Catalyst

by Sarah Beth Durst

  She loved every second of it.

   Chapter 15

  THE DEEPER INTO THE WHITE MOUNTAINS they went, the easier it was to avoid people. Zoe wondered if she should worry about wolves, bears, or Bigfeet instead. Or, as Surita would say, Bigfoots, she thought.

  Reminded of home, Zoe powered up her phone, planning to send a quick text to her family about how great canoeing was today, but there was no signal. She put it back in her pocket and hoped her parents hadn’t already started worrying. We’re not late yet!

  Soon, though . . .

  Pipsqueak crossed the next slope on silent paws, setting the pace. She seemed more determined than Zoe had ever seen her. Maybe the extra cat food had energized her, or her success with crossing the mountain.

  They traveled on and on, between pine trees, across fields, uphill and downhill.

  Eventually, though, even Pipsqueak began to flag.

  “Anyone else tired?” Harrison asked. They’d been traveling with only a few breaks since they’d left Aunt Alecia’s house, and it was deep into twilight. “I’m tired. Can we camp?”

  The cat took a few more steps into a clearing and flopped sideways onto the ferns and moss. She’d grown even larger and looked a bit like a very furry elephant lying down for a nap. Zoe, Harrison, and Kermit tumbled off her back. As they scrambled to sit up, they saw Pipsqueak stand, knead the moss and flattened ferns with her claws, and then lie down. She repeated this three more times.

  Zoe and Harrison unrolled their sleeping bags. This was their first official night beyond civilization. Sure, they’d camped before, but the other times, they’d known that a highway and the next town weren’t far away. Tonight there were only trees and stars and mountains.

  It was shockingly loud.

  Crickets. Leaves rustling in the wind. The babble of a nearby stream.

  Tired all the way down to her pinkie toes, Zoe climbed into her sleeping bag. Bone-deep tired. I never knew what that phrase meant before. Every bit of her ached. She closed her eyes.

  “Do you think there are bears?” Harrison asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zoe said. “Probably.”

  “Wolves?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mountain lions?”

  “We have a giant cat,” Zoe said. “We don’t have to worry. They’ll all be avoiding us.”

  “Unless we’re in their territory,” Harrison said. “Or unless we get between a mama bear and her cubs. Every single survival show ever made says not to do that.”

  “Pipsqueak, can you tell him not to worry?” Zoe asked.

  Pipsqueak laid a paw gently on Harrison’s face and licked his hair. “Hush, dog boy.”

  They lay in the darkness, which wasn’t really dark, just as the silence wasn’t really silent. In between the branches of the pines, Zoe saw more stars than she’d ever imagined existed. At the apex of the sky, a few looked fuzzy, as if a streak of cloud had stopped moving. “Is that the Milky Way?”

  She expected Harrison to answer. He was the one who camped out in his backyard so much, but it was Pipsqueak who said, “Yes. I read about it in A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe. No cats in it, but there is a constellation called Leo.”

  Harrison pointed up. “That one’s the Big Dipper.”

  “You can follow the stars in the Big Dipper to find the North Star,” Zoe told Pipsqueak. Demonstrating, she traced a line of stars. “See? Right there.”

  They all stared up at the stars for a while.

  “I like seeing the things I read about,” Pipsqueak said. “When Aunt Alecia changes me back to a kitten, will I still be able to read?”

  “I . . . don’t know,” Zoe said. “I hope so.” Surely Pipsqueak wouldn’t have to give up reading. Or talking. Or would she?

  They fell silent again.

  “The crickets are loud,” Harrison complained.

  “So are you,” Zoe said.

  “Good idea. I’ll drown them out.” He raised his voice and started to sing, “ ‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream’ . . .”

  Zoe joined in, making it a round. “ ‘Row, row, row your boat’ . . .”

  After they’d sung it twice through, Pipsqueak began to yowl in harmony with them, or loosely in harmony. Kermit the Dog howled along. Then Harrison switched to yowling instead of words, and Zoe changed to “Meow, meow, meow-meow meow . . .” They kept going in meows and dog howls until Zoe and Harrison were laughing too hard to sing.

