“You know, there was a time when I thought that this cat was a reincarnation of my mum

Sam

“You know, there was a time when I thought that this cat was a reincarnation of my mum.”

I stopped stirring the tea and turned around, not sure whether what I had heard was imagination or not. Sam was sitting there at the table, gazing steadily at me, a sort of determination in his eyes. My cat, Mica, lay on his lap, purring softly as Sam slowly rubbed underneath her chin, exactly the way she liked it. I returned his look, trying to find something to say, and then slowly moved back toward the table, the tea in my hand, not betraying that I was thinking about what he said.

“Here.”

“Thanks,” he grunted.

“Would you like any biscuits as well?”

“Sure.”

I gave him the mug, and then rummaged through the cupboard to find something to eat. Under a bag of cat biscuits lay a packet of Penguins; I took them out and handed a bar to him. Then I sat down, staring as Sam returned his attention to Mica, as if he had said nothing at all.

But he had said something. I stared at the cracks in the table, the ones which my dad always pushed the crumbs into whenever mum’s back was turned and it was his night to clear the table. My eyebrows furrowed, I traced the pattern on the chair with my fingers and listened to Mica purring on Sam’s lap, thinking hard about what he had said.

Sam, my Sam. I remember how small he was when I first talked to him, crouched down and crying around the back of one of the buildings in the school. I had seen him around before, a short, weedy boy in my year. I had never spoken to him, there was no need, and there were over one hundred people in my year. That day I approached him with caution, the general rule was that anyone found crying was to be left alone. But I was a tough kid, I didn’t usually follow the rules, and I talked to him, he looked kind of sad crying there and I didn’t really care about my reputation.

“Hey”

He had looked to me, his face dirtied and red from crying, I was revolted by the snot dribbling out of his nose. As soon as he saw me his eyes widened, as if he thought I was going to hurt him.

“I’m not here to beat you.”

He then turned his head back to face the wall, his body shaking with sobs; he seemed to be in some pain.

“What’s wrong?”

I was trying really hard to be friendly, I didn’t normally speak to other kids. Other kids were scared of me, and I didn’t give a damn about them. But I really tried with Sam, he looked so vulnerable, so in need of care, but he ignored me, and I left, bored with the effort.

The next day I saw him there again, but left him to it. It was only when I saw him there again the day after that I tried once more.

“I’m beginning to think you like this spot.” I said, grinning, trying to ignore the tears that were running down his face again.

“What do you want?” he said, his voice full of contempt.

I was surprised; I hadn’t been expecting this sort of reply.

“Have you just come here to laugh at me? Like the other kids? I’ll.. I’ll… beat you if you do.”

I had to stop the laugh in my throat, the boy’s eyes had suddenly become determined, the corners of his mouth turned downwards and he sniffed only once more as he looked at me. Some part of me had felt slightly afraid of the boy who was standing there with his fists clenched and tears rolling down his face. The coward within me wanted to leave him, with his straight eyes and determined stance, he had turned from pathetic to brave in such a short amount of time I wasn’t able to adjust. He just stood and glared at me, face red but set with determination, body shaking.

I turned and walked away, acting as if I didn’t care, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to hurt him right then, not when we first met. I left him standing, shaking. I didn’t see him there again.

“I guess that was a strange thing to say.” I looked up, Sam was talking to me, his cheeks were red, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s ok.” It felt really awkward, I never usually had nothing to say to Sam, normally I was in charge of the conversation. He would sit, and I would talk, that had been the unspoken agreement between us until very recently, it’s hard to adapt.

“I mean it though, you’ve always said that I haven’t ever opened up, and I guess that was something you could know.”

That was a good enough point, but I still didn’t understand.

“Why did you feel that way?”

He blushed further, “Well… erm…”

“Great explanation.”

“Shut up” he said, grinning slightly.

“Well?”

“The first- no, second time we met. It was-“

It was about a month after I’d walked away from him, a rainy day in June, just before the holidays started. I had argued with my mum and was walking out in the rain, mulling over life, smarting from what she had said to me. My cat, Mica, was sitting on the wall outside my house, mewing loudly at me, nudging her head into my arm.

“What’re you looking at?” I said “go find someone else to annoy.”

