Dangerous Deception

by Peg Kehret

  “Move him so he’s between your shirt and your jacket,” the boy said.

  I did as he suggested and it helped a little, but Midnight still squirmed so much that his toenails penetrated the T-shirt. “I wish I had my backpack to put him in,” I said. “I’m going to bleed to death before I get this cat home.”

  “Put disinfectant on your stomach as soon as you can,” the boy said. “It’s easy to get an infection from a cat scratch.”

  “Oh, great,” I said.

  “Cat bites are even worse than cat scratches,” he said, “so don’t let him bite you.”

  I nodded grimly, imagining headlines worthy of Crystal: Girl Dies While Rescuing Dumpster Cat. Or maybe, Doctor Sews Up Two Thousand Bloody Cuts on Sixth-Grader’s Stomach.

  “I hope he doesn’t have rabies,” the boy said.

  Rabies! Knowing the financial status of Sophie’s family, I was sure Midnight had not been vaccinated. I began to have second thoughts about saving Sophie’s cat.

  It’s too late now, I thought. Operation Cat Rescue has started and I can’t quit partway through. What could I do—turn Midnight loose on the bus?

  “The treatment for rabies is painful,” the boy said. “You have to get shots in your stomach.”

  I could have done without that bit of information. Was this kid deliberately trying to scare me or was he one of those people who speak without thinking what impact his words might have?

  I thought we’d never get to my stop. When I pulled the cord, the boy stood up to let me out of my seat. “Good luck,” he said.

  The bus driver watched suspiciously in his mirror as I stood hunched over and clutching my jacket while I waited for the back door to open. I stepped down, and immediately pulled Midnight out from under my clothes.

  “You’re killing me,” I told him. “You have to calm down.”

  He sniffed the air, looking innocent, and quit struggling.

  It helped to have a fifteen-minute wait between buses. As soon as Midnight came out from under my clothes, he settled right down. I stuck one hand under my shirt and gingerly touched my skin. Then I looked at my fingertips, expecting them to be dripping with blood, but I saw only a trace of red.

  The second I stuck Midnight under my jacket to board the second bus, he turned into Monster Cat again.

  “What do you have up your shirt?” the bus driver asked as I dropped my coins in the coin catcher. He leaned toward me, squinting. If I said I didn’t have anything, he’d know I was lying and might not let me board the bus, so I decided to throw myself on his mercy.

  “It’s a cat,” I said. “Somebody threw him in a Dumpster and I rescued him and I don’t have any other way to get him home.”

  “In a Dumpster, you say?”

  “That’s right. I heard him meow and when I climbed up to look, I saw him standing in the garbage.”

  “We don’t allow animals on the bus,” the driver said, “unless they’re service animals.”

  “It’s too far for me to walk home,” I said. “I couldn’t leave him where I found him or the person who threw him in the Dumpster would do it again.”

  The driver looked at me for a second, mulling it over. He glanced back toward the other passengers. There were only three people and none paid any attention to us.

  “He could be my service cat,” I said.

  “I reckon that cat of yours is doing a big service,” the driver said, “teaching you to be a kind person. Just don’t let anyone else see him.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Midnight’s squirming continued until I got off at my own street. By then my midriff felt as if I’d rubbed a cheese grater against it.

  I tried to come up with a good explanation for Mom of where I got Midnight and why I needed to keep him. I already had Waggy so I couldn’t use the argument that every kid should have a pet. One look at my scratched hands, not to mention my abdomen, would make He followed me home unbelievable.

  I toyed with telling the truth, since it had worked so well with the bus driver. “My friend’s mom is in the hospital and I don’t know where my friend is staying, and there’s nobody at home to take care of her cat.” That sounded good until I began thinking what Mom would ask me. Then I knew that not knowing Sophie’s last name would be a sure deal breaker. Plus Mom would want to know how we became friends if Sophie doesn’t go to my school. The whole telling the truth bit would not work.

