Preface:

    My story is unlike most: That in the fact that it has more than one beginning. The first start was back when I was three years old. Or, maybe I was two. Time was never really one of my strong suits.

    I actually don’t remember this specific beginning but I know it plays a lot into my story. After all, this story you are about to hear revolves around what happened that fateful day.

    I’ve heard stories about this, about how my aunt found the little black cat in the Lewis parking lot. About how he was just a little puffball that could fit in my mother’s hand. About how he always used to jump on me as I was the smallest thing in the house at the time and we needed to find him a new playmate.

    Which brings me to the second beginning to my story-this one happened no more than two or three months later and just like the first, I have no memory of it. I figure it’s much like how all the other adoptions work though. We found the cat we wanted, filled out a stack of papers almost as tall as me, and then brought the little furry rascle home.

    And then the third beginning of my story. The one that I actually remember. It takes place almost fifteen years after the first two, and this time we are back at the same humane society with the very same cat we adopted over a decade earlier.

    Only this time, it’s for a much different reason….

1st Life:

Being a cat with nine lives

is how i started out,

but soon after starting my life

it was living that many I'd doubt.

    My skin is bright red with darker patches that are almost black. My arm hurts in more way than one and the rest of my body feels as if it’s on fire with the scalding water landing on newly exposed flesh. Still, despite all this I can’t seem to make myself take the rough purple glove off, nor can I make it stop scrubbing. I need to get it all off. Anything that has at one point or another touched him.

My face is especially hard to exfoliate as it seems to be the most sensitive somehow. It shies away every time my arm lifts the gloved hand to it, and when I’m finally able to start scrubbing I immediately want to stop. But I can’t. The skin on my face as rubbed up against his head, used his body as a pillow. It’s the skin that I wore when I betrayed him.

Which meant that it has betrayed him.

I can’t make myself stop even though I know it is wrong. My body decides it all must go, that it doesn’t deserve to live, anymore. But no matter how hard I scrub, I still see it. Bits and pieces that are left from when he was still around. I want to scream, curl up into a ball and cry. This has been going on for nearly an hour, now, and nothing will make it go away.

The curtain is thrown open and on the other side, I see my best friend, Lola staring at me with wide eyes. I know I must be a sight to see. The top layer of skin has been  exfoliated away, almost too much so that now it is raw with little trickles of blood streaming down every so often. My hair is frizzed around my head in a blonde mess from trying to wash the dirtiness out of it. My nails have been cut down to the nub and all I can think is that I haven’t done enough. Because he’s still here.

“Oh, Birkley….” Lola breathes, before reaching in and shutting off the water. She doesn’t even care that she’s getting her shirt wet, “What are you doing?”

“It won’t come off,” I begin to sob, not realizing that it’s only noon and that she should be at school, not here, grabbing a towel for me to dry off with, “The skin that betrayed him… it won’t….”

“I think any skin that betrayed him is off,” Lola says with a nod, her eyes wide.

“No it isn’t,” I gasp, allowing her to pluck the glove off and cover me with the green towel, “I can still feel him.”

I know I sound like a maniac. I know why it is I can still feel his fur against my cheek. I know that everything I’m doing and saying is due to stress. But my body doesn’t seem to want to listen to the logical side of my brain. It wants to collapse in on itself and die right there and then so that I can be with him.

“Birkley, trust me,” Lola sets me on the toilet and moves to the cupboard where we keep our medical supplies, “Any skin that may have touched him is gone. Hell, I’m pretty sure some skin that hasn’t touched him is-” she breaks off as she eyes my crotch for the first time. Something in her eyes says a part of her hadn’t expected me to go so far as to actually shave and exfoliate till I was raw down there as well.

“Tell me you weren’t going to shave your head if I hadn’t gotten here when I did as well?” her eyes move up to meet mine. They look as if they’ve given up, just like mine do.

I look away because a part of me had actually been considering that. I hear Lola sigh, before moving around some more behind me. If I were in my regular mindset I would be embarrassed, sitting stark naked in my bathroom in front of someone-even if she is my best friend-with nothing but a towel covering my shoulders. But right now, I don’t care about anything.

“Why are you here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

I hear Lola sigh and the door opening. She yells something out to my little brother that I can’t make out through the door. Then she’s kneeling in front of me and rubbing Neosporin on my calves and feet where the bleeding was.

“You put Sunshine down last night. You don’t think I would skip school to make sure you wouldn’t drown yourself in the tub?”

A dry laugh leaves my throat, making it feel itchy. To cover it up, I grab the medicine from her and begin applying it to the more awkward parts of my body. After she’s finished rubbing it into my wounds, Lola grabs some bandaids and slips them over. At this point I’m basically dry, anyway, so for the most part, the bandaids stick on the first try.

“I brought the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies,” she says, making me turn around so she can get my back, “I figured you might want to watch them.”

“Thanks,” I can’t help but let a smile grace my face

“I also have McDonald’s, Little Caesars, and just about every junk food you can imagine.”

