. “I’ll go with you!”
“Come back here at once, Alfleta Jakes,” her father said. “You will sit in that chair until your mother comes downstairs with her report.”
“But—”
“Sit.”
“Yes, sir.”
16
What in the World Were You Thinking?
The next morning, Monday, Alfie woke early—and all alone. Her head ached, and her face felt tight from the tears she’d shed in private the night before.
“Oh, Princess,” she whispered.
But there was no Princess curled up next to her. Alfie petted the empty spot on her blanket anyway, imagining the kitten’s answering purr.
Alfie’s mom and dad had not yet decided what to do about “the situation,” as they were calling it. But they’d agreed Princess was not to sleep in Alfie’s room.
So the kitten had spent the night somewhere else in the house—and climbed someone else’s curtains.
Alfie’s room looked different now. The empty cardboard boxes were back in the garage, folded, stacked, and awaiting their next adventure. The sagging, claw-pulled curtains above her desk had been straightened. The litter box—one of her mother’s extra baking dishes—had disappeared, too, straight into the trash, Alfie was told.
“For heaven’s sake,” her mother had said, shaking her head in disgust.
Princess’s handmade toys were gone as well, and the Privacy, Please! sign removed from Alfie’s door. “You earn that kind of privilege,” Alfie’s parents had reminded her the night before. “And you can lose it, too, when you pull a sneaky stunt like that.”
“Maybe it was too much privacy too soon,” her mom had remarked, taking some of the blame for herself. But that only made Alfie feel worse.
Her mom and dad had tucked her in last night, though—and kissed her good night the same as always, Alfie reminded herself in the early morning light. Yes, there would be what her parents called “consequences.” But they still loved her.
EllRay felt okay about her, too, and Alfie knew it. After her parents had said good night, he knocked three times on the wall that separated their rooms. That was their secret signal for Hi, I’m here.
I am too, she knocked back.
But this morning was the start of the last week of the two-girl daycare club. Alfie would be spending today at Hanni’s house, because Mrs. Jakes had a dentist appointment.
Alfie just hoped Hanni didn’t ask how things had gone last night.
And she hoped Princess would still be there when she got home.
Oh, Princess!
“Early morning breakfast meeting,” her mom said, poking her head into Alfie’s room. “In the kitchen, in half an hour. Bed made, and please be dressed and ready to leave for Hanni’s house right after. Get a wiggle on, Miss Alfie.”
“Okay,” Alfie said, reluctant to leave the peaceful cocoon of her bed.
But she had better “get it over with,” as EllRay would say. Her mom and dad must have made their decision about Princess, and she might as well hear it.
Mr. Jakes was looking sharp as he sipped his coffee, ready for a day of meetings, research, or whatever it was he did at his San Diego college before fall classes began. “Take a seat and pour your cereal, Alfie,” he said when she walked into the kitchen.
No more “Cricket,” Alfie guessed. Maybe ever again.
“I don’t think I can eat anything,” she said, hoping this might let her dad know how sad and sorry she was about tricking them.
Okay, lying to them, basically—even if she had never actually said, “I did not bring a kitten home from Hanni’s house!
“And her name is not Princess!
“And she’s not living in my room and tearing it apart!”
“Good, we’re all here,” Alfie’s mom said, coming into the kitchen.
EllRay was probably hiding out in his room, Alfie thought. But that was what she would be doing, if he was the one called to the “early morning breakfast meeting.”
Alfie poured herself a heaping bowl of the healthiest cereal they had, hoping that might score her a few points. All she wanted was to ask, “Can we keep Princess?” but she knew that question would backfire.
So she waited.
“Before we begin,” her dad asked his daughter, “what in the world were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. Not at first,” Alfie admitted. “I was wanting. Hanni’s kitties took me by surprise, see,” she tried to explain. “And I just—I just wanted one. I knew I wasn’t really allergic, because I’ve played with friends’ cats before. But then the whole thing jumped from wanting to needing.”
“‘Needing,’” her mother echoed.
“Explain, please,” her father said, sounding very professor-like.
“See, school is about to start, right?” Alfie began. “In just one more week. A whole new grade, with new kids to meet, and a new teacher, too. Mr. Havens. EllRay says he’s strict, too, and I wanted to get off to a really good start,” she continued. “I just kind of figured that having a kitty at home might make everything easier to take.”
“How’s that?” her mother asked. “You’ve never had any trouble making friends, Alfie.”
“But when I came home after school, the kitty would be glad to see me,” Alfie tried to explain. “I could talk to her about stuff, no matter what happened during the day. Good or bad.”
“I’m glad to see you when you get home,” her mom protested. “I talk to you, Alfie.”
“But you don’t need me to take care of you,” Alfie said. “A kitty would.”
“And who did you think would be taking care of the kitten during the day, when you’re in school?” her father asked. “Did you really think your mother needed something else to do five days a week? An additional chore?”
Huh? “I guess I wasn’t thinking about Mom,” Alfie admitted. “But cats mostly sleep, Hanni says.”
“Cats do, maybe,” Alfie’s father said. “Kittens definitely don’t.”
So that solved the mystery of where Princess had spent the night.
17
Such a Mess-Up
Alfie’s dad cleared his throat. “There are three issues we need to discuss,” he began, and Alfie could feel her heart go down, down, down in her chest like a very small elevator.
Three issues? Not just one?
“First,” Mr. Jakes said, “you broke a family rule, Alfie. Now, I understand that you think that rule is wrong. But when a rule is wrong, you get to work changing it. You don’t simply ignore it and do whatever you please.”
“Yes, sir,” Alfie replied.
“Second,” her father said after exchanging a look with his wife, “you deceived your mother and me for three entire days.” He looked—disappointed in her, Alfie saw.
Cringe.
“I’m not arguing, but what does ‘deceived’ mean?” she asked quietly.
“It means you misled us on purpose in order to
get your own way,” her mom told her, stirring honey into her tea as if this were an ordinary thing to say.
“Oh,” Alfie said. “I guess I did that.”
“You did do that,” her father corrected her. “And third, there’s the cat situation. What are we going to do about the cat?”
“And what about Alfie’s consequences?” Mrs. Jakes asked, piling on.
“I have an idea,” Alfie said, speaking up in spite of the lonely spot in her chest where her heart used to be. “I think we should decide that I already learned my lesson! And that we should keep the kitty. Keep Princess.”
It was worth a try.
“Your mother and I had some other ideas,” Alfie’s father said.
“First,” Alfie’s mom said, “I want you to promise to talk to us about the family rules if you have a problem with one of them. I’m not saying we will change that rule, but we’ll certainly consider it if you or EllRay make a good enough case.”
“Okay,” Alfie mumbled. She guessed she could do that.
“Meanwhile,” her dad said as if he and his wife were a team and Mrs. Jakes had just passed him the ball, “you’ll pay us back for the baking dish and spoon we need to replace. They were our property, so it’s only fair. And if you don’t have enough money in your ballerina jewelry box, we’ll take a little out of your allowance each week.”
“Okay,” Alfie said. But—ouch.
“In addition to that,” her mom said, “because of the deception, there will be no TV or video games for you for an entire week, Miss Alfie. Also, you will apologize to each of us.”
“Can I do that part now?” Alfie asked, because she really wanted to. She hated the guilty feeling she’d had in her tummy for more than a week. Her mom always said that the guilt a person felt was an early warning device. It was that person’s way of telling themselves they were doing something wrong, and to just quit it. So that feeling was a gift, Mom said.