Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love (14 page)

She walks up to them and puts her hands on her hips. “Yo Shally. Yo D’Neece.”

“Why, Doris Jean! Look at your pretty new school!” the one called Shally teases her. “That is one fine house you got there. They make you clean it?” The half-dozen or so girls behind her bust out laughing at that one.

“Shut up, now,” Deej says, perfectly friendly. “I am so impressed you found your way here. You must’ve got yourself a map or something.”

“Subway runs uptown AND down, or did you forget that already?” D’Neece says. “Now come on, tell us about private school! You meet any rich whiteboys yet?”

Deej is laughing, but she’s nervous, I can tell. “These are my friends,” she says, glancing at us and then back at Shally and D’Neece. “We’re gonna go eat now, y’all coming or not?”

A loud conversation ensues over whether we should eat, what we should eat, where we should eat. Deej manages to introduce all of us by name, and though Jess and Shally pretend they’ve never met before, it’s clear they have. Everybody’s talking at the same time, but at least nobody’s fighting.

Until these two sourpuss grown-up guys come strolling down Gramercy Park South.

“This is Gramercy Park. It’s private. It’s a quiet neighborhood,” one of them barks. “Go fight somewhere else.”

The volume of the group doubles as several girls answer at once.

“If you want privacy then stay home!”

“We’re not fighting, we’re talking!”

“If we were fighting you’d know it!”

Then the other guy says the stupidest, stupidest thing.

“So go talk somewhere else,” he says. “Go back uptown, where you belong.”

Now everybody starts yelling, but Deej’s voice soars over the din.

“Excuse me, mister,” says Deej. Shally and D’Neece are flanking her like Charlie’s Angels. “There is NO need for that kind of talk.”

“It makes you sound like a racist bigot, for one thing,” says Trip, stepping right next to Deej. “That kinda thinking is just unhip, dude.”

Everybody gets quiet. I see Shally mouthing the words “rich whiteboy” to D’Neece, who looks impressed.

“Unhip?” snorts the guy, turning his full attention to Trip. “And what are you, a fag?”

“What if I was?” says Trip, locking eyes with him.

“You kids don’t belong here. I’m calling the cops,” says the first guy, taking out his phone.

“Call anyone you want. Just don’t be rude to my friends,” Trip says, as cool as I’ve ever seen anyone be.

All at once, like a flock of pigeons taking off in answer to some mysterious, prearranged signal, the crowd forms a circle around Trip and the Unhip Dude.

“Randall!” I say, in an urgent whisper. “Do something!”

Randall is standing in the relaxed, alert posture I recognize from the dojo, but he doesn’t move. “Trip’s got street smarts,” he answers, watching. He takes a slow, deep breath. “Let him deal with these jerks.”

But I’d seen enough cheesy cop shows on television to get myself all worked up. “He’s on parole, remember?” I blurt. “If the police come, he could be in trouble or something!”

Without looking away from Trip, Randall shakes off the geeky oversized wristwatch he always wears and hands it to me. He pushes up his sleeves. “Don’t tell my sensei,” he murmurs, so only I can hear. “But I kind of always wanted to get into a fight.”

Before I can say
bonne chance,
Randall is in the middle of the circle where Trip is facing off with the Unhip Dude. “What are you, the baby brother?” the guy says to Randall, starting to act all pumped. “The boyfriend?”

“Just a concerned, law-abiding citizen,” says Randall, stepping in front of Trip. “But there’s no law against idiots, unfortunately.”

At the word “idiots,” the guy reaches back and throws his first punch. Hard.

Exactly forty-five seconds after that punch is thrown, Randall and I are standing together on Gramercy Park South, doing something in front of everyone that I never, ever dreamed I’d be doing at all.

But wait! I am getting ahead of myself here! What happens is this:

No matter how the guy tried to hit him, Randall side-stepped it. The punch would come, and all of a sudden Randall was just, elsewhere, like he was zapped by Captain Kirk’s transporter beam and rematerialized a few feet away. The guy was wearing himself out swinging. Randall looked almost bored. The crowd was going wild and rapidly growing, as students from the Pound crossed the street to check out the fight. And Deej was hanging on to Trip for dear life, trying to keep him out of it.

But when the other guy, the one who had called the cops, started to sneak up on Randall from behind, and no one seemed to notice but me, that’s when this Kitten started to see red.

This Kitten experienced, for the first time in her life, what is meant by the term “ferocious clarity.”

I mean, come on! Two against one? That is just not fair.

“Keeeee—YAH!”
I scream, totally unthinking, running and leaping onto the second guy’s back. I lock my arms around his neck and kick furiously. This succeeds in knocking him off balance, if nothing else. He falls to the side, on top of me. My head whacks the pavement. I’m seeing stars, and not the Hollywood kind, as sheer momentum rolls us over each other, till I end up on top. “Don’t move,” I holler in the guy’s face. And I pray he doesn’t, since I have no idea what to do next.

