The Turning Book 1: What Curiosity Kills

by Helen Ellis

  “No, but when we go to Myrtle Beach, my mom wears a huge hat and is always lecturing us to put on more sunscreen.”

  “Beaches in Greece are topless.”

  “Got it.”

  “So, forgive me if I don’t want to embrace my wild side. Wild people embarrass themselves.”

  I think about that. The wildest thing I’ve ever done was going down a fifteen-story-high, spiral water-park tube last summer. A hundred and fifty twisty yards in one minute. My back bumped the fiberglass connector joints the whole way. My neck killed from straining to keep my head up. I was so scared of getting water up my nose, I held my breath. I didn’t even scream. My face must have been blue when I shot out. It was a horrible rush—but it was a rush. The lifeguard gave me his hand, I tugged my one-piece out of my butt, and for the next half-hour, I thought I could do anything.

  I could do anything now.

  I kiss Nick—just take my temple off his and turn my lips to meet his mouth. He tenses, like when I pricked his bare thighs with my kitty claws, but I don’t pull back. He could push me away if he wanted me to stop. He doesn’t. He keeps hold of my hand and keeps his lips softly pressed against mine. It is black-and-white movie kissing: sweet, like I’d hoped.

  Yoon mewls. He is dreaming of a meadow. His front paws bat at a butterfly. With a dream-leap, his body wrenches into a C. His heart races under his coarse copper chest. I let go of Nick’s hand and reach for Yoon’s belly. I want to rub it and reassure him, You’ll get that butterfly next time.

  Nick stops me. He says, “Don’t get yourself started.”

  “If I touch him, I’ll turn?”

  “Yeah.”

  I touch my lips, tingling from Nick’s kiss. I can’t hide my panic. Are those warning tingles or tingles everybody gets when they kiss their crush?

  Nick says, “Don’t worry. Only touching a cat or one of us in cat form will trigger the turning. Soon enough, you’ll learn to control it. I can. So can Yoon. Pot helps, and there are other ways. But for now, for you, the turning’s like puberty. No matter what you do, zits happen.”

  For an idiotically vain moment, I’m grateful that I don’t have any pimples.

  He grins. “I’m normal now—kiss me as much as you want.”

  I do. He opens his mouth, and mine goes along. This is Technicolor kissing. He pulls me into his chest so that half my rear end is off the lounge chair. Wind sweeps between our bodies and into an open flap in my comforter cover.

  Yoon miaows—a warning like the one I heard from Peanut Butter or Jelly when I put my foot through their spinning circle of a wagon train.

  I ask, my lips barely lifting off Nick’s, “Should we wake him? He sounds like he’s having a nightmare.”

  “Let him have it,” Nick mutters as he moves his mouth to my neck. His curls caress my throat. “Maybe he’ll fall off a building and die in his sleep.”

  “Mrowl!” Yoon’s warrior cry breaks us up. He is out from under the lounge chair. His lips retract. Drool drips off his canines.

  “Back off, dude,” Nick warns.

  “What is it between you two?” I ask.

  Nick says, “He doesn’t want me this close to you. He thinks I’ll talk you into suppressing the turning. If it was up to him, you’d turn all the time.”

  Yoon pounces at me.

  Nick puts himself between us. Yoon hits Nick’s chest. Nick falls backward into me. We all fall off the lounge chair. Caught in Nick’s arms, Yoon’s glowing emerald eyes implore me: Help! He’s bigger than me! Be on my side! But Yoon looks plenty tough. Besides, what’s a fair fight between a boy and a cat?

  Nick gets to his feet. Yoon twists to free himself, but Nick chucks him in the air and then catches him like a bristled, saber-toothed sack of potatoes. Yoon sinks his claws into the curve of Nick’s neck and shoulders. Nick curses. Dots of blood seep through his white Purser-Lilley T-shirt. Nick lifts Yoon straight up. His claws—wet with blood—slip out of Nick’s skin and shirt. The fabric rips from an extra-long thumb claw. Yoon’s black mask furrows.

