No one knew exactly where the Tom came from. He’d been prowling the neighborhood for weeks, maybe months and had killed Mrs. Gustafson’s pair of free-range Java finches that she blissfully allowed rule of here screened-in front porch. Everyone assumed that the cat came from the gully behind her house. After all, as the children had been told their whole lives, everything scary came from that network of ravines that ran through the neighborhood, dividing it into even smaller micro-neighborhoods. To the adults, these divisions were traversable only by bridge and car, but they posed no barrier to the children and teenagers who moved through them with the agility of the feral cats that lived within those same gullies.
Everyday after school Ginny and Jenny walked home, deposited their books on their respective bedroom floors, changed out of their school clothes, and rendezvoused in the gully. After they wound their way in on the narrow dirt path, the two girls would sit on the ivied slope and watch as the younger kids played on the tire swing that someone’s dad must have hung god-knows-when. Sometimes they would perch at the top of the slop behind some harmless shrubs, avoiding the nettles and blackberries, and surreptitiously watch the older kids make out. Time was they were the kids on the swing, but they’d grown too old for that sort of foolishness.
“I’m bored,” said Ginny.
“Shhhh, they’ll hear us,” Jenny replied.
“Gimme those,” Ginny said and yanked the binoculars from Jenny’s hand. She looked through them a moment and then let them dangle around her neck. She reached in the front pocket of her gouchos and pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims.
“Isn’t your mom going to miss those?”
“No way. She’s busy. The house is a dump. There were only a few left anyway.” Ginny handed Jenny the smoke and she took a drag. For a few minutes they alternated with the cigarette and bird-watching glasses, passing them silently back and forth.
“Jill and David aren’t very interesting. They just hold hands and talk a lot,” Jenny said. “I mean, we talk and what fun is there in that?”
“I wish Debbie and Nate hadn’t broken up. They were fun.”
“Ginnyyyy, Ginnyyyy,” a disembodied voice called down from street level.
“Oh, shit it’s my mom.” Ginny popped a Certs into her mouth and then handed them and the smokes to Jenny. “Coming, mom,” she yelled back.
The girls stood, brushed the dirt from their hind-ends, and started the short scrabble up the hill. As they neared the top Jenny yelled, “Wait! Listen!” Both girls were silent. Under the salmonberry bush, the mew came again.
Ginny reached in. “Ouch! It scratched me.”
Jenny got on all fours and coaxed the kitten from under the bush. She held the tiny thing to her chest. Its eyes barely open.
“Ginny, get up here.”
“Almost there,” she called back.
The girls considered the kitten for a moment. “I’m going to keep it,” Jenny said.
“Yea, well let me know how that goes,” Ginny laughed as she clambered back up to the street, Jenny with her new kitten, following behind.
Note:Hmmmm, kittens. My work has very few kittens as a rule, but this kitten is central to the plot. Still, maybe a kitten sends the wrong message.