The First Nine Lives of Isabella LaFelini

by Harvey, Rhonda

  “I don’t think so!” Pete heaved a fire extinguisher against the back of Rick/David’s head, and he fell to the ground. “You okay?” he asked Ty, who was bent over Isabella’s inert body.

  “You…you have to help her, Dr. Pete,” Ty said, tears bubbling down his cheeks. “Please, Dr. Pete, I know you can help her, please.”

  Rick/David stirred a little. “Come on, Ty, I’ve got to get you out of here. Where’s Isabella?”

  “Right there,” Ty said, pointing to the limp cat.

  “Right. Okay, you’re in shock. C’mon, Ty, let’s go. Cops are on their way.” The sound of sirens confirmed that. “C’mon. You’ve been through a lot—we need to call your mom…”

  “Isabella. The cat. Please, Dr. Pete. Please?”

  Pete rubbed his eyes. “Okay, bring her with you. I’ve got a bag in my car. Let’s see what we can do.” Ty accompanied him as they left the yacht and made their way to the car.

  He stretched Isabella’s limp body across the front seat of his Jag, first covering the leather with a towel he found in his gym bag. “Let’s see what’s going on with you, girl,” he told her, wiping blood away from her right eye. He listened to her heart and lungs. “Well, you’re still breathing, little girl…heart is a little weak, I think—not that I know the normal rate for a cat’s heart. There may be some fluid on the lungs…” He massaged her chest and stomach gently, then her ribs, arms and legs feeling for fractures.

  “Ow!” Isabella exclaimed, and Ty hoped it sounded enough like a “meow” to Pete.

  “She’s awake,” Ty told Pete, “here, let me hold her so she isn’t afraid.” To Isabella he said, “I’ve got you, girl. Dr. Pete here is just taking care of you…it’s okay…” He spoke in a voice that he hoped sounded like the voice of someone speaking to a real cat!

  If Dr. Pete had heard the “ow”, he didn’t let on. He continued to treat Isabella, wiping the blood from above her eye with a long cotton-tipped swab. “Ty, hold her tight, because this may sting a little, but it’ll stop the bleeding.” He applied a little dark powder to the cut over Isabella’s eye, careful not to drop any into her eye itself. “There you go. Good girl.”

  “So, she’s okay?” Ty asked anxiously.

  “I think so,” Pete told him. “Here’s my phone, please call your mother and let her know you’re all right. I’m going to go talk to the cops—and see if I can find Isabella.”

  Ty dialed his mother. “Yeah, Mom, I’m fine. I’m on Dr. Pete’s phone. Yeah, Mrs. LaFelini’s friend. Look, I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. Yeah, Mom. I’m sure. The police want to talk to me first and then they’ll bring me home. No, Mom, don’t come to the police station. That’s stupid. You just stay home, and I’ll be there soon. Mom, call Mrs. LaFelini, would ya? Tell her I’m fine, and that Isabella is with me. Okay? Mom, don’t cry. Mom, I’m fine. Really. Okay, okay. I love you, too, Mom.”

  Isabella slowly opened her green-gold cat eyes. “Mmm, I am in so much pain!” she told Ty. “What…what happened? Did we get him?”

  Ty grinned. “Yeah, we got him. You got him in the neck pretty good. I think you hit an artery! He was leaking blood big time when Dr. Pete conked him with a fire extinguisher. He went down like an anchor.”

  “Wh-what happened to me?” she asked, still fuzzy on the details.

  “He threw you against the railing. I thought…I thought you were…dead,” he whispered the word because tears were choking him.

  Isabella smiled. He likes me. A lot. Which is good, because I like him, too…And she snuggled deeply into his arms, her little cat head on his chest, purring softly as she listened to the beating of his heart.

  * * *

  Thirty-Three: A New Beginning

  Pete knocked nervously at the kitchen door. “Um, hi,” he swallowed hard, “Luce, I’m afraid…I couldn’t find Isabella.”

