Mom Disappears and Evelyn's Cats Act Odd
Evelyn Smith had once read a story called "Belle Prater's Boy." In it, a mother disguised herself and disappeared, leaving her son to live with his grandparents and cousin. Except for the part where she still had a father to live with and she was, of course, a girl, she completely understood how Belle Prater's son must have felt.
She'd come home from school Friday to find a note stuck under a "I Love Lucy Show" magnet on the refrigerator saying, "Went out with the girls, be home soon. Love, Mom."
Her dad, Eric Smith, was a reporter for the local newspaper and usually didn't come home until eleven or twelve at night. He called home to say that he only had one more article left before he got off and he should be home for dinner.
"Hoping for some of your mom's meatloaf," he said with a chuckle.
"She isn't here right now," Evelyn reported, "but I'll dig out the recipe and get started on it."
"Okay. I'll be home by eight."
"See you," she said.
"Later," her dad said quickly as someone started speaking to him in the background. They hung up.
Everything was going well. She found the recipe for the meatloaf, had gathered everything together. She carefully followed the directions, preheating the oven and making the meatloaf just as the recipe indicated. She bent over to shove it into the oven and stopped, holding the oven door halfway open.
"How long are you supposed to leave this in for?" she wondered. Her cat Dusty looked at her from where he was sitting on the counter and mewed complacently.
"Oh, hush," she said. "And get off the counter."
Dusty blinked slowly as if he were laughing. Then he got up, stretched, reached as far over the counter down the shelves as he could, and then dropped. He landed surprisingly gently on his feet. Dusty was by no means an underweight cat. Actually, he surpassed overweight. He was over twenty pounds and nearly two feet, counting the tail, of course. His eyes were a light green, and his fur was a sleek, shiny gray except for his paws, chest, and neck, which were a snowy white.
Evelyn looked at him oddly. "Why do you always do that?" she asked. She held up her hand as an idea struck her. "Dusty. Okay. How many fingers am I holding up?"
Dusty blinked at her dumbly, sat down and lifted his back right leg with the toes stretching as far apart as he could get them, and started washing them. A few seconds later, he looked at Evelyn, who was still holding up her fingers, gave her a look which said plainly he was insulted that she would watch him wash, and wandered out of the room.
"A cat," Evelyn muttered to herself. "A very strange, obedient cat. Mom must have trained him to do that." Shaking her head, she turned back to the oven. "How long?" she asked again as she remembered her question.
She went over to the phone. She knew her dad wouldn't know. He knew how to make things like grilled cheese, hamburgers, and chili, but this didn't fall into those categories. She called the Young house and was pleasantly surprised that Ellen, her mom's best friend, picked up.
"Hello?" Ellen asked.
"Ellen? Hey, this is Evelyn."
"Oh. Hey, Evelyn. How are you?"
"Good, thanks. And you?"
"Fine. Want to speak to Anna?"
"No, thank you," Evelyn said politely. "I was wondering if my mom was there."
"Oh, no. She isn't here. Isn't she home yet? It's nearly six."
"No ma'am. She isn't home yet. Oh, well. Thank you." They hung up, and Evelyn wandered back to the oven. If her mom wasn't at Ellen's, she didn't know where else her mom would be. It could be with the Greenshields, or Loren, but she didn't know their phone numbers.
She shrugged and looked at the meatloaf. She heard the crunching of cat food and looked into the alcove where the cats' food and water was. Daisy, a cat with a slightly fat stomach which tended to sway back and forth more than her tail, was all white with blue and yellow eyes. She stopped eating and looked up at Evelyn. She took a few deliberate chews, swallowed, and walked away, holding her head up high.
Pongo, the fourth oldest cat, watched her walk away and flicked his ears back and forth a few times to show his disdain. He looked up at Evelyn and mewed.
Evelyn rolled her eyes, bowed and said, "Yes, your Highness. Coming right up, your Highness." She took a piece of cheese out of the refrigerator, tore it up into small bits, and tossed it to him. As soon as Pongo had opened his mouth to grab some, Dusty pounded in from the family room, and the two twins, Nick and Jake, came from the other direction. Nick and Jake were completely black except for Nick having white on the back of his toes. Daisy followed at a more leisurely, dignified pace.
"Where's Christie?" Evelyn asked. Christie was her mom's cat, a beautiful calico with emerald green eyes.
One of the cats, she couldn't be too sure which one, growled deep in its throat. The others, one by one, followed suit.