  Nick tosses him away from his chest like a basketball. Yoon rebounds off the terrace wall, lands on his feet, and gives his silent hiss. Yesterday, Yoon’s no-noise made a battalion of mice scatter off my back landing, but tonight, it doesn’t scare Nick.

  Nicks stomps. Scat!

  Yoon leaps onto the terrace wall and then dives off.

  I run to the wall and lean over. I hear him before I spot him leaping from one grated fire-escape landing to the one below. He soars over the metal stairs. His copper coat blends with rust, but he becomes more visible in the light cast from the apartment lobby when he jumps to the sidewalk. I lose sight of him when he dashes across the tarred pavement to the bricked, Fifth Avenue border of Central Park and then into the bushes and trees.

  Nick says, “I have to go after him. If I don’t, he’ll come back for you.”

  “So go.”

  “I can’t catch him unless I turn.”

  “So turn.”

  “I don’t want you to see.”

  “You saw me.”

  “That was different. Go inside.”

  “No.”

  “Go inside!”

  “You can’t make me.”

  When he kisses me, I think he can make me do whatever he wants.

  But I want to see him turn! I tell myself to stop kissing him. Coach told us that smart girls like us get pregnant because they think only a boy can bring them to, as Webster’s defines, intense or paroxysmal excitement, which means an explosive discharge of neuromuscular tensions. I close my eyes. His arms wind around me. One hand clutches the back of my neck. The other flattens against the small of my back. I want to let go of the comforter cover and let it drop to my ankles.

  But my fingers won’t open. They are clutching the comforter and will not unclutch. I want to slide my thigh between his legs, but my leg will not move. My head is locked. My jaw is locked open. My tongue is petrified against the roof of my mouth. My pulse throbs in my ears, but my chest won’t rise or fall. My lungs are not filling with air.

  Wait a second.

  I am not breathing.

  Nick steps away, and I stay stuck.

  My eyelids are sealed shut, but wind fills my gaping mouth. Wind whips in the opposite direction, blowing my hair in front of my face. When the wind whips back, I can’t shake my head to loosen stray strands caught in the moisture Nick has left on my lips.

  I am paralyzed. I try to wiggle my fingers and toes, to unglue my eyes. Nothing works. Paralyzed is paralyzed—except my skin is alive! I feel everything. The ice-cold air against my exposed face, neck, and shoulders is electric. I should fight my paralysis, but it feels too good. My resolve is weakening because there is no air getting to my brain.

  Nick says, “I’m sorry, Mary. You’re not hurt. I only stole it for a minute—enough for me to turn and get away.”

  Breath-stealing? It’s not a myth! What else cool can I do?

  The comforter tugs between my hands. Nick must have dropped into cat form and landed on the hem. There’s another tug as he kicks off. I hear his claws graze the top of the terrace wall. The fire escape clanks. The clanks grow more distant and then the sound of him fades into the sounds of the night.

  My fingers crack as my hands unclench. My toes pop as I rise off my heels to flex my calves. I snap my neck, roll my head around in a circle. I hear a spark like when you touch a doorknob after walking across a carpeted room in your socks. It is the sound of a breath: mine.

  I open my eyes and inhale more deeply. I am alone but still buzzed. I can move, but I don’t. I remain on the terrace, gazing out over the trees, and feel what’s left of the good feeling Nick gave me until it is gone.

  chapter thirteen

  On the far side of Mags’s pitch-black room, Octavia sits in the oversized beanbag chair. She h
olds Kathryn Ann’s box of Goo Goo Clusters. She plucks out a foil-wrapped, chocolate hockey puck and throws it at my face.

  I duck.

  The Goo Goo smacks the glass door. I dodge the next one before it’s out of her hand. She tries to pelt me with Goo Goo after Goo Goo, but I am too quick. I stand in place, clad in Mags’s down comforter, and bob left and right. I see everything that’s thrown. To my new eyes, the room is bright.

  Out of ammunition, Octavia throws the box.

  She scrambles out of the beanbag. The bag is slippery. It scrunches when she shoves her hands into the blob. She reaches for the edge of the nightstand and pulls herself up. She sweeps her hands across the front of the table, slides open the drawer, and grasps for Mags’s water gun. She aims it at me like a Smith & Wesson.

