Page 43 of Kitten

Who called me Mulan at your birthday party

Lou liked my message complimenting the apartment.

no he did notttt lmao

yes he did!

She liked my message but did not respond. I pictured her showing the messages to Becca, the two of them laughing at my desperation. My phone vibrated with another incoming call from James. I put it down, tried braiding my hair. Had Lou always been this important to me? I called her my roommate, but instead, all this time, she was my friend. I felt like the butt of a joke: the last to understand why it was funny, and then why it was sad.

Furiously I thought about the law library, the payroll lady on vacation. If she’d paid me on time, I would’ve handled the utilities, and Lou might not have moved out. I pictured flinging myself down the steps of the law library when I was back in the city, but they’d probably just send me to HR. Even if I did something truly terrible to my body, they would not be obligated to care. They would simply employ somebody else—they already had—and it was me who owed them anyway, me who should be grateful they let me continue after graduation. But what about common decency? What aboutkindness? I emailed all of this to the payroll lady, including the sentence about flinging myself down the steps of their building. I read it over. I added, at the beginning,I hope your vacation is going well!Then I accidentally clicked send. It sent. There was no automatic reply. I filled with regret.

Next to my toe, only one beetle remained, belly-up, legs wriggling. The other one, the winner, had gone. I couldn’t tell if this was my beetle and reached to flip it. But I stopped myself. If this was the bigger one, then maybe, I thought, he should stay down. I watched the beetle struggle for a few minutes, becoming gradually disappointed by its ineptitude, then left.

—

The sun had set bythe time I returned to James’s house. The moment I opened the door, I was hit with the bitter, familiar odor of vomit. I raced upstairs, skipping every other step. On the bedroom floor lay an empty aluminum tin. All ten tubes of watercolor were pierced and leaking, the cowhiderug covered in violet puke. For a second I thought: Oh good, now I no longer have anything to paint with. Then my knees buckled. My hands found Silver beneath the bed. I cradled her, limp and unconscious, to my chest.

I called Isabelle and asked her calmly if she could drive me to the vet.

13

The waiting room was full of dogs. Most hadn’t stopped yowling since they arrived. One had pooed in his crate, making the whole room smell of feces. A select few were so well-mannered I suspected they were planted there by the vets to model good behavior. There were no cats, which worried me. When was the last time they’d operated on a cat?

Isabelle bought two chocolate bars from the vending machine. “We might be here for a while,” she said. It was seven. We arrived two hours ago. There had been a waiting line for the emergency room, and it was full of dogs that looked fine. When I asked to skip the line, showing Silver’s paint-stained muzzle, the woman at the front desk told me that everybody had to wait their turn. “Not all illnesses are visible,” she said pointedly.

When Silver’s turn finally came, I was relieved. But it’d been hours since they vanished with her behind the white door next to my chair, and I began to regret giving her up.

“Please sit back down.” The woman from the front desk materialized next to me. “You can’t go in there.”

I saw that I was knocking on the door. Someone grabbed my arm and tugged. Isabelle. She sat me down and rubbed her hand up and down my thigh. She was always doing that, putting her hands on parts of my body. “It’ll be okay, they know Silver,” she said. “She’s been with them since James first found her. They’re good, I promise.”

It didn’t matter how long they’d known Silver if she could still die. I had been out for the entire afternoon. I wasn’t sure how long the paints had been in her system. Maybe she was hungry, very possibly I’d forgotten to feed her. I hadn’t eaten yet, which meant she probably hadn’t, either.

Eventually, Isabelle fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. A long time passed before the door opened at last and the vet beckoned us in. She led us into a room with an aluminum island at the center. I gasped at the sight of Silver’s unmoving body on the surface, nearly white under the fluorescent light. A yellow bandage wrapped around her right wrist, thin as a noodle.

“She’s okay, just knocked out for a while,” said the vet. They’d induced more vomiting and pumped her with fluids. The vet reassured me it wasn’t my fault, but I knew that it was. The last time she ate something she shouldn’t have and got sick was when James and I left for dinner on my birthday. I wondered if animals, like babies, lacked object permanence. If they knew that when people disappeared, it wasn’t forever. I thought Silver was probably smarter than a baby, but maybe she wasn’t. She was just a small creature. When you were that small, all suffering was unbearable, you had no idea when it would end. Didn’t I feel that wayas a child? Back then, wasn’t there a part of me that feared my mother would go on one of her long drives and never come back? I used to fantasize about something terrible happening to me, being kidnapped or starving to death, my mother opening the door to a quiet house.

I stepped toward the table. As soon as I stuck out my hand, Silver opened her eyes, yawned, and leaned into my touch, as if she’d been faking sleep the entire time, waiting for my cue to drop the act.

“Little thing,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for leaving you.”

Silver licked my finger. Her tongue was dry and papery and left no trace on my skin. Behind me, Isabelle and the vet stood in silence while I ran my fingers down the silky fur of her back. The buzz of the fluorescent ceiling light took over the room. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before the vet cleared her throat and said, in a bright voice, “All right, I’m going to have to see the next furry friend in need,” and I clasped my hands tight so as not to slap her.

—

Silver had to stay overnightso they could ensure the paint passed through her system successfully. The total cost for her treatment was $1,299. The woman at the front desk said this like “twelve ninety-nine,” so I put my card down. It was declined. In a swift motion Isabelle slid hers before me.

I was given a copy of the invoice with a summary of Silver’s treatment: an exam, IV drip, catheter insertion, bath, and a couple of bags of fluids. On top of the sheet sat Silver’s name in capital letters, followed by my last name. They must’ve processed the intake form before discoveringthat she already existed in their system with James’s family. I knew I would keep this piece of paper forever.

We sat in Isabelle’s car. The warmth of the day had faded, and Isabelle turned on the heating. “I’ll pay you back, I promise,” I said. “It’ll just have to be in increments. My paycheck’s late.”

Isabelle waved the same way her mother did, swatting an invisible bug. “Take as much time as you need. The paycheck thing sounds annoying.”

“I sent my job a strongly worded email about it. I even threatened bodily harm. That part was an accident, though.” I cleared James’s missed calls from my phone screen, then showed Isabelle the email. She shrieked and grabbed my phone. I found the action startling and attractive, like so many of her mannerisms. Certain people could get away with snatching phones out of people’s hands. Lou was also one of these people.

“You’re insane, you’reinsane,” Isabelle said. She read aloud: “ ‘I will do terrible things to myself, possibly in your own building. I am not beyond throwing myself down a flight of stairs.’ Holy shit, Katie.”

“It’s bad, right? I’m so embarrassed. But I was really mad.”