Cleo

Byeee? Must be retired fashion model speak. Watching Ginny sauntering away like an apparition from a punk rock magazine, I felt ambushed. With a tap of her fingernails on our kitchen window she’d gazumped our ceremonial drive to school.

Not only that, she and Jason had blustered into our kitchen as if it was the most natural thing to do. Her audacious swoop of neighborly intimacy was unnerving. She was crazy, obviously. Either that or unbelievably compassionate, with greater depths than I’d assumed she was capable of. Yes, Ginny had to be insane. Or incredibly wonderful. How else would she know that the best way to treat traumatized people is to behave normally (give or take a byeee or two)? I hadn’t been prepared for a guerrilla attack of kindness, not so soon after breakfast.

I couldn’t help admiring the woman. A gold vinyl jacket and leopard-skin tights? What was that perfume trailing behind her—tiger musk? And how come those chandeliers didn’t pull her ears apart? I was too thickheaded to realize I’d just made a friend for life.

With his punk hairdo and purple schoolbag covered with rock band stickers, Jason was the personification of Cool. Yet he was besotted with Cleo in an unself-consciously boyish way.

“This is the cutest kitten!” Jason said, rocking the black bundle in his arms. “You’re so lucky!”

It was the first time in ages that anyone had put the words luck and our family in the same sentence.

“She likes friends,” Rob replied.

A tingle fizzed down my spine. Rob was remembering Cleo’s so-called promise to help him find new friends in the talking cat dream.

“Can I come over here and play with her after school?” Jason asked.

“Course you can!” we answered in unison.

Cleo settled herself in a pool of sunlight on Rob’s bed and we headed out the door. Rata paddled behind us like a steam boat. Halfway up the zigzag, the old dog seemed to run out of puff and plonked herself down. I waited with her a moment. Even though she was panting, she slapped her tail reassuringly on the path as if to say, “Nothing to worry about.”

Once Rata had recovered her breath we climbed the rest of the hill. The boys watched anxiously as she straggled to the car. Suddenly aware she was being observed, the dog rallied, lifted her tail and leapt youthfully into the back of the station wagon.

The school gates hadn’t changed, which seemed strange considering so much else had. Those gates were at least seventy years old. The first children who ran through them were old men and women now. Their bodies were disintegrating around them in retirement homes, while the gates had merely gathered a layer of rust. The deal hardly seemed fair. Yet, given the choice, I’d still rather come back as human, with a limited quota of laughter and pain, than gates that lasted one hundred and fifty unfeeling years.

Kids were pouring through them, still buzzing with stories from the summer holidays. No doubt Sam’s demise had been a hot topic around every kitchen table. Were they going to smother Rob with too much attention or, not knowing what to say, simply ignore him? I fought the urge to scramble out from behind the steering wheel and escort him through every nanosecond of the day.

Rob and Jason climbed out of the car.

“I’ll pick you up here at three-thirty,” I said.

“S’okay,” Jason said. “We’ll walk home together, won’t we, Rob?”

Rob squinted through the sunlight at Jason and smiled. “Yeah, we’ll walk.”

Walk? Meaning cross roads? My insides swirled at the thought of Rob’s feet going anywhere near roadside tarmac without my protective shadow. But Jason and Ginny were right. The sooner Rob adjusted to a new routine, maybe even created new friendships, the easier his life would become. Their advice had arrived in the most powerful package—generosity wrapped in action, not words.

At the risk of Jason thinking I was deranged, I took an old shopping list from my handbag and scribbled on the back the exact route they needed to take walking home. The pedestrian crossing outside the school was monitored by senior students who presumably had some respect for traffic. Following the footpath along the bend of the gulley, they’d have to cross one quiet street before reaching the busy road Sam had died on. They’d cross not at the bus stop farther down the hill but at the zebra crossing several hundred meters higher up, near Dennis’s grocery store and the new deli. Pressing the shopping list into Rob’s hand I made him promise not to cross until he was certain every car was safely distant. “And remember to ask the teacher to call me if you want to come home early,” I called, the unmistakable whine of smother love in my voice.

But Rob was already halfway through the school gates, laughing at something Jason had said. Jason strolled alongside him, turned, waved at me and flung an arm across Rob’s shoulder.

Huntress

Unlike most humans, a cat embraces the Wild Side.