Scratch

Chapter 04:

"Like a Cat on a Hot Brick"

Incidentally, Kuwabara didn't have to go get Okubo-the-janitor-with-keys and ask him to break into the registrar's office in order to find my address because Okubo, low and behold, knew exactly what it was from memory.

Creepy, right?

"No way, Okubo, how the hell do you know that?" Kuwabara said, mouth dropping open as he stood with Okubo and another boy at the school's front gate. Okubo, upon hearing my name fall out of Kuwabara's big mouth, had rattled off my house's street and number as if he went there every day. Had I been able to, I'm sure I sure I would have looked more than a little freaked out by this revelation.

But Okubo just shrugged. "I ran a paper route through that neighborhood. Her parents were a client and I saw her through a window once or twice, and then I saw her at school, and..."

"You looked in her window?" said the other boy. He was the one with the snarky voice from earlier, but I did not recognize him as a classmate (he was also wearing street clothes, so I had no way of knowing if he even went to my school or not). He had trimmed his black hair into a severe buzz cut, but his colorful basketball jersey, baggy jeans, and black windbreaker made him look more like a street punk than a military man.

"That's messed up, Okubo!" Kuwabara said, voice reaching higher octaves than normal in distress.

"Good going, buddy!" said the guy with the buzz cut, and Kuwabara smacked him roughly on the back of the head.

"Shut it, Sawamura! Peeping is bad!"

The pair traded heated looks as Okubo spoke up again.

"No, it wasn't like that," he said, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck. "Just an observation, was all. Do you need me to write down directions to her house?"

"Thanks, buddy," Kuwabara said, and he fumbled for paper and a pen in his bookbag before saying: "Here, Sawamura, hold this little guy for me, will ya?" He then dumped me (with care but little ceremony) into his friend's arms.

'Little guy?' I thought as I squirmed in Sawamura's inexperienced grip. He smelled very strongly of men's deodorant spray, and I sneezed as the fumes assaulted my sensitive feline nose. Guy! I'm not a guy!

"You still haven't explained why you have this thing," Sawamura grumbled as I got settled.

I'm not a 'thing,' either.

"I found 'im in the locker room," Kuwabara explained as he handed Okubo things to write with. "Then he ran off and went under the bleachers. Ookawa Tora's uniform was under there so I thought I'd take it back to her, along with her cat."

Sawamura's fingers trailed over my neck. "Hey, look, this cat's collar says 'Tora' on it," he said as he fumbled with the bracelet.

No shit, Sherlock, I thought.

Kuwabara nodded. "That's what makes me think the cat is Ookawa-san's, though I have no idea why she would bring her cat to school."

I froze. Gotta think up an excuse for that.

"Here's a map and the address," said Okubo, and he handed Kuwabara a small sketch of a map and a list of worded directions.

"Thanks, Okubo," Kuwabara said as he studied the map, and then his eyes lit up. "Hey, I know where this is! I pass this street on my way to school in the mornings!" He then thanked Okubo for the billionth time, and I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. Luckily, no one noticed that very human expression crossing my cat's face.

"It's fine, Kuwabara," Okubo said. "I owe you one, since you got me this job and all."

"Aw, it was nothin,'" Kuwabara mumbled as he put the directions in his pocket and plucked me from Sawamura's grasp. He seemed strangely embarrassed by Okubo's words.

Sawamura punched Kuwabara lightly on the arm. "It was not nothing! You had to beg them for that favor on your hands an knees!"

"Shut up!" Kuwabara said, going red across the cheeks, and he pushed past the boys. "Meet up at the arcade later," he called over his shoulder, and then the two of us were off.

He begged the principal for his friend? I thought as my classmate carried me unerringly toward my home. Wow. What a good, humble guy. Definitely not what I expected from a first impression.

I mentally kicked myself.

You need to be prepared to lie to him, not compliment him, I thought as Kuwabara took a wrong turn and then backtracked, glancing around to make sure no one noticed his little slip-up. He kept shifting me from arm to arm as we walked, and I realized how tiring holding me in the crook of his elbow must be getting. With a wriggle I twisted so I was facing him.

