“You do not exist,” I said to the cat in the mirror.
“I beg to differ,” said Crenshaw.
Aretha scratched again. “Fine,” I muttered. I eased open the door an inch to make sure no one was in the hallway listening.
Listening to me talk to an imaginary cat.
Aretha bulldozed through like I had a giant, juicy steak waiting in the tub. I locked the door again.
Once she was inside, Aretha stood perfectly still on the bath rug, except for her tail. That was fluttering like a windy-day flag.
“I am positively flummoxed as to why your family felt the need for a dog,” said Crenshaw, eyeing her suspiciously. “Why not a cat? An animal with some panache? Some pizzazz? Some dignity?”
“Both my parents are allergic to cats,” I said.
I am talking to my imaginary friend.
I invented him when I was seven.
He is here in our bathtub.
He has a bubble beard.
Aretha tilted her head. Her ears were on alert. When she sniffed the air, her wet nose quivered.
“Begone, foul beast,” said Crenshaw.
Aretha plopped her big paws on the edge of the tub and gave Crenshaw a heartfelt, slobbery kiss.
He hissed, long and slow. It sounded more like a bike tire losing air than an angry cat.
Aretha tried for another kiss. Crenshaw flicked a pawful of bubbles at her. She caught them in her mouth and ate them.
“I never have seen the point of dogs,” said Crenshaw.
“You’re not real,” I said again.
“You always were a stubborn child.”
Crenshaw unplugged the tub and stood. Bubbles drifted. Bathwater swirled. Dripping wet, he looked half his size. With his fur slicked down, I could make out the delicate bones of his legs. Water rushed past them like a flood around trees.
He had excellent posture.
I didn’t remember Crenshaw towering above me. I’d gotten a lot taller since I was seven, but had he? Did imaginary friends actually grow?
“Towel, please,” said Crenshaw.
14
With trembling fingers, I passed Robin’s faded pink Hello Kitty towel to Crenshaw.
Thoughts zapped through my brain like summer lightning.
I can see my imaginary friend.
I can hear him.
I can talk to him.
He is using a towel.
As Crenshaw climbed out of the tub, he reached for my hand. His paw was warm and soft and wet, big as a lion’s, with fingers the size of baby carrots.
I can feel him.
He feels real.
He smells like wet cat.
He has fingers.
Cats do not have fingers.
Crenshaw attempted to dry himself. Each time he noticed a tuft of hair out of place, he paused to lick it. His tongue was covered with little prickers, like pink Velcro.
“Those things on your tongue are called papillae,” I said, and then I realized that maybe this wasn’t the best time to be sharing nature facts.
Crenshaw glanced in the mirror. “My, don’t I look a fright.”
Aretha licked his tail helpfully.
“Off me, hound,” Crenshaw said. He tossed the towel aside, and it landed on Aretha. “I need more than a towel. I need a good old-fashioned shake.”
Crenshaw took a deep breath. His body rippled. Water droplets flew like crystal fireworks. When he’d finished, his fur was spiky.
Aretha tossed off the towel, wagging crazily.
“Look at that ridiculous tail,” Crenshaw said. “Humans laugh with their mouths, dogs with their tails. Either way, it makes for pointless mirth.”
I pulled the towel away from Aretha. She snared it between her teeth to play tug-of-war. “What about cats?” I asked. “Don’t you laugh?”
I am talking to a cat.
A cat is talking to me.
“We smirk,” Crenshaw said. “We sneer. Rarely, we are quietly amused.” He licked his paw and smoothed a spike of fur near his ear. “But we do not laugh.”
“I need to sit down,” I said.
“Where are your parents? And Robin? I haven’t seen them in ages.”
“Sleeping.”
“I shall go wake them.”
“No!” I practically screamed it. “I mean … let’s go to my room. We need to talk.”
“I’ll leap onto their beds and walk on their heads. It will be amusing.”
