It's the cable channel's directive that Kathryn Ann continue to be "fresh" at fifty-eight years old. She told them that if that's what they wanted, then they'd have to pay for it.

We wave good-bye, and a doorman walks us to the front entrance. Another doorman opens one of the double doors from inside. Another doorman meets us in the entryway and walks us to the elevator. Another doorman holds the elevator door open for us as we fit ourselves inside with him. Yes, that's right: four doormen for the four of us. The final doorman presses the PH b.u.t.ton and takes us to the top.

The elevator opens into a tiny receiving area hardly bigger than the elevator itself. There is a sideboard for mail and, to the left, enough room for an umbrella stand filled with bright red promotional umbrellas that, when you open them, have tiny bells dangling from the spokes that read Chime In!

Despite the building's staff of twenty-three, the apartment is locked. The twins have a key but also a pa.s.s code that must be punched in within fifteen seconds of unlocking the door to silence an alarm. Mags fishes in her book bag for her key chain, while Marjorie readies her fingers over the pad.

But then they simultaneously freeze.

"What?" Octavia whispers.

The twins are more attuned to their surroundings than we are and thus must have picked up on what my sister and I are now hearing. From the depths of their apartment, the noise is getting closer.

Crying.

Terrible, terrible, terrible crying.

When the twins open the door, Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly are standing on the threshold and screaming. It's not meowing. I've heard these two cats "talk" before and even "yell" at each other when they play-fight, but what they sound like now are inconsolable babies. Their slick, cream-colored hair stands on end. Their backs arch. The centers of their spines are level with their pointy black ears. Their tails puff. Their trimmed claws are out, curled downward. The blunt tips dig into the hardwood like thirty-six tiny sickles. Their black paws hover above the floor.

"Peanut b.u.t.ter!" admonishes Mags.

"Jelly!" Marjorie says.

Octavia shrinks into the far corner of the receiving area. She hugs her book bag to her chest. She shuts her eyes and prays- as if G.o.d will stop what he's doing, reach down, pinch her collar, and airlift her back to 72nd and Lex.

My sister has a fear of cats. She usually keeps it in check around Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly but refuses to be left alone with them. Up until now, they've never done anything I'd consider scary. Peanut b.u.t.ter only swats at you if you get up in his grill. I always figured Octavia was irrationally scared of cats like other people are scared of snakes and spiders. That's the thing about living with someone you haven't known your whole life. You never truly know what's going to freak that person out, how badly, or when.

Octavia slams the heel of her hand against the elevator b.u.t.ton. She beats it. If I didn't know any better, I would think she's going to break it or jam the elevator car. The twins and I gape at her, momentarily forgetting the braying cats. The elevator arrow ticks, pausing sporadically between numbers 1 and 14 as it crawls toward PH. The crying and pounding must be echoing down the shaft.

The call b.u.t.ton light goes out. I hear the car rising into place. In five seconds, the door will open, and the twins' mom will never forgive them for exposing the secret that they're harboring cats. This building doesn't allow pets. Kathryn Ann tips the doormen extra every Christmas to look the other way. If anyone from a lower floor has come along to investigate what's going on up here, the twins are in big trouble. Marjorie and Mags grab hold of Octavia and drag her into their apartment.

The cats scatter. I scoot in after them and pull the door shut.

We hear the elevator door slide open and a doorman give a nosy neighbor the brush-off. "Babies? No ma'am. I didn't hear any babies."

The elevator door closes, and away they go.

The cats come back. They slink silently, shoulder to shoulder, a pack of two. The fur on one side of each of their pale necks is wet. Kathryn Ann's house policy is to leave the kitchen sink barely running so that her "darlings" can tilt their heads under the skinny stream and drink fresh water whenever they want. I wonder what it's like for the twins to live with Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly, another set of siblings who are older than they are but never grew up.

The cats slither toward me.

"Boys!" says Marjorie. "What is wrong with you?"

