by Nancy Rue
She was sure her mother would want it that way.
1
Lucy stuck her pen through the rubber band in her ponytail and looked at her cat Marmalade, curled up in the rocking chair. He blinked back out of his orange face as if he’d heard what she wrote and was very much offended.
“I’m not talking about you, silly,” she said to him. “You’re a CatBoy. That’s different from a Human-Boy.” She grunted. “If you can call most boys human.”
Untangling her pen from its blonde perching place — and wondering how it got into a snarl just sitting there for seven seconds — she went back to the J.J. list.
Marmalade yawned — loud — and licked his cat-lips.
“Okay, okay,” Lucy said. “I’m getting to the important stuff.”
She scowled. The last time Aunt Karen visited from El Paso, she kept talking about how it was time for Lucy to get a bra. Had Mom worn one when she was only eleven years old? That probably wasn’t something Lucy could ask Dad without dying of embarrassment. She squeezed her pen and went back to the page.
Lucy dropped the pen and shook her hand, letting her fingers f lap against each other. That was a lot of writing. Inez, her weekday nanny, always said Lucy’s lists were her way of praying, so even though she might be hand-crippled for life, she did feel better.
Marmalade obviously did too, because he was now curled in a ball like a tangerine, breathing his very plump self up and down in the middle. Sleep-wheezing sounds were also coming from the half-open toy chest, where Lollipop, Lucy’s round, black kitty was snoozing.
It must be incredibly boring being cats. Feeling better seemed to make them want to lick their hairy paws and go to sleep. It made Lucy want to bounce out the door and get a soccer game going, or ride her bike in the desert with J.J., or at the very least go check out whatever her dad was clanging around in the kitchen.
But you couldn’t do any of those things when you were grounded. At least the March wind had stopped beating against the house and the long shadows were making stripes on her blue walls. That meant the day of groundation was almost over, and tomorrow she could start fresh.
Lucy carefully nestled the Book of Lists on her pillow and got to her knees on the bed, propping her chin against the tile windowsill to gaze out at Granada Street. It was a sleepy Saturday, except for the sound of the hammers a block over on Tularosa Street where workers were turning the old, falling-apart hotel into a restaurant.
The cottonwood trees that lined her street were letting loose a swirl of white fibers, and between those and the new spring leaves, she couldn’t see J.J.’s house as well as she could in winter. It was impossible to tell if he was sending her any shadow signals with a flashlight from behind the sheet covering his upstairs window. J.J. making a bunny with his fingers meant, “I’m hopping on over.” Devil’s horns meant, “Januarie” — that was his sister — “is driving me nuts.”
Dad’s clanging in the kitchen stopped in a too-fast way. Marmalade uncurled like a popping spring and stood on the seat of the rocker with every orange hair standing up on end. Marmalade never moved that quickly unless there was food involved.
Lucy scrambled across the bed and got to her door, yelling, “Dad?” — at the very same moment her father said, “Luce?”
She sailed across the wide hallway — not bothering to ride the yellow Navajo rug on the tile the way she usually did — and almost collided with Dad in the kitchen doorway. His hands were spread out to either side in their “Now, Lucy, calm down” sign. But his face looked about as calm as a cat in a kitty-carrier. His triangle nose and squared-off chin formed white, frightened angles that made Lucy’s mouth go dry.
“What’s going on, Dad?”
“I’m not sure. I need your eyes.”
He tilted his salt-and-pepper-crew-cut head toward the back door. “I heard something I didn’t like in the yard. I don’t want you to go out there.”
“Why?”
“Because I think it’s some kind of wild cat.”
“In our yard?”
Dad rubbed his palm up and down her arm. “I’m probably overreacting, but let’s check it out.”
Lucy lunged for the door.
“Window, Luce,” Dad said.
She dragged a chair to the sink and climbed up on it. Her father had been blind for four years, and she still couldn’t figure out how he knew absolutely everything she was doing — or was going to do — before she even did it. J.J. couldn’t either. He thought she could get away with a whole lot more than she ever did.
Leaning across the sink, Lucy slid the Christmas cactus aside on the windowsill so she could support herself with her hands. The backyard was already a puzzle of shadows, and at first, she didn’t see anything unusual except —
“Uh-oh,” she said.
“What?”
“Looks like Artemis got into the garbage again. That bag that had that disgusting Thai food Aunt Karen brought is all over the place.” She started to pull away from the window. “I’ll go out and pick it up.”
“Keep looking,” Dad said. “I closed the cans with those big bungee cords. Artemis couldn’t have gotten them undone.”
Lucy didn’t remind Dad that Artemis, their hunter cat, was practically Terminator Kitty when really nasty trash was involved. She got one knee up on the sink and peered past the red-checked curtains again.
“The bungee is still on the lid,” she reported. “She ripped into the side of the trash can.”
“She didn’t.”
“Well, there’s a big ol’ hole there.”