  In the end, what I told Mom was true, but I also left out certain aspects of the story. I simply said, “I was going past a Dumpster and I heard meowing from inside. A nice old lady let me use a step stool, and I saw this cat in the Dumpster with all the garbage.”

  Mom looked pained. “Someone threw a live cat in a Dumpster?”

  I nodded. “I got him out, which wasn’t easy, and I was afraid if I let him go, whoever put him in there would do the same thing again, so I brought him home. I got a few scratches; I’m going to go put disinfectant on my hands.” And, I thought but didn’t say, on my stomach.

  “We are not keeping him,” Mom said. “Waggy is enough trouble without having him chase a cat through the house.”

  “I think I know who owns him,” I said.

  “If you know who owns him, why didn’t you take him there?”

  “It might take a few days to contact her.”

  Mom gave me her “you aren’t telling me the whole story” look, so I headed to the bathroom before she could ask more questions. When I sprayed disinfectant on those scratches, I wanted to shriek at the top of my lungs. Instead, I bit down hard on a towel and hopped around the bathroom with the towel in my mouth until the sting subsided.

  When I returned to the kitchen smelling like disinfectant, Waggy was lying on the small braided rug on the kitchen floor with Midnight snuggled beside him, purring and kneading his front toes in and out of Waggy’s thick fur.

  “Good dog,” I said. Waggy’s tail thumped the floor. “Look, Mom, Waggy likes having Midnight for a friend.”

  “Midnight? You know this cat’s name?”

  “We have to call him something, and Midnight seems like a good name for a black cat.”

  Mom said, “We have no supplies for a cat. He needs cat food and litter and a pan to put the litter in, and a scoop.”

  “I’ll use my own money,” I said. “Any chance that you’ll drive me to the store?”

  Mom sighed. “This is not a permanent arrangement,” she said as she took her car keys off the table.

  I had planned to shut Midnight in the bathroom while we were gone but he and Waggy seemed so happy together that I left them as they were.

  I realized as I rode to the store that I should have taped a note for Sophie on her door, telling her that I have Midnight. She would be frantic if she came home and couldn’t find him. She might knock on her neighbor’s door and ask No Help if he’d seen Midnight. I was sure that he had put Midnight in the Dumpster. Would he tell Sophie what he’d done? If he did, and the Dumpster had been taken away by the trash collection company, Sophie would be grieving for a dead cat who was actually alive and cuddling with Waggy.

  Mom had been reading contest entries when I got home. Sophie’s thank-you letter should have arrived by now so I figured I was lucky and Mom wasn’t the one who read it. Still, mail sent to a large company but not addressed to a particular person might take a while to reach the right department. Sophie’s thank-you note could still show up and get me in trouble.

  Well, I couldn’t do anything about Sophie’s letter. I had my hands full dealing with Sophie’s cat. Cat supplies were more costly than I had anticipated. I bought a bag of dry food, four cans of moist food, a bag of litter, and a scoop. I still needed a pan to put the litter in but I was out of money. “A cardboard box will do,” Mom said. “The cat is only going to need it for a day or two.”

  I hoped she was right.
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br />   CHAPTER EIGHT

  On the way home from the store, Mom said, “I wonder who the cat belongs to. He’s clearly been socialized.”

  “I think he belongs to a girl named Sophie. I saw her cat once and this one looks like him, and she lives near the Dumpster where I found him.”

  “As soon as we get home, you need to call this Sophie and ask if her cat is missing. We should have done that right away. Maybe you would not have needed to buy all this.”

  “I don’t know her number,” I said, “or her last name. I’ll ask at school tomorrow.”

  Bus rides must work up a cat’s appetite because Midnight dug right in when I fed him, even though he’d eaten a whole can of tuna when he came out of the Dumpster.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t have much of an appetite. My stomach was sore from the cat scratches, and I had so many worries that I barely tasted my dinner.

