Mollie + Chester

Chapter Three

Every house in Tamwood looks exactly the same.
Every. Single. One. Well, the outsides anyway. They all have red brick walls and a freshly painted white picket fence around the precisely green mowed front lawns. They all have well-trimmed gardens with rose bushes that are always in full bloom whatever the time of the year and not one dead fallen leaf resides anywhere on any property.
Mum tried so hard to keep our house, the one right on the corner, looking perfect just like every other house in our town, but no matter how hard she tried, she could never get the inside perfect too.
We may all plaster on giant fake smiles and parade around in poofy dresses, or perfect suits, but one the inside, we are not perfect.
We are far from it.

The girl had raced into the dump, scaling the high fence and untied the kitten just in time, before the monster had got him. She held the kitten close to her chest that rose and fell quickly, her breaths short and raspy.
She had carried him, tucked in her soft, red coat all the way to her house, one that looked so similar to the others, the kitten didn't know how she could tell them apart, and walked up the cobblestone path to the door.
Seth rummaged in his pocket for the house keys but the door opened before he could find them, a short pudgy woman with greyish hair and teary eyes burst out of the house, holding a phone to her ear.
Her eyes widened when she saw the kitten in her daughter's arms.
"Mum, before you say anything," Mollie said hurriedly, "he won't do anything wrong, and he needs a home and..."
"Oh Mollie, you can't... Yes, yes, I'm still on the phone, yes it was just ringing to confirm the cake I ordered."
"Please Mum! I will look after him, he can sleep in my room and... Please!"
"Yes, yes, two-thirty," Mollie's mother said into the phone before hanging up. She sighed and looked at her daughter through her tear filled eyes. "Mollie..."
The kitten could see the mother looking over her daughter, seeing her tiny bony frame and heaving chest. She looked over at Seth, and the kitten saw the boy shrug, a carefree smile on his face.
The mother breathed out heavily. "Oh, alright, but you have to ask your father." Mollie groaned. "Oh, and you had better hurry up, you must get ready for the..."
"Yes, yes the party, I know, with the balloons and the petting zoo," Mollie said interrupting.
Her mother responded with one word: "Seth."
"Well, Mollie, Mum said yes, so let's go and ask Dad..." Seth started, grabbing his sister by the arm and dragging her inside.
The mother held out an arm between her children and shook her head.
"No way mister, you are helping with the decorating for the surprise party you spoiled."
This time, it was Seth who groaned and followed his mother into the kitchen. Mollie moved the other way, going towards her father's study.
The kitten dug his claws into the red coat as the girl raced as fast as she could. Along the walls were hanging pictures depicting the past, a woman in a white dress kissing a man in a suit, a tiny baby boy in a blue blanket, his face contorted as if he were about to cry, a boy with floppy hair holding a tiny baby girl, the boy and the girl, now older, holding hands. After the photo where the tiny blonde girl looked about five years old, the photos stopped and walls were bare.
The girl stopped at a heavy looking door that was different to all the others in the house, a dark brown wood covered in intricate carved swirls. She pushed it open, shifting the kitten so he sat in only one of her arms and stepped inside the room.
The man sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen looked old and young at the same time, if that were even possible. He wore fine clothes and his hair the same colour as the Seth's, cut shorter though. His face bore hardly any wrinkles, and he sat poised as if he needed to be ready to get up at a moment's notice.
It was his eyes that made him old, they seemed to have seen so much, looking worn and tired. Sunlight seeped in through the slits in the horizontal blinds, leaving lines of light across the room.
He looked up from his computer at his daughter, who shuffled nervously in the doorway.
"No," he said before she could even start talking, glaring at the tiny kitten who trembled.
"But Dad, please just let..."
"No." The man looked back to his computer, typing a few sentences before looking back to his daughter. "We cannot take care of a cat, I have enough to look after already, with you..." He trailed off, not finishing the sentence but Mollie had already finished it in her head.
"It's not fair!" She said, her eyes filling with tears. The kitten could feel her chest rising and falling more frequently now. Her breaths we so short. The kitten meowed. "I didn't ask for me to get..."
"Mollie," her father said cutting her off. The kitten could see this was more than the father could handle. He was only trying to fix it, not wanting to accept that his daughter could die in the next minute.
"But... Dad..." Mollie coughed between her words and the kitten meowed louder, jumping from Mollie's arms. He looked at the father and meowed again.
Now, Mollie bent over, coughing more. The father yelled something out that the kitten couldn't hear, he was meowing too loudly, and the mother with the greying hair raced into the room, carrying a metal thing.
Mollie had by that time, collapsed on the floor, her coughing had stopped.
The kitten did not stop meowing until the girl started breathing normally again.