“I suppose Ben’s going to be joining us as well?”

“Probably not for the movies,” Yeah, I could’ve answered that one, myself, “But I did buy him some snacks, too.”

“Good, because he’d never let us hear the end of it if you didn’t.”

“Believe it or not, I do have heart even when it comes to him.”

“I don’t believe it.”

She scoffs and then I hear her open the door. Taking that as my cue that I’m done, I turn around just in time to see her unhook something red with white stripes from the closet handle. She turns around to reveal it to be my sock monkey footy pajamas that I got for my birthday.

A black streak runs by her into the bathroom as she shuts the door and jumps up on my lap. I wince-it landed in a particularly wounded spot-and glance down to see my Midnight staring up at me with wide yellow eyes. As I stare back down at him, it clicks in me that he knows. He knows that Sunshine is gone. He might not know where or why or that he’ll never be coming back, but he knows he’s not here anymore. And he knows it’s going to be a long time.

All of a sudden, I want to get back in the shower again.

    But then Lola’s plucking him off of me and pulling me up. She hands me some underwear which I awkwardly pull on and then yank on the pajamas. As soon as I’m covered, she’s pulling me out of the bathroom, barely giving me enough time to recatch Midnight's eye as I leave.

    He knows. I know he knows.

    And he’s definitely not happy about it.

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    I’m curled up on the couch next to Lola. We aren’t touching, though I can see her itching to wrap her arm around my shoulders. It isn’t because she wants to touch me, so much as because she doesn’t know what else to do in this situation.

    I close my eyes against the sight of the chipmunks, trying to not remember how Sunshine would jump on my lap whenever I watch a movie. This is insane! I can’t just mourn for the rest of my life! Here was Lola, having skipped school just for me and I can’t even bring up a simple smile?! That’s awful.

    After a second, my eyes open. I grab a potato chip from one of the many bags sprawled around us. Lola has yet to touch anything, which I’m guessing is so that I have more to eat, myself. After all, it wasn’t all that unusual for a girl to bury her sorrows in food.

    “You feeling better,” Lola asks, pressing pause. I shake my head, unable to trust my voice, “Is there something else you want to do?”

    “I dont know,” I was right not to trust my voice. It’s raspy, quiet, and sounding as if I’m on the verge of tears.

    Which I am.

    Lola purses her lips for a second, before getting up and running downstairs. I contemplate following her for a second, but decide that she probably wants to be alone while she does… whatever it is she’s doing, but decide not to. She probably wants it to be a surprise and following her would just ruin it.

    Midnight comes and hops up on the farthest end of the couch from me. He hasn’t willingly come near me since yesterday and I don’t blame him. I was there when his brother was killed. I hadn’t stood up for the him, and now I was doomed to an unloved life.

    For the longest time, we just stare at each other. My lifeless, blue eyes gazing into his yellow ones. I’m searching for some sign of forgiveness, love. But there’s nothing there. His eyes are as cold and hollow as they have been for the past twelve hours.

    I want to cry. To jump over to him and cradle him in my arms and apologize over and over again. To make him forgive me. To make him love me again. I can’t lose two cats in so short of time.

    I move, and he runs away.

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    He looks at me-HE LOOKS AT ME! Me. Out of everyone in the room, everyone who came for this, he had to choose to look at me.  He must know that I won’t be able to handle his wide, scared eyes. Eyes that seem to say “It’ll be alright, won’t it? You’ll come back for me, won’t you?”

    My eyes can’t leave his. I don’t know what to say. I’ve never lied to him before, but I can’t tell him that he’s going to die, either. Dammit! Why can’t I stop crying! Surely all this negative emotion that’s radiating off of me can’t be doing much to reassure him!

    I want to run and beg and plead that they give me just five more minutes with him. Just five more minutes to hug him. To pet his back. To play with his floppy ears. To hear a happy meow instead of the scared one he gives as he’s being taken away. To hear his motorboat purr that could wake up China.

    I can’t live life without him. He’s been with me since I was two. I don’t know a life without him. If he’s gone, I don’t even know how I’ll be able to go on.

    Maybe if I reach out and grab him, we can run away together. We can go live in the mountains and he can go pee on whatever he wants and maybe he won’t like it but at least he’ll be alive.

    They round a corner and I never see him again.

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    Lola’s house is a light, a symbol of sanity as I drive up to it the next morning. She offered to come pick me up from school so I didn’t have to drive, but I quickly declined. If I picked her up, then I’d get to choose when I left, not the other way around.

    A part of me wonders, as I wait for her to come out, how I’m going to be able to make it through the day. My stomach feels like it’s going to burst and I can’t breathe, much less talk. But I suppose that’s still an improvement on yesterday. At least now I don’t feel guilty so much as sad. It doesn’t feel real, though. I feel as if if I were to just run home now, I’d open the door and hear his meowing from the kitchen where he’s been locked for the past few months, even though I know it isn’t true.

    I haven’t cried since we took him to the humane society the day before yesterday. Maybe I’ve shed all my tears then. I hope so. Then it’ll make today so much easier.