  After we finished eating, I took Waggy out for a walk. Normally I walk him right after school, but lately I had not been coming straight home so poor Waggy hadn’t received as much attention as usual.

  When we returned, Midnight climbed on my lap while I tried to watch a movie. Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorites, but that night I couldn’t concentrate. I turned it off partway through, walked Waggy one last time, and went to bed early.

  I was too tired to fix a bedtime snack. I should have fallen asleep instantly. Instead, I lay staring at nothing while Waggy twitched beside me, having one of his dreams where, I think, he’s chasing a squirrel. His paws scrabble at the blanket and he makes soft yippy noises. He never seems to catch the squirrel in his dreams, just like in real life. He only quits when I nudge him and say his name.

  I lay in bed and tried to figure out what secret Sophie’s family had. Were they immigrants who came to this country illegally? Sophie said she and Trudy were born here, but maybe her parents had been smuggled into the United States from Mexico or some other country, and now her mother feared they would be deported.

  My mind raced on. Maybe Sophie’s mom was in the government’s Witness Security Program. Perhaps she had identified a criminal and now the criminal’s thugs were trying to find her, to get revenge. Maybe Sophie’s dad was a murderer! But if Sophie’s mom was in the Witness Security Program, she’d have enough food and all the help she needed from the U.S. government. Her kids wouldn’t be hungry.

  What else could the secret be? I tossed and turned so much that Waggy jumped off my bed and slept on the rug.

  Sophie’s mother might be in trouble with the law. What if there was a warrant out for her arrest and that’s why she had not wanted to check into a hospital? Maybe she was wanted for murder!

  I knew it was pointless to keep thinking up possible reasons why Sophie was secretive. I needed facts, not speculation.

  • • •

  On the bus the next morning, I told Lauren what had happened to Midnight.

  “So, where’s the cat now?” she asked.

  “He’s at my house, and my mom is not happy about it. She hopes when I come home today, I’ll know Sophie’s last name and where she lives.”

  “You already know where she lives.”

  “If I admit that, I’ll have to explain why I was there.” We rode in silence for a few minutes. I thought how complicated my life had become because I had not been truthful. I hadn’t lied to Mom, exactly, but every time I withheld some facts, the situation got worse.

  “Let’s go to the hospital,” Lauren said. “If Sophie’s mom is still there, Sophie might be there visiting her. We can talk to her and tell her you have Midnight and find out what she wants you to do.”

  It seemed like a long shot, but I didn’t have a better idea. As soon as school got out Lauren and I took a bus downtown, headed for Community Hospital.

  “I hope nobody asks who we’re visiting,” Lauren said. “We should have brought some flowers or candy, as if we were taking a present to a patient.”

  When we entered the hospital lobby, we saw a small gift shop. Lauren bought a balloon that said GET WELL SOON on it. “I can give it to my neighbor when I get home,” she said. “He sprained his ankle and is off work for a few days.”

  I bought a single red rose. I planned to give it to Sophie and let her give it to her mom.

  “Let’s split up,” I suggested. “You take the odd-numbered floors and I’ll take the even ones. We’ll walk past all the rooms and look for Sophie. If you see a thin girl about ten years old with dark hair, come and get me.”

  “Don’t forget the family waiting rooms that they usually have either by the elevators or next to the nurses’ stations.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My uncle was hospitalized for two weeks, and we visited him a lot.”

  When we reached the elevator, we agreed to meet back there in half an hour. Then I got on, pushed “2” and the search began. I acted as if I knew where I was going so that nobody would stop me. I walked slowly past the open doors, glancing in each one. I felt embarrassed, as if I were snooping into other people’s personal business.

  In one room, several people stood around a bed, holding hands and singing “Amazing Grace.” My skin prickled. Their loved one is probably dying, I thought. I wanted to pull the door closed to give them privacy, but I kept walking.

  Two doors down, a TV blared a football game. Three young men clustered around the bed. An open box of pizza occupied the patient’s small bedside table.

