was embarrassed to have been caught rolling around on the floor, but not too embarrassed to notice how tightly the girl was holding on to the cat. As if she thought it belonged to her. “What’s your problem?” Bug asked her.
The girl bit her lip. She was that weird girl, the one just called Gurl. The one who watched everyone. The other kids said that since she didn’t look like any particular thing and couldn’t seem to do any particular thing, Mrs Terwiliger chose the obvious name. Bug himself might have tried to be a little bit more creative. Pasty Face would work, he thought. Or Ghost. Spooky! Now that was a good name for her. Her skin was white and her long dishevelled hair was almost the same. Her eyes were grey and almost as big as his own, but you could hardly see them through the curtain of hair. They were like headlights glaring through fog. Even her lips were colourless. Bug wondered if she had any blood at all.
Gurl clutched the cat close. “She’s not your cat.” Her voice was low and sort of scratchy, as if she didn’t use it much.
“Sure she is,” said Bug, getting to his feet. “I found her.”
She tried again. “This is the girls’ dorm.”
“No, this is the hallway.”
“This is the entrance to the girls’ dorm. You have to leave.”
Bug laughed. “You gonna make me?”
She gripped the cat tighter in her arms. “You can’t tell anyone,” she said.
“About what?” He looked down at his mangled knuckles, red and scraped from punching the walls. She saw them too and took a step back.
“You can’t tell anyone about the cat.”
“Why not?”
“Because!” the girl blurted. She looked as if she might burst into sloppy tears, which just made Bug think of an even better name for her: Dishwater. Weepy Dishwater Pasty Face.
“She’s mine,” said Bug. “She chose me.”
“She did not!”
“She did too! She was rolling around with me. You saw her.”
“That’s doesn’t mean she chose you,” said Gurl. She seemed to think a minute and then she said, “Listen, Chicken—”
But Bug cut her off. “Don’t call me Chicken!” he shouted, punching the wall. “That’s not my name!” Wham! “I have a real name.” Wham!
The girl took another step away from him. “OK, OK,” she said. “Sorry, what’s your name?”
“What do you think?” he said, opening his eyes as wide as he could. “It’s Bug.”
The cat began to wriggle and struggle in the girl’s arms until she was forced to let it go. “See?” Bug told her. “She wants to come back to me. She plays a mean game of rolling pin.”
But the cat trotted past both children and strode into the bathroom at the other end of the hallway. Bug followed, the pasty girl on his heels, but the cat ran behind the door and pushed it shut.
“What’s she doing?” Bug said, pressing an ear to the door.
“She’s fine,” the girl told him. But she seemed just as confused as Bug was.
After a few minutes, they heard the toilet flush.
“Come on!” said Bug. “Cats use toilets?”
“Of course they do,” the girl said, obviously surprised as well. Soon they heard the sound of water splashing in the sink. “Anyway, you can go now. I’ll catch her when she comes out.”
“No, how about you can go and I’ll catch her when she comes out,” Bug said. Not only was the cat rare, it was some sort of super-genius, toilet-flushing cat. Maybe she could fetch! Maybe she could balance pineapples on her nose! Maybe she could juggle chipmunks! He wasn’t going anywhere.
“She’s not yours!” the girl hissed. Suddenly, she got paler—if that was even possible—and her grey eyes went all silvery, like two nickels. Quickly, she pulled the sleeves of her red sweatshirt over her hands.
The girl was weirder than everyone said she was. “What’s wrong with you?” Bug said.
“What’s wrong with who?” said a voice. Mrs Terwiliger glided down the hallway. “Chicken! I’ve been looking for you. What are you two doing loitering near the girls’ dormitory?”
“Nothing,” Gurl and Bug said at once.
Mrs Terwiliger’s eyes narrowed, staring down at them both. “Gurl, you look pale,” she said, sounding more accusatory than compassionate. (And she enunciated the word “pale” with so much force that she spat.)
“I’m just tired,” croaked the girl. “I think I need a nap.” She tugged at the sleeve of her sweatshirt again. Was it Bug’s imagination or did the sweatshirt seem to be fading somehow? It had been red, but now it looked pink. And there was a faint pattern in it that he hadn’t noticed before, like the lines in a brick wall. Just like the painted brick of the hallway.
Mrs Terwiliger’s overwide lips turned down at the corners and Bug wondered if she had noticed the same strange things. But all she said was, “A nap is a wonderful idea. Go.” She waved her bony hand and Gurl practically ran into the girls’ dorm.
Then Mrs Terwiliger crooked a finger at Bug, the fluorescent lights shining off her tight, waxy skin. “Come, Chicken. Instead of punching the walls, I’d like you to help me move a filing cabinet. There’s a good boy!”
She turned and floated off. Bug started to follow, peeking inside the open door of the girls’ dormitory as he passed. And that’s when he saw her. Uh, didn’t see her. Because the girl wasn’t there. The room was empty.
Bug opened his mouth to shout—because what else do you do when a weird, weepy girl ups and totally disappears?—but then he thought better of it. Something extremely funky was going on with Pasty Gurl, but he’d keep his mouth shut.
That is, he would keep it shut in exchange for a certain toilet-flushing, rolling pin-playing, very rare, genius cat.
“Chicken!” said Mrs Terwiliger. “Move it along!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, a sly grin on his buggy face. “I’m moving it as fast as I can.”
Chapter 5 Attack of the Umbrella Man
GURL HURRIED ALONG THE CITY streets, the cat peeking out from an old backpack. She’d had to wait nearly an hour for the other orphans to fall asleep. (Digger kept untucking the sheets on Persnickety’s bed, just to make her cry, and stealing Tot’s doll, just to make her cry.) When Gurl finally slipped from the window and out of the front gate of Hope House, it was close to eleven.
The air outside was crisp
