Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love Read online

  To tell the truth, the feelings commonly referred to as a “crush”—a heightened interest in one particular person, a sense of longing for that person’s company and affection, and even a level of anxiety regarding whether the “crush” feeling is returned—although I understand these sensations intellectually, I don’t really have direct experience—

  “Ready for lights-out, honey?” Mom is standing in the doorway of my bedroom with her hand on the switch.

  “Matthew finds no single aspect of me offputting in any way,” I tell her. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Welllllllll, it’s not baaaaaad,” she replies, with a singsongy tune in her voice. She presses her lips together in that way people inexplicably call pursed. “Honey,” she croons, “you don’t think that by doing this project with Matthew you’re going to change the way he feels, do you? Because that would be the wrong reason to do it—”

  Motherdear, who thinks she’s so smart. “No!” I say, in hot denial. “We’re friends now. We’re gonna blow the lid off the science fair, that’s all.”

  “Well, I think it’s very open of you to share your feelings with him.” Note Motherdear’s use of the O word. “And Matthew must be a very open person to hear your feelings without freaking out,” she continues, hammering her point. “So obviously you have good taste!”

  At this, I must have started to look, I don’t know, sad or something, because in a jiffy Mom was sitting on the bed next to me rubbing my back, like she used to do every night when I was little. “Sweetie pie, remember that boys at fourteen can be much less mature than girls at fourteen.” She drones on, randomly spewing overused Momisms: “Everybody grows up in their own time. . . . many fish in the sea . . . , blah blah blah . . .”

  Yeah, right. And nobody spends the rest of her life INSANELY in love with her freshman-year crush. Till now, that is.

  —although I understand these sensations intellectually, I don’t really have direct experience—

  How could someone who gives off so much X not know what love feels like? As Mom prattles, I feel the needle on my inner dubiosity meter twitching into the red zone.

  That’s never a good sign.

  5

  I Discover Who Loves Me in a Place I Have No Business Being

  I have never seen Jess looking as determined as she does right now. And that is saying something.

  “The teachers talk and talk, and most of the class is not even LISTENING. Three—THREE!—out of thirty-four students in the English class turned in their homework on time. At least Doris Jean Amberson was one of them,” she says with a sigh.

  Jess and Kat and I have gathered for our weekly mathfest in the fourth-floor math room. We find that doing math once a week for an entire Krispy Kreme–fueled morning works better than doing it every day for a shorter length of time. This way it doesn’t get boring, and we surely do look forward to the donuts.

  Kat is by far the most Komputational Kitten among us, so she generally leads the way, mathwise, but Ms. Blank is nearby if we need help. Ms. Blank is the Pound’s Math Mentor. At the moment Ms. Blank is lying on the floor. Her left hand is on her forehead, shielding her eyes, and her right hand is writing something invisible in the air. It looks like she’s conducting an orchestra while suffering from a migraine, but we know she’s actually trying to memorize the value of pi to a thousand places. It’s sort of a hobby of hers.

  Jess’s two weeks of peer tutoring with D. J. Amberson have not gone well. “She won’t let me help her at all!” Jess reported after their third session. “She sits there and does her homework, and if I offer a suggestion she just looks over her shoulder like she’s afraid someone will see us talking. I WISH I knew what was going on!” By yesterday, Jess had resolved to take matters into her own tiny, iron hands.

  “I just showed up at her school yesterday morning and tagged along. Look.” Jess shows us her binder, which now has a tab clearly labeled “A Day in the Life of D.J.” “I started with homeroom and stayed with her every period. English, social studies, math, gym, lunch, biology, study hall. WHAT an interesting experience!”

  Kat and I both have donut sugar all over the lower halves of our faces (Kitten Directive Number Eighteen: Neatness Among Kittenpals Is NOT Required!). We listen, our mouths crammed full of glazed chocolate (me) and jelly-filled (Kat).

  “First, EVERYBODY calls her Deej, which she never told me. Second, she spends most of the day trying not to get into fights.” Jess is wide-eyed. “I mean, FISTfights! One girl in her class has a scar on her cheek where some other girl SLASHED her with an umbrella!”

  “Excuse me,” Ms. Blank is speaking from the floor, her eyes still closed.