  “I was right about you being my pack,” Kermit said, sighing contentedly. “A pack is supposed to sing together and be happy together. I’m glad I followed you.”

  “I still don’t understand why you did that,” Harrison said to Kermit. “You said it was instinct, but what did you mean by that?”

  “Was it because of Pipsqueak?” Zoe guessed. “Did you think she was like you? I mean, different from others?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” He told them about how a few days ago, after a visit to the vet, his owner went to let him out of the car and saw the dog had sprouted extra rows of teeth and his fur had turned green. “He was scared of me. Started screaming that I was a monster and yelling at me to get away from him. He looked like he might even start throwing things. So I ran away. I was alone in the woods, until I felt pulled to you.”

  “We’re glad you found us,” Zoe said.

  Harrison, Pipsqueak, and Buttermouse all chimed in to say yes, they were on this adventure together, and it was good he’d joined them.

  “I’m glad too,” Kermit said.

  “Yay, we’re all friends! And we’re all magnificent!” Buttermouse cheered.

  “I think . . . maybe the mouse is right,” Pipsqueak said. “Kermit’s owner may not have seen it. And the person at the store and the mother at the school didn’t see it. But . . . I think we are all magnificent. Even the dog boy.”

  Harrison sighed. “It’s Harrison.”

  Pipsqueak let out a purr-laugh. “I know.”

  Side by side and happy, they all looked up at the stars, especially the North Star. After a while, Kermit spoke again. “So, where are we going? And who’s Aunt Alecia?”

  They took turns telling the story of their adventure so far, from the day Zoe found Pipsqueak as a little kitten, alone and scared by her garage. Zoe told him about Aunt Alecia’s letter and the note they’d found in her house, and Harrison described the route they’d taken and how they’d avoided being seen, mostly.

  “You left home so that Pipsqueak can return home?” Kermit asked.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Zoe said. She hadn’t thought of putting it exactly that way, but Kermit was right. They weren’t trying to find a way to get away from home; they were trying to find a way to be home, safely together. We left in order to stay.

  “But your parents . . . They won’t understand, like my owner? Even if you succeed, you’ll still be in trouble?” Kermit let out a whine, as if the thought distressed them.

  It distresses me too, Zoe thought.

  “Yeah, we haven’t figured out what to do about that yet,” Harrison said.

  They fell asleep soon after that, with Kermit curled up next to Harrison, Buttermouse nestled in a patch of moss, and Pipsqueak’s fluffy tail encircling all of them. Zoe dreamed about giant mice, towering mountains, and furious parents.

  * * *

  It started raining shortly after dawn.

  Zoe woke to water drops splatting on her face. She groaned and scooted farther into her sleeping bag. Beside her, Harrison was waking up too.

  “Okay, this isn’t fun,” Zoe said, peeking out of her bag.

  Beside her, Pipsqueak was awake and licking her fur everywhere a drop of rain landed. “Make it stop!”

  “I can’t,” Zoe said. “It’s rain.”

  “I know what rain is! I want you to make it stop!”

  “Really not in charge of that. I don’t want it to be raining any more than you do.”

  Harrison raised his hand. “I want it even less. There
’s a wet dog in my sleeping bag.”

  As if on cue, the green dog stuck his nose up, flinched as a drop of rain landed on his muzzle, and then retreated. “You smell wet,” Kermit said, muffled within Harrison’s sleeping bag. It wasn’t clear whether that was a complaint or a compliment.

  Zoe felt a flutter against her elbow, shrieked, and then realized it was Buttermouse. He’d crawled into the sleeping bag with her. She noticed the colors in his fur were even brighter, albeit damp. “Oh, hi. I didn’t see you there.”

  Half asleep, Buttermouse said, “I want my box back.”

  “It’s in my backpack,” Zoe said. “I’ll get it for you.” To everyone she said, “Do we find someplace to hide and wait it out, or do we continue on?” There weren’t any buildings for miles, but maybe there was a ledge they could duck under. The trees weren’t helping. In fact, they seemed to be dumping even more water on them every time the wind blew.

