The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

eerie through the air holes. ‘So mad. The only time I remember him being this angry was after that time at the mall …’ She’s doing that slight, involuntary gasping that happens when people are tired out from crying.

My mind won’t work properly, it races like that mouse in the walls. My fur stands up in quills.

Calm down, Olivia, I tell myself. So she got herself locked in the freezer somehow. Careless kid …

‘I didn’t lock myself in,’ Lauren says.

I leap a little in the air. You can hear me? I ask. You understand cat? Oh my LORD!

‘Listen. Ted shut me in …’

What a silly accident, I say, relieved. I bet he’ll feel terrible when he realises … OK. Easy! I’ll go wake Ted, and he can let you out.

‘No, please don’t wake him.’ Her voice is like a scream, if a scream could also be a whisper. It’s horrible. It has little bloody flip-flops and scrawls saying help in it. I feel cold marching up my tail, into my spine. Lauren gives a series of hard little gasps like she’s trying to get herself together.

You can’t stay in there for ever, Lauren, I say, reasonable. That’s my place. It’s a little selfish of you, actually. Anyway, your mom will come looking for you, or the school … Is it a school you go to? Sorry, I forget.

‘No, Olivia,’ she whispers. ‘Think. Please.’ I look at the freezer, its size. I look at the air holes Ted pierced in the lid for me. Or were they for me? I feel the answer ebbing through the thick metal door, the rubber seal. The knowledge twists through my organs, flesh and bones.

You don’t go anywhere, when you go away, I say. You stay right here.

‘When you can’t get in, that means I’m here,’ she says. ‘We take turns, I guess.’

I think of it: Lauren lying quiet in the dark, listening as Ted and I go about our business. I haven’t seen you for over a month, I say.

‘Has it been that long? Time drifts here in the dark, it’s hard to tell whether you are dead or not. I wondered. But then I heard you through the wall, and I thought, no, not yet …’

Oh, I say. Oh, oh.

‘I’ve been trying to speak to you,’ she says. ‘Had to find a time when he didn’t stop my mouth too tight, when he was asleep and the music wasn’t too loud. I wrote notes. I slipped them into his pocket, his pants, anywhere I could reach … You didn’t find them I guess but he didn’t either so that’s good. Lucky he’s so drunk, always.’

I row uselessly and turn in circles. I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry …

She sighs and I hear the wet catch in her breath. ‘You’re always sorry,’ she says, sounding more like her old self. ‘Always trying to make him feel better.’

Oh, how could he? I say. To lock up his own daughter like this …

She gives a tired little laugh. ‘Grow up, Olivia. I’m not his daughter.’

But you call him Dad.

‘He calls me kitten when I’m good – does that mean I’m a cat?’

I shudder and my tail lashes. He calls me kitten, I say.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘There have been lots of kittens over the years.’

I think back to the night Ted found me, a kit in the woods, the night when the cord bound us together. His cuffs covered in fresh mud. The elusive scent in the back of the car, as if the seat had just been vacated. Soft fabric, yellow with blue butterflies. He wrapped me in a child’s blanket. I guess maybe I should have wondered what was he doing at night in the woods, with mud on his cuffs and a child’s blanket.

I ask, How long have you been here?

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Since I was little.’

All this time, I say. It’s like looking in a mirror, to find it’s really a door. I could really hurt Ted, I could. Oh Lord, I whisper, how awful.

‘You don’t know what awful is.’ Lauren takes a deep breath. ‘I’ll tell this once and then never again.’

‘Once upon a time I lived with my family. I don’t recall that too well. It was long ago and I was little. I don’t remember much about the day he took me, except that it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. I think my mom used to say that, but I’m not sure. Lauren’s not my real name. I don’t remember that either.

‘I do remember when he brought me here. I liked the house, it was dusty and dirty, and Mom never let me play in the dirt. I liked the peepholes in the plywood; I thought they were like portholes in a ship. I said so, and he told me I was very smart. He told me his name was Ted and that he was taking care of me while my parents were out. I didn’t think anything was wrong. Why would I? It had happened before, me being left with people, neighbours and such. My parents went to a lot of parties. My mother always used to come into my room to kiss me goodnight, before she left for the evening. I remember her scent. Geraniums. I used to call them “germamiums”. God, I was so dumb when I was little. I guess that’s how I ended up here. What was I talking about?’

You were telling me about the day Ted ... took ... you, I say. Each word feels like a little piece of gravel on my tongue.

‘Yeah,’ says Lauren. ‘I was so hot, that day, my bathing suit or underwear or whatever itched. I complained to Ted, said I was boiling. Maybe that was what gave him the idea. He told me there was ice cream in the freezer in the kitchen, and that I could go and get it. The kitchen was a mess, a pile of unwashed