  “Sorry, Ms. B,” I say. Jess has been getting kind of loud.

  “French,” says Ms. B slowly. We wait for the rest. “Cruller,” she finishes thoughtfully.

  Ms. B’s hand pauses in the air long enough to take a cruller from Kat, who’s sitting closest. “But get this,” continues Jess, choosing the last Boston cream and holding it delicately between two fingers. “She SINGS.”

  “Sings what?” asks Kat, her interest piqued by the conversation’s sudden veer toward the topic of music.

  “All kinds of stuff. During lunch, Deej and these two other girls—one of them was named Shelly, I think—they went into the corner of the parking lot—which is where they have recess, by the way, between the CARS!—and they sang. In harmony! They were just having fun, but Deej is really good.”

  “Did they mind you listening?” I ask. Having Jess follow me around scribbling notes in her All-Knowing Binder would be a little trying, and she’s my pal and littermate. I’m afraid to imagine how Deej and her friends felt about it.

  “You could say that,” says Jess brightly. I notice for the first time that both of Jess’s knees are scraped, but before I can ask about it the door of the math room opens, thus permitting (insert Strutting HottieBoy Music here)—

  The Entrance of Dawgs!

  But it’s only Randall. He’s our next Search for X interview, purely by the luck of the draw. I don’t expect that Randall will have anything illuminating to say about the workings of passion, but he’s Matthew’s friend and he’s on our list, so here he is.

  To be fair, there’s no single aspect of Randall that’s off-putting in any way (ha ha, couldn’t resist!). He has good posture, I’ll give him that. In his extra-Poundicular life, Randall trains and competes in some martial arts discipline or other. Supposedly, he whups ass. It’s kind of hard to picture.

  “Hey,” he says, spotting us. Nope, Randall does not sound like he even remotely has ass-whupping capabilities. “Hey, Ms. Blank.”

  Ms. Blank’s air-doodling briefly takes the form of a wave. Randall slides into an empty seat at our table. He lifts the lid of the donut box and peers inside.

  “Have one,” I offer.

  But Randall quickly shakes his head. “I don’t think my sensei would consider this ‘eating to win,’ ” he says.

  “I consider it ‘eating to eat,’ ” I riposte. (A riposte is a snappy comeback. How like the French to invent a word that means snappy comeback.)

  Randall does not offer a riposte to my riposte, nor does he even look at me. Instead, he blushes a faint shade of pink and turns to Kat. “How’s the practicing going?” he asks.

  It’s not unusual for Dawgs to get Tunnel-KatVision when we’re all hanging out together. Kat does nothing to encourage this, which only makes it more obvious. But outwardly speaking, Kat is on the tall and skinny side of the spectrum, and has this kind of Russian look to her, since her parents are both Russian (her mother, in fact, still lives in Moscow, a source of much sadness to our lonelyKitten Kat!). She has broad cheekbones and nearly almond-shaped, golden-brown eyes, with a swishy mane of straight, buttery-blond hair that she lets hang in her face most of the time. Total effect: chilled teen supermodel with a twist of mystery, and Dawgs do love a Secretive Kat!

  “Practicing’s fine,” she says inaudibly. Randall nod
s. They both seem satisfied with this conversation. I wonder, fleetingly, if Randall and Kat would make a good, if largely silent, couple. Can X be summoned in this way? Or does it have to show up on its own?

  “Well! I FINALLY feel like I have a handle on those polynomials,” announces Jess as she pulls her frizzy hair into a knot on top of her head and turns to me. “NOW we can help with your science project!”

  At this, Randall looks even paler than usual. “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that— Um, where’s Matthew?”

  I glance up. The fourth-floor math room is directly underneath the lab, where Matthew communes with his brilliant bunnies. “Upstairs,” I say. “He’ll be here.”

  Randall looks up, too, as if Matthew is going to burst through the plaster. He starts to mumble. “See, it turns out I have, like, a lot of stuff to do today. . . .” His voice trails off.

  “Don’t freak out, Randall,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. “We just have a few really, really personal questions to ask you!” I laugh, to lighten things up, but it doesn’t seem to work. Randall fidgets. There are candy sprinkles scattered all over the table from the donuts. Randall starts to sort them by color into anxious little piles.

