*************

            “Why right now?” I asked.

            “Well…your father is an idiot and doesn’t seem to realize that even geniuses need to take a vacation now and then.  And my boss agreed that I’ve worked long enough to cash in a couple weeks.  Don’t you want to go?”  Mom raised her eyebrows at me with a grin.

            “Of course I want to go!” I laughed.  “I just didn’t get why you wanted to do this so out of the blue.  So, when are we leaving?”

            “Today, if possible,” said Dad.

            “I need to go pack then, huh?”

            Mom shook her head.  “No.  I’ve already got a bag packed for you.”

            “Oh.”  I sat down again.  “Well…how long till we leave?”

            “A few hours,” said Dad.  “I have a program to finish and your mom has to make some phone calls.”

            “To make sure no one screws up the meeting day after tomorrow,” she clarified.

            “Ah.”  I fidgeted.  “Can I ride my bike down to the farm, then?”

            “Sure,” said Dad, Mom nodding in agreement.  Then they both looked at each other, but they were smiling.

            “ ‘Kay, I’ll be back in an hour.”  With that, I walked out the back door and grabbed my bicycle from where it leaned against a tree, mounted it, and took off down the dirt path.

            The “farm” is a place about a mile away from my house.  It belongs to an elderly woman and her son, who train horses there.  They have a huge old barn and it’s full of cats and a couple dogs.  There’s even a ferret living in there, although the cats despise it.  Sometimes I would go visit the Houstons—that was their name—and maybe even help out with stuff.  Ms. Houston’s husband died seven years back and her son Robert moved in to keep up the work.

            As I came out of the trees and into the cleared area that was the farm, I had to get off my bike and toss it over a fence, clambering after it myself.  From there, it was a downhill ride to the leveled space where the buildings and a few of the corrals were placed.  Robert waved at me as I came speeding down on the bicycle.

            For the next 15 minutes I helped exercise a new filly that had been delivered that morning.  Ms. Houston demanded that I let her feed me, so I stuffed myself with her wonderful cornbread and a plate of grilled ribs.  Then I hung out at the barn.  One of the cats had had a new litter of kittens and four of the five were calicos.  Robert said I could name two of them, but the rest were going to be given to a farm up the mountain.  I named one female calico Sunny and the one black male kitten Obsidian, which quickly evolved into Sid.

            Finally, I decided I’d better be getting home.  I’d said I’d be gone only an hour, and time was running out.

            Ms. Houston, however, wasn’t done with me.  She looked at me with sad brown eyes as she said, “Would you like to take one of those babies with you, hon?”

            I wondered what it was that had upset her.  She was such a cheerful person, and the reason for her eyes to be so sorrowful was beyond me.  “I’d love one, ma’am.  But I don’t think Mom would like it.  Clean freak, remember?”

            This seemed to make her even sadder for some reason.  I shifted indecisively in the farmyard, confused and uncertain.  Robert came to my rescue.

            “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you having a little piece of happiness for yourself,” he said.

            That made sense.  “You’re probably right…can I have Sid then?”

            “Of course,” said Ms. Houston.  She gave a cheery smile, but her eyes were still sad.

            Robert gave me an old leather book bag to carry Sid in.  Ms. Houston stuffed it with a flannel shirt that had been ripped up past repair and I settled the sleepy kitten into it, hanging the bag’s strap around my neck.  With a last wave to the Houstons, I walked up the hill, walking my bike beside me.  Getting over the fence was a little more difficult than before, what with my new package, but I managed, and it was less than five minutes before I was leaning the bike against the wall again at home.

            I checked the book bag before I walked inside.  Sid was curled amongst the flannel folds, and he blinked blue eyes up at me blearily before yawning and settling back to sleep.  I couldn’t help loving him.

***********************

            Mom was okay with the kitten.  That surprised me.  She’d said once that she thought cats and dogs were intent on making everything a mess and she didn’t want one in her nice house.  She’d been smiling when she said it, but she was serious.  What was up with the sudden rule slackening?  Ah, who cared…

            Dad and Mom were doing something in another room, arguing a little but no more than usual.  I sat on the couch, Sid curled sleeping on my lap, and watched Cartoon Network’s Toonami block.  Gundum Wing was on, which I currently counted as a “good enough to love” anime…  God, was I bored.  Mom had said we wouldn’t be leaving for at least another two hours.

            “Hey, Dad!” I called.

            “Yeah?”

            “Since there’s nothing for me to do and we’re gonna be here for a while, ya think I could have Ben over till we leave?”

            Where usually, I would’ve received an instant reply, I heard silence.  Then, my parents started to talk in low voices, seemingly discussing this.  What the freak was going on in this house these days?

            “No!” Mom finally responded.

            “Huh?” I was, quite simply, bewildered.  “Why not?”

            “Because I said so, young lady!”

