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

Olive nervously jittered her fingertips. “He has to go home.”

“What, he’s worn out his welcome already?”

“No,” Olive said, shaking her head. “No, I mean he needs to go home. He’s not supposed to be in South Carolina at all. He’s not even supposed to be a cat. And if I don’t get him to Yellowstone National Park in the next four days, he’ll be stuck here, in that body, forever. And he’ll die. Eventually he’ll die, and then it’ll be my fault, and I’ve gotten us a train ticket and a shuttle ticket but the train doesn’t leave for two days, and my mom’s coming to get me tomorrow, which means I’m going to fail him and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Q said, and I was sure that we were thinking the same thing. None of this is your fault.

Olive bulldozed on. “His pickup point is Yellowstone. And if I’m leaving for California, I don’t know how to get him there. Norma doesn’t want to drive.”

“Norma knows?”

“I couldn’t exactly . . . figure out how to say it.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Q said, scratching his chin. Something in his face was falling. “I think you’re old enough to hear this, Olive, so I’m going to tell you. After your dad passed away in that car accident, your grandmother just about disappeared. For weeks, she locked herself up in that house of hers, barely showered, and stopped talking to almost everyone but me. She had to recalibrate her entire existence. There was a lot of darkness. I want to help keep her in the light. This has been a particularly light summer. I’m not sure you know how much it means to her that you’re here.”

Olive breathed a single word. “Really?”

“Really,” Q said. “Now, I’d hate to see her go back to that place again, where she felt like the world didn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that losing someone and finding out about Leonard are the same thing. Not even close. What I am saying is that Norma specifically told me: I can’t take another shock. I’d like to respect that. I think that telling her ‘Aliens are real and Leonard is one of them’ might fall into the shocking category.”

“That makes sense,” Olive said, after digesting this information for a long, long time. “What should we do, then?”

Once again, Q peered down at me, shivering in my raincoat, the fur of my tail half puffed. “You said that Leonard needs to get to Yellowstone by when?”

“July twenty-first.”

“And your mom’s getting here tomorrow night?”

“With Frank,” Olive added, a bit under her breath.

“Well, there’s two ways you can play this. You can go with them tomorrow night, and take your chances with Leonard. Or . . .”

“Or?” Olive said.

“Remember at the beginning of the summer, when I told you that some people take the roads and some people take the marshlands? This might be one occasion where we need those roads. I understand that you don’t want to disappoint your mom. I’ve met her. She’s a good person. But when something’s this important, I think it’s okay to bend the rules.” Then he said the most wonderful words. “Leonard, my man, how do you feel about motor homes?”

“This is absolutely nuts,” Norma said the next afternoon, clanking dishes into the sink. And I would have liked to tell her: I know, we are leaving so quickly; we haven’t even had time to bowl.

Q leaned against his shoulder in the kitchen doorway, ankles crossed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There will be plenty of places to stop along the way. Olive will love it—get that kid a proper education. Best thing to teach you is the open road. What else is summer for?”

Norma grumbled. “Her mom’s getting here in ten hours. And you can’t just take off on a vacation that you thought of last night.”

“Educational adventure,” Q corrected her.

“For Pete’s sake! What about the aquarium? Two hundred guests are on their way.”

“Taken care of. TJ and the rest of the crew are going to step up their hours, and we’ve just got a boatload of new volunteers for end-of-summer events. Plus, I have a bunch of time-off stored up. Been saving it for a rainy day.”

“And I’m supposed to tell her mom—what? That she hasn’t seen her daughter in almost a month, but that’s okay. Her plans don’t matter?”

“I wouldn’t lead with that, no. But you could mention that we’ll drop Olive off in California afterward. Just a quick detour—only two states in between. She’ll still have time to settle in. So, you coming? It would mean a lot to Olive. And Leonard.”

“Well, then, by all means, if it would matter to the cat.” I was listening attentively by the refrigerator—and I will say that her words stung. Maybe she knew it, too; she threw a glance in my direction, an apologetic look in her eyes. Her nose twitched. “Sorry to drag you into this, Leonard.”

Don’t mention it, I wanted to say—because really, I was the sorry one. Who was bringing all the fighting into this quiet house, if not me?

“Okay, okay,” Q said to Norma. “The truth?”

“The truth would be nice,” Norma said.

“It’s for the kid,” Q said, “but it’s also for you. Wait! Hear me out. You haven’t left Turtle Beach for three years. Three years. That’s a lot of sightseeing to make up for. Plus . . . I’ve seen the way you look at that kid. Your granddaughter’s moving all the way across the country, and I bet you’d like some extra time with her. So when Olive brought up the trip, I latched on to the idea. Remember how we always talked about trekking around Yellowstone? Come on, Norma. Don’t break my heart.”

I knew that Q was stretching the truth, bending it to fit. But I was grateful.

Giving them some space, I hauled myself across the living room and into Olive’s bedroom, where she was stuffing an