  That’s when Matthew arrives (through the door, not the ceiling). My tummy gives its customary Matthew-is-in-the-room lurch, and I uselessly run my hand through my hair to fluff it, Meg Ryan style.

  Matthew’s not alone, though.

  “Yo-YO, it’s the Randinator and his harem! Gimme some skin, O lethal one!” The Randinator high-fives Trip with a pathetic lack of gusto, knocking his neat sprinkle piles everywhere.

  Trip is not your average student at the Pound, not that there is such a thing. Trip’s name is really Harold or Harcourt or some prehistorically old-money family name like that, but whatever it is he’s the third one, so his nickname’s been Trip since he was a babe in his nanny’s hired arms. He’s gone to boarding school in Switzerland, three different private schools uptown, and even (rumor has it) some kind of youth rehab place. Now he’s basically chillin’ at the Pound, technically a freshman but sixteen years old due to his Lost Years.

  “Howdy, pardner!” Matthew gives me a half-smile and an actual who’s-your-buddy? PUNCH on the arm. How romantic. “You will never believe what we just did!”

  “Psychic rabbits, people! Matthew is da man!” Trip seems to be able to talk about one thing with his mouth and say something completely different with his eyes. Right now he’s looking at Kat, and his eyes are talking a mile a minute.

  “Psychic RABBITS?” says Jess. Jess is not even fully convinced that people can be psychic. We’ve had long debates about this.

  “Trip concentrated on an image, and the rabbits had to guess which one by pushing a lever,” explains Matthew. “Not all of them showed psychic aptitude, but Frosty, Fluffy, and George scored well above what could be predicted by chance.”

  Trip angles himself toward Kat. “These bunnies were reading my mind,” he says to her meaningfully. How cool, Trip, like we’re not all reading your mind right now! Kat scoots her chair back a little and glances at Jess and me for help.

  “Did it work both ways?” I ask innocently. “Did you develop a craving for carrots at any point?”

  “Totally,” laughs Trip. “Now I know exactly what bunnies think about.” He looks at Kat, laying on that rich-boy charm. “And they think about it all the time!”

  “Rabbits actually prefer lettuce,” Matthew says to me.

  An image forms in my mind, of me and Matthew walking down the aisle to the strains of the wedding march. Ba-dum-de-dum! Big fat happy rabbits hop around our feet. The rabbits wear bow ties. I am carrying a beautiful bouquet of iceberg lettuce. . . .

  “Listen,” says Randall. Practically invisible, see? I almost forgot he was here. “I have to go. Really sorry, guys.”

  “What about our interview, bud? Won’t take long at all,” says Matthew, who apparently sees nothing unusual in Randall’s demeanor.

  “Yeah, can’t do it. Just so much going on today. Sorry!”

  Matthew looks at me. I shrug. No great loss, in my opinion. “Okay, maybe we can reschedule,” says Matthew affably. “And we have a brief questionnaire, you can fill it out at home. Only takes a few minutes.”

  “Sure, that’s what I’ll do.” It seems to me that Randall might really be blushing now, but he grabs the questionnaire from Matthew and hustles out of the math room so fast I can’t tell. I wonder briefly what would make the Randinator and his Fists of Fire beat such a hasty retreat. I am not alone in my wondering.

  “Whence the embarrassment?” asks Trip as soon as Randall’s gone. “You taking a survey about STDs?” Despite his former brain-frying exploits, Trip doesn’t seem to miss much.

  “Felicia and I are collecting data for our science fair project,” says Matthew, eyeing the Krispy Kreme box with the kind of longing he seems not to feel for humans—at least, not THIS human. I push the box toward him with my best come-hither smile, but then I remember I probably have chocolate on my teeth.

  Trip looks at me for the first time. “Working as a team, huh? Sweet.” I feel him wondering why on earth Matthew would be doing a science project with me. “What’s it about?”

  “Strictly confidential.” I smirk.

  “Unless, of course, you’d be willing to answer a few questions,” says Matthew through his donut. “Randall split,” he says, turning to me. “And data is data.”