            “…Dad?”

            “No, kiddo.  Sorry.”

            “Mmm, ‘kayyyyy…” I shrugged at Sid, who gave me a sleepy feline grin.  “I hope you’re not gonna do this all the time,” I told him.

            As if to mock this, he yawned exaggeratedly.  I couldn’t help quoting something Ryo said like a philosophy: “Sometimes, I wonder if cats are really a superior race in disguise, analyzing us to decide whether we’re worth it or not.”

***********************

            Time had crawled by, most of which I spent eating and watching TV.  I would’ve gone outside and done something but it had started raining.  Our bags were by the door, waiting to be carried out.  Dad was getting a raincoat before he started moving the luggage, and Mom had asked me to get her a cup of hot tea, which was simple enough that I didn’t screw it up too often.  Mom always had a pitcher of tea in the fridge, so all I had to do was put it in a cup and heat it up with the microwave.

            Standing in the kitchen, with Sid lying limply around my neck, his legs, head, and tail dangling over my shoulders, I found myself humming a tune.  Strange, it sounds familiar…what is it?  I couldn’t remember.  The microwave timer beeped in signal that it was done.  I checked to see how hot the tea was and decided to nuke it for 30 seconds more.

            I sighed and my gaze wandered around the kitchen as I waited.  My glance happened upon the kitchen phone.  Wouldn’t hurt to call Ben before I left, would it?  I picked it up and dialed the number I knew by heart.

            Riiiiiiiiiing…Riiiiiiiiiing…Click.

            “Hello?”

            “Hi, Ben.”

            “Les?”

            “Yeah.  You sound surprised to hear from me.”

            “That’s because I am!  Where are you?”

            “Whadda ya mean?”  I laughed.  “I’m right where I’m supposed to be.  Look, I’m gonna have to leave you for a while.  Might bug you a bit later some way or other, so be prepared for something,” I said, thinking about post cards and stuff like that.  “Don’t really know where I’m going, of course… Eh, anyway, I—”

            “Lessa, I’m serious.  Where are you?”

            I snorted.  Ben was being so wacky today.  “I already told you.”  The microwave had been beeping for quite a time now, so I figured I better take Mom her tea.  “Gotta go, Ben.  I’ll be seeing you.” I hardly gave him time to say ‘bye’ himself before I hung up.

            As I was taking the tea to Mom, I accidentally splashed some on myself.  Hot!!!

            I jumped and shrieked.  Sid skittered away across the carpet, frightened to death.  Luckily, I didn’t spill much more of the tea.  But I’d succeeded in making a mess.

            “Maaaaan, I can’t do anything cooking-oriented without screwing up!”

            Dad trotted into the hallway from the door, his raincoat on.  “What happened?”

            “Split the tea,” I grumbled.

            He raised his eyebrows at me.  “Really?  With what?  I wasn’t aware you could do such a thing.”

            I thought about what I’d said and then groaned.  “Spilt.  I spilt the tea.”

            “So I noticed.  Well…we don’t have time to clean it up.  C’mon, time to go.”

            I stood there, dumbfounded.  “Ehhhh?”

            “We’re leaving now,” he said slowly, as if I were a two-year-old.  “Come on.”  He turned and grabbed a bag of luggage as he walked out the front door.  I threw my hands in the air, surrendering to whoever was in charge of the universe’s sanity.  I turned around and started calling, “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!”

            Sid turned out to be sitting atop one of Mom’s sound system speakers, trying to clean the tea out of his fur.  He yawned at me as I put him in the book bag, and settled down to nap again.  Silly baby.  I hurried to the half-open door and carefully locked it behind me.  Mom was waiting in the suburban, Dad in the passenger seat beside her.  Both of them waved impatiently at me.

            The rain was cold, the kind that made your bones ache after being exposed to it for a while.  I nearly stumbled over my own feet in my rush to get out of it.  Jumping in the car and slamming the door shut quickly, I sighed with relief.  “So…where we going?”

            “I told you, babe, it’s a surprise,” said Dad.

            “Hey, why don’t you get some rest?” Mom suggested, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.

            I smiled.  “Nah, not sleepy.”

            “Suit yourself,” she said and grinned back.

            But it was only five minutes before I found myself yawning.  Sid had crawled out of his book bag and was licking at the tea on his rump again, annoyed.  I lay sideways on the seat—quite a feat for someone wearing a seat belt, as I’m sure several people know—and my kitten adjusted himself to lay cuddled between in the hollow between my hip and torso, purring his little head off.

            I really wanted to stay awake…

            Yeah, well, didn’t someone once say we can’t always have what we want?

***********************

            It’s for your own good.

Do you remember…

            I remember an edge, the sky…

            …I know what you’re thinking…

            Don’t you ever do that again!

            I’m not worth it…

            I didn’t know.