I walked away, feeling her eyes burning into the back of my neck. With a squeak she jumped off the wall and shook herself, I smiled as I heard the thud on the pavement, shaking my head. I didn’t really give a damn about people, especially not my family, but that cat was something else, my best friend almost. Within seconds she had overtaken me, sprinting at full speed as if daring me to come after her. I kicked a stone and stared at the sky, thinking, and then suddenly I sprang ahead, chasing after her. I didn’t really care for sports at school, I didn’t really care for anything much at school, but when I wanted to I could run faster than most people. As Mica ran through alleys that twisted and turned, I swear she had a smile on her face, leading me down strange streets. She stopped a while, watching me as I leant over, breathing hard, bent on not giving up. Suddenly her ears pricked up and she turned slowly to the right into a council estate unfamiliar to me. Puzzled, I had followed not far behind her, turning one more corner before finding her rubbing against a boy near to my age, sitting against the wall. I immediately recognised him though he was staring at the ground, clothes soaked to the skin. He didn’t move at first, I would have thought he was dead if he hadn’t been shivering; he looked so still, not literally of course, but still inside. Cold. Dead.

“What do you want?” he grunted.

I started; he was looking at me with hollow eyes that made me want to run far away.

“Come to laugh at me again?”

His voice was gruff this time, not shrill. Something about him was different from before, as if he no longer cared about the world. He just wanted to be alone, like me. But Mica had led me to him, and I could see her nuzzling his arm like she had mine, purring. Jealousy stirred briefly within me as he looked at the cat in surprise as if he had only just noticed her.

“Your cat?”

He looked at me, stroking Mica’s head absentmindedly.

“Yes.”

“She’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

I stood awkwardly for a while, staring at the ground. I guess he felt pretty awkward too; but he longer seemed to resent me for being there. We just stayed in silence for a long time, listening to the rain.

“I always used to think that rain was gonna wash everything away, even bad things. Guess I was wrong.”

I looked at him; his head was back against the wall, staring at the sky this time, the water rushing down his face and dripping on to Mica’s head. She was still purring. I smiled,

“Rain can do a lot of things, but some I guess you need to do yourself”

He brought his head back down to face me, puzzled. I grinned at him and laughed, and he laughed too while Mica purred even louder, joining in the song. I felt more carefree laughing in the rain, struck by the truth of my own statement for a second before doing what I thought I’d never do. I held out my hand to his and pulled him up, his hand was almost blue from cold, and when he was close up I realised that he had been crying all this time. I gathered up Mica in my other hand, ignoring her mewls of protest, and dragged her and the strange half-drowned boy all the way back to my house in the rain.

The smile spread its way across my face, “It took me so long to persuade you to talk. You just sat at my kitchen table, dripping, staring at the mug of tea I forced into your hand, not entirely sure where you were or who the strange people were. I’d never seen a more sorry sight in my life.”

“You wouldn’t let me leave; all I wanted to do was run back outside into the rain.”

“I didn’t want to be responsible for the death of my cat’s new found friend.”

“Yep, that cat saved my life.”

“I suppose, she did adopt you. But life saving is a bit far.”

“It was more important than you realise.”

This last thing was said in no more than a whisper, but I still heard it, and a slow creeping feeling spread its way through my insides, twisting and turning as I felt myself blush.

I have to say that our relationship is pretty unique. We have never once said that we were friends, it’s just that from that day on we seemed to belong to each other, two people bonded by the fact that we both miss the same imaginary place. It was an unspoken agreement at first. Those were the days when he would just turn up outside our front door unannounced and walk in as soon as one of us opened the door. He would sit at the table and wait for Mica to greet him, purring her usual chant as he fussed her, I’d make him a cup of tea and we’d make general chat. We saw each other every day, but we didn’t hang out at school, and I never went to his house.

That was what bothered me, during his stays he would sit and listen to me talk. At first I saw nothing wrong with that but after a while it frustrated me how he knew almost every thing about me while I knew nothing about him. One day he turned up later than usual, covered in cuts and bruises with blood on his cheek. I let him in without a word, but was unfairly cold toward him- I had no cause to except the lack of explanation. It was simple: kettle, tea, biscuit, table, chatter. Like every day. Except every day wasn’t like today, today he had obviously had something bad happen to him, like that day in the rain. I asked him what happened, he told me to leave it. Resentment grew.

