Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer (detective books to read TXT) 📕

I sit down on the chair and just stare at her. I can’t decide if I’m angry or just shocked.

“I would have told you earlier, but I wanted to do it at a therapy appointment,” Mom says, “and there kept being more urgent things to talk about, and then my mother said she wanted to come visit.”

I take a very deep breath and wait until my voice is going to be steady before I say, “I guess I just assumed your family was dead.”

“No,” Mom says. I’m trying to piece together a sentence to ask just how many relatives I have that she never told me about, but she fills that in without me prompting her. “My mother is living. I also have a brother, three sets of aunts and uncles, and eight cousins. My brother lives in Florida, and he’s married and has three kids, so you also have an aunt and three first cousins. They’re young—I just found out about them when I talked with my mother the other day. The older one is nine, the younger two are five-year-old twins.”

I feel like maybe I should have been taking notes as I try to list all this out in my head. I guess the only one I need to worry about is the grandmother—my grandmother. Because she’s visiting.

“What are they like?” I ask. “Not the ones you haven’t met. The rest of them.”

“Back when we were all regularly in touch, I didn’t get along with any of them very well. I had cut way back on visits even before I had to run. Obviously, when we were in hiding, it was too risky to give my mother any information about where we were. Twice, I sent postcards letting her know we were still alive. And then I called her last week. She lives in Houston, Texas.”

A grandmother is one of those eight million normal things that normal kids always had, and I didn’t.

At a therapy appointment a few weeks ago, the therapist told me that I never had to decide right away how I felt about something, it was okay to just wait and see and think about it. So that’s what I’m going to do.

“Okay,” I say. “What’s her name?”

“Rose,” Mom says. “Her name is Rose Packet.”

“That sounds like something you’d order from a garden catalog.”

“It does, rather. She grows roses competitively.”

“Huh,” I say, and retire to my room to talk this over with my Clowder.

21•  Clowder  •

Marvin: So who wants me on your zombie defense team? Today I turned a wrecked car into BODY ARMOR.

Orlando: I would have thought that body armor made out of a used car would mostly slow you down if the zombies were after you?

Marvin: You’ll probably still die but you will look SO much more badass while you’re doing it!

Orlando: Except for the part where I trip and fall down and can’t get back up because of the weight.

Boom Storm: You know what they say. You don’t have to outrun zombies, you just have to outrun your friend wearing a car.

Georgia: Where did u get the car?

Marvin: Junkyard. Actually my LARPing group got it, I just went to this workshop where a dude taught me how to use a fancy power saw.

Hermione: This doesn’t sound like it would actually make good body armor if your goal is to protect yourself. However, if your goal is to look like a supervillain from a postapocalyptic wasteland movie, it sounds perfect.

Marvin: I have a HELMET made from a FENDER.

Hermione: Yes, that was basically my point.

{LittleBrownBat is here}

LittleBrownBat: Hi everyone. I just found out I have a grandmother.

A living grandmother. I mean obviously I knew my parents didn’t hatch from eggs.

Firestar: OMG.

Georgia: Whoa. R u OK?

Orlando: Mom’s mom or dad’s mom?

LittleBrownBat: Mom’s.

I probably have even more relatives on my dad’s side.

Orlando: It’s OK, whatever was up with your dad, it probably wasn’t genetic.

LittleBrownBat: Anyway, my grandmother is coming to visit and I’m going to meet her and this is super weird. SUPER weird.

CheshireCat: Do you need more time?

LittleBrownBat: Are you offering to delay her plane?!?

CheshireCat: No! That would be wrong!

There’s probably a way to delay just her.

LittleBrownBat: No!

Might as well rip off the stuck thing and get it over with

Georgia: She hasn’t seen u in how long? I bet she’d walk to MN if she had to

LittleBrownBat: She lives in Texas

Georgia: OK walking prolly wouldn’t be her first choice

LittleBrownBat: Mom sent her two postcards in twelve years. To let her know we were still alive.

Georgia: Understandable given ur dad.

Firestar: Can you ESCAPE? Temporarily? If you need to?

LittleBrownBat: I have my own room.

Hermione: So there’s always the ‘sorry, I have homework, so much homework’ excuse

Georgia: Text me if you need an URGENT PHONE CALL.

CheshireCat: I can pass a message if you want. We can have a secret code! Secret codes have always looked super fun!

Firestar: Cheshie if I ever say DOUGHNUTS KALAMAZOO WINIFRED that’s an SOS.

CheshireCat: Noted!

22•  Steph  •

Saturday morning is bright and clear. My biggest concern, as I eat breakfast and make sandwiches for the road, is that Mom has gotten out of bed to see me off, which means she’ll be in the living room when I leave and might want an explanation for the robot dog. Fortunately, it fits in my backpack, if I zip it carefully and don’t sling it around much. CheshireCat folds all the limbs inward to make the robot as compact as possible. The extra battery goes in next to it.

“You’re up early,” I say, resting the backpack casually against my foot.

“I may go back to bed once you’re on your way,” she says. “Have a good trip and give me a call if you’re going to be home later than 10:00 tonight.”

“Okay, thanks!” I say, hoisting the backpack as discreetly as I can and hoping the seams don’t rip. Mom is watching me from the window as I put the bag of sandwiches in the back seat of the car. I wonder if she thinks I’m