They sniff my knee socks, sniff my shoes. Do they smell the orange fuzz? Of course they do. I stiffen like a stop sign. To me, the fuzz smells like the rest of me. To Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly, it must smell unnatural. They must be trying to figure out if I'm friend or foe. Or too sick to stay near.

Marjorie says, "Boys, you know Mary. It's Mary!"

Mags says, "She must have gotten that pot on her socks."

"Since when do cats like pot?" asks Marjorie.

"Since it's all-natural. You know how they like to eat gra.s.s."

Octavia tries to show signs of her old self. "Yo, your cats love the chronic," she jokes weakly, but her skin is devoid of brightness.

Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly rub their wet necks against my socks.

"See?" says Marjorie. "It's Mary!"

Kitchen sink water from the cats' necks soaks through the wool. The cats purr. Their vibrations tickle. The brothers are slender, but when they lean against the outsides of my lower legs, their combined pressure makes me feel like I'm going to collapse. Peanut b.u.t.ter has never been so affectionate. He aligns himself in front of Jelly and drapes his tail across Jelly's forehead. The boys circle. My legs are a maypole. They increase their speed. From my vantage point, they turn into one blurry, unending cat.

"They're going to spin themselves into b.u.t.ter," says Octavia.

Marjorie says, "Maybe Mom forgot to feed them."

Mags says, "No way. Her darlings?"

"Maybe she didn't feed them enough," Marjorie says under her breath.

Octavia says, "Maybe they're going to eat Mary."

The fact that my sister calls me by my real name shows me how scared she is.

I say, "They're fine, y'all. I'm fine."

I'm not sure what I should do to get out of the situation. Do I need to do anything? Won't the brothers tire themselves out? Lose interest? Their circling is strange, but cats do it all the time in cat food commercials. Their speed is off-putting, but they're not hurting me. My legs are warm, but the warmth isn't bad.

Marjorie and Mags move forward to wrangle their pets.

I say, "No, really, I'm fine."

But I'm not. The tingling is back. The fire ants have found me. They spool my calves and shins. I no longer care if my sister is scared because I want these cats off. If Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly have done to me what the deli cat did, my legs will sprout fur from my ankles to kneecaps.

I inadvertently kick one of them in the ribs, eliciting a hushed miaow miaow. A warning. The cats don't stop circling.

I reach down to separate them. That's when I get scratched.

I can see by my sister's face that what's happened is ugly. Funny: if Ling Ling had scratched me, Octavia wouldn't hesitate to scratch her right back. Scratch her bald-headed! Scratch her eyes out! Octavia has no fear of Ling Ling, Nightingale girls, or anyone meaner, bigger, or smarter than she is. But, dang dang, she is scared of Peanut b.u.t.ter and Jelly. She flees down a long corridor toward the twins' rooms. I hear two doors slam as she barricades herself inside their shared bathroom.

"Peanut b.u.t.ter!" Marjorie scoops him up and tosses him away from me. The cat lands on the hardwood and slides, spinning like the last legs of a top. He crashes into a receiving table. A cut gla.s.s vase topples. Drooping tulips are crushed, lithe green necks severed. Water spills and beads across the Pledge. The vase rolls, tulips twisting with it, onto the floor. The thud scares the bejeezus out of Peanut b.u.t.ter, who jumps and cracks his head on the underside of table.

"Serves you right, you bad boy! Mary, are you okay?"

But it wasn't Peanut b.u.t.ter who scratched my hand; it was Jelly. The cat sitting beside my ankle is licking my blood off his front paw. He's proud of himself. He spreads his toe pads and licks the hard-to-reach spots in between.

Mags grabs him. Marjorie grabs Peanut b.u.t.ter. The twins aren't going to put up with their cats' rotten behavior anymore. They grip the boys under their front legs and carry them at arms' distance. I follow them up the winding staircase that leads to a second-floor den and master bedroom. Mags nudges open her parents' door. She hurls Jelly across the room to land on the bed. Marjorie throws Peanut b.u.t.ter after him. The cats tumble to the far side of the bedspread. I hear the material rip. The boys spring off the rumpled mess and, with midair twists, land to face us. They crouch. Their hackles rise, and their inkblot faces smolder. Their ice blue crossed eyes zone in on where I stand.

