“And Mom loves me?”
“And Mom loves you. And Aaron loves you. And even Alicia loves you.”
“But—” she said. “What about Scrumpy? What are we going to do about him?”
Dad stole one of her broken pieces and popped it in his mouth. “I have an idea about that.”
They buried Scrumpy in the backyard of the duplex, and Eleanor and Owen painted a special brick to be the gravestone. The brick had a drawing of two lightsabers on it, crossed. And it also had waves and fish food and sailboats painted all around the sides, because those were things Scrumpy liked. And if Eleanor ever moved again, she could take the brick to the new house. If she wanted to.
Eleanor and Owen were grounded from walking around the neighborhood by themselves. For the rest of the week, they stayed in the backyard or inside. Owen and Michael finished the first Narnia book, but Eleanor hadn’t finished the second one yet. She started hers over so that they could all listen to it together. Saturday they had supper at Pizza King. And they played together every day.
A week after the running away, Eleanor’s dad invited Owen to go on an errand, which was weird. And Eleanor wasn’t invited, which was even weirder. And they did not come back until suppertime. Aaron and Alicia made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup from a can, and Eleanor’s mom came home from work, and they all started eating. Then, finally, Eleanor’s dad and Owen walked in the door. Owen’s mom and dad and Michael joined them.
Owen carried a cardboard box.
Owen held the box very carefully in both hands, and his face was bright, like he was about to explode. The box was a big shoebox, the size for winter boots, and it was taped shut with one piece of silver tape, and it had little round holes in the top just big enough to stick your pinky finger through.
Eleanor’s dad said, “It’s a surprise for the whole family—but mostly for Eleanor, because she misses Scrumpy.”
“And I picked her out,” said Owen.
Her?
“Ohhhhhh! It’s a new fish!” shouted Michael.
“Not in a cardboard box with holes,” said Alicia.
“Is that . . . ?” said Eleanor. She stood still in the middle of the room. She didn’t dare hope too hard. “Is that . . . ?”
“Open it,” said her dad.
“Open it!” yelled Michael.
Owen held out the box. But by then Eleanor already knew. Because the box was meowing.
She opened it. Inside was a kitten, tiny and fuzzy and stripy.
Owen said, “She’s orange, just like Scrumpy. I picked her for you. She was the only orange one.”
Eleanor was too excited to say anything. Her eyes shone.
Eleanor and Owen sat cross-legged on the floor next to each other, and Eleanor’s dad reached into the box and put the kitten on her lap. It meowed. It crawled from her lap to Owen’s and back again. It licked both their hands. It was so fuzzy and little.
And everyone was laughing and talking, and there was a litter box and a food bowl and a water bowl and cat toys that looked like little mice. And the kitten had the softest little pink pads on her feet and tiny little claws that prickled when she walked on your bare legs. And she had whiskers that tickled when you put your face next to hers.
After a while, all the grown-ups went to the backyard with lemonade and with Michael. Alicia went to her friend Millie’s, and Aaron went back to his room. Owen and Eleanor and the kitten were alone in the living room.
“She’s the best kitten ever,” said Owen.
“She is,” Eleanor said. “We’re going to share her.”
“Really?” said Owen.
“Yes,” said Eleanor. “Because we live in the same house, and you’re my best friend. Right?”
He nodded.
“We’ll feed her and take care of her together. We’ll train her to be a Jedi cat. She’ll live at both apartments.”
“My mom is allergic to cats,” said Owen. “We can’t have a kitten.”
“Oh,” said Eleanor, who had been imagining how to fit the kitten into the pulley basket or on the trebuchet to launch her from bedroom to bedroom. “Well, okay then. She’ll live here, and you’ll just have to visit all the time.”
Owen grinned. That would work fine. It would be like having a cat but without his mom sneezing.
“She needs a name,” said Eleanor. “I know exactly the right one.”
Owen said, “Scrumpy the Fifth?”
Eleanor shook her head, smiling. “Guess again.”
Owen thought about all the fun things they’d done since they met—reading Narnia, building Lego robots and play dough monsters, rebuilding the trebuchet to make it throw heavy things like tomatoes. He thought about fencing. He thought about Star Wars and all the times he defeated Darth Vader or (if Vader was good that day) fought with Vader to defeat the Dark Side. “Um . . . Good Vader?” he said. “Jedi Queen?”
She shook her head, grinning. “One more guess.”
Owen thought all the way back to the day they met, when Eleanor was standing on the sidewalk holding her fish up to the sunlight and promising to bring him home. He thought about the pulley they rigged later that day out his bedroom window. He thought about riding the bus together and the empty tree and Eleanor crying. He thought about secret codes. And he thought about all the things that a cat might secretly mean: home and family and love and belonging. And then he knew.
“Oh!” said Owen. “The kitten’s name is Goldfish!”
It was the perfect name.
Later, Owen was almost ready to go to bed when he got a message from the Millennium Falcon.
GOLDFISH IS HUNGRY!
(This is not a code.)
And he ran downstairs to help feed his and Eleanor’s kitten.
About the Author
In addition to Owen and Eleanor Move In,
