All's Fair in Love, War, and High School

  I'd have to tell my parents eventually, but I could put it off as long as possible.

  Chapter 2

  The next day at school I decided I would definitely run for office. Then I decided I definitely wouldn't. As I watched all the people passing me in the hallways, I asked myself, Would they vote for me? Did enough people think I could do the job—did enough people like me—to elect me? I hoped so, but I knew there might also be a very painful answer to this question. Did I really want to find out?

  I didn't mention the possibility of my candidacy to anyone that day. I told myself I'd talk with my friends about it the next day, but somehow I never got around to mentioning it then, either.

  Finally, I decided the best place to test-drive the idea was on my date with Brad. He would understand how I felt. Perhaps he'd even murmur words of encouragement to me.

  He came to pick me up at five so we could go to dinner before we saw a movie. When the doorbell rang, I was in the middle of taking out my hot curlers, so I sent my mom to the door before one of my little brothers could get it. I have three younger brothers: Andy, who's seven, and the twins, Joe and David, who are ten—all of whom are major pains. They seem to think anything female is hilarious and have no qualms about sharing aspects of my beauty regime with any guy who walks in the door.

  "She puts this thick, gooey clay stuff on her face every night," they told my last boyfriend. "You'll be sorry if you marry her."

  So I sent my mom to answer the door. Which turned out to be a mistake. While I was unrolling my curls she started discussing the evening plans with Brad.

  Maybe the problem is I date too much. If I hardly ever went out, then my mom would be nervously trying to impress my dates in order to encourage them. As it is, my mom sees the guys in my life as something between an annoyance ("Okay kids, Samantha's got a guy coming to pick her up in fifteen minutes, so get your stuff off the living-room floor before I throw it away!") and an unlimited resource ("So, Bryce, I hear your father is an orthodontist. Would he mind looking at Joe's teeth sometime?").

  Today when I walked into the living room, Brad stood beside my mom with a trapped expression on his face, and I knew he'd become a resource.

  Mom scooped up our nine-month-old tabby cat from the couch and smiled over at me. "Brad tells me you're going to El Marcado. That's just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the animal clinic."

  "I'm sure it's perfectly sanitary anyway," I said, grabbing my jacket from the hall closet and slipping my purse over my shoulder.

  Mom ignored me. "And you know I'm supposed to take Frisky in tonight to be spayed. It would really be great if you could drop her off for me."

  "You want me to take the cat on our date?"

  "Not on your date. Just to the vet's office. It's on the way to the restaurant."

  I shifted my purse on my shoulder, fiddling with the strap as I inched toward the front door. "Won't the clinic be closed by now?"

  "They stay open until nine."

  At this point Andy wandered into the living room and started tugging on Mom's shirt to get her attention.

  "Don't take Frisky away," he whined. "We want her to have kittens."

  "No, we don't," Mom said.

  "But kittens are so cute!" he said.

  "Sure, they're cute when they're kittens, but they grow up to be cats. So Samantha and Brad are taking Frisky to the vet."

  I put my hand on the doorknob and sent her a pleading look. "Mom . . ." Please don't make me do this. And please don't start an argument in front of Brad. I'm trying to look mature, sophisticated, and just a little bit glamorous. Hauling a cat around with me is not a way to accomplish any of these goals.

  Mom apparently has no telepathic powers. While she went on about how it wouldn't be "any trouble at all" and how she'd taken Frisky in for shots three weeks ago and the cat "behaved perfectly fine," she handed Frisky to Brad.

  Brad stood there, frozen, holding the cat slightly away from his sweater, eyeing her like she might have fleas.

  I knew he didn't want to even hold the cat, let alone chauffeur her to the vet's, but he was too polite to hand her back to my mom. Which is why, I suppose, Mom handed Frisky to Brad instead of to me.

  "Thanks, dear," Mom said. She took Andy's hand and headed toward the kitchen. "I have so many other things to do, and this saves me a trip." Over her shoulder she called out, "Have fun at dinner," and then disappeared into the kitchen.