"No fighting," Evelyn said sternly. The growls stopped.
At eight, her dad came home. He went back out to get Chinese for himself and Subway for Evelyn and was back by nine thirty. At ten, he disappeared into his office to do work on the computer while Evelyn cleaned up after themselves and did her homework.
At midnight, her dad woke her up. "Your mom still isn't home yet?" he asked.
She yawned and blinked sleepily. "Not that I know of. Is her car in the driveway?"
Her dad shook his head. "No."
"Then she probably isn't home," Evelyn said, rolling over.
"It's midnight," her dad said.
"So?"
"It's midnight, and your mom still isn't home. She left before you came home from school, and she still isn't here."
She rolled the sleep out of her eyes. "Well, let's call Ellen again," she said decisively. "And if she isn't at Ellen's, we can call Loren and the Greenshields and everyone else."
By two in the morning, they'd called all of her mom's friends, even coworkers, twice and the police once. She couldn't stop pacing back and forth across the kitchen, and her dad was sweating. They'd both had three or four cokes each and were trying to think of what else to do. Neither of them had any bright ideas. Her dad told her to go to sleep.
When Evelyn walked into her bedroom, Dusty, Daisy, Pongo, Jake, and Nick were all waiting for her on her bed. She crawled under the covers, swearing that she wouldn't be able to sleep until her mom was home, and the cats moved out of the way for her. Once she was settled, they crowded around her.
The next thing she knew, the sun was in her eyes and she was waking up.
It had been nearly a year since her mom had disappeared, and she had, for the most part, accepted it. Once she had thought that the worst thing that could happen to a person was to die or have someone close to them die. She'd been wrong. After a while, people had started treating her as if her mom had died, saying things like, "Cheer up, she's in heaven now. She's happy." But in reality, the worst thing that could happen to a person was to think that someone close to them had abandoned them. The fact that her mom had taken Christie and most of her clothes with her supported the latter as the truth, but she and her dad hadn't told anyone that.
It was wrong to say she no longer loved her mom. She kept some of the family photos out, but mostly to just keep her dad and herself from forgetting that her mom had ever been there at all.
After a few months, she and her dad had fallen into a schedule. She would come home from school, do her homework and clean up a bit, and then her dad would come home around seven. That is, if he didn't forget. Sometimes she would have to call the office to remind him. They would eat dinner together, and then he would go back to the office. She didn't mind that he wasn't home more often. Her dad had been promoted to reporter and editor.
June in Alabama is not the most pleasant experience. The temperature is usually in the high nineties or low hundreds, and you can't leave plastic near any metal because it will melt given enough time. In June, Evelyn had opened all the windows in the house and shoved all of the winter things away into the attic or into closets. The cats would only sleep in a room that had a fan going, and on the rare occasions they dared to brave the ferocious heat and make a run to the kitty litter or food bowls, they did so panting.
Around two in the afternoon, she went out to get the mail. She had a gravel driveway, but she liked going barefoot more than she disliked the curb she sometimes forgot about and tripped over. But when she was barefoot, she had to be more careful and watch where she was going. She nearly always saw the curb before she tripped over it.
She flipped through the mail. There were three bills, and they'd canceled all the catalogue subscriptions a short while after her mom had left. There was another letter on the very bottom, which she almost didn't see due to a bill from the electric company.
It was addressed to her dad, but it said, "On Behalf Of Your Daughter, Evelyn."
She stepped back into the house and closed the door behind her. It was partly to her, she reasoned. She opened it. It read:
Dear Eric Smith,
We are pleased to inform you that your daughter, Evelyn Smith, has been accepted to the School of American Magic. If she wishes to attend SAM, she needs to meet the other young witches and wizards from that area in front of Montgomery's Museum of Fine Arts, where they will be picked up in order to purchase school supplies at eleven o'clock this Saturday. If she can't make it then, she can meet us at the same time the following Saturday.
As she read it, her eyes started to bulge out a bit. Then she shook herself. It had to be some sort of joke. She went to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and called her dad. "Dad?" she asked.
"Yeah?"
"Um, I just got a letter." She read it out loud to him.
As soon as she was done, her father said, "Stay there. Don't do anything. I'll be right there with- Oh, never mind. I'll be right there."