  She says, “I can’t live with you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t even try it. I saw what you are.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Mary, don’t. I saw you. You know what I saw!”

  “Did the twins see?”

  “Does it matter? I saw. I can’t live with you! Mom and Dad won’t understand. They’ll think I’m crazy. I’ll be put in a state home and then out on my ass at eighteen!” The water gun shakes in her hands. She whimpers, “My life is over.”

  “Octavia, did the twins see?” I beg to know.

  “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What difference does it make? You turned. Into. A cat! Your boyfriend turned into a cat! And so did that deli guy!”

  “Yoon.”

  “Whoever!” Her eyes are wide and misty. “They gave you cat! You caught cat!”

  I tug the comforter around my shoulders and wait for an answer to my question about the twins seeing or not seeing. I could stand with my back against the terrace door and wait like this all night. I am eerily calm. It’s like I’ve taken one of Kathryn Ann’s airplane pills. Oh, my word, y’all, is that turbulence? Well, that is just fine. Oh, my word, y’all, are we nose diving? Well, that is fine too. Tailspin? Hon, would you mind unhooking yourself from that jump seat and getting me a splash more Tabasco sauce for this here tomato juice?

  Octavia says, “Look at you—you’re all stalker-y, like a cat. Fine!” She nods to the twins’ closed communal bathroom door. “They tried waiting up for you, but the Xanax took effect. They’re doped up like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Oh, God, Mary, I hate those cats, and now I’ll have to hate you.”

  “You don’t hate Peanut Butter and Jelly,” I tell her. “You’re scared.”

  “Hell, yes, I’m scared! Of you! How can you be so reasonable? You are standing in front of me in a comforter with your clothes in your hands—with two different boys’ clothes in your hands! You’re talking to me like we’re talking about you breaking curfew. You turned. Into. A cat!”

  “What did Nick look like?”

  “A frickin’ cat!”

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t know! I was trying not to look. Besides, all cats look alike—”

  “In the dark.”

  “Don’t play with me, Mary.” She is serious; she wouldn’t call me by my name otherwise. “I hate cats. All cats. They’re disgusting, selfish, nasty. Vicious!”

  “Peanut Butter and Jelly?”

  “Yes! Is your memory that short?”

  I raise my hand to examine Jelly’s scratch, but the cut is gone. A faint line is all that’s left of the crusty scab from a few hours ago. Along with unabashed boy-kissing, breath-stealing, and in-the-dark seeing, quick healing must be something else the post-cat me can do. I study the tips of my normally bitten-to-the-quick fingers. My fingernails are short but not ragged. There’s not one hangnail. Every cuticle is smooth.

  I offer my hand to Octavia for her to inspect, but she trembles twenty feet away against the wall. She brandishes the water gun. She doesn’t want me to leave my spot against the terrace door. We’re alone in a room together. I am breaking her cardinal cat phobia rule.

  I say, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Yes, you will. You can’t help it. Cats are hunters.”

  “I’m not a hunter.”

  “You are, whether you know it yet or not!”

  “What do you think I’m going to do, chase you under the bed? Pick you up with my mouth?”

  “You’ll give me a heart attack.”

  “You’re sixteen.”

  “So, you’ll scare me to death! I’m not debating you. You turned. Into. A cat!”

  I take a step. My front foot hasn’t touched the floor, but Octavia hears the rustle of the comforter.

  She fires.

  Streams of water splat the cover. Water hits my hands. Water strikes my throat, shoulders, and face. It clings to my flesh as if my flesh were fur. My face is slick and slimy, as if I bobbed for pepperoni on an extra-large pizza.

  The gun clicks. The tip drips. Octavia sucks out what’s left in the barrel. Her thirst sated, she grabs Marjorie’s $49 broom.

  “You’re the hunter!” I shout at her.

  She holds the bristled end toward me. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you near me.”

  But I want to get near her. I am drenched, and now that she knows about what’s happening to me, she should be offering me her sisterly help. I’m gonna get that broom.

