the couch. I flung open the hall closet.
Nothing. Nobody.
No surfing cats. No Crenshaw.
I hadn’t told anybody about what I’d seen at the beach. Robin would just think I was messing with her. My mum and dad would do one of two things. Either they’d freak out and worry I was going crazy. Or they’d think it was adorable that I was pretending to hang out with my old invisible friend.
I sniffed the jelly beans. They smelled not-quite-grapey, in a good way. They looked real. They felt real. And my real little sister had just eaten some.
Rule number one for scientists is this: there is always a logical explanation for things. I just had to figure out what it was.
Maybe the jelly beans weren’t real, and I was just tired or sick. Delirious, even.
I checked my forehead. Unfortunately, I did not seem to have a fever.
Maybe I’d got sunstroke at the beach. I wasn’t exactly sure what sunstroke was, but it sounded like something that might make you see flying cats and magic jelly beans.
Maybe I was asleep, stuck in the middle of a long, weird, totally annoying dream.
Still. Didn’t the jelly beans in my hand seem extremely real?
Maybe I was just hungry. Hunger can make you feel pretty weird. Even pretty crazy.
I ate my first jelly bean slowly and carefully. If you take tiny bites, your food lasts longer.
A voice in my head said, Never take candy from strangers. But Robin had survived. And if there was a stranger involved, he was an invisible one.
There had to be a logical explanation. But for now, the only thing I knew for sure was that purple jelly beans tasted way better than bran cereal.
The first time I met Crenshaw was about three years ago, right after first grade ended.
It was early evening, and my family and I had parked at a rest stop off a highway. I was lying on the grass near a picnic table, gazing up at the stars blinking to life.
I heard a noise, a wheels-on-gravel skateboard sound. I sat up on my elbows. Sure enough, a skater on a board was threading his way through the parking lot.
I could see right away that he was an unusual guy.
He was a black and white kitten. A big one, taller than me. His eyes were the sparkly colour of morning grass. He was wearing a black and orange San Francisco Giants baseball cap.
He hopped off his board and headed my way. He was standing on two legs just like a human.
“Meow,” he said.
“Meow,” I said back, because it seemed polite.
He leaned close and sniffed my hair. “Do you have any purple jelly beans?”
I jumped to my feet. It was his lucky day. I just happened to have two purple jelly beans in my jeans pocket.
They were a little smushed, but we each ate one anyway.
I told the cat my name was Jackson.
He said yes, of course it is.
I asked him what his name was.
He asked what did I want his name to be.
It was a surprising question. But I had already figured out he was a surprising guy.
I thought for a while. It was a big decision. People care a lot about names.
Finally I said, “Crenshaw would be a good name for a cat, I think.”
He didn’t smile because cats don’t smile.
But I could tell he was pleased.
“Crenshaw it is,” he said.
I don’t know where I got the name Crenshaw.
No one in my family has ever known a Crenshaw.
We don’t have any Crenshaw relatives or Crenshaw friends or Crenshaw teachers.
I’d never been to Crenshaw, Mississippi, or Crenshaw, Pennsylvania, or Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles.
I’d never read a book about a Crenshaw or seen a TV show with a Crenshaw in it.
Somehow Crenshaw just seemed right.
Everybody in my family was named after somebody or something else. My dad was named after his grandpa. My mum was named after her aunt. My sister and I weren’t even named after people. We were named after guitars.
I was named after my dad’s guitar. It was designed by a manufacturer called Jackson. My sister was named after the company that made my mum’s guitar.
My parents used to be musicians. Starving musicians is what my mum calls it. After I was born, they stopped being musicians and became normal people. Since they’d run out of instruments, my parents named our dog after a famous singer called Aretha Franklin. That was after Robin wanted to name her Fairy Princess Cutie Pie and I wanted to call her Dog.
At least our middle names came from people and not instruments. Orson and Marybelle were my dad’s uncle and my mum’s great-grandma. Those folks are dead, so I don’t know if they’re good names or not.
Dad says his uncle was a charming curmudgeon, which I think means grumpy with some niceness thrown in.
Honestly, another middle name might have been better. A brand-new one. One that wasn’t already used up.
Maybe that’s why I liked the name Crenshaw. It felt like a blank piece of paper before you draw on it.
It was an anything-is-possible kind of name.
I don’t exactly remember how I felt about Crenshaw that day we met.
It was a long time ago.
I don’t remember lots of stuff about what happened when I was young.
I don’t remember being born. Or learning to walk. Or wearing
