The Cat at the Wall by Deborah Ellis Read Free Book Online

finished with his meal. He licked his tray clean. He took it over to the City of Dreams, got some scissors and tape off a shelf and started turning it into a new house for his city.
    Aaron collected the rest of the trays, rinsed them off in the sink and gave them to the boy.
    The boy reached into one of the turrets on the castle and brought out a bag of candies. He offered one to each soldier. Aaron took one. Simcha didn’t.
    I butted my head against the boy’s leg. He handed Simcha’s candy to me. I took it in my teeth and stored it away under the sofa.
    Another Thing that was Mine.
    “What are we going to do with him?” Simcha asked. “What if his parents don’t show up and we have to leave? Do we take him with us?”
    “I don’t know,” Aaron said. “I haven’t run into this before. When we’ve taken over a house with a family, we put everyone in the back room. The parents look after the kids. I guess we’d have to take him with us and turn him over to the unit commander. Make the kid his problem.”
    “You look as though you don’t like that plan.”
    “I don’t,” said Aaron. “I’ve seen full-blown riots form out of the blue on a calm sunny day. These people get some tiny bit of half-baked information and blow it all out of proportion without even bothering to find out if it’s true or not. Next thing you know, someone’s shouting, stones are flying, some idiot starts tossing Molotov cocktails, and people are getting hurt.”
    Aaron thought for a moment, then picked up the radio.
    “I’m going to call it in,” he said. “It’s one of those little things that could turn into a big thing. Let someone higher up make the decision about what to do with the boy.”
    He turned the radio on. All he got was a bit of static. Then even that went quiet.
    “Battery’s dead,” he said. “Get the spares, will you?”
    Simcha looked around for the spare batteries. Then Aaron looked. They couldn’t find them because they were under the sofa where I had hidden them.
    “I’m sure I packed them,” said Simcha. “Can we use the recorder batteries?”
    “Wrong size,” Aaron said. He looked out the window. “It’s quiet out there now. Maybe we should just go.”
    I could have handed the batteries over to them, but I didn’t want to. There were more ready-to-eat meals in the duffel bags. I wasn’t going to let the soldiers get away until I had another chance at a good meal.
    I went to the door and plopped down in front of it, blocking their way out.
    Nobody was going anywhere.

Ten
    —
    The second detention I got was for not moving.
    I was in the hallway with my crew, standing by the long row of lockers near the autoshop room. We were doing what we usually did when we weren’t in class — hanging out, eating, brushing our hair, talking about other kids and complaining about teachers. Nothing special. For sure nothing evil.
    None of us had lockers in that section, but we liked to hang out there because the hallway was narrow and we could all find a locker to lean against and still look at each other and talk without having to shout. Plus we liked that all the kids coming down the hall had to pass close by us, and sometimes we wouldn’t let them. Some of the boys coming out of autoshop were funny looking, and we could make them feel bad. There was also a teachers’ washroom in that area. We could stare at them as they came out and make them think they had toilet paper on their shoes or something. We could see what everyone was wearing and if their hair looked funny. It was fun.
    There was one kid in our school in a wheelchair. He had cerebral palsy and was really popular, even though his family had no money, he couldn’t play sports and he didn’t wear cool clothes. I never talked to him.
    He had a motor on his wheelchair so that he could move it himself. I could see him coming toward us, and I decided I was tired of him being so popular for doing nothing more than sitting in a wheelchair. I