Free Scaredy Kat by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel Page B

I said. “She’s gone totally nuclear because Jac told her she’s quitting the cello.”
    “Oh boy. Poor Jac,” my mother said. I nodded.
    “Anyway, that’s it. Jac’s gone. I might try to e-mail her to find out what’s happening, since I have a feeling her mother
     won’t be letting her use the phone. In fact, I think I’ll go send her one right now.”
    I started toward the house, again uncertain why I was in such a hurry to get away from my mother. Her kindness, her goodness,
     the way she was so different from Jac’s mom, all of that was making me mad. Go figure. I felt angry at my mom because she
     was such a nice person, and that made it painful to shut her out.
    “Kat?”
    I stopped and looked at her over my shoulder.
    “Is there some reason you’re leaving out part of the story?”
    I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.
    “Huh?”
    “Five minutes ago you were standing in the yard next door with Orin. Were you going to mention that you’d met him?”
    I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Because I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t even have an answer for
     myself.
    She walked toward me and stood close, brushing my hair out of my eyes.
    “Maybe I’m imagining things. But these last few weeks, especially these last few days, I feel like you’re putting up walls.
     Shutting me out. I get the sense that there are things going on with you that you feel it’s important you keep from me. And
     that worries me. You’re entitled to your privacy, Kat, like anyone else. But I’m worried about you.”
    I couldn’t tell her she was wrong. Because she wasn’t wrong.
    But I sure didn’t want to tell her she was right.

Chapter 11
    Typical me. Since I didn’t know what to say, I cried instead. And I don’t mean a tear or two trickling down my cheek. I bawled.
     I cried for Tank, and for Jac. I cried for my mom, raising me all by herself. I cried for me, too—for the part of me that
     was terrified of my spirit sight, and for the part of me that couldn’t seem to confide in my mother anymore.
    During all this sobbing, my mom put her arm around my shoulders and led me inside. She sat me down at the kitchen table and
     put a kettle on for some tea. When my bawling downgraded into sobs, and then sniffles, she wet a cool cloth and handed it
     to me. I pressed my face into it. The cold and wet sensation helped shock me back into myself. My mother placed a steaming
     cup of tea in front of me. Its familiar smell was comforting. I had a few more sniffles in me, and then I felt almost like
     myself again. Myself with a swollen face and red eyes.
    “Who is Orin, anyway?” I asked.
    She didn’t seem to mind that having left so many of her questions unanswered, I now had one for her.
    “He’s a healer,” she said. “I got to know him four or five years ago—you remember when I did that six-week intensive program
     at the Omega Institute? He was there, too. After that, I ran into him at a couple other programs. We were friends. But after
     your dad, after the move and everything, we lost touch. Things got complicated.”
    By complicated, my mom meant that cash was too tight for any more new age workshops, and anyway a single mother couldn’t up
     and leave her daughter to take classes at the Omega Institute. I felt a flash of anger at my father. He had taken away so
     much from both of us.
    “I saw him outside,” I said. “Jac’s mom had just kidnapped her. I was still standing there with Max on the sidewalk. And Orin
     came out of the house. I’d kind of wondered who you were in your office with.”
    She nodded.
    “So he introduced himself and stuff. Then he went to get his bike. And I decided to go back in the van Hechts’—in the house
     next door.”
    “Go back?”
    I sighed.
    “I
am
doing my BC project on the house. I didn’t make that up. I was over there photographing yesterday, and the screen door was
     easy to open. A window was propped up. So I went in.”
    I