Speed Demon (11 page)

“Levi, you have to get him for me!” Zoe pleaded.

I didn’t see what the big deal was. The garage door to the driveway was closed, so it wasn’t like the cat could go anywhere. But the tears of a cute five-year-old blonde always resulted in action. Before I could say Marshmallow Pants, Levi was crawling on the ground attempting to coax the cat forward so he could grab her. Him. Whatever it was. I wasn’t sure we had even bothered to officially determine the cat’s gender. I think my mother was secretly hoping the cat would run away before she had to go so far as to take him to the vet and get him a license.

“Come here, kitty, kitty,” Levi said.

The cat hissed.

Levi reached for it and got a swat on the hand.

“Come on, I’m serious.”

The cat made a coughing sound, then threw up right in front of Levi.

Levi turned his head and wrinkled his nose. “Sick, Otis.”

“Who’s Otis?” Zoe asked, leaning over Levi to check out the vomit.

“It’s my nickname for the cat. He looks like an Otis to me.”

“Well, he won’t come to you unless you call him by his real name, Marshmallow Pants,” Zoe said with authority.

“Right. Marshmallow Pants, this ground is cold and your puke smells. So come out. Now.” Levi grabbed the cat and dragged and wrestled and pulled him out from under the van.

I was clipping the vacuum attachment back on and watching in amusement when we all heard my mother scream from the house. It sounded like something had ripped its face off in front of her, there was so much fear in her voice.

Abandoning the vacuum, I ran, as did Levi, who was still struggling to hold the cat, and Zoe.

Inside the kitchen my mother was white-faced and pointing to the floor. “Levi,” she said in a shaky voice, “I hope you weren’t attached to your gym shoes.”

“What?”

We all followed her finger and I reared back. “Oh, nasty!” There was a dead mouse—actually, just a mouse head—bloody and gruesome, sticking up out of Levi’s shoe.

“I think Marshmallow Pants left you a present,” my mom added, swallowing hard. “Oh, that’s so gross.”

Zoe screamed.

The cat jumped down out of Levi’s grip and ran, though he paused at the edge of the family room and gave one glance back at us before tearing off for parts unknown.

“We have
mice
?” I asked, horrified.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” my mom announced. “I’m calling the exterminator in the morning.” Then she yelled, “Bill! I need you in the kitchen. Bill!”

“I can get it, Mrs. S.” Levi grimaced, but he picked up his shoe and headed for the garage, presumably to dump the head in the trash can.

When he got back, he actually went and put his gym shoe in the washing machine.

“You’re keeping that?” Eew. Double eew. Triple eew.

“There’s just a little blood and fur on it. It will wash right off. These shoes cost ninety bucks.”

A budget-conscious demon. He was taking the whole thing really well, given that his face looked like he’d lost a battle with a pricker bush and he’d had his shoe turned into a burial ground for a rodent.

It wasn’t until after ten that night when I caught Levi trying to throw Marshmallow Pants out onto the back deck that I realized he might be more annoyed than he was letting on.

“What are you doing?” I asked him, even though it was obvious.

He jumped, clearly clueless that anyone was around. “Um, nothing.”

“You just stuck that cat outside. It’s November. It’s forty degrees out there.”

“So? He has a lot of fur. And I think he’s actually an outdoor cat,” Levi said, crossing his arms over his chest and shutting the sliding door to the deck closed on Marshmallow Pants. “I think he wants to run around and kill mice outside.”

“He’s standing on the deck by the door, staring into the house and meowing,” I pointed out. The cat looked like he had been betrayed. He was just sitting there, his mewling faint but obvious.

So the Nice Guy Demon didn’t like cats any more than I did. I went over and opened the door, watching the cat dart back in.

“What did you do that for?” Levi asked, annoyed.

I wasn’t sure, but it seemed mean to leave it out there when it wanted in. “Because I’m saving Zoe’s hero worship of you. She would be destroyed if she knew you tortured her cat.”

