someone who liked exotic animals, someone who worked in a zoo maybe. Gurl glanced around at the buildings that rose along either side of the alley. There were lights in some of the windows, but Gurl saw no worried faces in them, heard no frantic calls.
“Meow,” the cat said and took a few steps closer.
“Hey,” said Gurl. “Are you hungry?” She looked at the food in the packages and nudged the one with the lasagne. The cat sniffed, then began to eat in big gulps.
“You are hungry, aren’t you?” Gurl said. “Well, you and me both.” Keeping her eyes on the cat, she reached out and grabbed the package containing cake. Gurl ate like the cat did, in huge greedy bites.
The cat finished everything, right down to the noodles. Then it did something totally unexpected. It walked over to Gurl, reached up with a grey paw and patted Gurl’s cheek, once, twice, three times. Gurl’s eyes opened wide. “No, no, no!” she said. “I can’t take care of you! I’m just an orphan.”
“Meow,” said the cat. It yawned, climbed into her lap and began to make an odd rumbling sound. She’s purring, thought Gurl, who had read about it but never experienced it.
Gurl stared down at the cat. What was she supposed to do now? Where would she keep it? What would she feed it? She shifted her weight and her arm brushed against the cat’s leg. So soft. Hesitantly, Gurl ran a gentle finger between the cat’s ears, the way she would pet a friendly bird. The cat closed its eyes and sighed, pressing its head into her palm.
Just then, the back door of the restaurant flew open and the cat sprang from Gurl’s lap. The waiter marched out the open door carrying another bag of garbage.
“Whoa!” he said. Gurl froze, wishing with all her being that she was nothing more than one of the bricks in the wall. A queer shiver went through her.
But the waiter didn’t even glance in her direction. With his foot, he prodded the opened packages of food. Then he saw the cat standing there, back arched and tail spiked. “What the heck? Where did you come from?”
“Meow,” the cat said.
“Meow is right,” said the waiter. “Here, kitty.”
Since she was so close to him, Gurl could see that his brown eyes were hard and shiny, his smile cold. But why wasn’t he looking at her? Why was he acting as if he couldn’t see her? She was sitting right in front of him, right out in the open! But maybe he was just ignoring her like everyone else. The thought made her angry and she reached out for the cat.
What was wrong with her hands?
She could see them, but just barely. It was as if she were wearing gloves exactly the colours and textures of the alley itself: the black of the pavement, the red of the brick, the pink and white of the graffiti. And when she moved them, they changed to match the background. She touched her face, feeling the heat of her skin beneath her fingertips. If her hands looked like this, what did her face look like?
The waiter bent towards the cat. “Come on now,” he said. “I know someone who’d pay a lot of money to get a load of you.” He lunged for the cat, grabbing it by its front paws. The cat howled. “Shut up, you stupid thing,” the waiter said. The animal hissed, clawing with its back legs.
“Ow!” the waiter yelled, but didn’t let go. Carrying the wildly gyrating cat, he took one huge leap over to a garbage can on the other side of the alley and threw the cat inside. He quickly slammed the cover down and held it. The garbage can bucked and bounced, and the waiter kicked it. “Shut up!” he yelled.
Gurl was furious, but she didn’t know what to do. The waiter wasn’t big, but he was probably stronger than she was. And he could fly, even if he couldn’t do it that well. She unfolded her legs and saw they were exactly like her hands, nearly invisible. If he couldn’t see her, then…
The waiter kicked the garbage can again and the terrified mewls of the cat were too much for Gurl to bear. Though she had never done anything like it before, though she thought her heart would burst like a water balloon, she crept behind the waiter. Grabbing the waistband of his trousers, she yanked upward as hard as she could.
The waiter never flew higher than he did that moment and never would again. Gurl popped the lid off the garbage can. The cat vaulted into her arms, instantly becoming the colour of the air, the colour of nothing. The two of them, Gurl and cat, raced from the alley, just as if they had wings of their own.
Chapter 2 Blue Foot, Blue Foot
RUNNING, RUNNING. SHE WAS RUNNING, the cat curled in her arms, running so hard that her lungs hurt, running until she didn’t feel the pavement beneath her feet any more, until the ground below dropped away and she rose up into the air…
Gurl sat up in bed, clutching her chest. A dream. But not all of it. Not Luigi’s chocolate cake, which she could still smell on her fingertips. Not the cat, who slept across her feet under the threadbare blanket. But what about the rest?
She looked at her hands. They were thin and pale, but they were there, plainly visible. Gurl pulled the covers off her legs. Hands, check. Legs, check. She pulled the covers back up and shivered. The clock on the wall read 5.36am and pinkish sunlight marbled the iron sky outside the windows. The alley had been so much darker. Maybe that was why her hands had looked so strange, why the waiter hadn’t seen her. She had been hidden in dark shadows, odd shadows that mottled her skin.
Yes, she thought. That had to be it.
The cat mewled softly from beneath the blankets and crawled up to sit at Gurl’s side. She wasn’t much to look at. Cats in books had impish black faces and blue eyes, or smushed noses and fur the colour of butterscotch. With a wide, plain face and fur the grey of morning fog, this cat seemed unremarkable in comparison. Except for her eyes, the acid-green eyes that blinked so slowly as Gurl scratched one ear, then the other. The cat rolled over and exposed a white, tufted belly. She put her forepaws in the air and flexed them, clutching at something only she could see.
Gurl scratched the cat’s belly and a strange feeling came over her, a sleepiness, a peacefulness. A musical sort of purring filled Gurl’s ears, erasing the frown that had pulled at her lips. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around, she thought, does it make a sound? If a tree falls…if a tree falls…if a tree falls…
If anyone in the dorm had awakened, they would have thought Gurl had gone into a trance. Time passed, syrup slow, as Gurl scratched and scratched and scratched. Finally, the cat turned her little face to the clock and mewled softly. Gurl shook herself awake and checked the time: 5.57! In three minutes the alarm would ring and all the kids would wake up. What was she going to do with the cat? She couldn’t let anyone see it or else they would take it. Gurl was not very brave, not as brave as she wanted to be, but she was responsible. And if the cat had really chosen her, well then, the cat was Gurl’s responsibility.
Gurl climbed from her bed and pulled a box from underneath it, a box with a couple of old sweaters in the bottom. She reached into her bed, lifted the sleepy animal and laid it gently in the box. The cat peered at Gurl. “I’m sorry,” whispered Gurl, “but I can’t let anyone see you. Can you stay in this box until I can come back?”
The cat circled the box, kneading the sweaters. After curling up in a ball, she reached out
