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“You want me to what?” Katherine Harper said, sure she had misunderstood.
“I’d like you to mentor this girl,” Willow Wu repeated.
So she had heard right the first time. “But why?”
“Because I think you have the potential to reach her in ways that I and her other teachers can’t.”
Kat glanced at Matty and Tom, her two cats, as they sat face-to-face in the center of the living room. Matty had been in the middle of grooming Tom’s head, but now she paused to crook one eye in Kat’s direction. The yellow-and-brown tortoiseshell seemed just as skeptical of her human’s mentoring abilities as Kat herself.
Willow leaned forward, her chin-length, black hair framing her Asian features. “Julie is headed in a bad direction,” she said. “The kids she’s chosen to hang around with, they’re not the best influences. I’m afraid if somebody doesn’t help to set her straight soon, she’ll eventually be too far gone to reach.”
“But why me?” Kat asked. “I’m not really the mentoring type.”
“Have you ever mentored anybody?”
“No.” Kat sat up straighter. “But that just proves my point. I wouldn’t have a clue what I was doing. And I haven’t been in high school for fifteen years. I’m sure I’ve forgotten everything I learned back then.”
“She needs a mentor, not a tutor.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A tutor helps with school curriculum. A mentor helps with forging a path to a bright future.”
“Forging a path to a bright future?” Kat barked out a laugh. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Sure you do. You put yourself through college, then set out to build a career doing what you love, didn’t you?”
Kat frowned. Put that way, she sounded much more competent than she felt.
The cats interrupted the conversation when Tom pounced on Matty, sending them both rolling over Willow’s feet. When they stopped tumbling, Tom pinned Matty to the floor and clamped his jaws around her neck. Matty retaliated by grabbing his head so she could kick his chin using both of her hind feet. She didn’t hold back, and the resigned look on Tom’s face as he braced himself for the beating sent a bubble of laughter floating up Kat’s chest.
Sometimes Kat wondered if the felines thought it was their duty to entertain apartment visitors. Before Willow showed up, they had both been sound asleep.
Willow refocused on Kat when Matty chased Tom out of the room. “This girl, Julie Conway, she’s in a dark place right now. She has a lot of potential, but she doesn’t apply herself. Instead of the carefully thought-out answers I used to receive from her on tests and homework, now her work is sloppy. I sense she’s losing all interest in academics—not a surprise given the attitudes of the classmates she’s chosen to hang out with.”
Kat felt a smile flicker across her face. “Are you going to ask me to mentor them next?”
Willow’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Why don’t we stick with Julie first.”
“Okay, so what’s so special about this girl? Why help her and not her friends?”
“Because I get the sense she wants to excel, only she’s afraid it would alienate her from the group she’s fallen into. She’s smart—not a quality that’s necessarily appreciated by the sixteen-year-old age bracket.” Willow paused. “Kat, this girl, she doesn’t get much validation at home. Sometimes in class—when I can get her to participate—it only takes a tiny bit of encouragement for her to light up. But almost immediately she starts to shut down again, as if she’s remembering she shouldn’t be interested in grades and learning. It just breaks my heart.”
A blur of yellow, brown, and black tore into the room. This time, Tom was in pursuit of Matty instead of the other way around. When the cats reached the center of the living room, Matty collapsed onto her side and used one hind leg to keep Tom at bay as he circled around her, eyeing Matty as he would a juicy piece of steak.
“I hate to label kids as bad, but this crowd she’s started to spend time with is definitely troubled.” Willow blew out a breath. “And I suppose Julie, being a troubled teen herself, figures that makes them allies.”
“I get why you’re concerned, but I’m not sure I can help.” Kat felt unexpectedly vulnerable as she peered at her friend. “I’m not really . . . strong enough to mentor a kid.”
“Not strong enough?”
“I’m not good with kids.” What she really meant was that young people made her nervous. She remembered how sensitive she was at sixteen, and how one wrong word could send her spiraling into a crippling bout of self-doubt. It was too much pressure.
“She’s not really a kid,” Willow said. “I mean, she is, but . . .”
Kat didn’t say anything. It was obvious Willow was struggling to figure out something to convince Kat to change her mind.
She finally sighed. “Kat, sometimes in class she gets this look on her face.”
“What look?”
“Like she’s lost.”
Kat leaned back on the couch, memories of her own teenage years flashing through her head. She knew the lost feeling all too well. “I still don’t get why you’re asking me to talk to her.”
“For starters, Julie’s interested in computers. I was thinking you could tell her about what you did to get into programming. Maybe you could even take her to your office and show her around.”
Kat could feel her resolve melting. “Her parents wouldn’t mind her tagging along with a stranger?”
“You can ask her aunt, but I doubt she’d mind.”
“Her aunt?”
“Her aunt has custody of her.” Willow pressed her lips together. “That’s another thing. Judging from my rare interactions with her, the aunt isn’t too invested in Julie. In fact, I suspect part of the reason Julie acts out is to get her attention.”
“Where are her parents?”
Willow spread her hands. “Gone.”
Kat’s chest tightened. Having grown up in foster care, she knew how the absence of parents could leave behind a longing so deep it sometimes became difficult to breathe.
“Her father’s dead,” Willow said.
“And her mom?” Kat asked.
“She died not long after he did.” Willow took a deep breath. “Kat, she was murdered. And her killer has never been found.”
