Abandoned (10 page)

So the
others are cows,
thought Lauren and felt suddenly nauseous.
Almost against her will, she glanced inside the large pen before
she left the barn. A number of smaller skeletons were scattered
behind the high wire. Then she was outside and her arms were around
Trooper’s neck.

What
happened to them?
The thought screamed through her head.
It’s impossible for so many
different kinds of animals to get sick at the same time and die.
And if they had, the farmer would have taken care of their bodies.
No, they were abandoned, the poor things! And they died of thirst
and starvation. They died of neglect, locked inside tiny wooden
stalls. How could anyone do that, just leave all their animals to
die? As if animals can’t hurt or feel terrified!

Sudden rustling came from above her.
With a gasp, Lauren froze. Slowly, she pulled away from Trooper and
looked at the opening to the loft. Visions of bears and cougars
leaping out at her raced through her mind, even though she knew the
thought of a bear jumping out was silly. With shaky fingers, Lauren
fumbled with Trooper’s lead rope, her eyes locked on the loft
opening. She stopped when a tiny orange and white head peeked over
the edge of the loft. The kitten stared at her for a moment as if
trying to figure out what she was, then disappeared.

“Here, kitty,” Lauren called. The little
head reappeared, this time with a tabby companion. Lauren was
surprised at how enormous their ears were in comparison to their
thin faces.

“You’re so cute, even if you do look
like big-eared bats,” Lauren crooned. “Come here, kitties.” Two
sets of large eyes looked at her suspiciously. When she took a step
toward the barn, the kittens darted away. Lauren could hear the
straw rustling, then scratching on the inside wall of the barn.

There
must be a way to get up and down from the loft on the
inside
, she realized and hurried to the door. She looked
inside just in time to see the two kittens jump from a decaying
ladder that stretched up the wall beside a rusty tractor. It led to
a hole in the ceiling, the inside entrance to the loft.

Lauren watched the kittens race toward
the chicken coop end of the barn, then disappear through a tiny
hole in the wall. She ran outside to stand beside Trooper again.
The kittens were leaping through the undergrowth. She could hear
their rustling and see glimpses of them as they raced toward the
house. A few second later, they bounded up the steps to the house.
Halfway across the porch, the orange kitten leaped on top of his
companion and the two rolled into a tumbled heap. Lauren laughed at
their antics and the two kittens stopped to look at her. Now that
Lauren could see their whole bodies, she was shocked.

They’re
terribly thin
, she thought.
No wonder their ears seem big. The rest of their bodies are
so skinny. I wonder what happened to their mother.

“Here, kitties,” she called again. “Come
and I’ll take you home and feed you.” The orange kitten was curious
and took a step toward her, but the tabby was more timid. He
scooted in through the open door.

They’re
wild
, Lauren realized.
And
something’s happened to their mother. Without her, they can’t find
enough to eat.

“I wonder how they got way out here,”
she said, turning back to Trooper.

She led the gelding to the front porch
of the house and tied him to one of the support beams with a triple
knot so he couldn’t untie himself. Then she turned her attention to
the house. Carefully she walked up the steps and across the porch.
The boards were weak and she tested each one before she put her
entire weight on it, then she pushed the door the rest of the way
open and stepped inside.

Lauren found herself in an old kitchen.
It had been cheerful at one time, but now the curtains had faded to
gray and the floor was brown with dirt and debris. Dusty dishes and
mouse droppings were scattered across the countertop. A rusty,
old-fashioned fridge and stove stood against opposite walls and one
window was broken. Broken glass, twigs, and dried leaves were
scattered across the table. A squirrel or some other small creature
had made a nest on top of the fridge, but the animal was gone and
the pile of sticks and moss looked as forlorn and abandoned as the
rest of the house. Lauren glanced around but didn’t see the
kittens.

She walked across the kitchen and into a
living room. This room was in even worse repair. Over the years,
countless woodland creatures had stolen stuffing from the couches
and chairs for nests and burrows. Holes were pecked, chewed, and
ripped in the rotten fabric and rain had swept in from another
broken window. The floorboards around the window were warped and
cracked from the rain spilling across the floor. Lauren stopped to
listen, but there was nothing to hear. She pulled the couches away
from the wall and looked behind them, but there was no sign of the
kittens.

They could be inside one of the couches;
there were so many holes. She considered ripping into the old
couches, but then changed her mind.
I’ll check the rest of the rooms first
, she
decided.

Lauren walked through a doorway leading
from the living room into a tiny dark hallway. Two of the three
doors in the hallway stood open and Lauren peeked into the first
one. It was a bathroom. She stepped inside and looked into the
grimy bathtub, then behind the door. There was no other place for
the kittens to hide and when she didn’t see them, Lauren moved on
to the next room, closing the bathroom door behind her.

The second room held a double bed and a
fancy dresser.
Now this looks more
interesting,
Lauren thought as she walked to the dresser.
She picked up a picture sitting on the dresser. A man, a woman, and
a girl who looked about nine years old gazed back at her. A family.
They were smiling at each other and looked happy. Quickly, Lauren
put the picture back, facedown.

Lauren picked up a small perfume bottle
from the dresser and sprayed some on her wrists, then sniffed. “Ew
gross,” she said and put the bottle back on the dresser. “I smell
like rotten flowers.” She rubbed her wrists on the bedspread in an
effort to get off some of the scent. When she sniffed again, she
wrinkled her nose in disgust.
Now I
smell like rotten flowers, mildew and dirty laundry. Ew!

