On Jade's beside table, in a jar of yellow formaldehyde was the heart of a pig. She'd liberated it from the office of one of the many shrinks her father kept making appointments for. The reason she took it were, one: she wanted it, and two: he was a child psychiatrist, what the hell did he have it for anyway?
Cat was horrified when she first saw it, not because Jade owned a heart in a jar, but because Jade owned a heart in a jar that she hadn't named. So, for half an hour Cat sat on the floor in Jade's room whispering names to the jar trying to find the one the pig would like while Jade herself concentrated on her physics homework.
The truth was, Cat had just shown up at her house that morning and Jade was glad that she was entertaining herself instead of trying to persuade Jade into playing whatever she could come up with like she had an hour ago.
Every now and again Jade could pick up a name Cat whispered from where she was across the room. When Cat suggested the name Nathan, Jade actually broke the pencil she held in her hand. She said no so forcefully that Cat jumped and began to tear up.
Finally, Cat crawled over to where Jade sat and proudly introduced the jar to her formally, announcing that she'd decided on the name Connor.
"Why Connor?" Jade asked without looking up from her homework.
"'Cause he looks like a Connor," Cat replied simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Perhaps it was.