white shirt that was Dad’s hanging on the back of the door; I remember the cigarillo burn just below the elbow and the smell of my father’s aftershave.
Since I know I’m dreaming, I’m not frightened, just puzzled, when I walk back into the hall and this time find stepsgoing up to a painted white door with a hanging crystal pull. The pull looks like the kind that summons servants in grand houses on PBS shows, but this one is made from glittering parts of an old chandelier. When I pull it, a series of bells rings loudly, echoing through the space. The door opens.
An old picnic table and two lawn chairs rest in the middle of a large gray room. Maybe I’m still in the barn after all, because the spaces between the planks in the walls are wide enough that I can see rain against a storm-bright sky.
The table is draped with some kind of embroidered silk cloth and topped with silver candlesticks, two silver chargers, and gilt-edged plates, the center of each covered by a silver dome. Cut glass goblets stand at each place setting.
Out of the gloom, cats come, tabbies and calicos, marmalade cats and butterscotch cats and cats so black I can barely tell them from their shadows. They creep toward me, hundreds of them, swarming over one another to get close.
I jump up onto one of the chairs, snatching a candlestick, not sure what sick thing my brain is about to conjure next when a small, veiled creature walks into the room. It’s wearing a tiny gown, like the kind that expensive dolls wear. Lila had a whole row of dolls in dresses like that; her mother would yell at her if she touched them. We played with the dolls anyway when her mother wasn’t looking. We dragged the princess one through Grandad’s backyard pretending she was being held captive by one of my Power Rangers, with a broken Tamagotchi as an interstellar map—until its dress was streaked with grass stains and torn along the hem. This dress is torn too.
The veil slips and falls. Underneath is a cat’s face. A cat, standing on two legs, her triangle head tilted to one side, almost like her neck’s been broken, her body covered in the dress.
I can’t help it, I laugh.
“I need your help,” says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila’s, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk.
“Okay,” I say. What else can I say?
“A curse was placed on me,” the Lila cat says. “A curse that only you can break.”
The other cats watch us, tails flicking, whiskers twitching. Still silent.
“Who cursed you?” I ask, trying to smother my laughter.
“You did,” says the white cat.
At that my smile becomes more of a grimace. Lila’sdead and cats shouldn’t stand, shouldn’t press their paws together in supplication, shouldn’t talk.
“Only you can undo the curse,” she says, and I try to watch the movement of her mouth, the flash of her fangs, to see how she can speak without lips. “The clues are everywhere. We don’t have much time.”
This is a dream , I remind myself. A deeply messed-up dream, but a dream just the same. I’ve even dreamed about a cat before. “Did you bite out my tongue?”
“You seem to have it back,” the white cat says, her shadowed eyes unblinking.
I open my mouth to speak, but I feel claws on my back, nails sinking into my skin and I yelp instead.
Yelp and sit up. Wake up.
I hear the steady patter of rain against my window and realize that I’m soaked, blankets wet and clinging. I’m back in my room, in my old bed, and my hands are shaking so hard that I have to press them underneath my body to make them stop.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN I STAGGER DOWN to the kitchen in the morning, I find Grandad boiling coffee and frying eggs in bacon grease. I have on jeans and a faded Wallingford T-shirt. I don’t miss my itchy gloves or strangling tie; comfort’s the consolation prize for getting booted, I guess, but I don’t want to get too used to it.
I found a leaf stuck
Since I know I’m dreaming, I’m not frightened, just puzzled, when I walk back into the hall and this time find stepsgoing up to a painted white door with a hanging crystal pull. The pull looks like the kind that summons servants in grand houses on PBS shows, but this one is made from glittering parts of an old chandelier. When I pull it, a series of bells rings loudly, echoing through the space. The door opens.
An old picnic table and two lawn chairs rest in the middle of a large gray room. Maybe I’m still in the barn after all, because the spaces between the planks in the walls are wide enough that I can see rain against a storm-bright sky.
The table is draped with some kind of embroidered silk cloth and topped with silver candlesticks, two silver chargers, and gilt-edged plates, the center of each covered by a silver dome. Cut glass goblets stand at each place setting.
Out of the gloom, cats come, tabbies and calicos, marmalade cats and butterscotch cats and cats so black I can barely tell them from their shadows. They creep toward me, hundreds of them, swarming over one another to get close.
I jump up onto one of the chairs, snatching a candlestick, not sure what sick thing my brain is about to conjure next when a small, veiled creature walks into the room. It’s wearing a tiny gown, like the kind that expensive dolls wear. Lila had a whole row of dolls in dresses like that; her mother would yell at her if she touched them. We played with the dolls anyway when her mother wasn’t looking. We dragged the princess one through Grandad’s backyard pretending she was being held captive by one of my Power Rangers, with a broken Tamagotchi as an interstellar map—until its dress was streaked with grass stains and torn along the hem. This dress is torn too.
The veil slips and falls. Underneath is a cat’s face. A cat, standing on two legs, her triangle head tilted to one side, almost like her neck’s been broken, her body covered in the dress.
I can’t help it, I laugh.
“I need your help,” says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila’s, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk.
“Okay,” I say. What else can I say?
“A curse was placed on me,” the Lila cat says. “A curse that only you can break.”
The other cats watch us, tails flicking, whiskers twitching. Still silent.
“Who cursed you?” I ask, trying to smother my laughter.
“You did,” says the white cat.
At that my smile becomes more of a grimace. Lila’sdead and cats shouldn’t stand, shouldn’t press their paws together in supplication, shouldn’t talk.
“Only you can undo the curse,” she says, and I try to watch the movement of her mouth, the flash of her fangs, to see how she can speak without lips. “The clues are everywhere. We don’t have much time.”
This is a dream , I remind myself. A deeply messed-up dream, but a dream just the same. I’ve even dreamed about a cat before. “Did you bite out my tongue?”
“You seem to have it back,” the white cat says, her shadowed eyes unblinking.
I open my mouth to speak, but I feel claws on my back, nails sinking into my skin and I yelp instead.
Yelp and sit up. Wake up.
I hear the steady patter of rain against my window and realize that I’m soaked, blankets wet and clinging. I’m back in my room, in my old bed, and my hands are shaking so hard that I have to press them underneath my body to make them stop.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN I STAGGER DOWN to the kitchen in the morning, I find Grandad boiling coffee and frying eggs in bacon grease. I have on jeans and a faded Wallingford T-shirt. I don’t miss my itchy gloves or strangling tie; comfort’s the consolation prize for getting booted, I guess, but I don’t want to get too used to it.
I found a leaf stuck
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