Leonard (My Life as a Cat), Carlie Sorosiak [7 ebook reader .txt] 📗

It was the tone of Norma’s voice: a deep, dawning realization. She knew I was under that jacket—and she wasn’t pleased. Olive picked up the pace, moving rapidly through the hall. Or what I presumed was a hall: it was really very dark beneath the fabric. My heart thudded slightly with fear. Would Norma expose me—expose us—right here in the theater?

Abruptly Olive stopped, and I heard a door swinging open—then the sound of laughter and the smell of buttered popcorn, with all its salt and tang. The movies. No, I hadn’t strolled in on my own two feet, but still: I was at the movies. An experience that would transform me, transport me—like it had for generations of humans. Who wouldn’t want to see a chase on horses, a voyage on the sea, a flight to Earth’s moon?

Olive settled in the back row; I know this because she unzipped the jacket, just a little, and I poked my head out, my eyes adjusting to the dimness. Before us was a massive blue screen and a theater dotted with people.

“Sailor,” Norma whispered, scooting into our row. She looked frazzled, as if she’d been fighting with seagulls. “At first I thought, nope, no, you wouldn’t do that. But by golly, you’ve really gone for it. And you brought him in the motorcycle?”

Norma and I locked eyes. It was difficult to tell if she was angry with me or impressed that I’d stayed undetected for so long.

“Up,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“But we just got here,” Olive said, guilt in her voice—for my discovery or for bringing me to the movies in the first place, I didn’t know. “Can we stay, even just for a little bit?”

“Heck no,” Norma said.

Disappointment filtered through me, my ears pinning back. I was looking forward to this movie in particular, after Olive had discussed it with me: a pair of dazzling slippers, a floating house, a grown man in a lion’s costume. But we were lucky, Olive and I; just as Norma beckoned us to follow her, a flashlight shone upon us. A movie usher, checking the theater. Olive froze. Norma froze. We sat back quietly into our seats, as if there were nothing to see here, nothing at all. I tucked my head back into the jacket as Norma whispered, “Five minutes, that’s it. And then we’re gone.”

We stayed for the entire film.

The Wizard of Oz is really quite good, if you’re in the mood for adventure. I wish I could tell you more about the film specifically, but I’m embarrassed to say that inside the theater it was dark and warm, with wonderfully soothing music trailing from the speakers. As much as I tried, I couldn’t help nodding off, tucked cozily into Olive’s overalls, listening to the thump, thump, thump of her human heart.

On Earth, I have thought about the future constantly. How much of the universe would I fail to see if I lost my immortal life? How much would the hive miss my presence? And then there was the death bit—the actual, physical experience. Would it scare me? Would it hurt?

But I must say, during my first human lesson with Olive at the movie theater, I didn’t think about the possibility of dying—not even once. When we were listening to Dorothy say, There’s no place like home; when the lights flicked on and I yawned and stretched, pretending that I’d been awake all along; when Norma looked over at me and smiled, despite herself—these felt like livable moments, like I wasn’t just going through the motions of being alive. I was enjoying myself, without the worry and the stress of thinking about what comes next.

As it happened, what came next was ice cream.

I know I have already mentioned ice cream, so forgive me if—for just a second—I retread old ground. Because this time it was much less about the eating and much more about the atmosphere. It was jovial. It was fun. And most of all, it involved Olive and Norma interacting in a way that I hadn’t seen: like an invisible rope was strung between them, pulling them together.

“I feel like we just got away with something big,” Norma said, laughing, as if she’d been part of our human lesson all along. A chocolate-cherry ice cream cone melted slowly in her hand. “Never in a million years would I think to do that.”

Olive took another bite of her coconut ice cream, putting down the spoon. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all,” Norma said, finishing off her cone. “Your brain just works a little different. There’s power in that. Now that Leonard’s officially your cat, though—no one’s responded to the posters I’ve put up—I think I have a right to know if you’ve got any other plans with him. No skydiving, mountain climbing, sneaking into the grocery store at two in the morning?”

“I think Leonard would like the grocery store.”

Norma wiped her hands with a napkin until they were mostly clean. “I don’t doubt it.”

“And I . . . I might have promised him that we’d go bowling.”

“Promised him?” Norma said, the corner of her mouth twitching into a smile.

Olive covered her tracks. “I mean, you know—I promised myself. That I’d take him. In a normal way.”

An ocean breeze cut by our picnic table, swirling the humans’ hair. A few crane flies dipped and dived behind us; Olive placed a hand over her bowl, just in case one got curious. At the same time, Norma squared her shoulders and said, “I’m glad that you and Leonard are becoming so close. I know it’s—well, it isn’t always easy making new friends.”

“It seems easy for everyone else,” Olive said, not impolitely—more like a statement of fact. “I just don’t know how to be cool.”

Norma chortled. “Sailor, you’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t know anyone as cool as you. What other eleven-year-old knows about the transfiguration of ghost crabs, right off the top of her head?” She paused. “Did