Lauren slid open the top dresser drawer.
Clothes had been chewed into mouse nests. She poked at the threads
and jumbles of disintegrating cloth, then shut the drawer and
opened the one beneath it. There in a soft bundle of chewed paper
was a little wiggle of pink. With her fingertip, Lauren carefully
pushed back some of the paper fluffs. Four tiny pink mice squirmed
in the nest as the cooler air brushed over their hairless, fragile
bodies.

“Sorry, little guys,” Lauren said and
gently pulled the fluff back over them. A woman’s face looked up at
her from the pile of fluff, part of a chewed up photo. “It looks
like you made good use of that old photo album, anyway.” Slowly,
she pushed the drawer back in. She dropped to her knees in front of
the bed and peered into the shadows beneath. No kittens.

But they have to be here somewhere. This
is the last room they can get inside, unless they squeezed
underneath that closed door. They’re awfully skinny, she reasoned
as she climbed to her feet and walked into the hallway. Or they may
have another way into the room. She walked to the closed door,
turned the knob and pushed it open.

Wow, what
a cool room
, she thought as she stepped inside. The bedroom
was much better preserved than the rest of the house. The window
was still intact and the door being shut had given it some
protection against the woodland creatures and weather.

Lauren turned a full circle in the
center of the room. It was obvious that the person who had lived
here was artistic. Paintings covered the walls. Some were of plants
and flowers, some of mountains and meadows, and some were of
animals. Lauren looked closely at a painting of a bay mare with a
buckskin foal. “Cool. He’s the same colour as Trooper,” she said
and touched the foal in the painting. “He even has Trooper’s
crescent shaped star on his forehead.”

Books lay in a stack on the night table
and some of Lauren’s favorites were in the pile. She picked up the
top book, a copy of Black Beauty, and leafed through it. The line
drawings were coloured in with pencil crayons. Ginger was a bright
red chestnut with a blaze and Black Beauty glowed a velvet black
with blue highlights to make him look shiny.

Lauren looked around at the pictures
again.
I’ll use my paintings at home
to decorate my room. I’ve always just hidden them away in my bottom
drawer, but they’re as good as these ones and these look so cool
inside the frames. And my mom was an artist.
A rush of
warmth swept over Lauren’s face.
Is
an artist. She didn’t die. She just abandoned me.

Lauren slumped down on the bed and put
her face in her hands. A small cloud of dust rose from the
bedspread. How could she have forgotten? Lauren felt tears prick at
her eyes and immediately straightened.

No! I’m
not going to cry
, she vowed.
I’m never going to cry about her again. She doesn’t deserve
it!

Her hand brushed against a piece of
paper lying on the bedspread. She looked down. It was a photograph,
ripped into little pieces. A chill touched the back of Lauren’s
neck. She pushed the pieces around to see if she could put them
together.
It’s a man
, she
realized.
Why would someone rip up
his picture?

“But I would’ve ripped up my Dad’s
picture just an hour ago,” she whispered. She pushed the last
pieces of the photo in place. The man’s eyes were sad, his mouth a
tense line across his face.

Just like
my dad’s will be when he finds out I ran away.
She sighed.
I think I know why he didn’t tell me
the truth about Mom. He was trying to protect me. He wanted me to
think she had no choice when she left us. He did what he thought
was right for me, even though it wasn’t. He should have told me the
truth. But I can forgive him. It’s her I’ll never forgive. Never.
No matter what!

Lauren raised her head to look
out the window. The shadows stretched longer across the yard.
It’s getting late
, she
realized.
I better hurry. I don’t
want to be stuck here when it gets dark. Those kittens have got to
be here somewhere.

A sudden scrambling noise came from the
front of the house. “Gotcha,” whispered Lauren. She moved quickly
and quietly out of the room and along the hall, then peeked around
the corner but the living room was empty. As quietly as she could,
she crept toward the kitchen and leaned through the doorway.

Lauren smiled as the orange and white
kitten skittered across the floor with the tabby in close pursuit.
They were playing. The tabby jumped on his brother’s head and bit
his ear. Lauren held her breath as the two kittens rolled around in
mock battle in the middle of the kitchen. The orange kitten was
slightly bigger than the tabby, who meowed as his tail was
attacked. He reached out and whacked the orange kitten on the nose,
then ran toward the corner of the room and disappeared through a
door.

Lauren hadn’t noticed the door when she
first walked through the kitchen. It was painted the same colour as
the walls and was only slightly ajar. The orange kitten saw
Lauren’s movement as she turned her head. He froze on the spot, his
eyes huge in the unlit kitchen, then gave a tiny mew and scampered
toward the door and disappeared after his littermate.

Lauren walked across the room and swung
the door open. Stairs led down to a cellar. It wasn’t as dark in
the cellar as Lauren expected and carefully she stepped onto the
top step.

“Kitty, kitty,” she called. “Come here.”
She could see the orange kitten sitting halfway down the stairs and
the tabby looking at her from between two storage shelves. “I won’t
hurt you, Spunky,” she said in a soothing voice to the orange
kitten. “Or you either, uh…Tiger.” She glanced at where the tabby
had been sitting, but he was gone. “I’m going to take you to a nice
home where you can have lots to eat. I promise.”

She took a cautious step down. The
stairs didn’t look too safe. Spunky darted down the rest of the
stairs and ran to join his brother. Lauren shut the kitchen door
behind her, then quickly descended the rest of the way. The cellar
was dim but she could still see. Most of the shelves were empty and
the light from one high window flowed through the unblocked
shelves. The kitten huddled on the floor and watched her with
terrified eyes.