  I reached over and took Frisky from Brad's arms. "Sorry about this."

  "It's okay."

  I knew it wasn't. My telepathic powers apparently work much better than my mother's, and I could tell Brad would rather have stitches than carry our cat around. So I would hold her, and we'd just try to get the feline-escorting part of the evening over as quickly as possible.

  We walked out to Brad's car, and I absentmindedly stroked Frisky s gray fur to let her know that everything was fine. Her name is a misnomer. She was only frisky for the first two months of her kittenhood. Immediately thereafter she became lazy, slothful, and a whole slew of less-than-cute adjectives, but by then it was too late to change her name. Besides, she probably wouldn't answer to Lays-on-the-couch-licking-her-fur.

  I climbed into Brad's car and set Frisky down on the seat beside me while I put on my seat belt. Brad got in on the other side and kept sending Frisky sideways glances while he fastened his own belt. I could tell he was wondering how much cat hair she shed per minute, so I picked her up and put her back on my lap. True, I would probably spend the rest of our date looking like I was wearing furry jeans, but better to look funny than to have your date upset because you'd messed up his upholstery.

  Brad turned on the ignition, and Frisky's claws came out. I calmly tried to peel her off my jeans without screaming. Screaming probably wouldn't help soothe a nervous cat.

  "It's okay, Frisky," I breathed out. "We're just taking you on a trip to the vet."

  "Where they'll cut you open and remove parts of your body," Brad added.

  "You're not helping."

  "It's not like she can understand English."

  Frisky peered out the window, her eyes darting back and forth at the scenery, and she let out a long, low meow. Not like the cute little myerts she uses when she wants food. This sounded more like a gravelly, possessed can opener.

  "Is she all right?" Brad asked, taking his eyes off the road for longer than I liked.

  "I'm sure she'll be fine. Just hurry."

  He sped up. A lot.

  "Not that fast."

  He didn't slow down. "I thought your mother said the cat traveled just fine when she went in for her shots."

  "Well, maybe Frisky remembers that the last time she went for a car ride she got stuck by a bunch of sharp needles."

  The speed did nothing to soothe Frisky. She leaped from my lap and prowled back and forth in the car, searching for a way out. Every once in a while she bellowed her gravelly meows at us.

  "Would you get her off the dashboard," Brad hissed. "It's hard to drive when I'm waiting for her to pounce on the steering wheel."

  I reached over to grab her, but she sprang from the dashboard to the top of the seat. While I twisted around trying to pry her from there, she let out another series of possessed sounding me-ee-ow-ows.

  "Is she clawing my car seats?" Brad asked.

  "No. I mean, not on purpose."

  Brad muttered something under his breath and pressed down on the gas pedal. Street signs and mailboxes zipped past us.

  "I think you're scaring her." And if not her, than certainly me. I tried to get hold of Frisky, and Frisky tried to hide by wedging herself in between my back and the seat of the car. I leaned forward so I could reach back and grab her, but she kept moving farther down my back. I didn't know whether to be relieved or not that her claws were facing me, and not Brad's precious upholstery.

  Brad took his eyes off the road again to look over at me. "What is she doing now?"

  "I don't know. I don't speak cat."
>
  Luckily, we made it downtown and Brad had to slow the car for the lights and the traffic. He kept glancing over at me, perhaps waiting to see if the cat was going to explode or something.

  Frisky, discovering there was no way to dig out through the seat, turned around and began crawling up my back. I attempted to gain control of the situation by repeating, "Frisky, stop that!" over and over again while I tried to grab something that was neither claws nor teeth.

  I finally got hold of her, but she wouldn't sit in my lap. This time she crawled up the front of my shirt, stopped for a moment to stand on my shoulder, and then latched on to my head, like it was the top of Mount Everest.

  While he was waiting for the light to turn green Brad glanced over at me. "The frisky cat is on your head!"

  Actually, I'm not sure frisky was the adjective he used, but the word definitely began with an F.

  "I realize the cat is on my head."

  "People are staring at us."