            I shouldn’t have told you.

            We shouldn’t have come here…

            I know everything about everything around here.

            She won’t last the night.  I’ve won and you know it!

            Sometimes, I think of things that hurt…

            There will be others…

            Let go of me!  I’ll use it…

            No!  Don’t do it!

            Promise to remember…

            …I promise…

***********************

            Have you ever had one of those strange mornings when everything is beautifully—impossibly!—perfect?

When I woke, that was how things were.  Soft sheets around me and a plump pillow pressed to my cheek.  I refused to open my eyes yet, fearing that this dream would seep away into the cracks of reality.  A sweet scent drifted past my nose, alien and intoxicating.  I breathed it in deeply, sighing on the exhale.  I felt warmth, like a sun through a window, brazenly caressing my cheek, giving a welcome heat to my skin.  The air was crisp, as if it had just recently shrugged off the kind of cold that stone walls and floors give, and very fresh, yet at the same time it was touched with the sweetly musky scent of old rooms…

            God forbid I ever wake up! I thought happily, slipping back into this welcome impossibility with another sleepy sigh.

            So, of course, a moment later I was wide-awake.

            A hiss admonished my sudden movement and pinprick jabs of pain introduced themselves to my bare throat.  Obsidian moved liquidly down my chest and re-solidified in my lap as I sat up.  I scowled at him, rubbing my throat.  “Little brat,” I whined.  “That hurt.”

            He yawned for what had to be the billionth time since we’d met.  I couldn’t stifle my grin.  Yawning myself, I peered about at my surroundings.  “Huh.  We must be there…I mean, here…”

            I was in the room I had envisioned from the hints given by my senses as I awoke.  Stone walls and floors, a big beautiful bed of the kind fairy tale kings sleep in, a fireplace with a half-gone fire smoldering in its recesses, and a window near the bed that I could have stood in easily, with room to spare.  There were curtains drawn back at the window, and I wondered how there could be no pane in it and no air drafting through it.

I threw back the covers, ignoring the half-awake protest of the kitten, and stepped out of the bed.  My shoes and socks sat by the door of the room, which was a massive wooden masterpiece.  I still had on my worn white t-shirt and the broken-kneed jeans, but the plaid flannel shirt was draped across the footboard of the bed.  Sid’s book-bag hung from one of the four bedposts.  There was my Broncos duffel bag on the floor at the end of the bed too.  Rubbing my nose absently, I wandered over to the window, passing a bowl with full of smoldering emerald green ash, which seemed to be giving off the sweet scent I’d smelled earlier.

I was shocked at the scenery beyond the open window.  Rolling blue-green hills covered in lush long-bladed grass that moved in a lovely way under the kisses of a breeze.  Splendid old oaks stood here and there beneath the midday sun, creating puddles of shade that to me—a frequent lie-under-a-tree-and-daydreamer—looked positively luscious.  I turned my attention to the curtains on the window.  They seemed to have patterns woven into them.  I pulled the sashes holding them back and they swung together.  The room didn’t get any darker, but I couldn’t see where the light was coming from.

The curtains turned out to have a scene woven into them, like a two-piece tapestry.  To my surprise, the scene was the exact one I had been looking at through the window a moment before.  The only difference was a young man lying beneath one of the trees, hands behind his head as he gazed up at the sky.  I could almost see the moisture on his lips.  The skill, the time, it must’ve taken to create that masterpiece… “Wow,” I breathed.

Sid was wrapping himself around my ankles and I nearly tripped over his little body.  He cried up at me with a distinctively hungry voice.  At the thought of just the word ‘hungry’, my own stomach set up its own complaint.  I made a face and picked up Obsidian.  He promptly climbed to my shoulder.  “Okay, baby, I’m gonna change clothes and then we’ll go see about food.”

Sid didn’t understand this of course, so he cried again.  My stomach also reissued its own cry.  I laughed and began to pull clothing out of my duffel bag.

***********************

I must have wandered down those damn halls for hours!

I’d left my room and discovered that there was only one other door in the hall, across from mine.  I assumed it must be my parents’ room and I decided against checking to see if they were awake, because, if they weren’t, they’d probably be displeased with me bothering them.  So, being the idiot I sometimes prove to be, I wandered off down the hall, trying to figure out where food might be.  Of course, it didn’t take long for me to get totally, utterly lost.

“Ohhhhhh, maaaaaaan!” I moaned as I found myself facing yet another dead-end.  I’d encountered several of these over the past hour or so.  My stomach and my kitten were quite unhappy with the delay.  Sid was no longer his sleepy self, stalking agitatedly around me, looking around turns and sniffing with disdain at corners.

I sighed and backtracked down that corridor, and turned off it first chance I got, not really caring if I’d already been this way or not.  Sid was being a bit slow keeping up so I called to him over my shoulder as I rounded the turn.