Page 4

Chapter 4

Midterms and Impostors

L ucy pounces, a ball of fur and energy as I move my hand beneath the duvet. I’m cross-legged on the bed, my laptop casting a pale glow through the dark room, Hazel on a video chat. A swarm of tabs is open, each one a fruitless search.

“I’ve hit a wall,” I tell her after catching her up on what happened. “I might never know what I was exposed to. Should I be worried?”

“You’re not in quarantine, so I’d say no.” Hazel pauses as she washes her face. She’s bringing me with her as she gets ready for bed. “The vet would be monitoring you or would have scheduled a checkup if there was something to be concerned about, right?”

The uncertainty in her tone does little to soothe my nerves. “I guess.”

I swish my hand under the blanket, and Lucy’s tiny body makes a thwap as she pounces on it.

Something I can’t decipher tingles in the back of my mind. Unease. A warning .

Maybe it’s the trauma of what happened to Lucy—and nothing to reassure me she’s cured except the word of a woman who’s definitely hiding something.

I move my hand again. Swish. She pounces. Thwap.

“Do you have any other info to go on?” Hazel’s background shifts as she takes me out of the bathroom. She’s home with her family tonight. Framed photos of her and her sister decorate the hallway, and her dad’s massive Great Wave off Kanagawa print makes a brief appearance behind her before she plunks down in front of the familiar red brick of their fireplace. A pang goes through my chest. I’d give anything to be able to randomly drive home for a night or two.

“Just her first name.” Swish . “Natalie.”

Thwap.

I let her name linger on my tongue. I like saying it, even though it’s attached to a woman wrapped in an infuriating mystery.

“Natalie,” she repeats, sounding like a detective on a case. “I’ll look her up. I want a picture.”

“Don’t bother. She’s nowhere.” Defeat weighs heavily over me. I was so sure I could find something. Anything . All I found was a Reddit post from three years ago where someone asked about an excellent piano tuner in Vancouver named Natalie Zacharias, who seemed to have disappeared overnight. A local news article from two years ago also named her as an employee in a thrift shop that got robbed.

But what does this tell me? Maybe she had part-time jobs while completing her degree. Or these were different people with the same name.

“Ugh, that’s so weird.” Hazel puckers her lips, a deep crease between her eyebrows.

I know that look. It’s the one she makes when she’s trying to solve a tough problem. And Doctor Natalie Zacharias is a tough problem.

Lucy crouches and wiggles her butt, then does the most ferocious pounce yet. Hazel and I both laugh, and the sense of dread thaws a little .

Is it safe to trust that she’s been cured? She’s acting like a normal kitten and is definitely more playful now.

“I think I need to give up and accept that I’ll never know what happened to us.” Resigned, I drag the laptop closer and open my class notes. “Anyway, I’ve got midterms to cram for. I can’t believe I have four next week. This sucks.”

“I know.” Hazel’s voice is muffled behind her hands. “It feels like term just started.”

Exhaustion pulls me down, and I lean back against my pillows with my laptop on my thighs. My motivation is at an all-time low after the chaos of the last few days. How am I supposed to buckle down? As much as I want to follow my own advice and give up, I can’t force my mind away from Natalie—or the image of Lucy’s blazing purple eyes.

She flops around on the duvet, having the time of her life while I move my foot. Still, the nagging worry is there, a sense that I’m missing something important.

“I’ve started a study group with a bunch of other CompSci students,” Hazel says. “One of them is literally the smartest person I’ve ever met in my life. He’s been helping me with assignments.” The determined edge in her voice is all too familiar. We’re both overachievers who deal with pressure from our parents, but she tends to take it to the next level. She wants to start her own tech company that helps the environment in some way.

“Good to hear you’re making friends so you can use them for their brains,” I tease.

“It’s a fair trade.” She fidgets with something off-screen, a flush in her cheeks. “I give him free cinnamon buns from work.”

I raise an eyebrow. There’s more here. “And how often is he coming by for cinnamon buns?”

Hazel does a little awkward giggle that totally confirms my suspicion.

I gasp, excitement surging. “Oh my God! ”

“We haven’t gone out yet! But I think we’re both getting up the nerve to ask.” She covers her face, a gleam in her eyes.

“Who is he?” I shout, leaning closer to my laptop. Hazel’s adorably giddy when she has a crush.

The video gets blurry as she rushes to her bedroom, presumably so her parents don’t listen in. When she sits, her lips twist into a suppressed smile. “His name’s Sean. We met in the Computer Science Student Society and… I guess we’ve both been showing up in the study lounge a little more than necessary.”

I clap. “Ahh, this is so cute! I’m so happy for you.” And painfully aware that this is a perfect example of how meeting people starts with being social. She’s always been good at this. She met her last boyfriend on a dodgeball team. I’d die before joining a team that requires athletic and social competence.

Lucy flops on her side with her claws locked onto the blanket over my foot. I watch her little paws bat it, feeling them patter against my toes. My gaze keeps traveling to her eyes, searching, like I’m expecting them to turn purple again.

“Our flirting is so awkward and shameless,” Hazel says into her hands. “You’d cringe if you saw it.”

I laugh. “At least you know how to show someone you’re interested.”

“Uh-huh. Speaking of crushes .” Hazel grins, seeing right through me. “Maybe you should get to know Natalie a bit better.”

I splutter something that isn’t even words, not ready for the abrupt turn in the conversation. I finally choke out a sarcastic, “Yeah, okay.”

“Why not?”

“Even if she wasn’t weirdly cryptic, and even if I did trust her…” Longing fills me at the mere prospect of going out with someone that hot, that smart, and that confident. “A person of her… caliber… would never be interested in me.”

“How do you know?” Hazel asks optimistically. Bless her .