  “What do you mean, you couldn’t ‘find’ her?” Luci asked as she motioned him to come inside.

  “I…she left the hospital, Luce. I went after her. I got Ty. But…I lost Isabella. She wasn’t at the yacht—I don’t know where…”

  “Hey, Dr. Pete,” Isabella walked through the kitchen, pulling her hair up into a high ponytail. “Thanks for your help saving Ty.”

  “Isabella!”

  “Yeah?”

  Pete was confused. “Um…how…how did you get home? I looked for you at the docks and didn’t see you…”

  Isabella grinned. “I came home with Ty—the cops brought us home. I thought you knew that.”

  Pete looked closely at Isabella. “Um, what, uh, what happened there?” He pointed to a long cut above her right eye.

  “Oh, I hit it…on the door as I was leaving the hospital.” She grinned at him. “And, um, sorry about…um…ditching you at the hospital. I…I just wanted to get to Ty, ya know?”

  “Yeah, I know…so how did I beat you there, Isabella?” Pete was puzzled. The cut over Isabella’s eye was in the exact place where the cat’s injury had been…coincidence?

  Isabella shrugged. “Guess it’s that super-fast car of yours, Dr. Pete! Hey, Mom, gonna go to Ty’s for a while, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, Isabella. But don’t stay too late. You still have broken ribs, remember? And Ty’s had a really long day. We all have.”

  Isabella hugged her mother and started out the door. “Oh, Dr. Pete?” she started.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you’re a really good doctor. Really good under pressure. See ya later.”

  Pete shook his head. Was Isabella the same as…nahhhh, he told himself. You’re outta your mind, Myers. Out of your freakin’mind!

  SUMMER FLEW BY—as summers do when you’re fourteen. Before they knew it, Ty and Isabella were getting on a bus for Northside High. “Oh, man,” Ty told Isabella as he slid into the seat behind her, “what a summer, huh? Aren’t you worried that school will be boring compared to summer? I mean, how is English class gonna compare to being kidnapped and shot at and…”

  “You weren’t exactly shot at,” Isabella corrected him dryly. “The gun went off when I jumped on the guy’s back—not exactly the same as being shot at.”

  Ty shook his head. “Geez, Isabella, gimme a break. It was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me!”

  Isabella smiled. “I could do with a little less excitement. Hey, look, new girl!”

  Ty looked at the pretty blonde girl, “Yep. Pretty. Probably a cheerleader.”

  “Yep,” Isabella sighed. “We hate her already!” They both laughed.

  To Isabella’s amazement, the girl walked down the bus aisle and sat down in her seat just before the bus lurched forward.

  “Do you mind?” the girl asked, her voice heavy with a French accent.

  Isabella shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

  “Merci. I am Dominique. Dominique LeChien.”

  “Isabella LaFelini. And he,” she indicated Ty with her thumb, “is Tyson Briggs.”

  “Enchanté,” Ty told her, and Isabella felt the little hairs on her neck prickle.

  “Your name. LeChien? What’s it mean?” Isabella asked, although she already knew the answer.

  “Oh,” Dominique blushed, batting her eyelashes, “it means ‘the dog’. Why do you ask?”

  “Um, no reason,” Isabella lied. Ty was wrong. School wasn’t going to be boring. Isabella had a feeling it was going to be a really interesting school year. And she was right.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Rhonda Harvey is a writer, reader, teacher and trivia queen. She lives in central New York with her Corgi-Pomeranian rescue, Jack and three cats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Shelley and Oscar Wilde. None of them transform into humans—at least not that she knows of…

  Look for the further adventures of Isabella and her friends in The Second Nine Lives of Isabella LaFelini—Fighting Like Cats and Dogs, to be published early summer 2014.

  Feel free to contact Rhonda on Twitter @IsabellaLaFelini or by email
at IsabellaLaFelini@gmail.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WriterRhondaHarvey