Making things difficult

I racked my brains and spent ages bent over beside the bed with my butt in the air, but I still couldn't coax the kitten out. Not until Freddy came over. He crouched down, making sure the kitten could see him, then copied me and began calling to her.

"Kitty."

The kitten seemed to freeze. Only after a long standoff did she inch her way out. She looked at me first, then at Freddy, and finally ate something.

"Looks like this kitten knows how to repay kindness, doesn't she, Freddy?"

Freddy said nothing. His face flushed bright red, and he didn't dare look at me, keeping his eyes on the eating kitten instead.

"You're much better at this than I am."

I teased him on purpose. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his fingers curl. He wanted to touch the kitten but didn't dare, only holding his neck stiff and pressing his lips together as the redness at the tips of his ears spread to his cheeks.

After eating, the kitten studied the two humans, then brushed past my knees to Freddy's back, circled around, and wound herself against us in a figure eight. Then she ignored us both and went back to her bed in the corner.

"How about giving her a name?"

"Little Kitty? Tiny Kitty? Big Kitty? Black Kitty?"

Freddy interrupted my nonsense.

"How about Nova?"

"Oh, that's a good name. Let's go with that."

I didn't want Freddy going back to that place at all. Apart from some essential documents I'd taken with me at the time, Freddy now had nothing but the clothes on his back, so we planned to go on a big shopping trip that afternoon.

Actually, I'd lied to Freddy's adoptive father. How could I possibly have told the truth under those circumstances? I wasn't exactly wealthy, but I had more than enough money to support two children.

Freddy woke up very early in the morning, nothing like a child his age. He washed up, then fed the cat. After that, he might go to the living room for a snack, or stay in his room reading books or comics.

I woke up close to nine, then went downstairs to make breakfast. Breakfast was usually simple: oatmeal with milk, two slices of bread, a few strips of bacon, and a fried egg. I also gave the cat a separate boiled egg.

Today was our-next, the two of us might watch some TV or play games for a while, and the time would pass quickly. I also made a little extra snack, usually a warmed-up supermarket cake with freshly squeezed juice or milk. But today, we made butter apples together. The apples were too sour after steaming, so I'd consider adding some sugar next time.

I generally liked making a more substantial lunch. Ever since learning that Freddy might still be a little malnourished and might not grow tall, I'd simply bought an easy cookbook. Following its recipes couldn't go wrong nutrition-wise.

Lunch was rice with corn kernels and beef stewed with potatoes and carrots. It was my first time making the stew, and it tasted pretty good. There was also boiled shredded cabbage with a drizzle of olive oil and a little black pepper and salt, to provide vitamins. The cat's extra meal was boiled beef. I'd make that again next time; it was chewy enough to keep the kitten eating for ages.

In the afternoon, we usually went to a supermarket farther away. After all, Freddy needed too many things for it to be realistic to buy everything in one trip or even a few. Instead, I simply picked up a little more for him every time we went to the supermarket. Now his clothes filled half a wardrobe.

After coming home, the two of us cleaned the house. The basement was always locked, and we hardly used the attic, so we only had two floors to clean, but even that was hard work for two children.

I also had to water the flowers and mow the lawn. If the yard wasn't tidy, people from the community would come knocking.

Dinner was mashed potatoes with gravy and steak, boiled broccoli and corn, and a big glass of warm milk. The cat had cat food mixed with broccoli and chopped corn. She didn't like broccoli, but she loved corn.

Then we watched a movie together, with the kind of popcorn you could leave over the gas burner and get a whole potful without doing anything. Sometimes we ordered fried chicken and pizza. I drank Coke, but Freddy still had milk. There was no helping it; he was short and skinny compared with his classmates. I was very worried he wouldn't grow tall.

At this time, the cat would appear on the couch, then settle somewhere at random: perhaps beneath the blanket covering us, or on the armrest licking her fur, or simply curled into a little circle beside someone's hand, asleep.

I usually chased Freddy upstairs to bed around eight thirty, but I was five years older than him, after all. So I might stay downstairs watching TV and only go to bed close to ten. I seemed to have figured out why I woke up later than he did.

Soon, it was time for school to start. Elementary through high school were all part of the same school here, just on different campuses. Starting that semester, the school cafeteria stopped serving lunch. This was good news, since the cafeteria lunches really were exceptionally awful.

