“I know you,” the guy said.
“You do?”
“Aren’t you in my chem lab?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Raymond felt his breathing settle. Some, anyway. It was seeming likely that he would survive this encounter. It appeared to be morphing into something like a normal conversation.
“What’re you doing down here?” the guy asked.
“Oh. That. I wanted to see if I could get that . . .” Raymond made a sudden, instinctive decision not to mention the cat. “。 . . bench. That stone bench. I kind of liked it. I was gonna see if it was too heavy to carry home.”
The guy turned away, and Raymond breathed a sigh of relief. They had been standing close to each other, nearly nose to nose, and the stress of that closeness had been wearing Raymond down.
The guy walked to the bench. Reached down and tried to lift one end. It didn’t budge.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” he said.
“What are you doing down here?” Raymond asked. Then he immediately wished he hadn’t. His heart took to hammering again.
“Looking for that cat.”
Raymond didn’t answer. While he wasn’t answering, he felt a cold sensation rising up around his ears.
The guy kept talking.
“You know. There’s a stray that goes in and out this open window. I see it. I think it lives down here. I was gonna see if I could catch it.”
“What do you want a cat for?” Raymond asked. He could hear his voice tremble. He hoped the other boy couldn’t.
“I don’t. It’s for Mason. You know Mason?”
“I don’t think so. What does he want a cat for?”
“Hard to say. But, knowing him, I’m glad I’m not the cat. Some kind of evil genius experiment, I’m sure. So . . . have you seen it?”
“The cat?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes. I did see a cat. Just as I was coming down here. It was in the alley outside.” It hurt Raymond to call the cat an “it.” But he didn’t want to let on that he knew much about her. “I think I scared it. It ran out to the sidewalk and then made a right. You know. Toward school.”
“Thanks,” the guy said. “I’m on it.”
He jogged to the missing window, pulled himself up in one smooth movement. He rested his belly on the open window sash, then swung a leg out into the alley. Just like that, he was gone.
Raymond walked to the bench and reached his hands down to brace himself. To help himself sit. His legs felt shaky. Something that normally filled the inside of his gut seemed to be missing. He settled on the cold stone bench and worked to calm his own heart rate and breath.
His eyes fell on an open cardboard carton full of . . . well, junk, really. His first thought was to dump it all out and use the box. But it looked water damaged and weak. Ready to fall to pieces.
Sitting right on top was an old pillowcase, frayed at the open edge where it should have been neatly stitched.
He rose, testing the strength of his legs, and walked to it. Picked it up. It felt solid. It had no holes that he could see. He turned it over and over in his hands, but it continued to look up to the task.
He heard a tiny cry. A thin little mew.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Yeah, it’s me. Don’t say anything.”
He walked to the place from which he had heard the sound. Got down on his knees. He looked into a space between two wall studs, where the drywall was missing. The cat had made a little nest there out of loose insulation.
He stared in at her. She stared back.
“We have to get you out of here,” he said.
She looked at him in a strange way, Raymond thought. Almost . . . knowingly. She didn’t know what the problem was—she couldn’t. But she seemed to understand that there was a problem. She was aware of Raymond’s fear.
She did not come out to greet him, as she normally would have.
Raymond squeezed his eyes shut, as if praying. But, if he was, he was praying to a skinny little stray cat.
“Please forgive me for what I’m gonna do now,” he mumbled under his breath. “Please, please, please.”
In one sudden movement he reached into the wall and grabbed the cat by the scruff of her neck, pulled her out, and dropped her into the bag. She flailed wildly and got off one good scratch, slicing the skin on the inside of Raymond’s wrist with a single back claw. Raymond could not ignore the pain of it, nor the fact that the wound bled profusely. But he didn’t stop moving.
He placed the bagged cat under his shirt, tucked the shirt in, then zipped his jacket over the bulge.