What Curiosity Kills (16 page)

  I self-consciously touch the orange fuzz on the nape of my neck.

  To help hide the skinny stripe behind my long hair, Nick offers me his scarf; the same black-and-gray-checked scarf he wouldn't let Ling Ling borrow on the bus outside my house. No matter how hard she tugged at it, he wouldn't give it to her. Now it's tied around my neck. Instantly, it itches. But I'll put up with the irritation. This scarf is Nick's way of showing the world he belongs with me.

  "It's cheap," Nick confirms, "but Yiayia's so proud of herself for getting a deal." He impersonates her. "Ela!
TWO for ten
dollars, I talked the salesman into! "

Octavia says, "Let's go already."

I say, "I don't want Ben to hear what the book says."

  Ben says, "Sorry, Mary, you're not getting rid of me. Nick told you he owes me."

  Octavia hails a cab. "We're wasting time. Everybody get in already! You'll get yours, Ben, and we'll get ours."

  Nick gives his address to the taxi driver, dives into the back seat, and scoots to the far door. He pats the hump. What else can I do but pile in after him? Octavia crams in after me. She's none too happy to be holed up with two cat people. I know she blames Nick for what's happening to me and for what will happen to her if we don't get me fixed. She yanks the door closed, leans forward, and glares around me at him.

  Ben, who's left to sit in the front, sinks into the passenger seat and frowns into the rearview mirror. Racing uptown, the bulletproof partition, taxi radio, and driver's never-ending, onesided conversation into his earpiece will make it impossible for Ben to hear us.

  I ask Nick, "Who's Country Club's chaperone?"

  "He doesn't have one. He's stray."

  "If he's stray, what about his…who cut off his…"

  "Nuts," Octavia says in a way that makes Nick cross his legs.

  "I don't know," he says. "He either spent time in a pound or someone neutered him as a kitten and then left him to fend for himself. He lives down on Ludlow. But since the economy tanked, he's been up here sniffing around."

"For what?"

  "New territory. Haven't you noticed? The Upper East Side is mostly vacant lots. There are empty stores on every block. The worst stretch is on Lex between 72nd and 77th. Every other window in your neighborhood is dark. Caviarteria, Starwich—"

  "That bathing suit store," I think out loud. "The antique jewelry store…that store with retro furniture."

  "Payard," murmurs Octavia. "Every damn day, I miss those chocolate croissants."

  Nick says, "No more mom-and-pops. Papou says we're the new Lower East Side minus the bad element. But the bad element's already here. Country Club is King of the Strays."

  "You mean them?"

  "Yeah."

  "So, who are we?"

  "If you're with me—"

  "I'm with you!" The words fly out of my mouth. "I mean, why wouldn't I be with you?"

  "If you're with me, you're a dom. As in domestic," Nick explains.

  "Domestic," Octavia repeats, "because you guys live at home?"

  "Yeah. We're fed, taken care of, given a roof over our heads. Spoiled, in strays' opinions." He studies the time, temperature, and fare on the front seat's flat screen TV and decides what to reveal next. "See, doms and strays—the sides, us and them— are made up of pure-cats, like Country Club, and turn-cats, like you and me."

"Turn-cats, that's what we're called?"

Octavia mutters, "Y'all need help."

  Nick twists in his seat and snaps: "That's right. We do need help, but we don't have any! Apart from your little library book, there's no written history about what we are. We're not werewolves."

  Octavia swallows hard. "Are there werewolves?"

  "Hell if I know."

  I ask, "So, the twins' cats are domestics?"

  Nick nods. "Peanut Butter and Jelly."

  "You know them?" says Octavia.

  "Those Kim Jong-Il–lookin' crybabies? Yeah."

  "And Mrs. Wrinkles?" she breathes.

  "Queen of the Doms. Her family's ruled for thirty years; Country Club has ruled the strays for a week. He's only four years old, but talk about your dictators. His cats won't lick themselves without his permission."

  My heart starts to thump. "Who are the stray turn-cats?"