“I read the room.”

“What room? A vet’s office?”

I say nothing, my attention suddenly veering to Lucy, who’s lying on her side and purring. Wait a second.

“Not exactly a flirty place,” Hazel says, oblivious to my shift in focus. “Come on, you said after Mansplainy Matt that you were ready to date girls again. I can see your infatuation from here.”

I’m frozen, staring at the kitten on my bed. A chill creeps over me. Where is the brown smudge on her back paw?

A cold knot forms in my stomach as I lean forward, picking her up despite her meow of protest. I sift through the fur on her paw, searching. Could she have shed the brown hairs?

No, it’s been less than a week since I last saw her.

“Katie?” Hazel’s voice filters through my frantic thoughts. “You good?”

My phone is in my hand before I register moving, my fingers flipping through every picture of Lucy since the day I got her. I hold the kitten up next to my phone, comparing.

No—effing—way.

Disbelief and betrayal slice through me, leaving me breathless.

“Katie?” Hazel’s tone has an edge as she picks up on my panic.

“I—” My hands are shaking. I gaze into the kitten’s big blue eyes, which are wider set than in the photo. “Hazel, this isn’t Lucy.”

“Helping Paws Vancouver Anim—”

“Hi, this is Katie Alexander,” I interrupt, gripping my phone so hard that my hand cramps. “I picked up my cat from Doctor Zacharias today. Can you have her call me? It’s urgent. ”

My room is dead silent except for the rain lashing against the window, leaving streaks between me and the pitch black night. My candles sway in a draft, casting shadows over the walls.

“If it’s urgent, we recommend you bring your cat in for an exam,” the vet tech says.

“Please just have her call me.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I have follow-up questions.”

A pause. “Okay. What’s the best number to reach you?”

I give her my number, and before I can ask how long it will be, the line goes dead.

I flop sideways on the bed and draw my knees to my chest. Hazel is still on my laptop, walking in and out of the frame as she paces her room and flaps her hands.

Not-Lucy comes to curl up beside my face. I pet her.

“Whose cat are you, then?” I whisper, and she purrs, oblivious to my turmoil.

“There has to be an explanation,” Hazel says calmly. “A vet could get in serious trouble for something like this. They could be sued, or shut down, or… get a really bad review on Google.”

I moan incoherently into the duvet.

The minutes tick by with excruciating slowness. I turn on my desk lamp and try to study, re-reading the same notes over and over, praying they sink in so I don’t fail my first university midterms.

It’s hopeless.

After an hour, Hazel and I have to end our call so she can go to sleep.

Finally, as I lie in bed and prepare to stare at the ceiling all night, an unknown number lights up my phone.

I sit up and answer with a trembling hand. “Where’s the real Lucy?”

Silence. An exhale. “What are you talking about?”

Natalie’s voice disorients me. It purrs through the speaker, making me tingle everywhere .

I scowl. “Don’t give me that! You swapped my cat.”

The silence goes on for longer this time. “What makes you say that?”

I fling the blankets off me and get up, pacing the dark room. The ambient light from the street lamps outside casts a faint glow over the bed. “First of all, her whole personality is different, but I chalked that up to her being cured from… whatever she had going on. But it’s her back paw. The real Lucy has a smudge there, and this kitten doesn’t.”

“Do you not like this kitten?”

The question makes my heart jump. “So you admit it. This isn’t Lucy.”

“And you don’t like her?”

I look down at the little fluff ball on my pillow with her big eyes and beige-tipped ears. “That’s not the point.”

“Miss Alexander, trust me when I say you’re better off this way.”

I freeze mid-step, a scoff escaping. “I don’t trust you! You’ve given me no reason to!”

She says nothing. I want to reach through the phone and shake a real answer out of her.

“Is this why you put the ribbon on her?” I ask. “To distract me?”

“No. Maybe.”

I growl in frustration, acid rising inside me. “You’re despicable. Is Lucy still alive?”

“I have to go, Miss Alexander. Please understand that you’ve got the cat you were meant to have.”

“What is that supposed to—”

Beep beep beep. The call disconnects.

I gape at the phone, fury bubbling up. The jerk hung up on me!

I can’t even call her back because her number is private.

My hands are shaking. I can’t believe her. She lied about Lucy being restored to health, she lied about her contracting a curable disease, and now …

My eyes prickle, a lump forming in my throat.

No. Don’t go there.

She has to be okay. Only a monster would harm a kitten.

I tap the number for the vet’s office.

“Helping Paws, please hold,” the vet tech says in a rush.

“Wait—”

Hold music blares in my ears. I pull the phone away a few inches, continuing to pace because there’s no way I could sit still right now.

A long minute passes before she comes back. “How can I help you?”

“Hi, it’s Katie Alexander again. I have another important question for Doctor Zacharias. Can you please have her call me?” I barely refrain from referring to her as ‘that asshole.’

“I just spoke with her,” the vet tech says, sounding a little snippy, “and she told me to tell you that Lucy’s illness is resolved and there is no further reason for you to contact us.”

My face burns. She’s made it sound like I’m stalking her.

Too humiliated to argue, I swallow. “Oh. Sorry for…” I mumble something incoherent and hang up.

My room is quiet. Not-Lucy is asleep. Even the rain has ceased, leaving me in a heavy, suffocating silence.

These dead ends won’t stop me. I refuse to let the real Lucy down by giving up on her.

But ‘Doctor’ Natalie Zacharias seems to be a pro at this. Like maybe she does this sort of thing all the time. What if Lucy isn’t the only victim? Have there been other cases like hers—at other vet offices, even?

I grab my laptop, determination settling over me like armor. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to break this secret open… even if that means making a reckless plan.