  I had been too busy trying to pull the cat off of various parts of my body to pay attention to the other cars around us, but now I looked. The car next to us carried several teenage boys, all of whom stared openmouthed at me. Their mouths were open, I assume, because they were laughing too hard to shut them.

  I slunk farther down in the seat and ripped Frisky off my hair. She clawed my ear in the process. I wanted to toss her in the backseat like a shot put, but before I did, I noticed her mouth. It had bubbles of saliva all around it. Still holding her midway in the air, I said, "Brad, I think she's sick."

  "Not in my car!"

  She was going to throw up. I knew she was going to throw up, and I sat there holding her, trying to figure out which direction to point her. Did I want to get cat vomit all over me or all over Brad's car?

  The thought of half-digested Tender Vittles—or worse yet, some mangled mouse corpse—was more than I could imagine wearing. Even to save Brad's upholstery.

  Brad was watching Frisky so intently he didn't notice the light turn green, and the car behind us honked.

  Which did nothing to help Frisky's fragile mental condition.

  Besides digging her claws into my arms, she made gagging noises.

  "Don't let her throw up," Brad said.

  And exactly how was I supposed to stop that from happening? Tell her to take deep, soothing breaths? Roll down the window and tell her to hang her head out? If I rolled down the window, she would have been out of the car faster than I could say, "You don't really have nine lives."Then I'd have to go home and explain to my little brothers how Frisky had been flattened into a kitty pancake by the oncoming traffic. So, instead, I just held her, watching the bubbles of saliva around her mouth grow until they dripped onto my jeans. I looked around for something to wipe her mouth with. Did I have Kleenex in my purse?

  "She's foaming at the mouth!" Brad said.

  "Would you please watch the traffic instead of the cat?"

  "Isn't that something rabid animals do before they bite you?

  "She can't have rabies. My mom just took her in for her shots three weeks ago."

  "Maybe the shot didn't have time to work."

  I set Frisky on my lap and reached for the Kleenex in my purse. The saliva had already dripped all over me, so now along with cat hair I also had cat spit covering me. The perfect thing to complete my ensemble.

  "What are you doing?" Brad asked. "Don't let a rabid animal loose in my car!"

  "She isn't rabid. And I'm trying to get something to wipe off her mouth."

  Frisky didn't stay to let me wipe off her mouth. While I was still fishing Kleenex squares out of my purse she jumped into the backseat.

  Brad peered over the seat at her, swerving the car toward the shoulder as he did. "Now your cat is drooling all over my car. This is great. Just great. I'm stuck in a car with a rabid, drooling cat!"

  "You know, at this point I think your chances of being killed in a reckless car accident are a lot greater than being attacked by a rabid cat. So why don't you just watch where you're going!"

  And that's how it was when we pulled up to the vet's office. We were yelling at each other about how we were going to die.

  Brad and I got out of the car, and I opened the door closest to the cat. Frisky was huddled in the crevice under the driver's seat, and I wasn't sure whether she'd thrown up or simply drooled back there. I wasn't about to put my hand under the seat to find out. I tried to change the tone of my voice from the yelling-at-Brad tone to the here-kitty-I'm-really-your-friend tone.

  "Come on out, Frisky," I cooed. "Everything is just fine now. There's nothing to be afraid of."

  Frisky didn't buy it.

  Apparently there was nothing amiss about her telepathic powers, and she was not about to let us haul her into the animal clinic.

  "Come here, Frisky," I said again.

  Brad stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. "Just reach down there and grab her."

  Oh, sure. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets, but he wanted me to grab the angry, rabid cat. That's chivalry for you.

  I reached down cautiously, more afraid of upchucked mice than of being bitten, but before I could even touch Frisky, she shot past me out of the open door.

  "Get her!" I yelled to Brad.

  But Brad didn't have time to reach her even if he wanted to, which I'm pretty sure he didn't. I could tell by the way his hands were still in his pockets and the way he looked not at the cat, but at the backseat of his car.