  Nick leans back. "Runaways. Kids who waste their lives on the benches outside American Apparel down on Orchard. You know the type: faces pierced, tattooed, dreaded-up, dirty. They left home for some kind of freedom, but I don't know what kind of freedom you get by sleeping in abandoned buildings. This isn't the eighties. They're not starving artists. When their turn-time is up, where will they be?"

  Uh-oh. A chink in Nick's shining armor. If it weren't for my parents, where would I be? I am a lottery kid. My parents plucked me like a numbered ping-pong ball out of hundreds of thousands of foster kids, who are now living who knows where under who knows what kinds of conditions. No one chooses to run away. You run because you have no choice; continue living where you are living is worse than living on the streets. It is hell. But the streets are worse than hell. To avoid them, Octavia spent a year with the devil's minions.

  She says, "Maybe those turn-kids were kicked out when their folks found out what they were."

  Nick says, "Maybe. But that's not our problem. Our problem is them turning up here. They need to stay below Houston where they belong. But Country Club wants his strays to squat in our empty lots."

  I remember what Mr. Charles said about Country Club. "He wants to take over. He thinks Mrs. Wrinkles is getting old."

  "She is. Best-case scenario, in a few years, she'll die of natural causes. After her, there are no more Webster Wrinkles. A new dom has to take her place."

  "Has a turn-cat ever ruled?"

  "Not the doms. With strays, power goes back and forth between pures and turns all the time. Strays love to fight. A turn-cat had power before Country Club killed him. He murdered that kid in cold blood when he was human. It was gruesome."

My body tenses. "You saw?"

  "Yoon dragged me downtown to the stray royal lair to see an initiation."

  
Stray royal lair?
I can only imagine what Octavia is thinking. I keep my attention focused on Nick. We're close to his house. Five more blocks.

  "Why'd you go with him to begin with?" I ask.

  "I don't know many turns. Before you, I was the only one at Purser-Lilley. Yoon pisses me off, but he understands me. Sometimes, I need that companionship. I try to stay out of the whole doms-versus-strays situation, but Yoon is hard to say no to."

  "But he's one of them."

  "Officially, he's on
the fence
. He runs with strays but lives at home. He does enough to keep the strays happy, so they let him stick around. To officially become a stray if you're a turn, you have to be marred. Yoon wanted me to see that initiation ceremony because he thought it would impress me."

"Did it?

"It did. I'll never go back to Kropps & Bobbers again."

"Where?" Octavia grumbles.

  "Hair salon down on Ludlow. There's an overgrown garden in the back with high walls where stray turns and pures hang out. The owner is an animal lover; a people lover too. She doesn't judge. She keeps the back door closed, looks the other way, and doesn't ask questions."

  "So, what happened?" Octavia now wants to know, twisting toward him.

  Nick's eyes get so sad, it's got to be impossible for Octavia not to pick up on how much he hates how we are and how hopeless he thinks our situation is. But if it weren't for our condition, Nick would never have sought me out. We would never have kissed. I wouldn't be tingling—in the good way— from being pressed up beside him. I wonder if the Greek book has a cure, and if he and I get fixed, will we stay together. Or will he ignore me? Because every time he sees me, he'll remember what he wants to forget.

  Nick explains, "To get initiated into the strays, you have to mar yourself with a characteristic of the current king or queen. So, if the king's a bobcat, you have your tail cut off. If the king's a Persian, you have your nose broken. You know how Hussein had all those look-alikes? Strays call it getting Saddam-ed."

  Octavia says, "That's disgusting! Why would Yoon want to be one of them?"

  "Because strays are wild and unaccountable to anyone but each other. Apart from turning, once you're a cat—I'll admit it—it feels good. Everything feels better."

  "Like love?" I dare to ask.

  Nick looks at me with his sad eyes. He says, "When you're a cat, there is no love. Just lust. Heightened senses and no morals. You live life in the now. Strays want to live that way forever, but most of them don't make it through their turn-time alive. The last king was a rotten little shit. Fifteen but built like he was nine. He fought everyone. His front two teeth were knocked out, so he spat when he spoke. Country Club was his biggest protector. The kid had nursed his mite-infested ear back to health to gain his loyalty, but this one time, he left Country Club out in the snow. To a cat, rain feels like razor blades, but snow feels even worse. Country Club nearly died. And cats aren't dogs. They're spiteful. They never forgive.