“No,” I said. “You will not walk on anyone’s head.”
Crenshaw reached for the doorknob. His paw slipped off when he tried to turn it. “Would you mind?” he said.
I grabbed the knob. “Listen,” I said. “I need to know something. Can everybody see you? Or just me?”
Crenshaw chewed on one of his nails. It was pale and pink, sharp as a new moon sliver. “I can’t say for sure, Jackson. I’m a bit out of practice.”
“Out of practice doing what?”
“Being your friend.” He moved to another nail. “Theoretically, only you can see me. But when an imaginary friend is left to his own devices, alone and forgotten … who knows?” His voice trailed off. He made a pouty face, far better than anything Robin could pull off. “It’s been a long time since you left me behind. Perhaps things have changed. Perhaps the fabric of the universe has unraveled just a tad.”
“Well, what if you are visible? I can’t let you just walk down the hall to my room. What if my dad wakes up to get a snack? What if Robin has to go to the bathroom?”
“She doesn’t have a litter box in her room?”
“No. She does not have a litter box in her room.” I pointed to the toilet.
“Ah, yes. It’s all coming back to me now.”
“Look, we’re going to my room. Be quiet. And if anybody comes out, just, I don’t know, freeze. Pretend you’re a stuffed animal.”
“Stuffed?” He sounded offended. “I beg your pardon?”
“Just do what I say.”
The hallway was dark, except for the bathroom light spilling onto the carpet like melted butter. Crenshaw moved silently, for such a big guy. That’s why cats are amazing hunters.
I heard a soft creak behind me.
Robin stepped out of her bedroom.
I jerked my head to check on Crenshaw.
He froze in place. His mouth was open and his teeth were bared, like one of those dusty, dead animals on display at a natural-history museum.
“Jacks?” said Robin in a slurry voice. “Who were you talking to?”
15
“Uh … Aretha,” I said. “I was talking to Aretha.”
I hated lying. But it wasn’t like I had a choice.
Robin yawned. “Were you giving her a bath?”
“Yeah.”
I looked back and forth, forth and back.
Sister.
Imaginary friend.
Sister.
Imaginary friend.
Aretha ran over to nuzzle Robin’s hand.
“Aretha’s not wet,” Robin said.
“I used the hair dryer on her.”
“She hates the hair dryer.” Robin kissed the top of Aretha’s head. “Don’t you, baby?”
Robin didn’t seem to see Crenshaw. Maybe because it was pretty dark in the hallway. Or maybe because he was invisible.
Or maybe because none of this was really happening.
“She smells the same,” Robin observed. “Nice and doggy.”
I glanced at Crenshaw. He rolled his eyes.
“Oh well,” Robin said, yawning. “I’m going back to bed. Night, Jacks. Love you.”
“Night, Robin,” I said. “Love you, too.”
As soon as her bedroom door closed, we retreated to my room. Crenshaw leaped onto my mattress as if he owned it. When Aretha tried to join him, he growled. It wasn’t very convincing.
“I need to understand what’s happening.” I slumped against the wall. “Am I going crazy?”
Crenshaw’s tail rose and fell, ma
king lazy Ss in the air. “No, you most certainly are not.” He licked a paw. “By the way, at the risk of repeating myself, how about those purple jelly beans?”
When I didn’t answer, he settled into a doughnut shape, tail wrapped around himself, and closed his eyes. He purred the way my dad snores, like a motorboat with engine problems.
I stared at him, a huge, damp, bubble bath–taking cat.
There’s always a logical explanation, I told myself. And a part of me, the scientist part of me, really wanted to figure out what was going on.
Still, a much bigger part of me felt certain that I needed this hallucination—this dream—this thing—to disappear. Later, when Crenshaw was safely out of my house, not to mention my brain, I could think about what all this meant.
A soft knock on my door told me Robin was back. She always knocks the beginning of “Wheels on the Bus”: Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap.