  Crawling out of her sleeping bag, she found Buttermouse’s old shoebox. He scurried in, and she tucked it into the top of her backpack, safely cushioned by clothes. She rolled up her sleeping bag, hoping the water wasn’t going to soak through. She did not want to sleep in a mass of wet down.

  Harrison rolled his up too. “I should’ve packed the tent. We weren’t supposed to be camping this long or be this far north. It wasn’t supposed to rain on the days I planned for. I should have at least packed a raincoat.”

  The rain began to come down harder.

  “Or a scuba-diving suit,” Harrison said.

  Zoe and Harrison climbed onto Pipsqueak’s back. Her fur was wet, and the water seeped through Zoe’s shorts. The cat started forward. Every few paces she paused to shake—more of a shudder—and Zoe and Harrison had to hang on extra tight. Keeping pace beside them, Kermit looked like a used mop.

  It rained intermittently through the day, and as the rain increased in the late afternoon, it became more difficult to see. The mountains faded into a sheet of gray. Zoe’s clothes clung to her, and her hair was plastered against her cheeks. “We have to find someplace out of the rain!”

  Pipsqueak tried huddling against a tree, then behind a rock. At last she found a narrow outcropping of rocks that acted almost like a roof. Zoe and Harrison climbed off her back. All of them huddled against the rock wall, looking out at the rain. Kermit the Dog whimpered, shivering.

  “If my grandmother were here, she would make a campfire so we could all dry out,” Harrison said. “Though I’m not sure she would have approved of us being out in the rain in the first place.”

  “Did you pack matches?” Zoe asked.

  “Of course, but what would we light? Everything’s soaked.”

  “It’s summer,” Zoe said. “We’ll dry out.” She tried to make her voice sound upbeat. Really, she was wishing they were home. Drawing out her phone, she powered it up. The battery was at four percent.

  Worse, there was still no signal.

  She had no way of knowing whether her parents thought they were still at camp, whether Surita was still covering for them, or whether her parents were panicking because she hadn’t texted since they were at Aunt Alecia’s.

  She powered the phone off, wishing she could talk to them and tell them how she felt out here in the rain, not sure of how much farther they had to go.

  Maybe I should have talked to them from the very beginning.

  They could have helped her. Maybe they would have. If she’d tried trusting them, they could have surprised her. After all, she was certain they loved her. As Kermit would say, they’re my pack.

  On the other hand, maybe they would have panicked and called Animal Control or someone who would have taken Pipsqueak away from her. I made the right decision. Didn’t I?

  Pipsqueak looked miserable. Her whiskers drooped, and her wet fur was matted into clumps. Every few seconds she licked a different part of herself, but it didn’t seem to help. “I want to go home,” she said. “This was fun and exciting and nice and new, and now it’s not. I don’t want to be wet anymore!” Pipsqueak shook herself, shedding water and fur.

  “When this is all over, I’m going to crawl into bed—my bed, with all my blankets and every pillow in the house—and sleep for three days,” Harrison said in a dreamy voice. “I’m going to get a bag of potato chips and bring it into bed with me. And if I ever talk about climbing Mount Everest again, yell at me.”

  “I want to tell my family I’m sorry,” Zoe said.

  “Really?” Harrison said. “I’m not going to tell mine anything.”

  “I didn’t say I’m going to do it,” Zoe said. “I just want to.” She especially wanted to say it to Alex. She’d never kept such a secret from her brother before. She’d never had such a giant chunk of her life that he wasn’t a part of. She wondered if there were things he didn’t tell her—there probably were. He’d had girlfriends she barely knew about, and she didn’t know what he did when he went off with his friends. She’d never really asked. She’d only cared that he was spending time with her at that moment. What he did in the other moments hadn’t mattered. But she didn’t like having secrets from him.

  I wish I could tell him.

  I wish he were here. Or better yet, I wish we’d found Aunt Alecia, fixed Pipsqueak, and gone home, where we’d be safe and sound and dry. But they were a long way from that happening.

  Moodily, they all watched it continue to pour as the sky grew darker and darker, and the miserable day turned into a miserable night.