But he’s not moving. He’s not even looking at me. He’s too busy watching his friend get an ass-whupping from the Randinator.

It seems the distraction of my rabid Kittenattack breaks Randall’s focus for a half-second, giving his opponent an opening to land a punch. Which is unfortunate, since it leaves Randall no choice but to make physical contact. He swats the guy’s oncoming fist away like a fly, grabs his arm, and flips him neatly over his shoulder. The Unhip Dude lands on his back with a thud. At which point Randall gently places one foot on the guy’s throat.

“Sorry ’bout that,” he says to the panting, bewildered Dude on the ground. “I think you two should leave now.”

I’m vaguely aware of many Free Children gathered around, all whooping and cheering. But that’s floating somewhere distant, far, far away from my pounding head, as I wobble to my feet. Someone is helping me up but I don’t notice who it is until he speaks.

“That was incredibly brave,” says Randall as he pushes my tangled hair out of my face. “Are you okay?”

And, okay. I freely admit what happens next.

I can offer no logical explanation, but I kiss him.

I kiss Randall, in front of everyone.

As I do, something electrical-feeling zaps through me, from the top of my messed-up hair all the way down to the tips of my chunky-heeled boots.

There is a fresh round of whooping and hollering from somewhere close by.

“Mutual Rescue!” I mumble to Randall, amazed. “I think I broke your watch.”

“We better get you some ice,” says Randall, who understands that I’m talking gibberish because I may have a concussion. He must have been surprised by the kiss. He didn’t seem to mind it, though.

Just to make sure, I kiss him again. This time he’s not surprised, and he definitely doesn’t mind.

“I’m fine,” I say.

I’m X-cellent, in fact!

14

A Clue from Mr. Frasconi, a Letter
from Dmitri, and a Serious Talk
with Randall

P
ARTY ON THE BOAT! PARTY ON THE BOAT!

Trip says we’re having a party. What are we celebrating? Randall’s vanquishing of the Unhip Dude, Deej’s new friends (that’s us!) making peace with her old friends, the arrival of spring, the phases of the moon, whatevah! But his dad’s boat is docked downtown with a full crew and available for sunset circumnavigations round this island we call home, so Trip says it’s time for a party on the boat. Formal, no less!

PARTY ON THE BOAT!

But before the cruisewear shopping commences, here’s the rest of what happened on the day of the Great Vanquishing, as it shall be passed down in legend and song: hail, hail, O Randall the Brave, with an assist from Ferocious Felicia!

By the time the cops arrive, the two Unhip Dudes are long gone (if Randall’s ass-whupping wasn’t sufficient motivation, the verbal encouragement offered by Shally and D’Neece, pissed-off and scary-faced as two teenage Terminatrixes, would make any sane man flee in terror). However, there is still a crowd of whooping and hollering kids outside Gramercy Park.

The patrol car arrives with lights flashing. A cop struts out, hand hovering rather near his billy club.

“Somebody in a fight?” he yells. “Who was in a fight?”

Laughter, pointing; the crowd parts like the Red Sea. Not Moses, but Randall steps forward.

My Randall! Who’s fourteen but passes for twelve, who looks like he’d have to take steroids to win a chess tournament.

The look on the cop’s face changes from stern to concerned when he sees the Baby-Faced Randinator.

“You okay, son?” he asks.

“Fine,” says Randall mildly. “Nothing happened, really. Just some mean guys trying to scare us.”

The cop surveys this happy group of teens celebrating a home-team victory on the south side of Gram. “Who are you kids?” he asks, suspicious.

“We’re all friends, that’s who,” laughs Deej, twining one arm around Jess’s neck and the other around Shally’s.

“Right,” says the cop. “And where do you and your friends go to school?”

Deej looks back and forth between her two pals. In her Princess White Bread newscaster voice, she replies, “East Harlem Academy, and I’m also a visiting student at the Manhattan Free Children’s School, Officer, which is right across the street. They’re both highly educational institutions! These are some of my classmates.”

And Trip, who could easily be forgiven for wanting to fade into the crowd at such a moment, walks right up to the officer and sticks out his hand. “Harold Johnston Mathis the Third, sir! How do you do?”

“I’m fine, Harold, just fine,” says the officer, his adrenaline level sinking back to normal. “Ten syllables or less, tell me what happened so I can get back to work.”

“We were accosted by two small-minded gentlemen, who’ve moved on of their own accord,” answers Trip. He’s quite a few syllables over but the cop doesn’t seem to care. “It’s a shame people can’t always get along in a great city like this. We’re just heading out for some refreshments now. Care to join us?”

This is the place where you could insert some generic cops-eating-donuts joke.