  "So, Yoon and I are downtown in that salon's back garden, crowded around the initiation ceremony with a bunch of strays—turns in human form and pures in their only form— and we're all watching the king stick a pair of pliers in some idiot's mouth. That's when Country Club jumped him. Landed square on the king's head. His weight broke his neck, but before the king hit the ground, Country Club had scalped him, skinned his face, and nearly torn his head clean off."

  Octavia warns, "Mary, you cannot be part of this."

  Bile rises in my throat, the soured acid of my last meal—ham and cheese Hot Pockets. My desire to fight Country Club is nothing more than a bad taste in my mouth. If Nick hadn't held me back from running after him at the library, what would that huge white monster have done to me? What made me think I could take him? What made me want to fight him at all?

  
The orange,
Nick had whispered.

  I slip off a mitten and reach back to touch the fuzz on the nape of my neck. The orange stripe has crept up behind my ears into the shape of a slingshot.

  Nick lifts my hair, peels down the scarf, and takes a look. The gesture is incredibly intimate. Heat spills down my throat and under my blouse.

  He says, "It's spreading."

  Octavia shouts, "Get your hands off her!"

  Nick pulls away. "It's not me who started it! She can't catch it from me when I'm like this."

  
Like this.
I glance beside me and take him in. Nick Martin. Nick Martin. Nick Martin! Medium-height, medium-dark, and pretty-gosh-dang-close-to-handsome. I twist my head toward Octavia. All she sees is filth dressed up like a boy doll.

  She says, "Mary, we have to fix you. We have to fix you right now."

  Her hand opens and closes around the door handle. She's debating whether to jump out at the next red light and pull me along with her. Her other hand grips the tiny Greek book in her lap. Apart from Papou, we don't have any other translators at the ready. If I'm going to be fixed, he's the one to tell me how. Octavia knows I'm turning. She doesn't want to see my full transformation again.

  Nick reaches across me and grabs Octavia's hand with the tiny book. "Only physical contact with cats can start Mary off."

  "Get off me!" Octavia shrieks, jerking away.

  "It doesn't matter if I touch you—nothing will ever happen."

  "But I didn't touch Country Club," I point out.

  "But you wanted to. Urges to be a cat will make you turn too."

  I think about the whisker Yoon plucked from my head. His nearness didn't put it there; it was my urge to catch the mouse. The fur on my neck grew from my thirst for Country Club's blood. The turning is upon me. And now it's spreading on its own.

  Nick says, "You're a kitten. Each time you turn, the turning will come quicker. Your cat self will get bigger. The more full-grown cat you become, the easier the turning will be to control. Eventually, in season, you'll be able to turn without triggers whenever you want."

  Octavia asks, "How long has she got before she turns this time?"

  "If she doesn't touch a cat or get herself in a situation where she wants to be a cat, she should have until tonight."

  "But if she does?" Octavia pleads.

  "It depends." Nick's voice is even, without emotion. It's such self-control that keeps his own fear at bay. "On the circumstances, her level of exposure, how bad she wants it. Could be hours, could be minutes."

  "No," Octavia decides. "It is not going to happen, Nick. Your grandfather's going to read the Greek book and tell us how to stop it."

  Nick says, "I hope you're right."

Nick's yiayia opens the front door to their townhouse. Out from under her mink, the old woman appears more formidable. She wears thick-heeled, lace-up ankle boots. Her calves are covered by knee-highs a few shades darker than her natural skin color. Her housedress looks like something Mom would describe one of her characters wearing when she's bludgeoned to death by a neighbor who's sick and tired of lending her cups of sugar.

  Yiayia waves us in out of the cold toward the mudroom. As I suspected, she is not happy to see me. She eyes the warped hem of my plaid skirt and my wrinkled cardigan when I take off my coat. In Manhattan, you'll see a murderous tomcat on the roof of a library before you see a girl in her school uniform on the weekend—much less one as messy as mine. Who knows where she thinks I spent last night and why she's imagining I haven't been home to change. My skirt stinks from being crumpled on the twins' terrace, laid out on the deli floor, and doused by dust in The Cellar book well.