My curtains hadn't been shut properly so a slit of brightness came through into my dark room. I could see dust as it danced its way through the light. I felt something tickling my ear and I found the little ginger kitten nestled above my shoulder. He stared at me with his big green eyes and purred when I smiled.
The coughing fits I had happened every once and a while and were usually due to the lack of oxygen. I blacked out most of the times but Mum and Dad were so used to these fits now that putting on the oxygen mask and carrying me to my bed seemed like a common routine, like brushing your teeth or combing your hair.
From where I lay, I could see out of my second story window facing the front of my house. I saw the sky was a brilliant blue, great weather for Mum's party for me, which I got to get out of.
I sat up and peeked over the window sill, pushing back the curtains to find the yard looking completely different, like something had spewed bright pink and purple balloons and streamers and women if poofy dresses all over the place and hadn't cleaned it up yet. And I knew most of the guests would be around the back, visiting the supposed petting zoo and eating the disgusting cold finger food nobody even liked.
My bedroom door creaked open and I craned my neck to find Seth coming across the floorboards. On his head was a ridiculous party hat and pink icing covered his lips. I removed the oxygen mask from my face and stifled a laugh.
"Oh my god," I said as he came in and sat on the bed. "You look like a crayon."
Seth faked a hurt look. "What an insult, I am so deeply, offended that after you didn't even show up to your own birthday party, you laugh at me because I was made to wear a hat..."
I pulled on the elastic and flicked it back so it hit his chin. Seth swatted my hand away when I tried a second time.
"So, how's the party going without me?" I asked, trying to listen for music downstairs. The Macarena played which explained why Seth was up here. "So you haven't come to check on your sister, you've come to escape the dancing!"
At every party, the same songs were played in a row and. Every. Single. Person. Danced.
Seth looked offended. "I have not escaped, I was extremely worried for my sister..." He grinned and tickled me under the chin. "If you want, I can go and get Mum..."
"No!" I said a bit too loud. I would have been heard if the music hadn't have been on. It wasn't as if I didn't want to see her, I just didn't want her treat me like china, asking me a million questions about where it hurt. Seth was so much easier to be around, he acted like having cancer was normal.
"Hey! I found another mistake before..."
Seth jumped off my bed and disappeared, getting his old school laptop before returning. He opened the lid and showed me a website. I read it out loud.
"Lymphoma is cancer that starts in the chest or bone marrow..." I laughed. "Dear website people, I am ten and know that lymphoma starts in the lymphocytes which are in the immune system. Some of those cells are in the chest or bone marrow but it usually starts in the lymph nodes."
Seth nodded approvingly and opened up another link. This one made me laugh harder.
"Lymphoma can be non H-O-D-G-I-K-I-N-S... Hmm, hodgikins. That's really great spelling."
"They spelled lymphoblastic wrong too, but at least they spelled thymus right."
We knew all this because I had learned to spell these words before I learned the word 'because'. I also knew lymphoma in the thymus, which was in the chest was stage III and that 20 per cent of kids didn't survive.
Chester meowed, seemingly reminding us he was there and I scratched him behind the ear.
"What made Dad change his mind?"
"The little guy sat beside you and meowed until someone came to help. Dad said we could take him to the shelter tomorrow and see if he's lost, otherwise, you get to keep him."
I heard the kitten start to purr as I continued to scratch him and a thought occurred.
"What can I call him?"
Seth wrinkled his nose like he always did when he thought. "Lucky?"
I giggled and shook my head. "That's a dog's name!"
"Fluffy?"
"No way, Seth!" I lifted the kitten into my arms, his tail wrapping around my wrist.
"Well, I don't see you coming up with any ideas."
"Can you get me a book from my shelf?" I asked and went and stood in front of the little book shelf Dad built for me when I was a kid. Before well, everything.
He looked at me questioningly wanting to know what to do so I told to just pick a random book. He pulled at the spine of a pink hardback on the bottom shelf and dropped it on my lap.
I closed my eyes and opened the book to a random page, letting my finger fall on a word right in the middle.
"Good," I read. "Well this didn't work as well as I thought."
"Try again," Seth said and I obeyed, flipping to another page.
"Chest. Who would call their cat chest?" I sighed and threw the book to the end of the bed.
"What about Chester?" Seth said patting the sleeping kitten on his head.
"That's it!" I yelled, waking the newly named kitten and he jumped.
The kitten stood and walked around in circles before curling up in a ball on my belly and looked up at me with his big green eyes.
Chester.