did you come from?”
“Meow,” the cat said.
“Meow is right,” said the waiter. “Here, kitty.”
Since she was so close to him, Gurl could see that his brown eyes were hard and shiny, his smile cold. But why wasn’t he looking at her? Why was he acting as if he couldn’t see her? She was sitting right in front of him, right out in the open! But maybe he was just ignoring her like everyone else. The thought made her angry and she reached out for the cat.
What was wrong with her hands?
She could see them, but just barely. It was as if she were wearing gloves exactly the colours and textures of the alley itself: the black of the pavement, the red of the brick, the pink and white of the graffiti. And when she moved them, they changed to match the background. She touched her face, feeling the heat of her skin beneath her fingertips. If her hands looked like this, what did her face look like?
The waiter bent towards the cat. “Come on now,” he said. “I know someone who’d pay a lot of money to get a load of you.” He lunged for the cat, grabbing it by its front paws. The cat howled. “Shut up, you stupid thing,” the waiter said. The animal hissed, clawing with its back legs.
“Ow!” the waiter yelled, but didn’t let go. Carrying the wildly gyrating cat, he took one huge leap over to a garbage can on the other side of the alley and threw the cat inside. He quickly slammed the cover down and held it. The garbage can bucked and bounced, and the waiter kicked it. “Shut up!” he yelled.
Gurl was furious, but she didn’t know what to do. The waiter wasn’t big, but he was probably stronger than she was. And he could fly, even if he couldn’t do it that well. She unfolded her legs and saw they were exactly like her hands, nearly invisible. If he couldn’t see her, then…
The waiter kicked the garbage can again and the terrified mewls of the cat were too much for Gurl to bear. Though she had never done anything like it before, though she thought her heart would burst like a water balloon, she crept behind the waiter. Grabbing the waistband of his trousers, she yanked upward as hard as she could.
The waiter never flew higher than he did that moment and never would again. Gurl popped the lid off the garbage can. The cat vaulted into her arms, instantly becoming the colour of the air, the colour of nothing. The two of them, Gurl and cat, raced from the alley, just as if they had wings of their own.
Chapter 2 Blue Foot, Blue Foot
RUNNING, RUNNING. SHE WAS RUNNING, the cat curled in her arms, running so hard that her lungs hurt, running until she didn’t feel the pavement beneath her feet any more, until the ground below dropped away and she rose up into the air…
Gurl sat up in bed, clutching her chest. A dream. But not all of it. Not Luigi’s chocolate cake, which she could still smell on her fingertips. Not the cat, who slept across her feet under the threadbare blanket. But what about the rest?
She looked at her hands. They were thin and pale, but they were there, plainly visible. Gurl pulled the covers off her legs. Hands, check. Legs, check. She pulled the covers back up and shivered. The clock on the wall read 5.36am and pinkish sunlight marbled the iron sky outside the windows. The alley had been so much darker. Maybe that was why her hands had looked so strange, why the waiter hadn’t seen her. She had been hidden in dark shadows, odd shadows that mottled her skin.
Yes, she thought. That had to be it.
The cat mewled softly from beneath the blankets and crawled up to sit at Gurl’s side. She wasn’t much to look at. Cats in books had impish black faces and blue eyes, or smushed noses and fur the colour of butterscotch. With a wide, plain face and fur the grey of morning fog, this cat seemed unremarkable in comparison. Except for her eyes, the acid-green eyes that blinked so slowly as Gurl scratched one ear, then the other. The cat rolled over and exposed a white, tufted belly. She put her forepaws in the air and flexed them, clutching at something only she could see.
Gurl scratched the cat’s belly and a strange feeling came over her, a sleepiness, a peacefulness. A musical sort of purring filled Gurl’s ears, erasing the frown that had pulled at her lips. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around, she thought, does it make a sound? If a tree falls…if a tree falls…if a tree falls…
If anyone in the dorm had awakened, they would have thought Gurl had gone into a trance. Time passed, syrup slow, as Gurl scratched and scratched and scratched. Finally, the cat turned her little face to the clock and mewled softly. Gurl shook herself awake and checked the time: 5.57! In three minutes the alarm would ring and all the kids would wake up. What was she going to do with the cat? She couldn’t let anyone see it or else they would take it. Gurl was not very brave, not as brave as she wanted to be, but she was responsible. And if the cat had really chosen her, well then, the cat was Gurl’s responsibility.
Gurl climbed from her bed and pulled a box from underneath it, a box with a couple of old sweaters in the bottom. She reached into her bed, lifted the sleepy animal and laid it gently in the box. The cat peered at Gurl. “I’m sorry,” whispered Gurl, “but I can’t let anyone see you. Can you stay in this box until I can come back?”
The cat circled the box, kneading the sweaters. After curling up in a ball, she reached out with a white paw and rested it on top of Gurl’s hand. “You understand, don’t you?” Gurl breathed. Gurl knew that was a silly thing to think, that the cat was just an animal and couldn’t possibly understand what Gurl was saying. But cats were rare and special, Gurl told herself. Maybe the cat did understand. Gurl gave the cat one last pat and then she closed the box again, hoping that cats liked small spaces and sleeping for hours.
She didn’t have a lot of time to worry about it because soon the alarm rang and the kids climbed from their beds. As usual, no one greeted Gurl, no one asked her if she wanted to sit with them at breakfast. She ate as she always did, in the very back corner of the cafeteria, watching as all the others laughed and talked and shoved one another. It was just as well. Gurl had nothing to say to them anyway. A piece of toast fell lard-side down in front of her, but she ignored it.
“What’s up, Leadfoot?” said a voice. Gurl didn’t have to look to know who it was: Digger.
“Nothing,” Gurl muttered. It was what she always said.
“What? I can’t hear you!” Digger bellowed, getting up from her own table to lumber over to Gurl’s. She was huge, bigger than most of the boys even, with a great square head like a block of wood. She wasn’t much of a flyer, but she didn’t need to be. Once a brick had come loose from the second storey of the dormitory building. It had fallen on Digger’s foot while she was playing killer ball in the yard. She’d turned and proceeded to kick the wall so hard that some of the other bricks came loose. “Nobody messes with me,” she said. “Not even the buildings.”
Digger was tough, the toughest actually. The only thing that wasn’t tough was the way she picked her nose: delicately, with the tip of her pinky extended like she was sipping tea from fine china.
Gurl pushed her eggs around her plate, wondering if Digger would flip them on the floor or in her lap. Not that it mattered, for the eggs smelled like sweaty socks stuffed with day-old fish and were the last things in the world Gurl wanted to eat.
Digger snatched the fork from her hand and smacked Gurl’s plate to the floor, the eggs pellets scattering. “I said, I can’t hear you! Speak, Freak!”
Gurl finally looked up into that big blockhead face. Digger’s expression was the same as the waiter’s had been: smug and triumphant. It was like she knew that Gurl was beaten already, doomed before she began. Gurl thought of what she had done to the waiter, and a tiny smile made her lips curl up at the corners.
Digger’s nostrils flared. “Look at you,” she said. “You’re pathetic. All you do is sit there like a lump and stare at everyone.” With her