“Jackson?”
“Please go to sleep, Robin.”
“I can’t sleep. I miss my trash can.”
“Your trash can?”
“Dad took my trash can to sell at the yard sale.”
“I’m pretty sure that was a mistake, Robin,” I said. “Nobody wants to buy your trash can.”
“It had blue bunnies on it.”
“We’ll get it out of the garage in the morning.”
Aretha made a move to sniff Crenshaw’s tail. He hissed.
I put my finger to my lips to shush him, but Robin didn’t seem to hear anything.
“Night, Robin,” I said. “See you in the morning.”
“Jackson?”
I rubbed my eyes and groaned, the way I’d seen my parents do more than once. “Now what?”
“Do you think I can get another bed someday?”
“Sure. Of course. Maybe even one with blue bunnies.”
“Jackson?”
“Yes?”
“My room is scary without my stuff in it. Could you come read me Lyle?”
I took a long, slow breath. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”
Robin sniffled. “I’ll just wait right here by your door. ’Kay?”
“Okay.” I shot a glance at Crenshaw. “Just give me a second, Robin. There’s something I really need to do.”
16
I went to my window and opened it. Carefully, I pulled out the screen. Our apartment was on the ground floor. A few feet below the window, a cushion of grass waited.
“Good-bye, Crenshaw,” I said.
He opened one eye a bit, like someone peeking from behind a shade. “But we were having such a lovely time.”
“Now,” I said. I put my hands on my hips to show I meant business.
“Jackson, be reasonable. I came all this way.”
“You have to go back to wherever you came from.”
Crenshaw opened his other eye. “But you need me here.”
“I don’t need you. I have enough to deal with already.”
With a great show of effort, Crenshaw sat up. He stretched, easing his back into an upside-down U. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, Jackson,” he said. “Imaginary friends don’t come of their own volition. We are invited. We stay as long as we’re needed. And then, and only then, do we leave.”
“Well, I sure didn’t invite you.”
Crenshaw sent me a doubtful look. His long, whiskery brows moved like strings on a marionette.
I took a step closer. “If you won’t go, I’ll make you go.”
I put my arms around his waist and yanked. It was like hugging a lion. That cat weighed a ton.
Crenshaw dug his claws deep into the quilt my great-aunt Trudy made when I was a baby. I gave up and let go.
“Look,” Crenshaw said as he extracted his claws from my quilt, “I can’t go until I help you. I don’t make the rules.”
“Then who does?”
Crenshaw stared at me with eyes like green marbles. He put his two front paws on my shoulders. He smelled like soapsuds and catnip and the ocean at night.
“You do, Jackson,” he said. “You make the rules.”
A foghorn bleated in the distance. I pointed to the windowsill. “I don’t need anyone’s help. And I sure don’t need an imaginary friend. I’m not a little kid anymore.”
“Balderdash. Is this because I hissed at that odorous dog?”
“No.”
“Could we at least wait till morning? There’s a chill in the air, and I just took a bubble bath.”
“No.”
Tap-tap-ta-ta-tap. “Jacks? It’s lonely in this hallway.”
“Coming, Robin,” I called.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a frog hop onto the windowsill. He gave a tiny, nervous croak.
“We have a visitor,” I said, pointing. Maybe if I distracted Crenshaw he’d move on. “Did you know some frogs can leap so far it’d be like a human jumping the length of a football field? They’re amazing jumpers.”
“Mmm. They’re amazing bedtime snacks, too,” murmured Crenshaw. “Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a little amphibious morsel.”
I could see he was in full predator mode. His eyes turned to dark pools. His rear wiggled. His tail twitched.
“See you, Crenshaw,” I said.
“Fine, Jackson,” he whispered, eyes lasering in on the frog. “You win. I’ll leave, do bit of hunting. I am, after all, a creature of the night. Meantime, you get to work.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “On what, exactly?”