  * * *

  Somehow, Zoe slept, even wet and uncomfortable against a wall of rocks. She woke, her eyes feeling gummy and her mouth tasting like peanut butter. The rain had stopped, and everything was dripping and hazy. The humidity was thick enough that it looked as if the trees were smoking after a fire. Around her, the others woke too.

  “Maybe we take a break from traveling and just lie in the sun for a while?” Zoe suggested.

  “Yes!” Buttermouse cheered. “I want to feel the sun on my wings! All those months in a cage in a dark classroom . . . I saw the sun through the window, but I never knew I’d feel it on my fur and wings, out in the beautiful mountains! I am a lucky mouse.”

  “Have you always been this cheerful?” Harrison asked. “Or is it new, like the wings?”

  “I am still who I am. Just with extra awesomeness.” Examining himself, the mouse pointed with a paw to his belly fur. “Look, I’m even more rainbow!” His fur boasted brighter blue, green, and purple than it had before.

  “Very pretty,” Zoe told him.

  He preened.

  Zoe and Harrison rode Pipsqueak until they found an open meadow. It had an exposed rock in the middle that was perfect for lying in the sun. After they dismounted, Pipsqueak stretched out on the rock while Kermit shook the remaining water from his fur.

  Zoe lay on her back and let the sun soak into her. It was going to be a hot day, but right now that was what she wanted. She tried to imagine just turning around and going home. Of course, they couldn’t do that. It was sheer luck that she’d been able to keep her family—not to mention the rest of the town—from noticing the giant cat for as long as she had.

  She tried not to think about the fact that today was Friday, the last day of camp. They were supposed to be home with Surita by the end of the day.

  A few minutes passed, and then Harrison’s voice drifted across the rock. “Hey, Zoe? Pipsqueak? We haven’t been in this field before, have we?”

  Pipsqueak didn’t move. “No. It’s north of where we were. We’re going north. We haven’t been north.”

  Zoe sat up. She saw Harrison squatting in the grass and staring at the ground. Kermit sniffed at the grass. “What is it?” Zoe asked.

  “Come see.”

  Pushing herself up with a groan, she crossed to him. She stopped and stared. There, in the ground that had been softened by rain, in the opposite direction from where they’d come, was a cat paw print.

  A giant cat paw print.

  Zoe stared at the print. She
knew she wasn’t an expert on animal tracks, but it looked like one of Pipsqueak’s. “Pipsqueak, could you come here?”

  “One minute. I’m finally warm again.” The cat rolled onto her back, displaying her belly to the sun.

  “I just want to measure this paw print.” Zoe eyeballed it. It seemed to be the right shape and size.

  Pipsqueak shot over to where the others were. “What print? Oh. Whoa. That print.” She laid her own paw into it. The track was slightly broader, but it was the same exact shape.

  Another giant cat, Zoe thought. Could it be?

  It had to be! The evidence was right here!

  Pipsqueak sat abruptly. “I’m not the only one. Maybe?”

  “You’re not!” Zoe beamed at Pipsqueak. “You have a brother! Or a sister. Or a long-lost cousin. Or something. And he or she is nearby. She may have walked right by us, and we didn’t see each other because it was so rainy.”

  Pipsqueak sniffed the track. “I don’t know how I didn’t notice another cat’s scent. Maybe because the two of you stink so badly.”

  “Hey!” Harrison said.

  She’s not wrong, Zoe thought. The rain should have helped, but after a night sleeping under the stars, they both smelled like a wet dog that had rolled in a bog.

  Pipsqueak trotted across the field, her nose sniffing the air. Zoe and Harrison hurried after her with Kermit and Buttermouse. At the next paw print, she lingered to sniff more, and they caught up to her. As soon as they reached her, Kermit started sniffing too, eager to help. Then Pipsqueak was off again, stopping only when Zoe and Harrison called to her. Fidgeting impatiently, she bent so they could climb on.

  Following the paw prints in the soft earth, they tracked the other cat into the woods and a quarter of the way up a mountainside. Once, Pipsqueak paused and sniffed the air so hard it looked as if she were eating it. Zoe wondered what she was thinking and feeling, knowing there was another who was like her somewhere nearby. Did he or she talk too? Had he or she grown fast like Pipsqueak?