  Across the hall, a man wearing a badge that said VOLUNTEER stood with a golden retriever next to the bed of a little boy, about six years old. The boy was bald, and a bag filled with some kind of liquid hung over the boy’s shoulder while the liquid dripped through a tube into one thin arm. His face glowed as he petted the dog with his other hand.

  The dog wore a green coat that said THERAPY DOG. She stood patiently beside the bed, wagging her tail while the boy rubbed her ears.

  “Daisy is the best dog ever,” the boy said. “Good dog, Daisy. Good girl.”

  A woman—probably the boy’s mother—watched with tears in her eyes. “Thank you for coming,” she told the volunteer. “This is the first time Johnny has smiled since he got here.” She patted the golden retriever. “Thank you, too, Daisy,” she said.

  I finished the second floor, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. That turned out to be the surgical unit and Intensive Care. Instead of individual rooms, the patients were in large rooms, screened from each other by privacy curtains but all open to view from the nurses’ station. No visitors were allowed unless they checked in first and only immediate family could enter.

  I returned to the lobby to wait for Lauren.

  “No sign of her,” Lauren said, “but I got to see the new babies in the nursery.”

  We each had one floor left to do, so we rode the elevator together. Lauren got out on the fifth floor, while I went up to six.

  I’d passed only two rooms when I recognized Chance, Jelly Bean’s brother. He was sitting up in bed and had no other visitors, so I went in.

  “Hi, Chance. How are you doing?”

  “Better. I still don’t know what happened, but at least I can talk now.”

  “You can’t remember the accident?”

  “Nope. I remember I was going to the basketball game, but then my mind goes blank.”

  “Were you texting?”

  Chance gave me a sharp look, and didn’t answer.

  “I wondered because you were texting and driving while I was in the car and I almost told you it’s illegal to do that, but I was afraid you’d get mad and not deliver the food for us again.”

  Chance still didn’t say anything.

  I gazed out the window. “I’ve felt guilty ever since I heard about the accident. I should have spoken up. I should have asked you to stop.”

  When Chance spoke, his voice was so low
I had to strain to hear the words. “The accident wasn’t your fault,” he said. “It was mine. You’re right; I was texting while I drove. The cops haven’t talked to me about that yet, but they took my cell phone so they’ll be able to tell.”

  He pounded one fist onto the bed, making me jump. “How could I have been so stupid? I knew it isn’t legal to text and drive, but I thought I was such a good driver that I could get away with it. I figured nothing would ever happen to me.”

  “But it did happen to you.”

  “It sure did. Not only to me but also to my brother. Because of my stupidity, Jelly Bean has a broken leg and my parents’ car insurance cost will zoom skyward, and I’ll probably lose my driver’s license. You know what the worst part is?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll have to admit to my parents what happened. They’re going to find out anyway, so I’ll have to tell them the truth.”

  Even though Chance had caused the accident, he was so miserable now that I felt sorry for him.

  “It could have been worse,” I said. “Jelly Bean might have been killed.”

  Chance groaned, as if he couldn’t stand to think of that possibility. Then he said, “There’s one piece of good news. Jelly Bean had an X-ray this morning and his leg is healing faster than expected.”

  “That’s great. I hope you feel better soon.”

  “Thanks for coming to visit me,” Chance said.

  I hurried through the rest of the sixth floor and then met Lauren again.

  “No sign of Sophie,” Lauren said.

  “I didn’t see her, either. I wish I’d met Sophie’s mother. I might have walked right past her room and didn’t know it was her because I don’t know what she looks like.”

  “Let’s go look for Sophie in the hospital cafeteria,” Lauren said.

  We each bought lemonade, but we didn’t see Sophie.

  “I don’t know how else to try to find her,” Lauren said.

  “Let’s find out which school the kids in her neighborhood attend. We could go there and say we’re friends of Sophie’s and give her address. Even if there’s more than one Sophie enrolled, they’d know by the address which one we want. Maybe the school has a contact number.”