"Whoa, Kitty!" he said, stopping dead on the sidewalk as I wormed up his body and hooked my claws into the shoulder of his coat. Hold still, dammit, I told him. Cars passed us on the street, and two short elementary school kids walked by with unabashed stares. Kuwabara glared at them as they gawked at the wonder of a highschooler carrying a cat through a neighborhood street in broad daylight, but I didn't let their little exchange stop me from pulling myself onto his shoulder and winding my body around his neck.

There, you big idiot, I thought as I settled down across his shoulders. The mischievous part of me took over, and I flicked his nose with the tip of my tail. He batted the banded tail out of his face with his index finger, but he did smile a bit, too. Now you can carry me better.

"You really are a houscat," Kuwabara said when the shock of my random movement wore off (also, I thought: Wow, you're perceptive. More than you know, actually.). "Definitely not a stray. It took me ages to get Eikichi to ride around like this."

So Eikichi must be his own cat's name, I deduced as we picked up the pace. He didn't say anything else to me as we neared my area of the neighborhood, but when we turned onto my street I felt my heart beat a little quicker. By then, however, I had come up with a plan to get away from Kuwabara without arousing much suspicion, which was nice considering how we had started this walk of doom without one.

Here it is, I thought as we passed the houses preceding mine. The moment of truth.

"Let's see," Kuwabara said as he took the paper from his pocket. "You live in house eight, so... oh, there it is!"

My home is one story tall and only a few rooms wide, with a postage stamp of a front lawn and not much more yard in the back. There's a white fence (picket, because my mom is cliché like that) bordering the front yard, and there's a taller and more solid white fence cupping the back. We have a one-car garage, which is rather extravagant for that neighborhood, and the space between our small home and the even smaller garage is filled by a seven-foot-tall privacy gate that leads into the backyard. Kuwabara, of course, walked through the opening in the picket gate so he could walk up to my porch, and he took a deep breath of my mother's carefully tended beds of rosebushes as we passed them.

"What pretty flowers!" he said, stopping on the short walkway leading to my porch in order to inspect a bush of yellow blooms. "Kurama would love this. You don't see many flowers in the city."

You don't see many cats get carted through the city on someone's shoulders, either, I thought, and with a flex of my back legs I jumped off of his shoulders and hit the ground.

"Wait, Kitty!" he called, wheeling around as I darted beneath a rosebush. "Hey, come back, you'll get lost again!"

Oh, shush, I thought as I ran, under the cover of rosebushes, towards the gate to the backyard. My hulking classmate was somehow able to stay hot on my heels without ruining any of my mother's flowers, and I felt his hands grab at me as I leaped to the top of the fence and then jumped over it. Whoa, I barely made it, I thought as I found myself standing in one of the flowerbeds Mom planted in the backyard. This one, however, held azaleas. That guy is really quick on his feet. What the hell?

"Wait, cat!" I heard him say from the other side of the gate. "Well, at least stay in the yard so I can tell your owner where you went! Please?"

I meowed at him.

"Oh, good, you're still there!"

My mental eyebrow twitched.

"Well, I'm gonna go ring the doorbell. Ookawa-san should be home by now since it's so late."

Just leave the uniform on my doorstep and be done with it! I thought as I walked toward the back door and, by extension, the kitty door. Kuwabara was still babbling in the backyard when I pushed through the flap and entered the laundry room. I changed into my human body right there (after making sure to take the bracelet off of my neck so I wouldn't choke to death, of course, and then I rescued the bracelet off of the floor and slipped it on my wrist). After that I grabbed a towel from a basket of clean ones sitting on top of the washing machine, and then I walked into the kitchen.

"Mom? Are you home?" I called, wrapping the towel around my naked body, and then I saw the note on the kitchen table.

Dad and I are at an office function tonight, it read. There's food in the fridge. Do your homework! Love, Mom.

I remembered Umi telling me that they wouldn't be home tonight a second later.