I hounded him, never let him alone. I no longer let him be, no longer could I cope chatting away at him with no reply. I had told him every thing: my past, my present, my future, my hopes, my dreams, my nightmares, my ultimate fears. Nothing. I had told him about all the times I’d been happy, unhappy, alone, the time when I had wanted to shoot someone just to be noticed when I started a new school. Nothing. I confessed things to him: I still cried when I watched Disney films, I hated being a tomboy, I hated the way I looked, sounded and I hated myself. Still nothing. I bullied him, bugged him, tried every trick in the book to get him to open up to me. When I was hormonal he must have suffered hell, I threw a biscuit tin at him once in frustration, I hit him, I cried on him, I even spat at him once (did I ever say I was ladylike?). He bore it like a saint. One time I told him I hated him before bursting into tears, he came closer and hugged me while I sobbed on his shoulder with frustration. I don’t know why I was so obsessive, he obviously did. He knew me better than I did, I loved and resented him for that. It was a release, I think. I got to offload my troubles, he got to focus on ones that weren’t his own. I always calmed down in the end. But he’s so stubborn, so unwilling to open up. It got to a stage when I’d scream at him and he’d smile at me in amusement. I left the room, he found me and gave me a slice of cake. I loved him for that, I hated him for that. No, I loved him for that one, no question.

My parents loved him, he was polite and attentive, listening to every thing they told him and eventually obeying the “call me Abbey” my mum threw at him one day. Whenever he turned up with bruises and cuts she embraced him as if he were her own son. I have never seen him smile more genuinely. The more he came the more I got on with them too; my relationship with my parents had been non-existent until the day he arrived. Maybe that’s another reason I stayed as patient as I could be, he genuinely loved my parents as much as they loved him. I guess I’ve been extremely unfair in my treatment of him, after all it’s obvious that he has a shit life at home. Why else would he always come to my house, accompanied by whatever bruises he’s been given as presents? His mother had died young, I once heard, and he was left with his father alone. His father’s an alcoholic. My parents don’t drink, I don’t drink any more. Fits.

The thought about his mother connects to Mica. In the rain, she had sought him out and brought him help. She had looked after him like a mother would. She had brought him a home, affection, an escape.

She had offered him a refuge, somewhere where he could always go.

He once turned up at night in a storm without saying a word, crying his eyes out like on the day when I first met him. He had my bed and I slept on the floor, he said he liked my posters and I laughed. Had he never been in my room before? I don’t think he had, but it was nice. It was like sharing a secret that I could never really tell him leaning against an AGA or sat round a table, it was something he had to see for himself. We chatted until the birds started singing, proper chatting, not in monologues. He didn’t open up, but he told me more and I lapped it up. He loves the colour grey and he doesn’t know why, he loves apple flavoured lollipops, autumn and flip flops. He loves records and old radios. He loves moonlit nights and grass; he loves nappies (this one was sarcastic, I laughed so loudly my mother came and told me to be quiet, when she saw Sam there she smiled and brought him a drink and a towel to dry his hair. A nice motherly touch, I think he started crying again). He wants to be a doctor, he wants to help people. He wants to find a cure for cancer (a sniff penetrated a brief silence). He wants to find someone to spend his life with. He went back to things he likes: watches, hopscotch, blankets, picnics, cats (Mica had joined us), Penguin biscuits and ladybirds. He loves laughter. He loves girls with curly hair (that’s when I hesitated, my hair’s the curliest of any one I know), he loves freckles (I am a freckle breeding ground) and he loves tea.

I realise now: my eyes are grey.

“Now do you understand?”

He’s been staring at me intently, our eyes meet. His aren’t grey but the softest brown. His eyelashes are long but not too dark and his brow is intelligent, sensible. His nose has a cute little bump on it I never noticed before, with a freckle just to the left of it. His skin is muddied and his hair is still messy from sleeping.

And his lips are delicious.

He tastes of the Penguin biscuit I just gave him for breakfast, but also of the mint toothpaste I let him use this morning. His lips taste of happiness and hope and for some reason they taste of apple flavoured lollipops.

I pause, he hesitates.

Grinning: “So why did you turn up at my door last night?”

Perplexed, amused: “That matters to you right now?”

Mischievous: “No. Habit.”

He laughs. He puts his arms round me and I taste apple again. I can get used to that taste.

I praise the storm that is still raging outside, it means we don’t have to leave the house. It means an afternoon drinking tea cuddling under blankets and pushing the cat away, watching Disney movies. He brings a box of tissues, just in case.

He tells me everything about himself.

Mica brought Sam a lot of things, but most importantly: she brought him me.

She brought us love.