She hung up settled down on the couch with a mystery book while she waited. It was one of those composition books, with a bunch of short stories by different authors. This book had to do with cats. Everyone thought she loved cats. Well, she loved her cats, although always getting cat gifts could sometimes get a little tiring. Right after she read the part where the body had finally been found, she looked up, thinking about what she'd found out so far. She always tried to beat the person/cat solving the mystery. Or else, what was the point? After she thought about it, if she didn't know it, she would go back and read through the clues again. There were always clues.
That was when she saw the cats. They were gathered around the letter, looking at each other. "What are you guys up to now?" she asked. They jumped and looked at her as if they had just remembered she were there. Then they wandered away. Jake stayed back for a few seconds, licking a paw, and then followed them.
Evelyn stared after them. "One of these days," she muttered, but she didn't know how to finish it. She didn't get the chance, anyway.
She heard the loud roar of an engine and then the squeal of brakes. She raced out to the driveway to see if someone had sped around the curve in the road too fast, crashed, and needed help. Her jaw dropped as she saw her dad jump out of her car. He was wearing a pressed work-shirt, and she gaped at the green T-shirt he wore over it. The front said "Make 7." She was pretty sure she knew what the back said.
Her dad ran over to her. "Where's the letter?" he asked.
"Dad?" She looked up at him, not knowing what to make of the situation. First a letter, which was most likely a prank, and then her dad came home acting like- like- like this! She swallowed. "Where'd you get the shirt from, Dad?"
He looked confused for a few seconds and then looked down at his shirt. He grinned, abashed slightly. "Guys at work gave it to me. You know, to lighten spirits at the office. I guess I forgot to take it off."
"Apparently," she observed.
He turned around. Sure enough, "Up Yours" was written clearly on the back. She sighed, trying hard to keep her hand from reaching up to slap her forehead, cover her mouth, or cover her eyes. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do more, although running and hiding under a rock occurred to her a few times.
They went inside, and her dad picked up the letter, which Jake was standing over protectively. Evelyn gave the cat an odd look, but her dad just scratched Jake behind the ears and said, "Good boy." He started walking towards his office, perusing the letter.
Evelyn followed him. When she saw the office, she sighed. There were three bookcases, all loaded with books. On books were more books, laid horizontally to fit. The bookshelves curved downward in the middle, and even more books were piled up on the floor. Some of her dad's shoes and socks had been tossed carelessly around the room, along with scraps of paper and rubber bands. The computer was making a soft whirring sound. The printer was clicking and whistling to life, and her dad turned the TV on, adding to the noise.
"I think it's a prank," Evelyn said, hoping to get a conversation going.
"It isn't a prank," Eric said thoughtfully.
"Yes, it is," she said. "It has to be."
"It isn't a prank," Eric repeated. Then he cocked his head as he looked at her. "Didn't I ever tell you your mom was a witch?"
She stared at him in shock. "Wuh- Wuh- Huh?"
Her dad grimaced. "I forgot to tell you, didn't I?"
"You forgot to tell me? Mom was a witch?" This was surreal! This couldn't be happening. It was a dream, and she would wake up, tell her dad about it, and they would laugh.
She tried to wake herself up somehow, but in the end she gave up and sat down heavily on the floor.
"Yep." Without another word, Eric turned around in his chair. He shoved a few piles of papers off his desk until he found the phone. He dialed a number and turned to face Evelyn.
"Hello? Rodney? Yes, this is Eric... Could I please speak to Clair?"
He waited patiently and began speaking again a few moments later. "Yes, Clair. This is Eric... Well, you told me to call you if she got a letter..." There was a high-pitched squeal on the other end of the line. Her father grimaced and held the receiver away from his ear. "Yes, yes, she got it. They can go shopping this Saturday... What?... Oh. Of course I'm going to let her go! She's a witch and she deserves it! Besides, it's what Margie always wanted... Fine. Come up for a visit. But no bright lights this time. To this day the neighbors think I can't handle fireworks... I know you tried to hide the light from when you came last time. You blew up our shed, though. Trust me, I remember... Fine. Twenty minutes."
He hung up the phone and looked at Evelyn, who was still staring at him, wide-eyed. "Why don't you go get a snack?" he suggested. "You're grandmother will be here in about twenty minutes." He turned around to the computer and began typing furiously.
"Grandmommy lives in Miami, Dad. We're in Montgomery. Two and half hours away by plane."
"Yeah." He turned around again. "Didn't I tell you she was a witch, too?"
Evelyn shook her head.
Her dad frowned. "I guess I forgot. Darn it, I'm getting awfully forgetful when it comes to her family." He turned back to the computer.
