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--Who are you? What do you want from me?--
It's not your business! Allie bore down and pushed her deep again.
Her mother was on the phone now. Allie now sat on her shaking hands, and forced a fake smile as her mother turned back to her.
"Yes ... I see ..." her mother said into the phone. "Is that so? ... Don't worry, I'll take care of it... . I said don't worry ... I know ... me, too."
She hung up, and came back toward Allie, but she didn't sit down. "That was my husband," she said. "He just got off the phone with Sarah Wintuck, who's still teaching fourth grade in Cape May, New Jersey."
The slippery ice beneath Allie's feet became the edge of a glacier calving into the sea. She was in freefall now, and deep inside her the cat woman was screaming to be released.
"I don't know who you are, but I want you to leave," her mother said coldly.
"I ... I just ..." But what could she say? What could she tell her that would make any sense? "I have a message from your daughter!"
The hatred in her mother's eyes was so potent, Allie had to look away. "I want you out of my house!" she said. "Now!" And she didn't wait for her to leave. She grabbed Allie by her skinny cat woman arm, and pulled her toward the door. In a moment she was over the threshold again, outside the door, about to be hurled out of her parents' lives.
"Please!" Allie said.
"Help me!" shouted the cat woman.
"You think I don't know about you people!" said her mother. "You prey on people's hopes, telling them what they want to hear, and then you rob them blind! Well, you picked the wrong family to scam!"
Her mother's hand was on the door, ready to slam it, and Allie couldn't allow that. She had to say something to make her understand.
"They were arguing about the radio!"
And it stopped her mother cold. "What did you say?"
"When the accident happened, they were arguing about the radio--he turned it down, and she turned it back up. But it wasn't his fault! She wants you both to know that the accident wasn't his fault!"
Her mother's expression went from shock to horror to fury in the span of a single second, and then she said in a voice lethal with venom, "Whoever you are, I hope you rot in hell!" She slammed the door so hard it almost broke the jamb, and Allie could hear her bursting into tears on the other side.
Allie ran from the house, tears filling her own eyes, her whole body shaking, the cat woman fighting to get out, and there was a pain deep in her back, spreading down her arms.
This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to bring comfort to her parents, not anguish.
--Let me go!-- screamed the cat woman, and Allie refused, taking out all her anger on her. If the woman had only stayed asleep--if she had only stayed quiet, Allie would have talked her way out of this. Things would have gone differently if she didn't have to fight the cat woman for control.
This is your fault!Allie screamed in her thoughts as she ran. You couldn't just let me do this! You couldn't just let it be! They were on a busy street now--a commercial street full of shops restaurants and cars. Plenty of people to skinjack. Allie tried to peel out, disgusted with the cat woman and her body--but she couldn't do it. She tugged and twisted, but it was as if she was glued to the cat woman's frame. She had stayed inside her too long!
--Get out of me!--
I'm trying!
The pain in her back was moving to her chest. It was intense, and it was hard to breathe. She shouldn't have run so fast. Not in this body. It suddenly dawned on her that the cat woman was having a heart attack--Allie had given her a heart attack, and now she was stuck with her in this feeble failing body!
--what have you done to me?-- the cat woman wailed.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
She stumbled in the front door of a restaurant.
--what have you done?-- Shut up! I'll get us out of this, Allie told her.
The maå¯tre d' looked at her in alarm. "Help me!" she said. It was all she could do to get the words out. "Heart." Restaurants did have emergency kits, didn't they?
The Maitre d' looked like a deer in headlights, then he glanced down at his reservation book as if the solution might be written there. He was useless.