I glance down at my knee socks and am relieved to see that although the wool is tight from what has sprouted underneath, the fur is contained. The scratch across the back of my hand isn't bleeding badly. Amazingly enough, no fur has come out of the clotted red line. I blow cool air on the scratch.

The cats fly off the bed.

Mags slams the door. "Rabies!"

Marjorie says, "How? They never leave the house."

We race down the stairs to get away from a new blitz of crying. We hole up in Mags's room, but the crying comes through. Still locked in the bathroom, Octavia is nowhere to be seen.

"Maybe it's not as loud as we think," I say.

"Yeah, like a tree falling in a forest," Marjorie nervously agrees. "Maybe we hear it because we know that it's there."

Mags clicks on her flat screen, and we luck into a mind-numbing block of reruns from season one of America's Next Top Model. To drown out the cats, she raises the volume as high as it will go. The three of us line our backs against the single bed and draw the comforter over our legs. After several minutes, Octavia ventures out and plops herself into the over-sized beanbag chair.

Hours pa.s.s, and I decompress enough to soak in what's happening on-screen. But all the models remind me of Ling Ling. They're twice her height but, like Ling Ling, know how to walk across a room and command attention. I can see why Nick is drawn to her. I can see why dreadlocked, spike-haired, and tattoo-headed boys are also drawn to her. Those types would never give me a second look. Up until now, Nick has never looked my way either. What's his sudden interest in me?

Without thinking, I brush a hand over my socks from under the safety of the covers. Everywhere I squeeze, there is fur underneath. The fur is slick in some places, tangled in others. What is wrong with me? What's happening?

Kathryn Ann barges in. Home from broadcasting her show, her tight, surgically enhanced face is creased with anger. Hand on her hip, she says, "Please, ma'ams, will one of y'all kindly explain why my darlings are shut up in my room like it's a pound? Those boys have nearly put a hole through my door trying to claw their way out!"

chapter nine.

It's close to midnight, and Marjorie and Mags have returned from their mother's room, where Kathryn Ann made them clean up the mess the cats made. Tasks included sweeping wood shavings off the floor, stripping the shredded bedspread and underlying sheets, bringing those sheets to the building's bas.e.m.e.nt incinerator, remaking the bed, wiping cat pee off the walls, picking up knickknacks the boys had knocked off her vanity table, and super-gluing heads back onto two porcelain penguins from her collection.

Kathryn Ann hadn't a.n.a.lyzed the cats' behavior. She'd said to her daughters, "Animals are animals. It's not for us to reason why. But don't you dare shut them up like that again. You're lucky I'm not calling Mary and Octavia's parents."

Then, she'd sedated the boys. Kathryn Ann's antidrug campaign does not include prescribed medications because she can't get her nerve up to fly without generic Xanax or go to sleep without generic Ambien. She crushed half a pill of each and then mixed the powder in with the brothers' Fancy Feast. Currently, her darlings are conked out, curled head to toe, yin and yang, on top of her Eddie Bauer carry-on that's parked in the back of her walk-in closet. Kathryn Ann is laid out on top of her covers. The twins said she didn't bother to change into her pajamas; she just shed her skirt and suit jacket, then timbered onto the bed in her control tops. Thanks to her own regular nightly dosage, she'll sleep like a mummy.

The girls and I nuke Hot Pockets and play Truth or Dare. Hey, if I don't go along, they'll know something is wrong. As long as I don't touch my legs, I might be able to make it through the night without panicking. I can do it. I am not going home.

The Hot Pockets stink, so we stay in Mags's room. Marjorie won't allow food in hers because, to her nose, every odor lingers. I've seen her use a toothbrush to scrub spilled hot chocolate out of hairline cracks in the hardwood floor. She saved up her allowance to order a $49 broom off QVC. Mags encourages us to make a mess in her room because it drives her sister nuts.

Mags jokes, "Stains are proof that our friends love me best!"

