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Nikki scrubbed her tearful face with mittened hands, and stepped into the three-wheeler’s path with hands overhead to flag down her brother. Twice he and his friends had raced by as they ran the track. She risked getting run over, but it was better than being ignored in the icy wind.
Hank applied the brakes. His fair skin flushed from wind-burn and embarrassment, but Nikki didn’t care. “I’ll tell. It’s not fair.” She had to shout over the engine noise.
“Quit following us.” He forced a nonchalant expression when Zeke and his no-neck older cousin zoomed past on their own spanking new four-wheeler, and then Hank turned to scowl at her. “Mom told you to stay home. I can’t babysit while me and the guys run the course.”
“It’s my turn. You always let me ride. I’m as good as those guys, you said so.” She hated the whiny way she sounded, but couldn’t help it. Hank was only three years older, but he treated her like a baby when she was nearly ten. He’d been riding since forever, while she’d stood out in the cold until her nose turned snotty. “Mom said to share.”
“No, Mom said you should go shopping with her.” He revved the engine like he wanted to spin out and leave her in the dust. Except the ground was froze solid.
“I already got my Christmas shopping done. Mom told you to watch out for me, and instead you ditched me soon as she pulled out of the drive. Maybe I should take back your present.” She stuck out her tongue. He wasn’t going to let her ride. Not with his friends around to see.
Nikki’s friends had left town with their families for the holiday, except for her bestie Gina, whose mom just had a new baby. Gina was all, “Oooh, the baby this and the baby that,” until Nikki wanted to puke. It was bald and prune-faced, and smelled like pee. Nothing cute about it, as far as Nikki could see. Not like the kitties over at the barn. Nothing was cuter than kitties.
Mom wouldn’t let them have pets, especially cats, because she got sneeze attacks. Nikki didn’t care about being with the popular kids at the barn. She wanted to spend time with the cats. So as long as Hank let her tag along to visit the kitties, she’d keep his secret.
Usually Hank was pretty decent, for a boy. He didn’t mind when she tagged along, and she took seriously being sworn to secrecy about the barn hangout. That’s where the older kids, boys mostly, hung out and smoked dope and bragged about all kinds of things that would make parents’ eyebrows curl. Mom would have a cow if she knew Hank hung out at the barn, and she’d totally stroke out if Nikki did, too.
“I gotta catch up with the guys.” Hank adjusted his blue and white Dallas Cowboy’s gimme cap, the one he got for his birthday four months ago. “Sorry. I’ll make it up to you later. Promise.” His eyes shifted away and he ducked his head. “It’s Zeke’s rules, ya know. His trail, his four-wheelers...”
“Zeke’s a stupid-head.” She bit her lip to stop the tremble.
Hank smiled. “True. But he lets us ride, and got us both into the barn. He says his cousin visiting from Austin gets dibs over my kid sister.” He shrugged. It made perfect boy-sense, she guessed. “You gotta wait until he goes home. Then it’ll be back to normal, okay?”
“Promise?” She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t.
“Swear on my Cowboy’s cap. Dustin—that’s the cousin—he’s heading out day after Christmas.” Hank touched his hand to the cap, and saluted the way Daddy taught him. Daddy had bought it for him before he left.
She smiled. He looked like Daddy, too; they both did, with white-blond hair and freckles. Looking at Hank made her miss Daddy even more.
Hank revved the engine again. “Now go back home before Mom finds out you’re here. She’d ground both of us.” He pulled away in an impressive cloud of dust. She guessed it wasn’t that frozen after all.
Ever since Daddy got deployed—a fancy word for “gone away to serve America”—Mom got this pinched expression on her face. She didn’t laugh so much anymore, and mostly said “no” to anything new. Mom said she had a lot on her mind, keeping everything going till Daddy got home. She didn’t want any bad surprises, and said Hank and Nikki had to suck it up and pull together like good soldiers right along with Mom. They all had their fingers crossed (toes too, and eyes if it’d help) that Daddy could come home for a holiday visit. That would be the bestest Christmas present of all.
She and Hank tried not to be any trouble. But the barn was too good to resist. You only got invited by the cool kids, how could anyone turn that down? If Mom found out about the barn hangout, that would be a very-bad-thing. Even though Hank and his friends didn’t smoke or anything, Mom said an omission was bad as a lie. Nikki wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but she didn’t want to find out.
Nikki watched Hank go. She scrubbed her salty cheeks where the tears had dried and itched in the cold air, and waited until he turned the corner over the hill out of sight. Since he wouldn’t let her hitch a ride, she’d hike to the barn by herself. It wasn’t that far. Up the hill and down the path to the left. She knew better than to ask Hank to look after the kitties. He wouldn’t stop the trail ride for such a thing, and even if he did, she didn’t want the boys to know how much she liked the cats. Hank was okay, but some of the older boys acted mean sometimes.