“The facts. You need to tell the truth, my friend.” The frog twitched, and Crenshaw froze, pure muscle and instinct.
“Which facts? Tell the truth to who?”
Crenshaw pulled his gaze off the frog. He looked at me, and to my surprise, I saw tenderness in his eyes. “To the person who matters most of all.”
The frog jumped off the sill, back into the night. In one magnificent leap, Crenshaw followed. When I ran to the window, all I saw was a blur of black and white, streaking through the moon-tipped grass.
I felt like I’d taken off an itchy sweater on a cold day: relieved to be rid of it, but surprised by how chilly the air turned out to be.
17
Robin was waiting for me in the hallway, sitting crisscross-applesauce. Her stuffed armadillo, Spot, was in her lap.
I took her hand and led her back to her bedroom. Her rainbow nightlight painted stripes on the ceiling. I wished I had one in my room, although I’d never admit it.
“I heard you talking,” she said as she crawled under her blanket.
“Sometimes I talk to myself.”
“That’s kind of weird.” Robin yawned.
“Yeah,” I said, tucking her in. “It is.”
“You promised Lyle,” she reminded me.
I’d been hoping she’d forgotten. “Yep.”
“He’s in my keepsakes bag.”
I rummaged around in the brown paper bag. A bald doll poked out of the top, sizing me up with blank and beady eyes.
“Scooch over,” I said. Robin made room for me on her mattress.
I opened the book. Its pages were soft, its cover tattered.
“Robin,” I asked, “have you ever had an imaginary friend?”
“You mean like inbisible?”
“Invisible. Yeah. Like that.”
“Nope.”
“Really? Never?”
“Nope. I have LaSandra and Jimmy and Kylie. And sometimes Josh when he’s not being a boogerhead. They’re real, so I don’t need to pretend.”
I flipped through the pages of the book. “But sometimes, you know, when you’re alone?” I paused. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to ask. “Like say you’re home and you don’t have any friends over and you really need to talk to someone who’ll listen. Not even then?”
“Nope.” She smiled. “’Cause anyways I have you.”
It made me happy to hear her say that. But somehow it wasn’t quite the answer I’d been hoping for.
I opened to the
first page. “‘This is the house. The house on East 88th Street. It is empty now—’”
“Like our house,” Robin interrupted. “Only we live in a ’partment.”
“True.”
“Jacks?” Robin said softly. “Remember when we lived in the minivan for a while?”
“Do you really remember that? You were just little.”
“Kinda I remember but not really.” Robin made Spot do a little dance on her blanket. “But you told me about it. So I was wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
Spot performed a backflip. “Wondering if we’re going to have to live there again. Because where would we go to the bathroom?”
I couldn’t believe it. Robin was just a kid. How had she figured out so much? Did she spy on our parents the way I did?
Robin sniffled. She wiped her eyes with Spot. I realized she was crying without making any noise.
“I … I miss my things and I don’t want to live in a car with no potty and also my tummy keeps growling,” she whispered.
I knew what to tell her. She needed to hear the facts. We were having money problems. We were probably going to have to leave our apartment. We might even end up back in our minivan. There was a good chance she’d have to leave all her friends behind.
I put my arm around Robin and hugged her close. She looked up at me. Her eyes shimmered.
You need to tell the truth, my friend.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “We can’t live in our car. Where would we put Popsicles? Besides, Aretha and Dad snore like crazy.”
She laughed, just a little.
“You worry too much, girl. Everything’s fine. I promise. Now let’s get back to Lyle.”
Another sniffle. A nod.
“Hey, fun fact about crocodiles,” I said. “Did you know that a bunch of them in the water is called a ‘float’?”
Robin didn’t answer. She was already sound asleep, snoring softly.
Me, I couldn’t sleep. I was too busy remembering.
PART TWO
Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough
—A HOLE IS TO DIG: A FIRST BOOK OF FIRST DEFINITIONS,
written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak