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Catch the Cat
Chapter 1
© Aaron Hoopes 2008
Justin Lumkin was miserable. But at least it was the last day of school and he would be free of the torment for the summer. Justin had a bit of a weight problem. He was bigger - fatter really - than most of the other kids in the class and they enjoyed picking on him. He had chubby cheeks and blue eyes that often filled with tears when he lay in bed at night. He wasn’t good at sports and was always the last one chosen when the other kids made up teams. They laughed at him whenever he missed the ball. Justin thought he must be the most miserable kid in the world, but as he looked across the classroom he realized there was one other person who was just as miserable.
The skinny pale girl sat in the back of the room, her scraggly black hair covering her face, strategically hiding the acne blemishes which stood out on her cheeks. Her name was Nikki Bean. She was the other misfit of the class. Justin would have felt sorry for her if he wasn’t so busy feeling sorry for himself.
“Mr. Lumkin, would you please answer the question,” Mrs. Wick asked, as she stood by the blackboard at the front of the room, shaking Justin from his thoughts.
“Uhm, I…uhm…didn’t…uhm…hear the…uhm…question.” Justin stammered. The girls in the back row started giggling.
“Brilliant, Lumpy,” Rex Summers whispered from behind him.
“Maybe if you were paying attention you might have heard the question, Mr. Lumkin.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Wick,” Justin mumbled, sliding down in his chair trying to sink out of sight.
At that moment the bell rang and the classroom erupted as the students jumped up and raced for the door. It was the last bell on the last day of school and everyone was eager for it to be over.
Justin struggled to get out of his chair. As he stood up he realized Mrs. Wick was standing over him. The rest of the students were gone.
“Justin, you will be in the eighth grade next year,” Mrs. Wick said in her pinched, nasal voice. “It’s a big step. I hope you spend the summer doing something productive.”
“Yes, Mrs. Wick,” Justin said sullenly. He gathered his books and slowly trudged out of the classroom into the hall.
“Outta the way, Lump!” Mark Wallace hollered, pushing past Justin and racing down the hall.
Justin jumped aside and thought he was safe until a pair of hands slammed into his back, and a rough voice blasted his ear.
“Yeah, Lump, get out of the way,”
The next thing he knew he was sprawled face down on the floor. He rolled over and looked up. Standing over him was a tall, muscular boy with a menacing look on his face. Everyone in school feared Ralph Corvin. He was the official school bully.
“Get in my way again, Fatboy, and it’ll hurt a lot more,” he hissed.
“Jerk,” Justin thought as he scrambled to get up. No sooner was he on his feet when Ralph shoved him down again and kicked his backpack, scattering the contents across the floor. The few kids remaining in the hall laughed and pointed.
“Hey, you boys!” a strong voice came from behind them. It was Mr. Detillo the vice principal. “What’s going on here?”
Ralph yanked Justin up by his arm and squeezed.
“Justin tripped, sir. I was just helping him up.” Ralph said innocently.
“Are you okay, son?” Mr. Detillo asked Justin.
“I’m fine,” Justin mumbled, trying not to wince at Ralph’s fingernails biting into his arm. Last year after a similar incident he had tried to tell a teacher that Ralph was bullying him. Ralph got a week of detention and Justin had paid for it with six months of torment. He wasn’t about to go through that again.
“Well, try to be more careful,” Mr. Detillo said to Justin and walked off down the hall.
“Good boy, Lump. You’re learning. Now get out of here…and don’t let me see you around this summer or I may beat some of that blubber out of you,” Ralph growled as he shoved Justin down again and walked out the school door.
Justin gathered up the notebooks, pens, trading cards and candy bars that had spilled out of his backpack. “Mega-jerk,” he muttered to himself as he slowly made his way to the door. He wanted Ralph to get as far away as possible before he went down the stairs.
Finally, he reached the front entrance and went outside. The green in front of the school was shaded by a huge oak tree with giant branches growing in every direction. There were still a few kids hanging around the enormous knotted tree. His attention was caught by a group of girls who seemed to be singing. As he got closer he realized the girls were circled around a tearful, scrawny Nikki Bean crouched in front of the tree.
They were not singing.
“Ikky Bean peed her pants! Ikky Bean peed her pants!” the girls taunted.
“It’s not pee, it’s just water,” she said timidly, but the other girls ignored her.
“Ikky Bean peed her pants!” the girls jeered in unison which somehow made their jeering more hurtful.
“Hey,” Samantha Robbins, the tall, blonde ringleader shouted, “Maybe we should call her Ikky Pee,”
The crowd of girls burst out laughing.
“Ikki Pee, Ikky Pee,” they sang.
“Come on, you guys,” another girl, Katie Dearborn, said. “Let’s get out of here. She’s starting to stink.”
As if on cue, they turned on their heels and skipped away, singing and laughing, leaving Nikki slumped against the oak tree. Justin, feeling that he was a kindred spirit in misery, approached her.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“It’s not pee!” Nikki yelled, looking up at him angrily. Her eyes were puffy from crying “I just spilled my water bottle.”
Justin could now see that her pants were soaked. It really did look embarrassingly like she had peed in them.
“Uhm…well, if we go sit in the sun for a little while, maybe it will dry,” he offered hesitantly.
Nikki brushed a tangled lock of black hair from her face and tried to focus on Justin through her misty eyes. She attempted a weak smile. “Hey, that’s a good idea, Lump…oh…sorry, I mean…Justin, right?”
Justin nodded. Very few people used his first name. “Those girls are losers,” he said.
“Yeah, I won’t argue with you there.” Nikki stood up.
