Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love Read Online Free Page B

under the phuton.
    “What is it?” he says in his yummy, quiet voice.
    “Are you gonna be in the lab later? It’s kind of complicated. I’ll come by and we can—”
    I pause for effect, and also to enjoy the sight of Jess sputtering and Kat, who generally avoids eye contact, just outright staring at me. “You know.
Talk
about it.”
    Matthew nods. “Sure. I have to clean all the rabbit cages today, so I’ll be there, like, all afternoon.”
    Okay cool, cool, later, see ya later. Phase one is complete! How easy is this? X, prepare to surrender your mystery. The Secret of Love is an onion that just lost one layer of skin.
    This afternoon, I will go to the lab, and there, as we breathe in the fragrant bunny-turd aroma of the rabbit hutches, I will tell Matthew all the things that I have, um, decided to tell him.
    Felicia’s Private Kitten Directive Number Gazillion: When your Kittenpals tell you you’re insane, YOU ARE.
    I AM INSANE.
    Uh, Jess? Kat?
    WHY DIDN’T YOU STOP ME???????

3
    Tick, Tock. Tick, Tock. The Longest Morning of One Kitten’s Life
    D uring a typical day at the Pound, all us Free Children are supposed to pass the time by digging deeply into our passions, creating our own learning plans, being self-directed and self-motivated and self-self-self. This approach to education offers many advantages, such as the opportunity to spend your day writing love poetry (like me) or breeding genius rabbits (like Matthew). But it is a huge problem when you are in a state of, yes, OBSESSIVE anxiety about a chain of potentially humiliating events you have just set in motion and inside your self is the last place you want to be.
    Luckily, there’s no rule that says I can’t spend the morning tagging along as my fellow Poundmates engage in the self-directed pursuit of their self-induced passions. And no one is more self-directed and passionate than—
    “Why is it so hard to just HELP people? I mean, I’m trying to do something NICE! And she looked at me like I was there to steal her LUNCH or something!” So says Jessica Kornbluth, founder of and (so far) sole participant in the brand-new MFCS Peer Tutoring Outreach Program. We’re in the second-floor kitchen of the Pound. (The building used to be some rich person’s house, and it still feels more like an eccentric old mansion than a school—there are kitchens and sitting rooms and a creaky, tiny elevator with a black iron gate that’s hard to close, so we prefer the narrow, twisty back stairways that sneak you from floor to floor.)
    Jessica “Helping People Is My Thing” Kornbluth is helping herself to a nice foamy cup of coffee with steamed milk. Two shakes of cinnamon, one shake of cocoa. Her mug sports a faded picture of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy standing in the transporter chamber. They’re supposed to appear and disappear based on the temperature of the mug, but that was a million rides through the dishwasher ago, and now they’re just permanently semi-materialized, which I imagine would tickle.
    But those are my thoughts. I doubt Jess is concerned about Captain Kirk’s discomfort; she has Serious Real-Life Issues on her mind, always. She tucks her very organized, businesslike black binder under her arm, with all its pert little color-coded tabs sticking out, and heads for the Red Room.
    There are a few sitting-room areas on each of the Pound’s five mazelike floors, but our favorite is the Red Room, so called because of the floor-length cherry red drapes hanging at the south window. I’m feeling calmer already, curled up on the Red Room’s squishy old sopha, staring into the huge marble fireplace and soaking up that brisk, everything’s-under-control vibe Jess gives off. Maybe I should get a binder, too. Section One: Things Matthew Has Said to Me and What They Might Mean. Section Two: Stupid Things I Have Said to Others That Matthew Might Have Overheard. Section Three: Favorite Foods. Section Four—
    Jess flips her binder open