    Lola’s black hair comes bobbing out of her house exactly five minutes and nineteen seconds after I texted her-yes, I was counting. She skips down the driveway as if she doesn’t have a care in the world and I feel a smile tug on my face. Sunshine immediately leaves my brain as I think of all the things we can talk about, say to each other, now that I don’t have memories every corner I turn.

    “What’s up girlie?” she asks, throwing her backpack and chromebook into the back of my car.

    I shrug though I know she can’t see it as she’s now running around toward the front, “Not much. Dreading all the homework I’m going to get.”

    “You and me both,” she laughs.

    I smile over at her, my mood immediately lifted. “Do you work tonight.”

    Lola blanches, “Ugh, yes. I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done.”

    I laugh, “Well, you didn’t have to stay home, yesterday.”

    “Neither did you.”

    “Yes I did. I was in pain!” I fake a cry and throw my head back briefly, before whipping it back forward so I can keep my eyes on the road. How can I joke about this? Sunshine was my beloved cat! But I don’t feel guilty and doubt I will until later tonight.

    “You just wanted to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks,”

    “You caught me,” I stick out my tongue.

    “Of course I did. How long have we been best friends?”

    “Far too long, apparently,”

    “Just what I was thinking.”

    I snort and a part of me wonders why I can’t just stay in this moment for the rest of my life.

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    Night has come. I can feel it in my skin as I lay in my bed that night, none of my homework done and my eyes wide open. I can’t sleep. There’s no sound of heavy, padded feet from above me. No scooting chairs as a small furry creature jumps down off the table. It’s quiet.

    Way too quiet.

    I roll over onto my side, close my eyes tight against the silence and begin to name every element I know off the top of my head. If I can distract myself, then it’ll be easier to fall asleep.

    “Hydrogen, Iodine, Copper, Nitrogen,”

    My feet get cold, so I kick the blanket over them, folding it over so that they can’t escape again.

    “Oxygen, Neon, Chlorine, Boron,”

    My Kenny bobblehead doll all of a sudden begins to speak. It does that every once in a while in the middle of the night if I move too much and my bed hits my nightstand.

    “Aluminum, Potassium, Helium, Lithium,”

    Hey, I’m even surprising myself. I never thought I could come up with so many on the fly. Especially since Science is my worst subject ever.

    Maybe I should reward myself with something to quench my parched throat.

    I don’t need to turn on the lights as I make my way up the stairs for the kitchen. I’ve lived in this house my entire life so I could walk through it with my eyes shut. My hand trails along the wall as I walk up the stairs, mentally counting them so I know when I’ve hit the top.

    “8… 9….”

    I reach for the gate that keeps Sunshine locked up in the kitchen. This is always the tricky part, opening it up without knocking it down, and then maneuvering around the mess that is the litterbox.

    Only the gate isn’t there and in my shock, I end up stumbling forward. My hands fly out in front of me, bracing for impact as I fall and I mentally cringe. Great, I’m going to fall face first into a mess of cat pee and soggy poop.

    But I don’t. Instead, my hands come in contact with the cool ground of the marble landing and the overwhelming aroma of a Bleach and Pinesawl mixture meets my nose.

    That’s when it hits me. I can’t believe I’ve forgotten after such a short amount of time. I don’t bother to get up, merely crawl into the kitchen and towards the living room, completely regarding my original intent for coming up.

    It isn’t until I reach the couch-my hands and knees now sore from supporting all my weight and the ends of my long wavy blonde hair probably dusty from dragging on the ground-that I finally realize that I’ve been crying the entire time.

    I don’t cry. That’s always been my thing. I do not cry. When I broke my hip back in freshman year and my father kept telling me to walk it off for an hour before my mother stepped in and forced him to take me to the hospital I didn’t shed one tear. When I lost my little brother in the mall for nearly two hours I didn’t panic. Didn’t sob.

    But now I find myself curled up on the short end of the couch, my face buried in one of the pillows that had been thrown on their, bawling. My eyes burn, my nose is cold and my fingers hurt from clutching onto the cushion. I want to scream, to cry to the heavens. To punish the ones who have taken him away from me.

    I can’t, though. If I do any of these things, I’ll wake up my parents and Ben. Maybe they deserve it. Maybe they deserve to get no sleep after what they did to him. But I can’t be the judge of that.

    A soft meow comes from below me and for a second my heart stops. The meow clearly isn’t his-it’s too low and careless. But it’s a better imitation than I or anyone else I know could.

    My eyes peek open to see a tiny black face with giant blue eyes staring up at me. The eyes do not seem to contain any worry but the sound he lets out tells me everything. He is concerned about the negative emotions I’m letting out.

    I roll over on my back and begin to work on my breathing, trying to steady it. I can’t worry Midnight by my own weakness.

    He climbs onto my stomach and lays down, his eyes never once leaving mine. As we continue to stare at each other, I feel my lids begin to droop and drop a hand onto Midnight’s back as if to hold him there as I fall back asleep.