Evelyn left him alone and went for a snack, just as he had suggested. After she had fetched a pack of Oreos and a glassful of milk, she went out into the living room to watch TV.
Ten minutes later, the room exploded into a cloud of smoke scented like Downy Outdoor Fresh. Evelyn started coughing as she choked on an Oreo. Her dad rushed into the room, shouting. It took her a few seconds for her to realize what he was saying.
"Clair! Clair! I demand you knock that off this moment! Look at her! You've scared her so much she's choking!"
"Relax," a familiar voice said.
Evelyn stopped coughing suddenly as she realized she was breathing quite all right. She wiped her watery eyes and looked around. Most of the smoke had cleared, and the woman on the other side of the room said a few words Evelyn couldn't understand. When she was done speaking, the smoke in the room suddenly disappeared.
Evelyn looked at the woman and gasped as she recognized her grandmother. But this wasn't her grandmother as she remembered her. This woman had the same eyes and the same skin, but she was wearing a tall, pointy black hat, and a long black robe. In one hand, she was carrying a vacuum cleaner, and in the other she had a small box.
"Grandmommy?" Evelyn asked doubtfully.
"What's the matter?" her grandmother laughed. "Cat got your tongue?"
"No, it's just- It's... Um..."
"Not what you expected," Clair finished.
"Something like that, yes."
"Well, you'll get used to it now that you're going to SAM. I'm so proud of you!" Clair let our another high-pitched squeal and ran to hug her granddaughter. Evelyn cringed as the vacuum cleaner hit her in her leg.
Clair tore herself away. "My, look at you. How you've grown!"
"Grandmommy?" Evelyn asked.
"Yes, dear?"
"You're a- a- um... A witch? Really?"
Clair nodded proudly. "She's already catching on," she told Eric happily. Eric buried his face in his hands in a mixture of disbelief, pity, and fear of what could happen to his daughter under this woman's supervision.
Evelyn pointed to the vacuum cleaner. "Do you fly that thing? I thought you were supposed to fly brooms."
Clair frowned. "Fly what thing?" Her eyes followed Evelyn's finger, and she laughed when she saw she was pointing to the vacuum cleaner. "Oh, no, dear. You can't fly this. It doesn't have any magic in it. But if you want to fly vacuum cleaners, Whover is the best. Just so you know."
"So you can fly vacuum cleaners?" Evelyn asked, feeling a bit lost.
"Of course. You could fly anything, if you knew the right words. Tommy, your cousin, has taken to putting a charm on his skateboard. He's competing soon against a bunch of other kids. I think one of them is flying a scooter."
"Oh."
"And witches in Africa fly on plates. Did you know that?"
"I'd heard something about that, yeah."
A few seconds of silence passed. Evelyn stood there, looking lost. Clair stood in the middle of the room, smiling happily and hardly noticing the discomfort. Eric was tapping his fingers on yet another bookcase.
Eric finally cleared his throat. "Clair?" he asked. "Can I get you anything to drink?"
Clair looked at him. "Oh, yes, please. How about some iced tea with lemon?"
He nodded. "Coming right up."
As soon as he'd left the room, Clair grabbed Evelyn's hand and dragged her to the guest room.
"Now then," she said as she made herself comfortable sitting on the floor. "I've saved this stuff for when you started at SAM." She took the small box out from under her arm and set it on the floor. She opened it carefully. "Now then," she repeated as she took out a chain. "This is to hold... Let's see... I know it's in here somewhere..." She felt around in the box, which grew to her hand's size. "Hmm..." She pulled up the sleeve of her robe and shoved her hand farther inside the box.
Evelyn stared in shock at the box on the floor. It was only a few inches deep, and about four inches square, but her grandmother's arm was in it all the way to her elbow.
"Here it is!" Clair said in triumph. She withdrew her hand, and the box shrank. Evelyn blinked at it. "Here you go. That's the family's amulet. Rosegold." She handed it to Evelyn.
Evelyn stared at the pink stone before holding it up to the light to make sure she was seeing correctly. "There's gold in it!" she said, surprised.
"Of course," Clair said, digging in the box again. "Rosegold. What did you expect?"
"Not this," Evelyn muttered.
"This is your mother's diary. You need the right spell to read it. I never found out what it was, but maybe you'll have more luck." She shoved it into Evelyn's hands and went digging in the box again.