  I lunge. She swats me. I go after her. She swats me harder, many more times, until I’m running from her. I jump on the bed, she swats me off. I jump on the beanbag, she swats me toward the desk. I hop on the edge, land on my butt, pivot off. Her broom knocks over the desk chair. I hopscotch over strewn Goo Goo Clusters, but Octavia steps on them. The foil packages pop. Caramel, marshmallow, and peanuts squish between her toes and slow her down. I shimmy into Mags’s closet that’s too messy to close. I press my back against the wall and hug the relatively few hung clothes to my chest. My arms sting where Octavia swiped me. I glance along the outside lengths of my legs and see what feels like razor burn there too.

  Octavia says, “Girl, don’t you know that you’re nekkid?”

  I peer out of the closet. Mags’s comforter is stuck in the door.

  Truth be told, I did know. But being naked felt natural. It feels natural now.

  I say, “Looks like my days of self-consciousness are over. Whatever’s happening to me can’t be all bad. No more changing clothes under other clothes! Try it. You might like it. You could stop getting dressed in your bunk and showering by yourself after gym. Maybe we should see how shy you are if I bite you!”

  Octavia jabs me with the broom handle. She kicks Mags’s mound of shoes and clothes into the closet. She tries to shove the door closed to trap me.

  “I’m not gonna bite you!” I say. “Besides, I don’t think that’s how it works. I think you’re born with it. So, if Mom and Dad are sending anyone back to foster care, it’s me. I’m the one with the problem.”

  Octavia sniffs. Her voice is shaky. “Your problem is real—mine’s in my head. Head cases always lose to medical conditions.”

  “You know, Mom and Dad don’t have to know about either of us. I’m not going to tell if you don’t. You said you saw me.” I try to get a smile out of her. “How can you be scared of a pwecious widdle kidden?”

  Octavia’s lips tighten.

  She says, “Kittens cry all the time. They get their heads stuck in glasses and bags. They hide in sofa cracks. You sit on them or knock them across the room when you open a door. When you step on their tails, they make the worst sound.”

  I hear something in her voice I’ve never heard before. I ask, “How do you know?”

  “My last foster mom was a cat-hoarder.”

  “A what?”

  “One of those women who has a hundred cats.” Her shoulders slump. The fight has gone out of her.

  “You’re exagg
erating,” I soothe.

  “Okay, Oprah, she had forty-five cats. She was old. She couldn’t climb the stairs to my room, which was an attic, by the way, but the cats could get up there. I could never get them all out. There was always one under the bed, or behind a curtain, or on a shelf in the closet, or under a pillow. They pissed on the wallpaper and shit in corners because she forgot to change their litter boxes. Her eyes were milked-over, her nose was shot. The house should have been condemned.”

  “I can’t believe child services put you there to begin with.”

  “As long as you don’t kill anyone, they’ll keep the checks and kids coming.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “What was I supposed to say? To who? I was seven, and my parents were dead. My brother and sisters wouldn’t take me. I’d been through other foster parents. The old woman didn’t hit me. She loved those cats, even though she couldn’t take care of them. I figured I had no right to complain.”

  “But it was—”

  “Hell,” Octavia says. “Some were sick. Skinny. Spines showing through. Shit stuck in their paws because they were too sick to bathe. They’d cough up hair balls, puke. That vomit noise…chug, chug, chug, CHWACK! I hate it. They’d chase each other across the furniture. Stuffing hung out from where they sharpened their claws. There was no place to sit where you wouldn’t sit on a spring or get run over. I couldn’t eat a bowl of cereal without them crawling all over me because they wanted the milk.”

  “Why didn’t she stop them? You were her kid—they were animals.”

  “Those cats were her darlings, like Peanut Butter and Jelly are Kathryn Ann’s. The old lady made me put my cereal on the floor as soon as I was finished. So many cats would crowd around that bowl, it would disappear. At night, they’d crowd around me, and I would disappear. They’d dive-bomb me. Attack my feet under the sheets. Blow in my face. Chew, rip out my hair. They covered me like my milk bowl. I fought but never won.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  Octavia props the broom against the closet hanging rod. I could take hold of it, but I’m too stunned to move as she raises her pajama top. She trusts me enough to turn her back.