“I wasn’t torturing it! I just sent it outside to hunt at will. Where it can drop dead mice in the grass, instead of my shoe.”

“Well, it’s back in the house now. Sorry.” Not really. Despite the gross factor, it was kind of funny that the cat had chosen Levi’s shoe to make his deposit in.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, hiking his jeans back up on his hips.

“Nope, no, you don’t,” I said cheerfully, determined not to think about how it had felt to have him kiss me. And there was going to be no talking about it. Ever.

“But it’s important.”

“So talk to Amber about it. You know, since you have a girlfriend.” Okay, bitterness was squeaking out. Time to leave the room.

“K-Slay, come on ...”

Argh. I hated it when he called me that stupid demon slayer nickname he’d given me. “I can’t believe this is my life!” I exploded. “No one will talk to me, NO ONE, except for you. What kind of a cruel irony is that?”

“Okay, drama queen, now that that’s out of your system, can we be rational for a minute?”

No. No, we couldn’t. I stuck my tongue out at him and stomped off to my room to write an e-mail to Isabella begging her to forgive me before I was actually forced out of desperation to talk to Levi.

Chapter Nine

After fourteen days that felt like four hundred as a complete social pariah, I decided I was willing to talk to Levi. My thought when the Incident first went down was that if Levi and I talked at school, people would really think we were actually a couple, which (a) wasn’t true, (b) would label me a boyfriend stealer, and (c) eew. Then when it became obvious in about a minute that Levi and Amber were still West Shore’s Cutest Couple (aside from those cat scratches on Levi’s mug), I figured it would really look weird if I talked to him at school. Like I was still dangling after him in a state of desperation, and maybe I was down and out but I had my pride.

But two weeks later I was willing to talk to anyone that could form sentences and didn’t look at me like I was toxic waste. I was talking to the baggers at the grocery store, which I offered to voluntarily go to with my mother, and I was playing Polly Pockets with Zoe just to hear the sound of my own voice. If it wasn’t for play practice at the theater two nights a week, I would have probably literally gone insane.

I kind of thought everyone would thaw out. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d started dating a teacher or had become an overnight Internet porn sensation. But no, there was no thawing. I was still getting the tundra treatment and my e-mails and voice mails to Isabella were going unanswered, which initially upset me, then hurt me, then ticked me off. Five years of friendship and she wasn’t even going to let me apologize? I would have listened to her, and that stung.

My nightly sawdust vacuuming did nothing but keep the kitchen clean and score me some brownie points with my mom, and as far as I knew, the portal was still wide open. I figured it was time to suck it up (my pride, not the portal) and actually talk to Levi if I ever wanted to squeeze any info about closing it out of him.

And I was still contemplating sending him back. How to Lose Levi in Ten Days was starting to hold some serious appeal.

I made a list of pros and cons:

 

 

 

Disgusted at myself, I ripped the list up and tossed it in the trash. Why exactly would I miss him? No clue.

Further confirmed when I had to sit next to him in the minivan on the way to the zoo to help my mother chaperone Zoe’s latest Girl Scout outing.

I was just sitting there, biting my fingernails as I stared out the window when my finger was suddenly jerked out of my mouth. I turned to glare at Levi. “What?”

“Quit biting your fingernails. It’s gross. You’re ripping pieces of them off and spitting them out. I’m going to toss my Frosted Flakes.”

Feeling like I might suddenly cry, I said, “I don’t like you,” and studied my nails so he could see how on the edge I was. Yuck. Maybe Levi had a point. My nails looked like I’d taken the tips to a cheese grater, my midnight blue polish shredded.

“Yeah, because you haven’t said
that
yet today. I was getting worried we might go a full day without you declaring your dislike.”

“Biting nails is gross,” Zoe piped up, craning her neck to see us in the backseat.

Anyone who still needs a booster seat should not be entitled to an opinion. On anything. “No one asked you, diva.”