"Love you too," I murmured, and then I all but jumped out of my skin when the doorbell rang. The doorbell has a nice ring—a very merry ping! pong! sound—but it nonetheless made me feel like I was under fire. Without a sound I sped back into the laundry room and pulled on a random assortment of clothing that ended up being underwear, a tanktop, shorts, and a pair of tall socks. None of it really matched, but that hardly mattered as I crept to the door on silent feet and peered through the peephole.

I had a heart attack right after that. Kuwabara had pressed his face right up close to the hole on the other side. He pushed the doorbell again a second later, scaring me even further, and then he started knocking.

"Are you home Ookawa-san?" I heard him say, voice muffled by the four inches of solid wood separating us. I dropped to my knees and started to crawl toward the window that looked out onto our porch, which ran the length of our house. I peeked over the sill to find Kuwabara standing with a stiff back before the door, one hand lifted like a robot's as it hovered above the doorbell.

"Go away," I muttered, watching him ring the bell and knock a few more times. But then, as if on cue, he turned my way. I ducked out of sight, heart leaping into my throat.

Oh dear sweet mother of Christ, I thought as I heard his footsteps cross the porch. They stopped right in front of the window, so I pulled my legs up to my chest in hopes he couldn't see me.

I flinched when he tapped his knuckles on the window pane.

"Uh, is that you in there Ookawa-san?" he asked, voice fuzzy as it filtered through the windowpane. "This is Kuwabara Kazuma from school, and I think I have something that belongs to you."

I said nothing, praying to no god in particular that he would just go away.

"Uh... I think I can see your toes."

This time my eyes really twitched, and with a curse I extended my legs, stood up, and went to the door. "Sorry, I thought you were a salesman," I sighed as I flipped open the deadbolt and drew the door aside. No getting out of this now. "What did you say your name wa—"

I stopped talking, then, struck dumb by the sheer size of the guy in front of me. Somehow I had missed this little (irony) aspect of his person; maybe I thought everyone was that big as a cat. But now that we stood not two feet away from one another, I realized that I had to crane my head back in order to look him full in the face, and he had to look very far down in order to see mine.

His attitude, however, was a far cry from his intimidating stature. His narrow eyes went wide as his jaw dropped in horror, and then he jumped back a step and pointed square at my face.

"You're that girl I hit today in dodgeball!" he bellowed. The pointing finger dropped as he crowded forward, apology plastered all over his face. "Oh wow, I am so sorry for that! I swear I didn't mean to hurt you! I mean, your nose looks fine now, but really, I didn't aim for you, honest!"

"Hey, hey, I'm fine!" I said, holding up my hands to ward him off. The height thing only got more obvious as he got closer, and closer he was getting—more with every passing second. "Back off!"

He did so immediately, withdrawing to the extreme edge of the porch with an 'eep' of embarrassment and surprise. "Sorry!" he said, and he bowed from the waist so hard that his face became parallel to the ground.

"Um... it's fine." I brushed my hair out of my face with a hand, making a show of looking bored as I studied my nails. "You said you have something of mine?"

His face lit up. "Oh, yeah, I do!" His bag popped open and he held out my neatly folded uniform. He held his arms straight out and bent himself slightly at the waist so he didn't have to come any closer, but this resulted in me having to walk nearer to him in order to get the clothes.

Of course, right when I touched the clothes, my bra fell out of them. The two of us froze as we both watched the garment tumble to the floor, and then our eyes met. My cheeks (and his) flushed.

"Ack!" Kuwabara said, spinning around to face the yard. "I swear I didn't see anything! I'm sorry!"

"Oh, uh, I was wondering where my, uh, uniform went!" I said, snatching up my clothes. The excuse I had prepared on the trip over seemed silly now, but I did my best to smooth over such an embarrassing moment. "One of my, uh, friends hid my clothes from me during gym class. She's, um, a real prankster, that one." I turned to go inside. "Thanks so much! See you tomorrow."

"Wait, Ookawa-san!" said Kuwabara, whipping around. I cursed, having made it inside but with the door gaping wide open. "I found your cat, too!" he said, eyes darting all over the porch.

"Cat?" I asked. I schooled my face into a cool mask that did not reflect my pounding heart. "I don't own a cat."

"Of course you do!" he said in protest. "I found it sitting on your clothes under the bleachers! It even had your name on its collar!"