Nikki walked with her backpack in front of her waist to obscure her wet pants. They made their way to the far side of the lawn where the afternoon sun was blazing, and sat down. The warmth of the sun engulfed them immediately and they began to relax.
“How’s that?” Justin asked.
“Gonna take a little while,” Nikki replied. ‘So, what are you doing this summer?”
“Not much,” Justin shrugged. “My parents work most of the time so I’m on my own a lot. How about you?”
“Same. My parents are split up so I have to spend half the week at my Dad’s and the other half at my Mom’s. Both of them are really busy with stuff. That’s okay though. They are kind of weird, you know.”
“Yeah,” Justin nodded.
“It’s funny. We wait all year for school to end thinking that it will be so great when it’s finally over. Then we just end up doing nothing all summer and waiting for next year to begin. And the truth is I hate school. I hate all those people.” Her eyes lowered to her drying pants. “I hate myself,” she muttered.
“Yeah,” Justin said again, sinking into his own misery. “I know how you feel.”
“I wish we could find one of those genies in a bottle who could change everything for us,” Nikki said wistfully. “I’d be a beautiful model.”
“Yeah,” Justin said for the third time. “And I’d be…” he trailed off.
“What?”
“Not fat, for starters,” he said.
All of a sudden a gentle wind kicked up and caught the leaves of the oak tree. The sun had just moved behind it and was now coming through the leaves like a million slivers of shimmering gold in the sky. It seemed like a perfect moment and for the first time in a long while they both felt good.
And then something really surprising happened. From out of the tall grass at the edge of the lawn stepped a purple cat. It was sleek and muscular with yellow eyes and a black-tipped tail. The cat strutted across the school lawn and came right up to them. Justin and Nikki both watched in astonishment as the purple feline sat down on the ground in front of them and looked up.
“You know,” the purple cat said, “people often moan and groan about the chains that bind them, not realizing that they already possess the key to unlocking them within themselves.”
Justin’s mouth fell open and Nikki almost peed in her pants for real. Was it a dream? Was it an illusion? Had the cat actually spoken?
“What?” Nikki finally managed.
“I said that people often struggle to escape the chains that bind them without realizing that they already possess within themselves the key to unlocking them,” the cat repeated. Its voice was lilting, giving them the sensation that the words were floating around in their minds.
“You…you can talk,” Justin eyes bulged out.
“Hello?” The cat’s soft voice took on a tinge of sarcasm. “I think we’ve established that already.”
“But cats can’t talk,” Nikki stammered.
“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a normal cat.”
“And cats aren’t purple,” Justin added.
“Good grief! Are you guys trying to win some sort of award for mastering the totally obvious?”
Justin and Nikki looked at each other and then back to the cat. It sat there with its yellow eyes fixed on them.
“Cool!” they exclaimed in unison.
“So what’s all this stuff about removing chains, Mr. Cat?” Justin asked.
“Please, call me Zink,” the cat replied.
“Zink! What a funny name,” Nikki said, laughing.
“Young lady, you know how much you dislike being teased about your name and yet the first thing you do is tease me about mine,” the cat chastised.
“I’m sorry, Zink,” Nikki repented.
“Yeah,” Justin added. “She wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“Okay,” Zink said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I like my name and I don’t really care what people think about it.”
“Well, I hate my name,” Nikki said.
“Me too,” Justin agreed.
“So I gathered. It’s not only your names you hate, right? You guys were sitting here wishing you could be totally different.”
“How do you know that?” Nikki asked.
“Come on, I’m a talking purple cat. I know everything.” Zink bragged.
“No way!” Justin argued.
“Way.” Zink replied.
“Okay, Zink, if you’re so smart, tell us how can we be different. We’re stuck as we are. We will never change. He’s Lumpy Lumkin and I’m Ikky Bean. It’s our fate.”
“Ha!” The cat fell over on his back, paws in the air, and began to giggle. “You guys crack me up. It’s your fate…oooh, so serious. Gimme a break.”
“Hey, don’t laugh at us,” Nikki said seriously.
“Sorry about that,” Zink rolled back over so he was lying on the grass in front of them. “But you guys have so much potential, and yet here you are just sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves.”
“All right, so tell us what kind of potential you think we have,” Justin challenged.
Zink sat up, his ears flopped down and his eyes narrowed into slits. His two front fangs thrust forward “Ah, you seek answers, Grasshopper,” His voice sounded like that of an Chinese monk in an old kung-fu movie. “I’ll tell you what you wish to know, but,” his ears popped up and his eyes opened wide, “only if you catch me!”
And with that the cat sprang to its feet and darted off across the lawn, a purple blur. Justin and Nikki’s eyes met for a split second and then they jumped up and charged after the cat.
They chased Zink across the school green and into the playground.
“Geez!” Zink exclaimed. “You guys are such slowpokes.”
“You move too fast,” Justin said between panting breaths.
“Oh, shall I slow down a bit?” the cat asked and began moving as if in slow motion. “How…’s… th…is?” the cat asked his words matching his movements.
Nikki and Justin got closer but each time they reached out to grab it, the cat was just out of reach. Exasperated, they gave up.
“I can’t do this,” Nikki panted and plopped herself down on a picnic table in defeat.
Justin slumped down beside her.
“Yeah, me either,” he agreed.
“Whether you believe you can do something or believe you can’t, you’re right,” came the cat’s voice from the other end of the table. “If you start out saying ‘I can’t catch the cat,’ no matter what you do, you will not catch me. On the other hand, if you start out believing you can catch me, then you’re working towards a positive goal and will eventually find a way to succeed.”
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