Zoe shot me a look of rebuke. “Mom! Kenzie called me diva.”

“Kenzie, stop calling your sister names!” My mom sounded huffy and annoyed as we pulled into the elementary school parking lot to collect the other girls who would be riding with us.

I huddled against the window and felt sorry for myself. I was good at it.

Levi nudged me with his knee. I glanced over at him and he gave me a dorky smile full of teeth, his eyebrows going up and down. “Come on. We’ll have fun at the zoo. In the aquatics building we can watch the piranhas bite the heads off minnows and you can pretend they’re me.”

“Why pretend they’re you?” I said. “Let’s just toss you into the tank and see what happens.”

He pinched my cheeks like he was my aunt Mary. “You’re so cute when you’re bitter.”

I was about to smack him when he tilted his head and listened, like he heard something.

“What?” I knew that look. It was his Demon Danger Alert look.

But he just shook his head, and refocused on me, smiling. “Nothing.”

My mom had parked and was undoing her seatbelt. “Okay, I’m going to go talk to the other troop leader and see who we’re taking in our car.”

“I’m going with you,” Zoe said.

I didn’t see any point in standing around in the cold November morning while the moms negotiated and the kindergartners ran around in circles on the blacktop, so I stayed in the van and worried. Easy enough.

Especially since Levi was on the floor of the van crawling around on all fours and whispering in . . . was that Latin?

“Uh . . . what are you doing?” I unbuckled my seatbelt and pulled my legs up onto the seat. If a snake or something was on the floor, I didn’t want to touch it. No thanks. Pass.

“Otis,” Levi snarled.

Otis? What or who was that? And where had I heard that before?

A second later a triumphant looking Levi dragged a hissing Marshmallow Pants out from under the seat. “Hah, got you, you furry little freak.”

That earned him a bite on the arm, which had Levi hissing like the cat.

“What is he doing in here?” I asked. “Nice outfit, MP.”

The cat was wearing a hot pink onesie. It didn’t look conducive to litter-box usage, but I was guessing Zoe hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Levi was opening the door and after a second I realized he was just going to drop the cat in the parking lot. “What are you doing? You can’t throw that cat out!” I grabbed his arm and tried to yank him backward.

“I hate this cat,” Levi said vehemently. “If he pukes in my stuff one more time, I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“What did he puke on now?” I asked, a little freaked out by Levi’s intensity. I mean, animal vomit didn’t thrill me either, but it was like twenty degrees outside and we were in the school parking lot. He couldn’t seriously be that mean as to ditch a defenseless pet out there.

“My jeans. My book bag. My
pillow
.”

Okay, that was nasty, but still. “Well, he obviously has some dietary issues. My mom can switch out his food.” I hit the button by the driver’s seat to close the side door to the van, hoping the cat wouldn’t leap out before it shut. I had no interest in tearing across the parking lot in pursuit of Zoe’s cat. “Zoe loves this cat, Levi. She sleeps with him.”

Levi and the cat were in some kind of staring match.

And Levi’s eyes had started to do that freaky red glowing thing that only happened when . . .

Uh-oh.

He only did that when he was in the presence of another demon and they were having a showdown.

Which must mean that Zoe’s little ball of fluff so charmingly named, was actually a demon from hell.

I swiveled to check out the cat’s smooshed face. Yellow glowing eyes. Check.

“Levi, this cat is a demon!” I shrieked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Shh!” he yelled right back. “The girls are here.”

He was right. The door whipped open and a pack of girls clamored into the van and started squealing in delight at the sight of the cat.

“How did Marshmallow Pants get in here?” my mom asked with an exhausted sigh.

By the powers of his demonic and furry self. “I don’t know.”

“We’ll have to drop him back at the house. Okay, everyone find a seat!”

Levi shifted to the back, taking the squirming cat with him, and after a lot more chatter, climbing over each other, and cat petting, all four girls were finally buckled in and we were off to the zoo, with a slight detour to drop demon cat off.