"My name?"

"Yeah! It's collar said 'Tora.'"

"Tora," I repeated. "Tora. Tiger. That's a pretty common name for a cat."

He pulled back a bit. "But... it was on your clothes!"

"I would never take my cat to school," I said. "That is, I wouldn't take my cat to school if I owned a cat. Which I don't."

"But..." His eyes traveled to my wrist, and then his mouth dropped open. "Hey!" he said, pointing. "That's the bracelet the cat was wearing!"

My hand was behind my back faster than you can say 'catnip.' "My friend made me this!" I snapped. "I've been wearing it all day!"

"It was on the cat, I swear! A tortoiseshell tabby with dark and honey-brown stripes!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" I said, and I grabbed the doorknob with the hand not emblazoned with the sparkly symbol of my guilt. "Thank you for bringing me my uniform! Have a good day!"

I then slammed the door in his face.

He knocked and rang the bell a few more times, but I just stood there with my back pressed to the door, sweat pouring from my pores as I thought about how close to discovery I had just come. My hands shook as I curled my hair behind my ears, and when I did I caught sight of the bracelet on my wrist.

So much for being cursed for Kuwabara, I thought as I studied the clear crystals, red strings, and metal boxes. It's more like it cursed me with Kuwabara.

The thought was not one I relished, and when the knocking died down I pressed my face back to the peephole just in time to see him walk away. He shot the house one last, disappointed look before he started off down the street, broad shoulders slumped in defeat, and with a heavy heart I went to my room and laid down across my bed.

"So you went back for your bento, changed so you could crawl through a vent, of all things, and then you got taken home by a classmate," Dad said. The hour was late, and I had waited for Mom and Dad at the kitchen table until they got home. "He saw your new bracelet—"

"Which is very pretty, dear," Mom interjected.

"Not the point, darling," said Dad. "So this classmate of yours saw the bracelet and connected it with the cat, which you claimed you didn't own. Did it not occur to you to say that you owned the cat and have matching bracelets? I'm sure you wouldn't be the first pet-owner to do something like that."

My shoulders slumped. "The thought did not occur to me," I said thickly.

He shrugged. "Oh well. And just where, pray tell, is your school bag?"

"Under the bleachers," I said. "It was separated from the clothes, and it's black. Kuwabara didn't see it when he found my uniform."

"So you can't do your homework?" His eyes held studious thunder.

"I called Umi and she brought over a photocopy of everything," I said with a grin.

"I just love Umi," Mother said, sighing. "She's beautiful and smart and kind even if she does wear a little too much black. You know, things would be so much easier if she knew your secret."

Dad shot her a sharp look through his oval glasses. "Think about who her parents are, darling," he said patiently. "CEOs of the largest medical company in Japan, remember? They'd want her for testing if they ever caught wind of this. It's far too dangerous!"

"Oh, I know. I just wish..." She stared into space, wistful.

"Anyway, I just wanted to tell you what happened," I said as I stood up. "I need to go to bed. But if Kuwabara comes by again, we don't own a cat. In fact, we're all allergic."

"Achoo!" Mom said, and when Dad and I both stared at her she said "Just practicing!" in a voice that was far too chipper to fit the circumstances.

I groaned, because I could tell—even back then I could tell—that this situation was not going to be over anytime soon.

And when it did end, it probably would not end well.

NOTES:

Connection... ESTABLISHED! Also, awkward. Also, cool beanz. I find Kuwa-chan and Tora fun to put together. She's so I'm-trying-to-be-stoic-and-cool-like-Umi-and-failing and he's so I'm-trying-to-be-nice-and-not-a-creeper-please-don't-freak-out-because-I-mean-well, and it's an odd mix, but a fun one. Soon enough more shit hits the fan, and it should prove entertaining. Buuuut for a while, before the real plot sets in, we're just gonna have some more funny shenanigans, which should prove fun. I really do have a concrete plot, though, no worries.

Thanks for reviewing! You all rock! Saiyuri-dahlia, WickedLovelyDream, Daliha, Ashes to Ashes, DarlingSM, and msizzle!