Or this is the place where you could Observe that Matthew and Jacob and Kat got tired of waiting at Madison Park and came back looking for us, arriving just in time to see me in X-powered lip-lock with Randall, and half the Pound cheering us on.

Consequently, you could Describe the various looks on their faces, the O-shaped mouths, the cartoonish expressions of surprise. You could also mention the strange lump of satisfaction that formed in my chest when, still breathless from the kiss, I turned my face away from Randall’s and made brief, accidental eye contact with Matthew.

But there is a far more urgent question burning in my Kittenbrain, and that question is this:

Am I hooked up with Randall? Or not?

The Mutual Rescue worked better than anyone could have expected, and I extend all due props to Miss Dervish Greenstream for the tip. But is it enough? Will it last? I review what I’ve learned so far about X, and I plot the data points against the Randall-plus-me equation, but the answer is far from clear.

First of all, there’s no Romeo/Juliet Thing. Nobody’s trying to keep us apart.

We are not really opposites. In fact, Randall and I both tend toward the geeky and are prone to unrequited crushes. So we’re more similar than not, much as I hate to admit it.

And yes, the Mutual Rescue worked major X-mojo, but it would be difficult, not to mention painful, to reenact that on a regular basis.

What else is there? Think, Felicia, think!

The setting . . .

so very conducive to romance . . .

Ich bin ein Berliner. . . .

That’s it! The Romantic Setting.

Thanks, Mr. Frasconi!

But Randall and I don’t have to go to Berlin, because Saturday night we’ll be hangin’ and chillin’ in the most Romantic Setting evah! A sunset cruise on Trip’s dad’s boat. What could be more perfect?

I resolve to go all out: wear something girly, sneak a spritz of my mom’s perfume, beg Kat to bring her violin. Because the power of the Romantic Setting must not be squandered, and let’s face it: Randall is smart, brave, open with his feelings, and capable of boyfriend-like behavior. And he likes me.

If I didn’t notice Randall’s X-cellent qualities before, was it only because I was wearing Matthew-blinders?

Matthew Dwyer, who is many, many wonderful things. But boyfriend-like is not among them.

“A boyfriend”—I hear my mother’s voice, reverbeverbeverberating in my head like a gong—“a
boyfriend
is NOT the only golden road to happiness!”

Yeah, well, she only says that because she doesn’t have one.

Maybe my mom doesn’t want a boyfriend. Or maybe she just can’t find one.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t.

I thought Kat had summoned us to the Moonbeam to plan outfits for the party on the boat, but I thought wrong.

Her violin case is on the seat next to her, but tough Violin Kat, swearing-in-Russian Kat, get-out-of-my-way-or-I’ll-stab-you-with-this-bow-Kat is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s a defeated and totally heartbroken Kat who sits here in our favorite booth, sobbing. She pushes a piece of paper across the table to me and Jess. It’s a letter, scrawled in teeny-tiny letters.

Dear Miss Katarina,

I have made terrible, terrible mistake. I write you this
letter so you can please forgive me.

You are very serious person, and tall, and the language
you say when you practice violin is like grown man! Like
angry sailor! I never think a teenage girl to say such things.
And that is why my mistake. Katarina, I think you grown
woman!

When you say we rehearse at “school,” I say, yes, you
are music teacher. When you tell me you have boyfriend, my
heart break but that is life. Then the little boy comes. Your
student, yes? But when he call you honey, baby doll, I see he
is boyfriend of which you told me!

Only then do I realize you are high school girl!

Every time I see you for practice, I am full with
humiliation to remember my idiot mistake. To think I wrote
such words of love to a child!

Forgive me. I cannot recital with you. I cannot appear
in public with this shame in my heart. You are talented
girl. Use no more the dirty words, they are not for your
girlish lips.

And be careful, dear Katarina. I think your little
boyfriend is too much possessive. You shall “play the field,”
yes? That is what the young people do in America.

Forgive again for my advice but you are like baby sister
to me now—

Dmitri

“It’s over,” Kat moans. “All that work. Wasted! Argosy Records, ruined! Everything’s ruined.”

She puts her head on the table and pounds her fist. Jess and I each grab our milk shakes before they spill.

“Why? Why can’t everything happen the way it’s supposed to? Why why why why why?” Kat laments, not caring if the whole Moonbeam hears.

I have a split-second vision of her dad on his wedding anniversary, wailing and clutching a glass of vodka. It must be something to see.

“Kat,” says Jess delicately. “It’s really awful. But at least he apologized, isn’t that one positive thing? It was all just a mistake.”

“Why why why why why?” is what comes out, muffled and damp.

“Do you HAVE to have an accompanist?” I ask. I know it’s a dumb question, but the scientific method has taught me not to take the obvious for granted. “I mean, I know that’s how it’s usually done, but—do you have to?”