  I wouldn't have thought Frisky capable of such a burst of energy, but in seconds she'd sprinted across the sidewalk, jumped from a garbage can to a tree, to the roof of the vet's office. Once there, she sat glaring down at us from behind the rain gutter.

  "Now what are we going to do?" I moaned.

  "I don't know what we are going to do, but / am going to take my car home and clean it out. It smells funny, and who knows what that psycho cat of yours did underneath my seat."

  "You're going to leave me here with my cat stuck on the roof?"

  "What do you want me to do? Climb up there after her? Maybe I could break my neck just to make the evening complete." He flung open the car door and jumped into the driver's seat. "I've got to get rid of this smell before it becomes permanent."

  He slammed the door shut and screeched out of the parking lot.

  "Jerk," I called after him. "Jerk! Jerk! JerkP'

  Then I glared back up at the cat. "And you're a jerk too! It isn't enough that you wake me up every morning by stepping on my face—now you're ruining my love life! I ought to—"

  I stopped my tirade when I realized several people in the parking lot had just gotten out of their cars, and they were now all staring at the crazed teenager who was yelling, for some indiscernible reason, at the side of a building.

  Without another glance at Frisky, I walked into the clinic and explained, in a surprisingly coherent manner, the situation to the receptionist.

  She shrugged sympathetically, but didn't move away from the desk. "We don't have a ladder here, but usually cats will come down if you coax them long enough."

  Right. I was supposed to stand out on the sidewalk for who knew how long, looking like an idiot, while I tried to reason with a cat.

  I walked back outside. Frisky was calmly surveying the parking lot from her rain gutter, with no apparent intention of ever coming down. I uttered a few more threats at her, then pulled my cell phone from my purse and called home. Let Mom deal with the cat crisis. I just wanted to go somewhere where I could wipe the cat spit off my jeans. Besides, she needed to come pick me up anyway, since Brad had left me stranded at the vet's office.

  Jerk.

  Mom answered the phone. I wanted her to be sorry—no, mortified—for what had happened, for what she'd caused to happen. Instead, she just sounded irritated.

  "Frisky is on the roof? Why did you let her do that?"

  "I didn't let her. I didn't give her my permission. Not once did I ever tell her it was a good idea. You shou
ld try catching a neurotic, terrified cat."

  Mom sighed. "I'll be right down." Then she hung up.

  I waited for her on the sidewalk, every once in a while glancing up at Frisky. I wanted to yell at her some more, but didn't dare. One can only endure so many strangers thinking you're insane, and I'd already passed my quota.

  Finally Mom pulled up in our minivan. She stepped out, ignored me, and walked to the side of the building. "Frisky, it's dinnertime."

  The cat meowed once—one of its normal myerts, not the possessed-sounding kind she'd been using on me, then leaped down from the roof.

  Mom scooped her up and gave her a scratch underneath the chin. "Sorry to lie," she told the cat, "but you can't have anything to eat until after your surgery." Then Mom turned to me. "See, that wasn't really so hard, was it?"

  I stared at her, just stared at her for a long moment. "Mom, you know how every once in a while when you want to point out how grateful I ought to be to have you as a mother, you tell me about how you were in labor for eighteen hours with me?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, I think I can trump that now. The next time you tell me all about childbirth pains, I'm going to tell you about the time you made me take the cat to the vet, and I was humiliated, clawed, drooled on, and spent a portion of the car ride wearing a rabid cat on my head."

  "Frisky can't be rabid, dear. She's had her shots."

  "I don't care!" I yelled. "I hate her anyway!"

  Mom stroked the cat gently, as though realizing for the first time what a traumatic experience Frisky must have had. I stomped off to the van, but I still heard her anyway, softly telling the cat, "Don't be too upset about the procedure, Frisky. Trust me, you don't want children. Sure, they're cute when they're babies, but they grow up to be teenagers."

  Chapter 3

  When we got back home, I went straight to the bathroom and put antiseptic on my cat scratches. I wished I had something to put on my other wounds, but they don't bottle anything to put on humiliation. Or disappointment. Or fear that a guy is going to tell all of his friends you spent the evening covered in cat drool.