Mrs Terwiliger’s overwide lips turned down at the corners and Bug wondered if she had noticed the same strange things. But all she said was, “A nap is a wonderful idea. Go.” She waved her bony hand and Gurl practically ran into the girls’ dorm.
Then Mrs Terwiliger crooked a finger at Bug, the fluorescent lights shining off her tight, waxy skin. “Come, Chicken. Instead of punching the walls, I’d like you to help me move a filing cabinet. There’s a good boy!”
She turned and floated off. Bug started to follow, peeking inside the open door of the girls’ dormitory as he passed. And that’s when he saw her. Uh, didn’t see her. Because the girl wasn’t there. The room was empty.
Bug opened his mouth to shout—because what else do you do when a weird, weepy girl ups and totally disappears?—but then he thought better of it. Something extremely funky was going on with Pasty Gurl, but he’d keep his mouth shut.
That is, he would keep it shut in exchange for a certain toilet-flushing, rolling pin-playing, very rare, genius cat.
“Chicken!” said Mrs Terwiliger. “Move it along!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, a sly grin on his buggy face. “I’m moving it as fast as I can.”
Chapter 5 Attack of the Umbrella Man
GURL HURRIED ALONG THE CITY streets, the cat peeking out from an old backpack. She’d had to wait nearly an hour for the other orphans to fall asleep. (Digger kept untucking the sheets on Persnickety’s bed, just to make her cry, and stealing Tot’s doll, just to make her cry.) When Gurl finally slipped from the window and out of the front gate of Hope House, it was close to eleven.
The air outside was crisp and fresh, and Gurl welcomed it. Inside the orphanage everything seemed confused and difficult to figure out, so much so that she rarely tried. Outside the orphanage, however, her thoughts were clear. Something was happening to her, something weird and scary and important, and she needed to understand it, control it. For that, she’d go back to the place it first happened: the alley behind Luigi’s. She needed to see if it would happen again.
Plus, she needed a snack.
Luigi’s Dumpster yielded a feast. Tangy Italian meat loaf, delicate squash ravioli, fettucini with peas, prosciutto and cream sauce. Gurl offered the meat loaf to the cat, who ate a few bites before turning her attention to the fettucini. Gurl munched on the meat loaf as she watched the cat drag a long noodle from the packet and proceed to shorten it, bite by bite. “You know, I’ve been doing the same thing Mrs Terwiliger does,” Gurl said. “I’ve been calling you ‘cat’, the most obvious thing, even in my own head!” She smacked her forehead to demonstrate the foolishness of this. The cat stopped nibbling on the noodle to stare. “I could call you Laverna, like that flyer said. Hey, Laverna!” The cat blinked, bored. “Maybe not,” said Gurl. “So, instead of calling you what you are, which is easy, or calling you something that describes you, which is boring, why don’t I call you something that you like?” The cat blinked slowly in the way of cats, the way that said they were listening carefully and you had better say something interesting for a change. “Why don’t I call you Noodle?”
The newly named Noodle uttered a short mew, which Gurl took as an OK, before getting back to her fettucini. “Noodle it is, then,” Gurl said, feeling immensely pleased with herself. She had never named anything before. No wonder Mrs Terwiliger liked it so much, even though she was awful at it.
Gurl finished the meat loaf and polished off the ravioli in a couple of swift bites, eyeing her own hand as she did. She wondered what triggered it, what exactly made her fade. She could feel the tingling in her skin that afternoon, knew it was happening and was terrified that Mrs Terwiliger or that crazy boy—Bug or Chicken or whatever his name was—would notice. They didn’t seem to, or at least neither of them said anything. But she didn’t like the look on Bug Boy’s face as he turned to follow Mrs Terwiliger. It was a smug, self-satisfied look, the one everyone seemed to give her. A look that said Gurl was doomed, beaten before she even started.
“No, I’m not,” she said and her words echoed in the dark alley. Noodle’s whiskers twitched in disapproval. “Sorry,” she said, softer now. If she had to choose between being noticed and being ignored, she would take ignored any day. Bad things happened when she was noticed.
Noodle curled up in Gurl’s lap and Gurl leaned back against the brick, just as she did that first night, and stared up at the sky and the buildings that reached ecstatically towards it. A newspaper wafted on the wind, looking beautiful and fluttering and alive. Gurl felt a thousand things at once. Small and big. Safe and free. Invisible and yet exposed. In her mind, she rifled through her daydreams and found a favourite: a girl stands ankle-deep on a beach with the ocean roaring in front of her. Behind her, a boy shuffles out of a cozy cottage and calls out to the girl: “Mom and Dad say it’s time to come inside now.”
Noodle shifted in Gurl’s lap and mewled softly. “I know,” said Gurl. “We have to do what we came to do.” She held up her hands. “They look the same, Noodle. Just regular old hands.” With her nose, Noodle nudged her fingers. “Yes, concentrate. That’s a good idea.” Gurl focused all her attention on her hands, willing them to fade. She tried harder, squinting with the effort. After a while, her right wrist seemed to look a bit nubby like the pavement beneath her, but it hadn’t changed colour and nothing else seemed different at all. Her hands dropped to nestle in Noodle’s fur. “This is not going to work,” she said. “I didn’t even think about it both times it happened before. It just happened. Maybe it was because I was scared?”
Gurl sat in the alley until her butt and the cat fell asleep. Now what should she do? Would she just keep blinking on and off like a light bulb, never knowing when it was going to happen next? But she couldn’t sit here all night. Though it was only September, the temperature had dropped a few degrees and she was getting a little cold. She tapped the cat to wake her and helped her into the backpack. Gurl would have to try again on another night, maybe in another place.
Gurl slipped the pack on, careful not to jostle Noodle. At least the ravioli was good, she told herself. The trip was not a total waste. She paused at the entrance to the street and looked right and left. It was so late that the city seemed deserted and Gurl felt a flutter of nervousness in her stomach, a flutter that matched the trash dancing in the wind. Even Noodle seemed to sense Gurl’s anxiety and pulled her head inside the bag.
Nothing to worry about, Gurl thought. You’ll be fine. She straightened the straps of the pack before heading out on to the street. Walking briskly, Gurl glanced behind her every so often. Wan light pooled beneath the street lamps, giving the air a sickly, yellowish hue, while the bulbs themselves issued a low, eerie buzz.
Plink!
Gurl whirled around, scanning the street. The trash danced, slick puddles glistened, but no one followed her. This is the city and it never sleeps, she thought. Probably someone kicking a stone down the sidewalk blocks away. She told herself that she was being paranoid. And then she told herself to walk faster. For about the billionth time in her life, she wished she could fly.
Pssst!
Again, Gurl turned to face an empty street. But wait: there, in the darkened doorway of a shuttered shop, was someone lurking in the shadows? She stared, straining to see. On the opposite side of the street, a black dome rose from the subway entrance and Gurl’s stomach clenched. But the black dome turned out to be an umbrella, an overcoat-clad person beneath it. Gurl sighed with relief. Some businessman coming home late from the office. Well, if he thought it was OK to be out this late at night, then she was probably fine. She glanced back at the businessman, who held the umbrella so low that she couldn’t see his face. Like Gurl, he didn’t fly, but walked in a swaying lurch that favoured one leg. She felt a little sorry for him, not only unable to fly