“Do you see claw marks?”
Lucy pressed her forehead on the glass, and a chill wormed its way up her back. Right where the gray plastic had been ripped away, thick gashes scrawled down the can as if someone had made them with a big nail.
“Yeah,” she said. “And they aren’t Artemis’s. Or Marmalade’s — or Lolli’s — or Mudge’s — ”
“It’s a good thing we only have four cats,” Dad said, “or we could be here for days.” The dry, Dad-calm was back in his voice. “You keep watching. I’m calling Sheriff Navarra.”
Lucy pulled her other knee up and settled into the sink. It was a good thing she’d done all the dishes and wiped everything dry in an attempt to get out of groundation, although that never worked on Dad.
From this position, Lucy could survey the whole yard, which fanned out from the big Mexican elder tree in the middle to the fence surrounding the house like a row of straight gray teeth. The umbrella was still down on the table on the patio, and the chairs leaned with their faces against the house, waiting for enough spring in the air so she and Dad could come out and sit in them. The gate on the side sagged as always beneath its fringe of cautious wisteria vine just coming into bloom — the same kind of plant that covered the toolshed and had started to creep up the dead tree by the back fence.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone now,” Lucy said.
Dad closed his cell phone against his chest and dropped it into his pocket. Two fierce lines formed between his eyebrows. “That’s a definite bummer.”
“How come?”
“The sheriff ’s on his way. He’s going to think we’re imagining things. Okay — be like the kitties. Look for movement. Up high — not on the ground.”
Lucy pulled her eyes to the top of the fence, the roof of the toolshed, the rickety arch over the gate. Nothing moved. Not until she went back to the dead tree, where a shadow was passing over it.
“What?” Dad said.
“I think I saw something — ”
“Shhh!”
Lucy froze and let Dad tilt his head and listen. People said a blind man didn’t really have a better sense of hearing than anyone else, but Dad could practically hear a cobweb fluttering in a corner.
“Do you see Artemis?” he said.
Lucy searched the top of the fence again, where Artemis Hamm normally inched, tightrope-walker style, when she was stalking a mouse or a quail who was just tryi
ng to keep her kids in tow. No sign of Artemis.
And then Lucy heard what Dad must have heard: the low growl of their huntress feline, the kind she made when some other cat was trying to horn in on the prey she’d done all the work to catch.
“Under the dead tree.” Dad put both hands on her shoulders. “Is Artemis down there?”
Lucy saw her cat’s mottled coat, the one that looked like God couldn’t make up his mind on what kind of cat he wanted Artemis Hamm to be. She crouched at the bottom of the dead tree, staring up as if it had come to life.
Because it had. Lucy gasped as she watched one paw and then another, each the size of Artemis’s head, creep its way down the spongy bark, smothering its woodpecker holes, until pointed, tufted, devilish ears came into view.
“It’s a bobcat!” Lucy said. “Dad — he’s going after Artemis!”
Dad let go of Lucy’s shoulders, and she scrambled down from the sink — but not before he got his hand up.
“You stay in this house, and I mean it,” he said.
“He’ll get Artemis!”
“He’ll get you too. I’m calling Sheriff Navarra again — ”
The rest of whatever he was going to say was lost in a screech so horrible even Dad looked bolted to the floor. Lucy hoisted herself back up onto the sink and flattened her face against the window. The big cat was almost to the ground, but there was no helpless Artemis flailing in his mouth.
There was only J.J., facing the animal with a shovel in his hand and a smear of sheer horror across his face.
We want to hear from you. Please send your comments about this book to us in care of zreview@ zondervan.com. Thank you.
About the Publisher
Founded in 1931, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, is the leading international Christian communications company, producing best-selling Bibles, books, new media products, a growing line of gift products and award-winning children’s products. The world’s largest Bible publisher, Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) holds exclusive publishing rights to the New International Version of the Bible and has distributed more than 150 million copies worldwide. It is also one of the top Christian publishers in the world, selling its award-winning books through Christian retailers, general market bookstores, mass merchandisers, specialty retailers, and the Internet. Zondervan has received a total of 68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher.
Share Your Thoughts
With the Author: Your comments will be forwarded to
the author when you send them to [email protected].
With Zondervan: Submit your review of this book
by writing to [email protected].
Free Online Resources at
www.zondervan.com/hello
Zondervan AuthorTracker: Be notified whenever your favorite authors publish new books, go on tour, or post an update about what’s happening in their lives.
Daily Bible Verses and Devotions: Enrich your life with daily Bible verses or devotions that help you start every morning focused on God.
Free Email Publications: Sign up for newsletters on fiction, Christian living, church ministry, parenting, and more.
Zondervan Bible Search: Find and compare Bible passages in a variety of translations at www.zondervanbiblesearch.com.
Other Benefits: Register yourself to receive online benefits like coupons and special offers, or to participate in research.
