Лори Касс - Gone With The Whisker

Kate slumped, catching her breath. “Give me a sec.” I felt the weight of her as she rested and I did my best to communicate courage and strength by laying my forehead against her knees.

After a moment, she pulled in a breath. “Okay,” she said, picking up her head. “We’re like five feet closer than when we started. Let’s see. That lowest license plate isn’t that far away now and . . . Yes! It’s hanging off a couple of nails! And they look wobbly, I bet I can work them free. One for you and one for me!”

She immediately started the shoulder-feet shuffle again, and I hurried to catch up to her. A few more one, two, oof s later, Kate said, “Hold it, I think we’re close enough. I just have to . . .” She grunted and oofed and I found myself pulled around by her strength. Yet another advantage of being compact in size; the ability to be hauled around by your niece when tied together in a dark shed.

“Okay.” She twisted around. “Now I reach up and pull out the nails, right? Then we’ll use the points to start cutting these strings. It’ll take a while, but I think this will really work!”

“Go slow,” I cautioned. “We don’t want to—”

A tiny Thud! noise was followed by a howl from my niece. “I dropped it!” she sobbed.

“We’re fine,” I said soothingly. “Don’t worry. Can you see it?”

Kate sniffed, and I felt her head twist around. “No . . . hang on, yes.” She sniffed again. “But it’s rolled under the edge of the wall. It’s outside and I can’t reach it.”

“That’s okay. There’s another nail, remember?”

Sniff . “Yeah. There is. But with two nails we could both have been working at cutting us apart.”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “Work on the other one.”

“Okay.” She sniffed again and shifted a bit. “Um, there’s something I should tell you. That guy my parents kept telling you I was messed up over? I got over him months ago. I don’t know why Mom and Dad think I’m still thinking about him.”

“Um,” I said. “That’s . . . good. I mean, that’s great. That you’re over him.”

“And there’s another thing.” Her shoulders shifted as she reached for the nail. “My tablet? What I’m doing on it mostly is Moon Time.”

I frowned. “Um . . .”

She sighed. “It’s a video game for little kids. It’s embarrassing to be caught playing it. My friends make fun of me.”

“I read middle grade books,” I told her. “And not for work, but because I like to.”

“Yeah? But I have to tell you one other thing. I don’t really get sick at the smell of food cooking in a restaurant.”

Such a surprise. “No?”

“No.” She sighed. “I was just nervous about working in one. A restaurant, I mean. All those people on TV, they really know what they’re doing, and I don’t know how to do anything. I’m not sure I even like to cook,” she said, sounding ashamed. “I mean, I can, but . . .”

So she was my flesh and blood after all. “Not sure if you’ve noticed,” I said, “but I’m not overly fond of cooking, myself.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. I just thought you were too busy. I thought all grown-ups liked to cook.”

As if.

“Okay,” she said. “I can feel the nail, only—” She stopped. “This one’s in deep,” she whispered. “I can’t get it out. Not without a hammer or something.”

“Next plan,” I said calmly, as I tried to think of one. “That license plate. Can you get it down?”

“Um, maybe. Let’s see . . .” She lifted her head. “What was that noise?” Kate asked.

I went still. “What noise?” Because if Courtney and Luke were back early, our chances to escape had dwindled to basically none. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Shh!”

And then I heard it. A rustle of leaves that wasn’t the wind. An approaching rustle. I couldn’t hear any footsteps, but someone—something—was making that noise. I flexed my hands, trying once again to break the twine, and again didn’t get anywhere.

The rustle came closer. And closer. And then:

“Mrr.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Eddie, what are you doing here?”

“Mrr!”

Kate laughed. Actually laughed. “He missed us. Well, you, anyway. Maybe me a little.”

“But his cage was latched!”

“Yeah, about that.”

“Mrr!”

Eddie’s well-being had been at the back of my mind since Courtney and Luke had appeared on the trail, but now I had to face this new reality. And I didn’t like any of the possibilities of what might happen to my fuzzy little friend any more than I liked what might happen to Kate. Or me.

“Right,” I said. “Back to the license plate. Its edges will be relatively sharp. The sooner we can cut ourselves free, the sooner we’ll get out of here and not have to listen to him anymore.”

Because Eddie was whining. And scratching at the shed’s siding. And giving the occasional howl.

Kate shifted some more, tightening the twine around my body. “Okay, I can feel the corner . . . got the corner . . . the edge . . . got the whole thing!” she called triumphantly.

“Great,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Now see if you can use that to—”

“I know what to do.” Kate contorted herself and started sawing at the twine binding us together. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

I swallowed my initial response. “If you want me to move so you can get a better angle, just let me know.”

She grunted and I waited, hoping and praying that the strands would part under the plate’s rusty metal edge like the proverbial knife through butter. I looked up at the window. While it had always been dark in the shed, the faint light coming in seemed even fainter. Dimmer. Which either meant a cloud was passing overhead, or that we’d been in here for hours and it was getting dark.

I stared at the window. The forecast had been for clear skies and no clouds had been in sight the entire day. Hurry, I silently said to my niece. Please hurry hurry hurry—

“MRRR!!!”

This time the howl came so close to my head that I wished for earplugs. “Eddie, geez Louise! Could you lighten up already? And what are you scratching at?” Not that I cared if he damaged the shed—have at it, pal—but the noises his paws were making weren’t of the scratching variety.

And then I caught on.

“Kate,” I said. “I bet Eddie thinks your nail is a cat toy. Is there any way you could entice him to push it our way?”

“The nail? Why would he think that’s a toy?”

“Because he’s a cat. Now if you could—”

“Don’t need to,” she said. “He’s already pushed it back this way.”

No wonder he was howling. He wanted his toy back. “Hang on to the license plate, and we’ll move around so I can get the nail.”

“Or,” Kate said, “I pass the plate over to you and I start using the nail. The plate’s bigger, so even if we drop it, we could find it again.”

It was a good plan, and we carried it out immediately to the accompaniment of an occasional quiet “Mrr” from Eddie. It was hard work, far harder than I’d expected, and it took some time to saw ourselves loose from each other.

When the last piece of twine parted, we rolled away from each other, and lay there, breathing deep and free. “Is this what the parting of conjoined twins feels like?” Kate asked.

I smiled. “Next time I run into some, I’ll ask. Can you stand?”

Standing with your hands tied behind your back is a trick, but with the support of each other, and the shed’s walls, we managed to get upright. “Okay,” I said. “I’m holding the license plate. You turn around and rub the twine on your hands against it.”