With school out until the Monday after New Year’s, most of the big kids had better things to do than sneak out to the barn. She should have the place to herself. Hank, Zeke and his cousin wouldn’t stop riding until the sun started to set. She checked her pink sparkly cell phone, the one Mom said only to use for emergencies, and saw she had at least an hour before dark-fall. There was plenty of time to travel there and back home without anyone being the wiser.
Twenty minutes later Nikki arrived at the old barn. The walk took longer than she’d figured, and chilled her to the bone. Before going in, she did what the big kids did, and walked all the way around the structure to be sure nobody else was there. The weathered wood had long since lost its original color, and the gray planks blended with the bare bois d’arc trees. Its witch-claw limbs grabbed at the shaky walls, and drooped clear to the ground as though to gather up the horse-apples shed around its gnarly feet.
Nikki shivered, from the cold, not the spooky trees. After all, she was nearly ten years old, and stupid trees were nothing to be scared about. She didn’t see anybody else around, but listened carefully at the door anyway for whispers or boy laughter before shoving aside the loose wall plank enough to bend low and squeeze through.
She straightened, and turned her head this way and that. Nikki hadn’t noticed so many shadows before when she’d been here with Hank. “Just shadows, nothing scary.” Her voice didn’t even shake. See? Nothing to get stupid about.
A soft mew replied.
“Mama Kitty? It’s me, Nikki. I brought you treats.” It wasn’t proper cat food, but she’d discovered the cats liked baloney and cheese during her first visit when she’d dropped part of a sandwich.
The fluffy gray cat eeled out from one of the empty stalls and padded toward her. “How are you? Where’s your family?” When they’d first met last spring, she’d had half a dozen babies, but over the weeks and months, some had disappeared.
Nikki brushed off a wooden box and sat, crooning to Mama Kitty when the cat cheek-rubbed her ankles. “Kitty-kitty-kitty?” She called again, hoping the three remaining young ones would come out of hiding when she pulled out the plastic baggy of food. Unlike their mother, the kittens remained shy and she’d not managed to pet a single one, although they would sneak close enough to grab a treat or two she tossed in the dirt pathway down the center of the building. “Guess you need a new name, huh? I mean, if your babies are all grown up, I can’t call you ‘Mama Kitty’ forever. So what’s your name?”
The gray cat hopped into her lap and nosed the plastic bag, trilling and mewing with excitement. “Always hoping for treats, aren’t you?” The cat’s bony hips stood out prominently beneath the fur. Nikki shredded the cold cuts into strips, and hand-fed her two before the first kitten appeared. Two more kitten-shaped shadows hung back in the doorway to the stall.
Nikki tossed a cube of cheese near the first youngster, and he pounced on it, crouching over the treat to lick and finally pick it up and chew, head turned sideways to more efficiently munch. She offered another strip of baloney to the gray cat on her lap, and thrilled at the sound of cat purrs.
Like always when she visited the cats, she fantasized about taking them home. “I keep hoping you could come live with me. Would you like that? Hey, I’ll call you ‘Hope’ for luck. Maybe that’ll make it happen.”
Hope purred and head bumped Nikki’s hand, as if approving the new name. Nikki had researched on the internet and found out some cats didn’t cause allergies. There was one called a Siberian that people said was a safe kind for sneezy people like Mom, and the gray cat had long hair like a Siberian.
She tossed another piece of cheese to the kitten, and made trill sounds with her tongue. The blond again pounced on the food. “You like that, don’t you?” She smiled when the two other furry figures finally dashed out of the shadows toward the food.
The blond kitten screamed, and raced away. Only then did Nikki realize the other two creatures weren’t kittens, but raccoons.
Hope dug her claws into Nikki’s pant leg and arms, and puffed up to enormous proportions. Screaming, Nikki scrambled to stand up, dumping the terrified gray cat off her lap.
The raccoons hissed and fought over the cheese, gulped it down and then stared up at Nikki. They took wobbly steps toward her. They acted sick, bad sick. Maybe they had rabies.
Nikki backed away, one slow step at a time, fearful the sick raccoons might attack her. She should never have come alone. She was just a stupid nine-year-old kid, and made a baby mistake. Hank would know what to do. She wanted to find the loose board and make her escape, but was afraid to turn her back on the threatening animals.
She still clutched the baloney and cheese baggy, and flung the plastic toward the sick raccoons. The creatures fell on the treats, making awful noises, and the gray cat pressed against her leg, wailing. Without further thought Nikki scooped up the bony feline, turned, and dashed to the loose board and backed out of the barn butt first.
Panting, she straightened and whirled to run back home. She nearly ran into the man, and stopped dead, juggling the yowling, struggling cat.
“What y’all doing with my cat?” The giant scarecrow-man leaned forward, long scraggly hair flying, and shrugged off a heavy sack slung over one shoulder so it slammed to the ground. He scowled, revealing broken, stained teeth. In the other hand, he held a gun.