This was the most presentable Freddy had ever been at the start of school: clean clothes that fit, a brand-new schoolbag and stationery, and even an expensive insulated cup, because Klein said drinking cold milk gave him diarrhea. He even had pocket money. Sometimes, Freddy was afraid to fall asleep, afraid his life now was only a dream and that everything would be gone when he woke up. Yet he also wanted to fall asleep quickly, so a new tomorrow would come sooner.

I walked Freddy to his classroom door before hurrying off to my own building.

For lunch, I'd made a big sandwich. It didn't need heating, was quick and convenient, and provided balanced nutrition. Soft bread enclosed lettuce, ham, lean smoked chicken, cheese, and sauce, all wrapped in plastic wrap and cut in half to make it easy to eat. There was also a prewashed apple and two randomly chosen snacks: today, they were soda crackers and chocolate.

Todd was the only one in class with a lavish lunch, but even his paled beside Freddy's. The others looked at the two slices of bread and sausage in their hands, then at the enormous sandwich Freddy could barely hold.

"What? Another question you can't answer, and you've gone quiet again?"

After lunch, there were two more classes before school let out at three in the afternoon.

I stood at the school gates waiting for Freddy and spotted a few familiar guys I'd beaten up before. I watched them with a smile, then watched them hurry across the road.

Freddy came out neither particularly early nor particularly late.

I inspected him carefully. His hair was fairly neat, and his clothes weren't dirty. I also felt his stomach to make sure his lunch was safely inside.

I took his hand and walked home with him after school.

Life continued peacefully like this for three years.

That year, I was sixteen, and Freddy was eleven. We lived like a real family.

I started high school and was moved farther away from the elementary campus, which meant we hardly saw each other apart from our brief lunch break.

Freddy had no friends in his class. After years of open and veiled warnings from me, no one bullied him or spread rumors anymore. But Freddy still had no friends. More precisely, he didn't want to make any.

At eleven, Freddy didn't enjoy roughhousing or playing games the way ordinary children did. He had almost no interest in anything and refused all unnecessary conversation. More precisely, he never initiated a conversation with anyone but me. Even though I was young, I realized there was a problem. I borrowed books on psychology from the library and understood his need to protect himself, so I never forced him.

Instead, I sought out his hidden interests. He liked grinding bits of broken glass and collecting blades, so I prepared special boxes for him, gave him a finely made little knife, and told him not to cut himself.

When I noticed that he liked watching ants, I bought him an ant farm and put it in a shaded spot in his room.

He liked comics and books, so every Friday afternoon, I took him to the bookstore or the secondhand shop to pick out a couple of new ones.

He liked drawing, so I gave him an extra twenty cents in pocket money every month. Occasionally, this little town held an art exhibition or two in a year, and we never missed one.

With my careful feeding, Freddy's height of one meter forty was already above average in his class. But he wasn't very fond of exercise. Even when the teacher told them to form teams, Freddy still stood off to the side without speaking.

This led to-this led to Paul King deliberately singling him out. He was Freddy's PE teacher, a man who looked strict but was actually extremely mean.

During the free-activity portion of PE that day, they were told to form groups and practice shuttle runs. Everyone in class grouped up in twos and threes, leaving Freddy standing alone beneath the locust tree by the field, his eyes lowered to the grass clippings on the ground. He didn't even look up to search for teammates.

Paul King's whistle sounded shrilly, and his burly figure strode over across the grass, his contempt undisguised.

"Freddy, what are you standing there for? Playing a wooden post? No one wants you in their group because you can't even open your mouth and speak?"

Scattered snickers rose around them. Freddy said nothing. Even with someone backing him up now, these little, unprovoked acts of malice still followed him like a shadow.

It was certainly impossible to say he didn't care at all, but this was still much better than the numbness he'd forced himself to maintain before. He shot the PE teacher a disgusted glance. The man's skin was bright red from the sun. Like a skinned bullfrog, Freddy thought.

Freddy lowered his chin a little farther. At one meter forty, he wasn't short among his eleven- and twelve-year-old peers. He was even almost half a head taller than the other boys, which made him rather conspicuous instead. Especially with that look in his eyes.

Just like a rat in a gutter, Paul thought. Even if someone adopted him, it doesn't change the fact that he used to live in the sewers. There must be something mentally wrong with him. He might even be a potential psychopath.

Freddy watched him, staring at his legs, which looked especially thick and muscular beneath his shorts.

This stemmed from an old medical journal he'd bought at the secondhand shop a few days earlier. It described the structure of the human body in detail, from muscles to tendons to bones... Every time he looked at those anatomical diagrams, he felt particularly excited.