Mreeowww!Harold’s green eyes stared down at me, his claws digging into my chest and neck.Mreeowww!
“Damn it, Harold.”I shoved him off my chest and sat up, the relief that I wasn’t dying overshadowed by my irritation.“I thought I was dying.”
Pulling off my headphones, I scowled at him.“It’s practically the middle of the night.You really need to learn to use the cat doors.”He yowled before taking a few steps into the hall.When I didn’t immediately get up to do his bidding, he yowled again.
“Fine, fine.I’m coming.”In the few seconds it took me to leave my bedroom, Harold had already made it to the door of my apartment.“Someone’s in a hurry.”
Instead of turning to go downstairs when I opened the apartment door, Harold raced down the hall to Nana’s open apartment door.
Open door?My heart stopped.Why was her door open?
“Nana?”The knot of worry in my belly grew heavier as I followed Harold into her dark living room.Had I forgotten to close the door when I left?No, I remembered to close it.Didn’t I?“Are you awake?”
Harold headed straight to her bedroom, his yowling getting louder and more insistent.My breath caught in my throat.She had to be in bed, right?I’d left the door open by accident.That’s all it was.Nana was in bed, sleeping peacefully, and I had stupidly left her door open, but everything was fine.
Mreowww!Harold’s meow somehow sounded louder from the bedroom than it had when he’d been right next to me.
I had to go in there, but every single step was like walking upstream through knee-deep mud.
“She has to be okay.She has to be okay.She has to be okay.”I recited the mantra in a harsh whisper, unwilling to entertain the thought that she was anything but okay.Shuffling my feet the last few steps to Nana’s bedroom, I repeated, “She has to be okay.”
I could think of only two things I might see when I opened my eyes: Nana sleeping peacefully … or Nana sleeping so peacefully she’d never wake up.
Please, not that.Anything but that.
Forcing air into my lungs, I closed my eyes and stepped through the door.Harold let loose the most menacing growl I’d ever heard from him, and my eyelids popped open.There, on Nana’s bed, was … Harold.
Turns out there was a third, far more terrifying option of what I might see.
Nana wasn’t there at all.
“Nana?”I croaked out, my heart crawling up the back of my throat and making it hard to speak.I checked the bathroom as I jogged past on my way to the kitchen, my panic growing with each step.“Nana, are you in here?”
All the lights were off, and Nana was nowhere to be found.
It’s fine.Everything is fine,I thought to myself.She’s just in the store finding something new to read.Harold chased after me as I raced downstairs and into the store.“Nana?”I yelled with a touch of hysteria colouring my voice.“Nana, are you in here?”I ran up and down the rows of shelves before dropping to my hands and knees to check under the display tables.Had she fallen?Was she hurt somewhere behind the bookshelves where I couldn’t see her?“This isn’t funny, Nana.Where are you?”
Harold’s muffled yowl stopped me in my tracks.
“Harold?”
He meowed again, sounding forlorn.His yowls grew louder as I neared the stockroom.
No.No, no, no.
I sprinted to the back and scanned the room.Harold sat meowing by the back door, a door which, instead of being closed and locked like it should have been, was ajar.A lonely skiff of snow swirled in from the alley, tracing sinister patterns on the floor.
I let out a strangled cry, the sound more pathetic than Harold’s meows.
The back door was open, and the alarm wasn’t going off, and Nana was out there somewhere doing who knows what.I threw the door open and called for her down the alleyway.“Nana!Nana, are you out here?”I yelled despite knowing in my gut I wouldn’t get an answer.
Nana was missing.And I’d let it happen.
I think I really am having a heart attack now.
thirty-seven
you went for a walk?
