White Cat by Holly Black Read Free Book Online

that grew into mountains Philip, Barron, and I would climb and leap from. The heaps of garments filled the hallway and chased my parents out of their own bedroom, so that they eventually slept in the room that was once Dad’s office. Empty bags and boxes filled in the gaps in the clutter, boxes that once held rings and sneakers and clothes. A trumpet that my mother wanted to make into a lamp rested atop a stack of tattered magazines filled with articles Dad planned to read, near the heads and feet and arms of dolls Mom promised she would stitch together for a kid from Carney, all beside an endless heap of replacement buttons, some still in their individual glassine bags. A coffeemaker rested on a tower of plates, propped up on one end to keep coffee from flooding the counters.
    It’s strange to see it all, just the way it was when my parents lived here. I pick up a nickel off the countertop and flip it along my knuckles, just like Dad taught me.
    “This place is a pigsty,” Grandad says, walking out of the dining room, clipping a suspender onto his pants.
    After spending months living in the orderly dorms of Wallingford, where they give you a Saturday detention if your room doesn’t pass semi-regular inspections, I feel the old conflicting sense of familiarity and disgust. I breathe in the moldy, stale smell, with something sour in it that might be old sweat. Philip drops my bag onto the cracked linoleum floor.
    “What’s the chance of me borrowing the car?” I ask Grandad.
    “Tomorrow,” he says. “If we get enough done. You make a doctor’s appointment?”
    “Yeah,” I lie, “that’s why I need the car.” What I need is to have enough time alone that I can put my plan to get back into Wallingford into effect. That does involve a doctor, but not one who’s expecting me.
    Philip takes off his sunglasses. “Your appointment is when?”
    “Tomorrow,” I say impulsively, shifting my gaze to Philip and elaborating. “At two. With Dr. Churchill, sleep specialist. In Princeton. That okay with you?” The best lies have as much truth in them as possible, so I tell them exactly where I’m planning on going. Just not why.
    “Maura sent over some stuff,” Philip says. “Lemme bring it in before I forget.” Neither of them suggests coming with me to the completely fabricated appointment, which fills me with profound and undeserved relief.
    Someone could cut through the mess in our house and look at it like one might look at rings on a tree or layers of sediment. They’d find the black-and-white hairs of a dog we had when I was six, the acid-washed jeans my mother once wore, the seven blood-soaked pillowcases from the time I skinned my knee. All our family secrets rest in endless piles.
    Sometimes the house just seemed filthy, but sometimes it seemed magical. Mom could reach into some nook or bag or closet and pull out anything she needed. She pulled out a diamond necklace to wear to a New Year’s party along with citrine rings with gems as big as thumbnails. She pulled out the entire run of Narnia books when I was feverish and tired of all the books scattered beside my bed. And she pulled out a set of hand-carved black and white chess pieces when I finished reading Lewis.
    “There’s cats out there,” my grandfather says, looking out the window as he washes a coffee cup in the sink. “In the barn.”
    Philip sets down a bag of groceries carefully. His expression is strange.
    “Feral,” says Grandad, using a fork to pry an ancient piece of toast out of the old toaster, and tossing it into the trash bag he hooked over the basement doorknob.
    I walk over to where he’s standing and peer out the window. I can see them, tiny liquid shapes. A tabby jumps atopa rusted can of paint, while a white cat sits in a patch of long weeds, just the end of its tail twitching. “You think they’ve been living here long?”
    My grandfather shakes his head.
    “I bet they were pets. They look like pets.”
    Grandad