Evelyn fingered the diary. It had a leather cover. On the front, there was an engraving which read "Property of Margie Smith." She flipped through the pages. They were all blank. She wondered what the spell was. Maybe her mom had left some clue as to where she had gone. She stared at the diary, not really seeing it, but seeing her mother quite clearly.
"And this," her grandmother said, bringing her back to reality "is a gift from your grandfather and me."
Evelyn looked at the new object in her hands. It was a mirror. It was a bit girlish for her tastes, but it was pretty. The frame for the mirror was a white stained glass with a green piece of glass at the top. The handle was blue, light blue and dark blue swimming together. Over that was a white lily with yellow in the center and a single green leaf. The mirror's frame and handle were made entirely out of stained glass, and it looked very fragile.
She looked up to see her grandmother grinning at her. "Thank you, Grandmommy," she said, hugging her.
"Oh, isn't that sweet?" Clair said, returning the hug. "Now then, I'll fetch your granddad, and we'll all eat dinner out someplace nice to celebrate. All right?"
"Sure." Evelyn stood up and gathered the necklace, amulet, diary, and the mirror to put them in her room. Suddenly, the room was filled with smoke, and Evelyn started coughing, nearly dropping everything. As the smoke cleared, Evelyn wondered if she would ever be able to get the smell of Downy out. Before she left the room, she checked to make sure the window was open as far as it could go.
"At least I didn't start choking again," she muttered. She went into her room and placed everything on her bed. She went into the kitchen to get a drink, one which would hopefully overpower the stench and taste of Downy. The only thing she could think of to drink was something that was mostly alcoholic, but there might be something else.
Her dad was in the kitchen, putting a lemon in a cup of water.
"She asked for iced tea, Dad."
"Oh. Right. Oh, well. Waste not, want not." Her dad drank the water greedily before starting to make a glass of iced tea. He ate the lemon as well.
"Grandmommy wants to take us out to celebrate. She said someplace fancy."
"You have a dress?"
"Of course I have a dress. I'm a teenage girl, after all."
"Good." He turned to the counter, slicing another lemon. "No, Dusty. This is fruit. You wouldn't like it."
Dusty mewed, and there was a hint of a growl in it.
"I don't think he agrees," Evelyn said with a grin."
"I don't think so either. Fine, Dusty. Here, have some fruit. But don't blame me when you get hair balls and throw it all up."
Evelyn made a face. "Thank you, Dad, for that lovely picture."
Dusty started eating the fruit. He licked it a few times, then took a big bite, chewing with an air of satisfaction radiating from him.
And then the room disappeared in another cloud of smoke. Once again, Evelyn smelled Downy. I'll never get the smell out, she thought. Even worse, she found she had almost been expecting it.
Dusty, however, hadn't. He jumped away from the lemon, hissing and clawing the air.
"Oh, poor thing," Clair crooned.
Evelyn picked up Dusty as the smoke started to clear and Dusty was able to see Clair. From the looks of it, Dusty knew full well what had caused the smoke. Evelyn held the cat regardless of his hissing.
"I wonder what happened to the poor creature," Clair said. "Evelyn, dear, maybe you shouldn't hold him so tightly."
Yeah, with comments like those, I wonder what would happen if I loosened my grip, she thought. Out loud, she said, "Maybe I ought to put him somewhere nice and quiet." She walked out of the room after quickly nodding hello to her granddad and went to her room. She put Dusty on her bed and petted him fiercely.
He looked at the things on her bed. The necklace, the amulet, the mirror, and then the diary. He hissed.
"What's your problem?" Evelyn demanded. "That was Mom's!"
Dusty turned away and began grooming himself. Evelyn thought about it and then placed all of her gifts in her closet. She didn't want Dusty or the other cats ruining any of them.
They went out to dinner, where her grandmother seemed to delight in talking about the weather and gossip about the family, and her granddad talked of nothing but chess, electronics, and sports. Although Evelyn wanted to find out about the school she'd be going to and why she'd never heard of it before, she had to wait to Saturday to find out anything.
It was Saturday before she knew it.
Copyright 2001. Please review this and tell me what you think. If no one like's it, I'll probably put the story on hold- Wait, no. I won't. But still, tell me what you think. If you want to be picky and point out all the mistakes I made, go ahead. I'm not exactly a kind reviewer either. ;) And if you're an author with a Signed Review, I'll eventually get around to reviewing your story/stories/songs/poems. Thanks! This won't be like Harry Potter... I promise.