Boots! Yes! Boots would know!
She ran around the circulation desk. “Thank you!” she called to Linda.
“You’re welcome,” Linda said. She still had an odd smile on her face. Julie didn’t have time to think about what it meant. And she didn’t see Linda walk back to the mouse cage and set the Three Blind Mice free. “You’re very welcome.”
Chapter Eight
Alone
Julie coasted into her driveway as the garage door lurched, closing. Mom was home! Cindy was wrong! Looking for Mom’s car, she stood up on the pedals.
A fat orange cat scooted out tail-first under the closing garage door. She swallowed back disappointment. It wasn’t Mom; it was Boots.
Did Boots know about Mom? Oh, how was she going to tell him? He was not going to take this well. “Boots?” Julie said.
Boots jumped and turned. “You’re home!”
“Listen, Boots . . .” She looked down at the pavement and blinked fast. Why did she feel like crying again? Why was it so hard to say? “Boots, Mom’s in the Wild.”
He didn’t say anything—he’s in shock, she thought. Julie raised her head. “Boots, I need to call . . .” she began. She stopped. He was wearing his cloak and boots. He had a sack over his shoulder. Boots never wore clothes outside the house. “Are you running away?” she asked.
He ducked his head. “Not exactly.”
She had a horrible thought. “Are you running toward?”
“You don’t understand my kind of loneliness,” he said. “I am the only talking cat in the real world. I’ll never find love outside the Wild.”
Julie felt as if the pavement had been ripped from under her feet. Speechless, she stared at him. First her mom and Grandma, and now Boots. She was losing her family. She shook her head—maybe she’d misunderstood. “You don’t mean . . .”
“Plus there’s the constant fear of being tossed into some evil government laboratory where I’ll be dissected into a zillion pieces.” He said it casually, but he shuddered all the way down to the tip of his tail. “If I can avoid any poor miller’s sons, I might be able to stay free of my story, find my dream girl-cat, and start a new life. The Wild will be a jumble while it’s growing. I should be able to pick and choose my own tale or even avoid the tales altogether. It won’t be the same as last time.”
She didn’t understand. “You aren’t happy here?” A dozen memories jumped into her mind: hide-and-seek (he always hid in the cat food cabinet) and cards (he always demanded they play Go Fish). Sure, they weren’t always buddy-buddy. But brothers and sisters were supposed to fight and tease. She’d never meant anything by it. And she’d never thought it was serious enough to make him want to leave. “Is it me?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It isn’t you,” he said. “I just don’t belong here.”
“Of course you belong. You’re my brother!”
He flinched but said, “I’m a cat. A five-hundred-plus-year-old talking cat who eats Fancy Feast and pretends to chase squirrels so strangers will think I’m a pet.”
But . . . but she’d grown up with him. Maybe she wasn’t from the Wild. Maybe she didn’t know what it had been like outside the Wild for all those years, but he’d been her brother for every year she had been alive. That wasn’t something you could toss away like it didn’t mean anything. “We’re family. We have to stick together.” You couldn’t just stop being family. She gulped and blinked, trying not to cry. “Mom needs us.”
“Your mother had some money in her jewelry box. You can use it for a bus from the center of Shrewsbury. If you start now, you should be able to outdistance the Wild. For a little while, at least.”
How could he do this? Bad enough that the Wild had escaped and Mom and Grandma were lost—how could Boots deliberately abandon her? How could he reject her? They were family, whether he liked it or not. “What about family loyalty? Are you just going to abandon your own sister?” Despite her best efforts, her voice cracked. “Did you plan this? Did you make the wish in the well?”
“Of course not—Zel would skin me alive,” he said. “But I’m not going to cry over spilt milk either. I have a second chance—the love of my life could be in there.”
That was the most selfish, the most . . .
Dropping to four paws, he ran down the driveway. “I’m sorry, Julie!”
“You are the worst brother ever!” she called after him. “You’re not a cat; you’re a rat!” She chased him to the end of the driveway. “Come back! Boots!”