  Spoken like a scientist! Trip leans back, balancing his chair on two legs. “A gentleman never discusses money, politics, or religion. So sayeth Junior.” (It takes me a mathematical minute to figure out that Junior must be Trip’s dad.) Trip laughs. “But I’m not much of a gentleman, so fire away! The old man keeps me on a pretty short leash these days, so answering questions is what I do best.”

  I can’t help thinking that Trip is not the spoiled thug I expected him to be. At least, not entirely.

  “What about you beauties?” Trips says, turning to Jess and Kat. “Are you being interrogated, too?”

  Kat peers at Trip through her hair. “Yes,” she says eloquently.

  “It’s Felicia and Matthew’s project. But of course we’ve agreed to be interviewed,” says Jess.

  “Excellent! We can bare our souls together. But I am so sick of being indoors,” Trip says, to me this time. “Why don’t you gather up your questionnaires and your number two pencils and your truth serum, and we’ll go pay a visit to Gram?”

  The donuts were gone, and Ms. Blank was now snoring ever so quietly on the floor. Clearly, there would be no more math today. A visit to Gram sounded perfect. More importantly, we could get three interviews done in one afternoon! As Matthew is fond of saying, data is our friend.

  And that is how, a short while later, Matthew, Trip, Jess, Kat, and I found ourselves breaking in to Gramercy Park.

  Gramercy Park is what they call a key park, meaning you need a key to get in, and it’s the only key park left in New York City. Perhaps this sounds snobbish, but private, padlocked, Secret-Gardenesque Gramercy Park is the last of its breed, and I for one would hate to see the black iron gates torn down. Gram wouldn’t feel quite as magical inside if it weren’t somehow forbidden.

  To have a key to the park, you have to live in one of the buildings surrounding it. The Pound has a key, but its use is strictly monitored and involves filling out an application and having it signed by a faculty member. When I was struggling with the seasonal reference conundrum in my haiku phase, Mr. Frasconi approved me for Gram visits at least once a week, so I could “observe nature and respond in poetry, dreams, or personal reflection.” Mr. Frasconi’s coolness knows no bounds.

  Keyless—that is to say, rule-breaking—drop-ins to Gram are not unheard of, especially among the older Free Children, but I personally have never done it and am experiencing an emotional cocktail of one part rebelgrrl, twelve parts wussypants, and forty thousand parts don’t-act-like-a-dumb-wussypants-in-front-of-Matthew. Trip leads us to th
e corner farthest from the Pound, where Gramercy Park East meets East Twentieth Street. A large tree with a low, overhanging branch reaches through the fence in a way that can only be called inviting.

  Trip pulls himself up onto the branch. From where he’s perched it’s a short step up to the top rail of the iron fence.

  “Who’s first?” says Trip. He extends his hand, and before you can say “nerves of steel,” Jess is on the branch next to him. She flashes me a big, adventure-loving grin before taking the leap. There’s a soft thud.

  “Oooooooooh,” coos Jess’s voice from inside the park. “It’s SO beautiful!”

  Kat flies up next, her lean arms strong from countless hours with the violin. “Let me go first so I can catch you,” offers Trip, the very model of Dawg-on-the-make gallantry. He hops effortlessly over the fence. Kat follows, landing with a giggle. A giggle! From Kat!

  “Hey, you’re light as a feather,” I hear Trip’s voice say.

  Now it’s just me and Matthew, the intrepid investigators of amour. “After you,” he says, smiling that irresistibly inscrutable Matthew Dwyer half-smile. He laces his fingers together so I can use his hands to step up to the branch.

  It’s always so nice to be in a tree, I think, before realizing I’ve said it out loud.

  “Yes, it is,” agrees Matthew. He’s next to me on the branch now. We can peer over the fence and the thick evergreen hedge and see almost all of the little private wooded park. I know Gram well from ground level, but this is a brand-new vantage point.

  Matthew and Felicia sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! Who writes these songs?

  Matthew holds out his hand, and I take it, and together we jump over the fence, landing butt-first on a hard, damp pile of wood chips.

  (Felicia’s Private Kitten Directive Number Ohmigod-Matthew-Held-My-Hand!: All Instances of Matthew-Felicia Body Contact MUST be Logged in Felicia’s Notebook Within Twenty-Four Hours of Occurring!)

  Trip, Jess, and Kat are standing there smiling, covered with bits of bark and dead leaves.