Anne Ursu: The Shadow Thieves

"What are you going to call her?" asked her father, putting the bags in the car.

"At least until she's claimed," said her mother, getting into the front seat.

"Bartholomew," said Charlotte.

It just came out of her mouth -"Bartholomew" – but maybe that, too, was fate. Because Bartholomew is an excellent name for a cat, even if the cat is a girl cat and Bartholomew is a boy's name. Because cats need names, even if you are going to pretend the cat is temporary (when you know it is not). Because you can shorten it to Mew, which is really the most fabulous nickname for a cat ever. And because Bartholomew was currently curled up fast asleep on Charlotte's lap.

"Once upon a time there was a cat with no home," Charlotte whispered to Mew. "And there was a girl with a home but no cat. But then the cat found the girl, and the girl took the cat to her home, and then they moved to Prague together and opened a coffee shop and lived happily ever after."

But Bartholomew was not the only surprise in store for Charlotte that day. At dinner that night- take-out Chinese food from the restaurant next to the pet store-Mrs. Mielswetzski suddenly slapped her forehead.

"Oh!" she said, looking at her husband.

"Oh!" said Mr. Mielswetzski, looking at his wife. "We completely forgot."

"In all the excitement!"

"We have news."

"Good news!"

"At least we hope you think it's good news," said Mrs. Mielswetzski.

"I'm sure she will," said Mr. Mielswetzski.

"Well, you never know"

"Oh, she'll be thrilled!"

Charlotte waited. It often took her parents some time to get to the point. Sometimes she thought that they were actually one person who had been divided into male and female parts by a mad scientist. Anyway, she was in no hurry; her parents' idea of good news did not quite match her own-it tended to involve an outing to History Days or a bout of family therapy. Besides, no news could possibly be better than the news currently curled up on the bench right next to her. Charlotte let her hand rest on Mew's softly breathing belly.

"Well," said Mrs. Mielswetzski, "I've been talking to Uncle John…"

Charlotte perked up. Uncle John and Aunt Suzanne lived in London with their son, Zachary, who was Charlotte's age. The Millers had all come over one summer when Charlotte was six- Charlotte had vague memories of kicking around a soccer ball with her cousin, who kept insisting on calling it a football, and at the time she had thought he was very, very stupid. In the last couple of years Charlotte had repeatedly tried to convince her parents to go to London to visit them-not that she was desperate to visit family she barely remembered, but she was quite interested in going to England. The Mielswetzskis kept saying they might go sometime, when the time was right, maybe next year, maybe for Christmas. Charlotte almost had them convinced this summer, but then Aunt Suzanne's mother died, and Charlotte's mother and father said it wouldn't be right. Charlotte wanted to go to London so badly-life certainly couldn't be so banal in London. She had thought maybe she could even spend a year there sometime, and then she would "try harder" and "meet new people" and "have a better attitude." Someday she was going to live there and take photography lessons; her mother said she'd send her to photography lessons right where they were. That totally missed the point. London sounded like the coolest place in the world-though, let's face it, anything for Charlotte would have been better than where she was.

"Well," Charlotte's mother smiled, "Uncle John is going to be transferred back here in the winter! They're going to live right near us. The whole family."

Charlotte tried to mask her disappointment. So much for her glamorous new life abroad. She scratched Mew's ears comfortingly.

"But that's not all," her mother said. "Uncle John and Aunt Suzanne didn't want Zachary to have to start at a new school in the winter. So…" She held out her hands expansively "Your cousin is going to come live with us. Isn't that great?"

Charlotte blinked. Great wasn't quite the word. Bad wasn't the word either, by any means. It was neither great nor bad, it was entirely without greatness or badness. It was neutral. It simply was. Like school lunch or piano lessons, her cousin's impending arrival seemed to be just a fact of life, one more ordinary thing in what had been-until just that afternoon-an exasperatingly ordinary life.

But Charlotte tried to be enthusiastic for the sake of her mother, and her father smiled at her and said, "See? I knew she'd be delighted." And her mother beamed and said, "Oh, honey. It will be like you have a brother!" And Charlotte smiled and did not say a word, not a word; everything she had to say was expressed by her hand on her kitten's gently humming back.

So all was well in the Mielswetzski house. Charlotte was happy, for the first time in months, and her parents were happy too. They believed everything that they had said to their daughter about Uncle John's transfer and about the reasons for Zachary's sudden move. They had no reason not to; the story certainly made sense. But the fact is, Uncle John had not quite been honest with his sister. He was going to be transferred in the winter, yes, and the whole family would be moving, yes. But he did not mention that he had actually requested the transfer and that winter was the soonest he could get it. He did not mention that the whole reason for the transfer was to move his son away, as soon as possible, and the fact that he was being abruptly taken out of his school and shipped off to America had nothing to do with his education. So Mr. and Mrs. Mielswetzski could not be blamed at all-the liar here was Uncle John. But you must not be too hard on him. He was desperate.

CHARLOTTE WAS ONE MONTH INTO THE SCHOOL YEAR at Hartnett Preparatory School, and thus far the year had proved to be just like all the other years, except more so. Eight of the girls in her class, whose names all began with A, had left for the summer as brunettes and had come back as blondes. They paraded through the hallways like an eerie airhead cult, and just as their hair had lightened, they seemed to have faded a little – they had lost form, character, color, as if their very atoms had spread out and could barely be distinguished from the walls around them. Charlotte wondered if they had all fallen victim to some elaborate brainwashing scheme. She didn't know whether to feel proud that she had escaped that fate or insulted that the brainwasher didn't want her.

But the girls' transformation was far overshadowed by that of identical twins Lewis and Larry Larson, who had gone to fat camp and come back shadows of their former selves. The change had thrown all of the rest of the boys into a strange predicament- since Lewis and Larry had once been tremendously fat, the other boys had, in their banal way, believed the twins should be teased, but since Lewis and Larry were no longer fat, the boys could find nothing to tease them about. This quandary had thrown the eighth-grade males into a state of dull disquiet as they pondered the nebulous nature of the universe.

So the girls had faded and the boys were in a state of constant melancholic unease, and thus there spread a pall over the entire eighth grade.

All the teachers noticed it. Nobody shouted out the answers in class anymore, nobody even raised his hand. Attempts at discussion resulted in vast silences; lectures were greeted with glassy-eyed stares. The most vibrant and popular students seemed to be living inside a gigantic ball of existential goo.

One by one the teachers changed their approach. Even the most mild mannered of them became fierce and confrontational, sending an unrelenting barrage of questions into the classroom, picking out defenseless students and daring them not to answer.