Page 36 of If Anything Happens To Me

“I do, too,” I said. “Keep going. What happened the day you were taken?”

“So,” Iris said, and she took a deep breath. “You have to understand that as close as Hayley and I are, we are also very different. Her idea of a big Friday night is taking a bubble bath and bringing a basket full of kittens into her room to snuggle up and watch movies.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I like going out,” Iris said. “Meeting new people. I think it’s because I had so much responsibility with the cats. I’ve been taking care of creatures my whole life, and I want to spread my wings a little. Have adventures.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I said, understanding what it was like to have a lot of responsibility. Sometimes, too much.

“Maybe there is something wrong with it,” she said, looking down. “Considering what happened.”

I saw her tense up, and I did, too, scared of what was coming.

“Two weeks ago, my parents went away for their anniversary,” she said. “They were going to Block Island, and leaving me and Hayley alone. My aunt and uncle live nearby, and they’d check in on us. I was thrilled that my parents would be gone.”

“What were you planning?” I asked.

“Just . . . being free. They said they were closing the Castle for the weekend so we didn’t have to deal with strangers. But that was what I was looking forward to—seeing people.”

“What do you mean?” Matt asked.

“I’d been dating this guy, Andy. Well, nothing serious, but we’d sort of started hanging out, and I thought . . .” She trailed off for a few seconds. “But then I found out he was seeing a girl from another school.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah, exactly. So I was like, we’re done. As soon as I changed toward him, he was suddenly texting me all the time, interested again, but there was no way I could trust him after that. I was really down about the whole thing. So I figured, it was a weekend, I’d keep the Castle open, stay busy, and hopefully meet some nice people. Distract myself from thinking about him.”

“Even though your parents didn’t want you to keep the Castle open,” I said.

“Yep,” she said. “They hung theCLOSEDsign on the door, but as soon they left, I gave Hayley a wicked look. ‘While the parents are away,’ I said, and I turned the sign back toOPEN. Hayley was so mad at me. She hates when I break the rules. It really bothers her.”

“But you opened, anyway?” Matt asked.

Iris nodded. “We headed into the cattery to make sure everyone had enough food and water, and to check on the cats who had had medical procedures and were wearing cones. Almost all of them were napping, either in patches of sunlight or under shelves or in little houses, or in the library.”

“And someone showed up?” I asked.

“Yes. He did,” Iris said.

She explained how her dad had built a cool feature—an outdoor play yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. The cats could enter it from the Castle, and the yard, full of real grass, was fenced on the other three sides and even above so they couldn’t escape. The Bigelows required everyone who adopted a cat to sign a document agreeing to keep the cats inside—to protect them from predators, animals that hunted along the docks, in the dumpsters. To keep them from being hit by cars. To save them from being picked up by terrible people who would harm them.

That afternoon, Hayley and Iris went into the fenced yard to check on the ten or so cats lounging in the sun.

“Right away,” Iris said, “I spotted a guy about my age crouched down outside the fence. He was playing with two gray tiger kittens, dangling a string between the slats in the fence. He was really cute, in a brainy sort of way.”

“The string,” I said. “That was part of what you first remembered. How could you tell he was brainy?”

She thought about it. “He was wearing a Brown University T-shirt, and these glasses that kept slipping down his nose—he reminded me of a boy at my school who’s in AP Calculus.”

“What did he do?” I asked.

“He just stayed there, playing with the kittens. Hayley got nervous right away. She whispered to me, ‘He’s weird.’ But I didn’t think so. And I thought of Andy, and how glad I was that there was a cute boy here . . . He asked me my name.”

“And you told him.”

“I did.” She swallowed hard. “And then he said something that made me suspicious. I should have walked away from him, but I ignored the warning sign. I just kept thinking of Andy, how hurt I was.”

“What warning sign?” Matt asked.

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