It was a cold night in Rio, Brazil. Kiania sat on their family’s old wooden porch chair that had been there since her parents had moved into the house way back before she was born. She could tell that the chair was really old as she rocked back and forth on it: the paint was peeling; it creaked as you rocked; the wood had cracks and the chair was slanted a bit. She was outside because that’s where she collected all her thoughts best. As she watched the sun slowly fan out its golden-yellow rays and drop down, she saw a stray kitten wandering on the sidewalk. Its fur was covered in layers of grime and it looked like it hadn’t eaten in days. She was longing to keep the kitten, but she didn’t know if her parents would approve. Where would she put it, anyway? Her parents wouldn’t want dirt and kitten litter all over the floors either. But no, she couldn’t leave this kitten alone by itself to suffer. It needed a home, a warm place to live, with food and friendly people. She decided to go and take it. As she jumped off the porch chair, her feet landed with a soft thud which made the kitten flinch and turn towards her. Kiania made her way over and gently lifted the baby kitten into her arms, stroking the rough layers of dirt on its fur. She could barely feel the soft fur underneath all the grime. It stared at her with wide eyes and blinked softly. There was no way this innocent cat could be harmful. She tiptoed into the house cradling the cat, the night sky blossoming above her, and gently started to rub soap and wash off the kitten’s fur delicately with buckets of water, because giving it a bath would cause too much noise. As Kiania was rubbing away, she could see that underneath all the soot was soft, luscious, cream- white fur with coffee- colored ears and a nose. Its eyes were bright blue and seemed to twinkle when Kiania looked at it straight in the eye.
She knew she was missing something she needed to do. Yes! She thought. I need to name her. She stared off into the distance as she thought of what to name the kitten. It has to be a girl's name, she finally thought. “I think I’m gonna name you Pucu,” Kiania finally decided when she had finished cleaning and feeding her. You mustn’t make any noise though or I won’t be able to keep you. The cat met her gaze and Kiania could swear it understood her. It was nearly midnight as Kiania tip-toed up the stairs, so she needed to find a hiding place quickly for the miniscule kitten. All she could think of was to keep the kitten under her bed. So she took Pucu silently to her room, put a bowl of water and a small box that could do for a litter box under the bed, and drifted to sleep.
The next morning, she checked on Pucu and made sure she had enough water for the day. She needed to somehow get some cat food for her, but water would do for now. Then she came down the stairs to the kitchen to make herself breakfast. Afterwards, she brushed her teeth, and rummaged through her school bag to find her half-finished homework. She rushed to finish before her mother came down and then put it in her school bag.
“You must pack up your school bag quickly and go to the bus stop. Grab your student card.” Her mom told her. A student card was what you carried and used to pay bus fares. She grabbed her lunch off the polished counter and hurried out the door. Adel had already left for his bus, because she didn’t see him or the other students standing at the corner of their street.
Adel was her older brother who was going to join her father in the military soon once he was old enough, which would be next month when school ended. He always looked so fresh before school started, his hair slicked back, uniform clean of wrinkles, and face shiny; in other words, he was the perfect child. Mother and father favored him because he was the eldest. Calista was her younger 9-year-old sister. From her beautiful flowy hair cascading down her back to her smooth feet and clean, tiny toes, she stood out in their family. Her bright, wide blue eyes, and warm, charming grin always looked elegant. Kiania, on the other hand, though, didn’t look that charming and wasn’t as bright or neat as her brother. She wasn’t always in order and harsh like her father or as hardworking and gentle as her mother. As the students streamed off the bus into the school, Kiania caught sight of her friend name. She tried to make her way towards her, but kept being shoved into the horde of kids.