Marjorie was given the bigger room because of her sleepwalking, but Mags got the terrace. The terrace wraps around the north and west sides of the penthouse. The twins' dad loves it. He's Eastern European and marvels at the sun like a Neanderthal. Although I've never seen him out there, evidence of his presence remains: Speedos slung over a cheap lounge chair; a hardback spy novel, pages warped from rain; and a fold-out aluminum face-tanner. The terrace is what makes this apartment worth tens of millions of dollars, but Kathryn Ann never sets foot onto it. What rich people on Fifth Avenue will never tell you is that their terraces are covered in pigeon p.o.o.p.

Mags aims the water gun she uses to shoot the gray rats with wings at me. "Mary, truth or dare?"

Octavia has already been dared to go out on the icy terrace and pull the frosty, neon orange, banana hammock over her sweats. Marjorie was dared to take one of her mother's muscle relaxers but wouldn't unless her sister did too. Mags popped a pill but didn't have to be dared-so she opted for truth and revealed she'd been felt up by my neighborhood deli owner's son behind the potato chip rack.

This is scandalous on many fronts. None of us know the deli owner's son's name, he's nineteen, and he's opting out of college. He is constantly cleaning the deli and thus never seen without yellow rubber gloves, which most likely means he touched her b.o.o.bs while wearing them.

I don't want to be asked why I've still got my school socks on under my flannel h.e.l.lo Kitty pajamas, so I choose dare.

Mags says, "I dare you to call your boyfriend."

I shoot her a withering stare. "Nick's not my boyfriend. In case you forgot, he's Ling Ling's boyfriend."

Octavia says, "If he was her boyfriend, he's not anymore."

"Yeah," says Marjorie. "Turning your boyfriend over to the princ.i.p.al for drug possession is definitely grounds for a breakup."

Mags says, "I can't believe Nick and her were together."

"Nick and she," corrects her sister."Nick and she," mocks Mags. "And you wonder why you've never been kissed."

Along with Marjorie, both Octavia and I squirm at this remark. Besides Mags, none of us in this room has been kissed. We're not even sure Mags is telling the truth about the deli owner's son, but we want to believe her. Our lack of "experience" is ridiculous. We're sixteen. According to Gossip Girl, we should be on the pill.

Mags says, "You have to call him, Mary. It's a dare!"

I say, "I'm not getting star-sixty-nined."

"Nice try," Marjorie says, "You know very well you can't starsixty-nine an unlisted number."

Mags pa.s.ses me the portable and holds her water gun to my temple. "Put it on speaker."

I stare at the b.u.t.tons "I don't know his number by heart."

This doesn't stop Mags. She scrolls through the digital redial listings. Last weekend, I accepted this same exact dare. We'd found Nick's home number in the Purser-Lilley soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s phone tree, and I'd called and listened to Nick's yiayia try to coax me into talking.

"Ela! Speak!" she had said.

I called back twice, hoping Nick would answer so I could listen to him say h.e.l.lo, breathe, then say h.e.l.lo one more time before hanging up. But every time, it was his yiayia.

"Nai?" The old woman had found the whole thing hilarious. "Oh, you again! 'Private Caller.' Ela! Speak!"

Mags shoves the phone in my face.

Tonight, Nick answers before the first ring finishes. This late, his grandparents must be in bed. "Yeah?" he says. Not h.e.l.lo, as I'd imagined. Not like every other person in the world answers the phone.

I don't say anything. The dare was to call, not to talk. The phone lies face-up on the PB Teen pink and purple floral rug. We're sitting around it like a campfire. The speaker makes Nick's steady breath sound obscene.

Nick says, "I know it's you, Mary."

Blood drains out of my face. I reach to poke off the phone, but Octavia grabs my elbow. Her fingers dig into the sensitive flesh above my funny bone. I can't bend my arm. Tilting toward each other, we struggle. I wonder if Octavia will forever be grabbing my elbow to stop me from doing what she thinks that I shouldn't.

She mouths the word: Talk.

I stop struggling. My sister lets go of me. I dare myself to say: "How did you know it was me?"