Kat looks up at me, red eyed, wet cheeked. “What do you mean?” she growls. “A classical recital program,
solo
? That’s insane! It’s crazy, nobody does that! That’s
bleep bleep bleepsky bleeping BLEEP
!” She hurls this last stream of profanity at Dmitri’s letter.

“We’re just trying to HELP, Kat!” chides Jess. “We have like, four whole days to solve this problem. You can’t give up!”

“So what do you suggest?” Kat asks bitterly.

Jess smiles her Joan of Arc smile. I hear her mental binder snapping open to a new, freshly tabbed section. “For starters,” she says, sounding unstoppably efficient, “I think I should talk to Dmitri.”

“We need to talk,” says Randall.

Uh-oh. This can’t be a good sign.

Randall and I, on our first maybe-we’re-hooked-up-now excursion, are strolling through the famed arch at Washington Square Park, where Fifth Avenue screeches to a halt and the party called Greenwich Village officially begins.

“What did you mean by mutual rescue?” asks Randall. “That’s what you said to me, remember? Right before we—before you—you know.”

Mutual Rescue! I did say that. Is that what’s worrying him?

“Oh, that’s nothing,” I say. I wonder if we should be holding hands. Isn’t that what girls and their boyfriend-like boyfriends do when they walk in the park? “Mutual Rescue, it has to do with the science fair project I’ve been working on.”

“With Matthew?” he asks quickly. “That’s the one about your crush, right? The Search for X?”

Okay, now
je comprends tout
. He’s worried that I still like Matthew. How cute! How boyfriend-like! “My crush on Matthew is over,” I say, quite convincingly. “We have this science project to finish, but we’re just friends. In fact,” I say, feeling a little gossip-guilt but wanting to offer as much reassurance as I can, “I know who Matthew really likes!”

“I do, too,” he says. “He’s one of my best friends, remember?”

Whoops. So all that time I was mooning over Matthew, Randall knew it was hopeless and respected my feelings anyway. Huh. Another mental point awarded to the Randinator.

Randall stops walking. “I wanted to be sure you meant it,” he says, plain and simple. “When you kissed me. That you weren’t just trying to make Matthew jealous or something.”

Silly Randall. Silly, silly, silly Randall. As if I would do something like that. As if.

“I wasn’t,” I say. I take Randall’s hand. It’s smooth and warm. Fingers entwine. He smiles at me and tucks our joined hands into his jacket pocket.

But was I?

Matthew&Felicia . . .

2-gethah . . .

4-evah . . .

Shaddup, already! The Love Boat sails tomorrow. The Romantic Setting is on its way. Just gotta hang on till then—

“Hey, George,” says Randall. “How ya doin’, George?”

The Washington Arch features not one, but two statues of George Washington. On the east pillar is Washington at war; on the west, Washington at peace. I’m facing the eastern statue, and for a second it looks like the Father of Our Country is heaving a big, exasperated sigh, aimed right at me.

You think winning independence from the British was hard? I want to say to him. Try overthrowing the tyranny of X!

King George III was a pussycat compared to this!

By rights New York City should have at least another week or two of spring, but by the next day, Saturday, the climate has prematurely shifted, in a worrisome, global-warming kind of way into hot and humid no-coat season. At least, on dry land it has.

“Bring a sweater,” my mom says. “It’s always chilly on the water.” I take this as the best possible sign. It may be no-coat weather in the city, but it’s always jacket season at sea. No wonder the rich buy boats.

And the et sweatera idea is perfect, because the dress I finally decided on is a groovy retro halter-top number, a satiny green so dark it’s almost black, with a wide pleated sash and full skirt—only eighteen bucks at the vintage clothing store down the street from the Unbound Page. A pair of black kitten heels—that’s what they’re called, really!—a pretty black lambswool sweater and a beaded clutch purse from my mom’s bottomless closet, and I am a vision.

Mom walks me downstairs and makes the surprising and extravagant gesture of springing for a taxi. “You look much too pretty to take the bus,” she says, sticking her arm in the air. A yellow chariot pulls up almost instantaneously.

“Bon voyage!” says Mom, tucking the cab fare into my purse and taking one last look at me in my glamour getup. She carefully pinned me in so the halter bra won’t shift around and show straps. She also helped with my hair, which is piled up on my head and sprayed into perfect immobility.

“Felicia, honey,” Mom says, “you are developing a very nice figure.”

Furball alert canceled, at least for tonight. “Thank you,” I say, and then whisper in her ear, “I must get it from you, hotsy mama!” She laughs, and I think the old girl even blushes a little. I smooch her on the cheek and climb into the cab.

“North Cove Yacht Harbor, please,” I say, oh-so-elegant. “By Battery Park. I have a boat to catch.”