the orphanage, however, her thoughts were clear. Something was happening to her, something weird and scary and important, and she needed to understand it, control it. For that, she’d go back to the place it first happened: the alley behind Luigi’s. She needed to see if it would happen again.
Plus, she needed a snack.
Luigi’s Dumpster yielded a feast. Tangy Italian meat loaf, delicate squash ravioli, fettucini with peas, prosciutto and cream sauce. Gurl offered the meat loaf to the cat, who ate a few bites before turning her attention to the fettucini. Gurl munched on the meat loaf as she watched the cat drag a long noodle from the packet and proceed to shorten it, bite by bite. “You know, I’ve been doing the same thing Mrs Terwiliger does,” Gurl said. “I’ve been calling you ‘cat’, the most obvious thing, even in my own head!” She smacked her forehead to demonstrate the foolishness of this. The cat stopped nibbling on the noodle to stare. “I could call you Laverna, like that flyer said. Hey, Laverna!” The cat blinked, bored. “Maybe not,” said Gurl. “So, instead of calling you what you are, which is easy, or calling you something that describes you, which is boring, why don’t I call you something that you like?” The cat blinked slowly in the way of cats, the way that said they were listening carefully and you had better say something interesting for a change. “Why don’t I call you Noodle?”
The newly named Noodle uttered a short mew, which Gurl took as an OK, before getting back to her fettucini. “Noodle it is, then,” Gurl said, feeling immensely pleased with herself. She had never named anything before. No wonder Mrs Terwiliger liked it so much, even though she was awful at it.
Gurl finished the meat loaf and polished off the ravioli in a couple of swift bites, eyeing her own hand as she did. She wondered what triggered it, what exactly made her fade. She could feel the tingling in her skin that afternoon, knew it was happening and was terrified that Mrs Terwiliger or that crazy boy—Bug or Chicken or whatever his name was—would notice. They didn’t seem to, or at least neither of them said anything. But she didn’t like the look on Bug Boy’s face as he turned to follow Mrs Terwiliger. It was a smug, self-satisfied look, the one everyone seemed to give her. A look that said Gurl was doomed, beaten before she even started.
“No, I’m not,” she said and her words echoed in the dark alley. Noodle’s whiskers twitched in disapproval. “Sorry,” she said, softer now. If she had to choose between being noticed and being ignored, she would take ignored any day. Bad things happened when she was noticed.
Noodle curled up in Gurl’s lap and Gurl leaned back against the brick, just as she did that first night, and stared up at the sky and the buildings that reached ecstatically towards it. A newspaper wafted on the wind, looking beautiful and fluttering and alive. Gurl felt a thousand things at once. Small and big. Safe and free. Invisible and yet exposed. In her mind, she rifled through her daydreams and found a favourite: a girl stands ankle-deep on a beach with the ocean roaring in front of her. Behind her, a boy shuffles out of a cozy cottage and calls out to the girl: “Mom and Dad say it’s time to come inside now.”
Noodle shifted in Gurl’s lap and mewled softly. “I know,” said Gurl. “We have to do what we came to do.” She held up her hands. “They look the same, Noodle. Just regular old hands.” With her nose, Noodle nudged her fingers. “Yes, concentrate. That’s a good idea.” Gurl focused all her attention on her hands, willing them to fade. She tried harder, squinting with the effort. After a while, her right wrist seemed to look a bit nubby like the pavement beneath her, but it hadn’t changed colour and nothing else seemed different at all. Her hands dropped to nestle in Noodle’s fur. “This is not going to work,” she said. “I didn’t even think about it both times it happened before. It just happened. Maybe it was because I was scared?”
Gurl sat in the alley until her butt and the cat fell asleep. Now what should she do? Would she just keep blinking on and off like a light bulb, never knowing when it was going to happen next? But she couldn’t sit here all night. Though it was only September, the temperature had dropped a few degrees and she was getting a little cold. She tapped the cat to wake her and helped her into the backpack. Gurl would have to try again on another night, maybe in another place.
Gurl slipped the pack on, careful not to jostle Noodle. At least the ravioli was good, she told herself. The trip was not a total waste. She paused at the entrance to the street and looked right and left. It was so late that the city seemed deserted and Gurl felt a flutter of nervousness in her stomach, a flutter that matched the trash dancing in the wind. Even Noodle seemed to sense Gurl’s anxiety and pulled her head inside the bag.
Nothing to worry about, Gurl thought. You’ll be fine. She straightened the straps of the pack before heading out on to the street. Walking briskly, Gurl glanced behind her every so often. Wan light pooled beneath the street lamps, giving the air a sickly, yellowish hue, while the bulbs themselves issued a low, eerie buzz.
Plink!
Gurl whirled around, scanning the street. The trash danced, slick puddles glistened, but no one followed her. This is the city and it never sleeps, she thought. Probably someone kicking a stone down the sidewalk blocks away. She told herself that she was being paranoid. And then she told herself to walk faster. For about the billionth time in her life, she wished she could fly.
Pssst!
Again, Gurl turned to face an empty street. But wait: there, in the darkened doorway of a shuttered shop, was someone lurking in the shadows? She stared, straining to see. On the opposite side of the street, a black dome rose from the subway entrance and Gurl’s stomach clenched. But the black dome turned out to be an umbrella, an overcoat-clad person beneath it. Gurl sighed with relief. Some businessman coming home late from the office. Well, if he thought it was OK to be out this late at night, then she was probably fine. She glanced back at the businessman, who held the umbrella so low that she couldn’t see his face. Like Gurl, he didn’t fly, but walked in a swaying lurch that favoured one leg. She felt a little sorry for him, not only unable to fly but also barely limping along. Imagine if the weather were bad. If it were stormy? It would take him for ever to walk a few blocks!
Gurl frowned. But if it wasn’t stormy, why was he carrying an umbrella?
She turned and started to walk again, a little faster than before. So the guy was a little strange; it didn’t mean he was dangerous. Maybe he just liked to be prepared.
From the backpack, a paw batted her ear. “Yeah,” Gurl whispered. Noodle tapped her again. “What is it?” The cat growled low in her throat, reared up from the backpack and nipped Gurl on the earlobe. “Ouch!” Gurl yelped.
Behind her, a gurgling voice said, “Ouch!”
Gurl whirled around so fast that Noodle almost fell from the pack. The man, who had been at least a block and a half away, now stood just a few feet from her. His overcoat, which had looked fine from a distance, was torn and stained with food and mud and things that Gurl didn’t want to think about. He wore two different shoes, one black, one brown, both slashed at the top to make room for long horny toenails. The umbrella, which he still held low over his face, was lacy with holes, as if someone had sprayed acid on it.
The man giggled, lifting the umbrella just a little, so that she could see the fine grey down that covered his cheeks, the teeth that he had filed to points. “Nice kitty,” he whispered. “Nice, nice kitty.”
And then he said: “Run.”
Gurl took off, running faster than she ever thought she could, Noodle bouncing in the pack on her back. But she could hear the man-thing panting and giggling, the slap-drag of his worn shoes on the sidewalk as he lurched after her. Frantic now, her heart pounding so hard