As she walked into her class, Kiania noticed there was a substitute in her class. She was definitely an Argentinian. Kiania knew of some stories that Argentinians had been taking some people away in her neighborhood during the war. But this lady was probably not bad, because the school made sure that all teachers that came into the school were not on Argentina’s side. She looked older, like in her 50s or so, and had dull, brownish- gray hair in a bob cut. It had snow- drifts of dandruff in it and matched her crinkly eyes and wrinkly, pale skin. She looked Kiania straight in the eyes as she took attendance and her eyes glimmered with pure hatred. Was she bad? No, the school wouldn’t have misread the detector that determined if any of the Argentinians that came to the school were on Argentina’s side. But she wasn’t so sure. She shook her head and tried to clear the thoughts swirling around in her head. She knew the school wouldn’t let anyone in if they were harmful. On the board, her name was spelled out as- what did it say? It was so scribbly and small that Kiania couldn’t read it. She put them to work right away. Kiania twirled her hair around her finger over and over again as she worked. She wondered if Pucu had kept quiet all day. Did she have enough food? How was Kiania going to get cat food without her parents finding out? None of her friends had a cat- but wait, didn’t her neighbor Celina own a cat named Vanila? She was pretty sure she did, because she often saw a big fluffy white cat wandering near her house, and she had seen it once when she was at Celina’s house even though the cat barely ever came out. Everyone called Celina “Lina”, because Celina liked being called that better, since it was easy and quick to say. Before that, in 1st grade, her nickname was “CeCe”. Kiania had been her best friend since 1st grade, when Celina had moved from the busy city of Rosario, to the busier city of Rio before the war had started. She could probably borrow some cat food from her and decided she would ask Lina if she could borrow some of her cat food when the substitute turned her back to the blackboard.
After a few minutes, she saw her chance. She quickly jotted down a note to Lina and passed it to her right before the substitute turned around. Kiania had a sinking feeling that the teacher had seen her. She didn’t want to get in trouble, but the lady just stared at Kiania for what seemed like minutes, until she finally turned back towards the blackboard. Usually, their teacher snatched notes off students desks if she saw them. Kiania saw her stick the note inside her study book and read the note like she was reading the study book. The note read:
Do you have any cat food that I can borrow? I found a small kitten yesterday and took it in.
~ Ki
P.S. Please don’t tell your parents. My parents don’t know about this.
She saw Lina writing furiously as soon as the teacher started to write down equations on the board. She was just about to pass the note to Kiania, and Kiania was ready to grab it and tuck it in her study book, but the substitute turned around and looked at Llina suspiciously for a while. Then, she glanced over at Kiania. As she glanced over at Kiania, Celina stuck the note under her desk quickly. Finally, she slowly strode over to Celina and stopped just short of her desk.
“Is everything okay here? She asked in a gravelly voice. The whole class turned towards them. Neither of them answered. Somebody got the nerve up to say,
“You can talk?” Then everyone turned to that person.
The woman turned to the student and fixed her eyes on her until she turned to the whole class and croaked, “Get back to work, kids.” After that, nobody said anything, and she pretty much seemed to forget about Kiania and Celina. Kiania read the note. It was in much finer writing than Kianias messy, loopy, uneven script. The bright pink sticky-note read:
You got a cat?! I have to come over and see it when your parents aren’t home. I definitely have some cat food you can borrow. My cat is really fat, so I have a lot of cat food, because she’s always hungry.
You can get off at my bus stop and walk home after I'll give you some cat food and you can walk home afterwards.
(And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.)
~ Lina
“Yes!” Kiania said aloud to herself. She realized her mistake as her classmates turned towards her, including the substitute. She was just glad that she would be able to give Pucu some cat food now, but she might have been a little bit too happy! She pretended to be writing down a note in the answer slot from the textbook, and came up with a pretty bad lie that she hoped everyone believed, especially the teacher.
“I, um, was um, just happy I figured out the answer to question six,” Kiania stammered. She put on a weak smile for the class. Kiania was awful at lying.
“Only question six?” Pedro asked. “I’m on question 15! That’s more than half ahead of you!”
“I’m on question 17,” Gabriel sneered at him. “Higher than you.” Then everybody started to yell out which question they were on and it was like a circus going on until the substitute yelled, “SILENCE!” Everyone started working and kept their mouths shut until the end of class, maybe with a few exceptions.
“I didn’t know she could yell,” Jose whispered to Pedro. He might of whispered a little bit too loudly, because half the class glanced up at him, including Kiania, but thank goodness the teacher didn’t hear him.
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Ding the dismissal bell finally chimed. Ding.
“Yes!” All of the students cheered. Finally, it was dismissal. Kiania was excited to see Pucu (hopefully her parents hadn’t found out yet) and give her some real cat food. But Kiania would never have cheered about it being the end of the school day had she known the night ahead of her.
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Kiania sat straight up in bed, her heart beating. She thought she heard a sound like someone had broke the door down- or was it just a dream? She listened, straining her ears and trying to be as quiet as possible, tiptoed to Calista’s bedroom, but she was still fast asleep. She bent over to check to see if Pucu was awake, but she was fast asleep. Maybe she’d just had a nightmare. She started to snuggle back up in bed; after all, it was only 1:30am in the morning. Then she heard feet faintly moving across the floor.