Kitty Kitty Read online

  Michele Jaffe

  Kitty Kitty

  For Jennifer Sturman,

  who is totally twenty-four karat

  Dearest (in mostly alphabetical order) Meg Cabot, Holly Edmonds, Susan Ginsburg, Dan Goldner, Sarah Hughes, Elise Howard, Jennifer Langham, Amanda Maciel, Abby McAden, Laura Rosenbury, Jennifer Sturman, Josie & Sebastian Sturman, Eric Wight, Gelateria Nico, Gelateria al Sole, Harry’s Dolci, Pizzeria Ae Oche, Bar Bonifacio, Narwhals, Betsey Johnson, Agent Provocateur, Chocolate croissants, Cupcakes, Tacos, Pizza, Caffè latte,

  I send you gigathanks from 1 Gratitude Villas, Thanksylvania, Planet of Seriously-I-Could-Not-Have-Done-This-Without-You in the galaxy IOU1.

  Airkisses,

  Michele

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  My best friend, Polly, thinks that people should come with…

  Chapter Two

  Of course, I didn’t know that. Instead I went prancing…

  Chapter Three

  Allow me to pause here for a moment to say…

  Chapter Four

  Little Life Lesson 8: If the police already think you…

  Chapter Five

  According to my translation program, this is the essay I…

  Chapter Six

  “Arabella?” I asked.

  Chapter Seven

  Actually four horrifying things. As they approached our table, I…

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as I got up to my room I…

  Chapter Nine

  As I watched, they pulled a sheet over Arabella’s head.

  Chapter Ten

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Something profound, maybe…

  Chapter Eleven

  I’d sort of figured Arabella just sent me her whole…

  Chapter Twelve

  Little Life Lesson 26: If you are really interested in…

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’d been prepared to hit him with “I pity the…

  Chapter Fourteen

  I know it’s wrong to say, but I was sort…

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’d only been in one gondola before, and that was…

  Chapter Sixteen

  IT WAS POLLY, ROXY, AND TOM! POLLY, ROXY, AND TOM…

  Chapter Seventeen

  The knock was followed by a voice saying, “Calamity, open…

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Okay, let’s go over this again, just to be sure,”…

  Chapter Nineteen

  Okay, I might have mumbled it. And whispered. From behind…

  Chapter Twenty

  At the time, though, all I knew was that my…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Little Life Lesson 36: If you are thinking to yourself,…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Camilla the concierge stopped us as we were going through…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The launch was piloted by an 800-year-old man with a…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I’d sort of imagined billionaires did Big Important Things at…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The very best way in the world to be roused…

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jack36 36 BadJas: I told you not to get too…

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Here’s how we went to the masquerade ball:

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Tom had his BlackBerry out, with a map of Venice…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I stayed up most of the night arranging and rearranging…

  Chapter Thirty

  Little Life Lesson 57: If you have once run into…

  Chapter Thirty-One

  While I waited for Dadzilla’s not-at-all-setting-my-kneesatremble arrival, I entertained myself…

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When I woke up, Bobby was hovering over me with…

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  When I opened my eyes I was still a bit…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Michele Jaffe

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: Office of the College Counselor

 

  Subject: RE: Senior Questionnaire

  Date: September 8

  Dear Miss Callihan,

  Thank you for your thoughtful wishes on the beginning of the school year. Although we miss having you here in person, I hope you are enjoying your time in Venice. I remember having tea at the Grissini Palace Hotel with my grandmother when I was just a boy and thinking it was a lovely spot. What an enviable place to call home.

  I’ve thought very seriously about what you said, and no, I do not think it would be better if the Senior Questionnaire asked “How do you imagine your tombstone?” rather than “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Nor do I think you need to worry; I am quite sure that when the time comes, yours will have more to say than “Here lies Jas. She did what she could with her hair.”

  Most sincerely,

  Dr. James Lansdowne

  College Counselor

  Westborough School for Girls

  Los Angeles, CA

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: Office of the College Counselor

 

  Subject: RE: RE: RE: Senior Questionnaire

  Date: September 15

  Dear Miss Callihan,

  Thank you for asking after my grandmother. She is, in fact, still living but I doubt she is considering a trip to Venice. If she is, I will be sure to warn her that the Grissini Palace Hotel is now “more like a tree than a hotel because it is filled with nuts.”

  I am sorry that you found our list of Potential Work Environments on the Senior Questionnaire so limiting. Frankly it had not occurred to any of the faculty that we could be alienating a “sizable chunk of our students” by not including “Big Top” and “wherever taxidermists work” on that list.

  Thank you for bringing that to our attention.

  Sincerely,

  Dr. James Lansdowne

  College Counselor

  Westborough School for Girls

  Los Angeles, CA

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: Office of the College Counselor

 

  Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Senior Questionnaire

  Date: September 30

  Miss Callihan,

  Thank you for your suggestion that I call you Jasmine. As you know, it is school policy that all students be referred to by their last names.

  While I see that it does strictly conform to the essay topic “Challenges I Have Faced,” I am not convinced that writing your college essay in the form of a screenplay entitled Dadzilla vs. Jas: Bloodfeud! Forever!strikes exactly the right note. Along the same lines, while explaining that you suspect insanity runs in your family does fall into the “challenge” category, I’m not positive that is something you want to highlight for a college admissions committee.

  Yours,

  Dr. L

  P.S. I am unclear on what you are getting at when you say “Also would time spent in a foreign jail count as an extracurricular activity?” Please elaborate.

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: Office of the College Counselor

 

  Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Senior Questionnaire

  Date: October 4

  Jasmine—

  My weekend is going very well, thanks f
or asking.

  Look, you really have nothing to worry about. Although you feel that you are “slightly dead inside,” I am positive that you can write a dynamite essay. You just need to find the right topic. What about some of your Little Life Lessons? You are still keeping up with those, aren’t you? You should have added at least sixty-five new ones since you’ve been gone. Some of the girls have shared theirs with me and they are very provocative. If you’d like to send me some of yours, we can discuss how to go about turning them into an essay. The advice that writers always give is to write what you know. I’m sure if you just put your mind to it and build on an episode or episodes from your real life, you will come up with something outstanding.

  Best,

  JL

  To: Jasmine Callihan

  From: Mary Pease

  Subject: Thank you

  Date: October 9

  Hi, Jasmine!

  It’s me, Mary, Dr. Lansdowne’s assistant. I just wanted to tell you how much we’ve all enjoyed your fake college essays. The entire teacher’s lounge was in stitches when we read “How Not to Steal a Limo” and “I Met Death in Las Vegas and He Was Wearing a Speedo (and a Turquoise Mesh Shirt).” What an imagination you must have to make all that up! Thanks for the great laughs and good luck with your real essay.

  Mary

  Chapter One

  My best friend, Polly, thinks that people should come with warning labels, like mattresses. If they did, mine would be CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS.

  Or at least it would have been, once. But not anymore. Not since Jas’s European Exile started. For the past six weeks, nothing had happened to me.

  Even the horoscope I found while skimming the newspaper to do my current events assignment for Italian class, on the Saturday morning this all started, said:

  “The Gobi Desert is one of the most inhospitable places in the world, and your sign is likewise right now. You feel battered by storms outside your control and beleaguered by a drought of change. Rest, meditate, and conserve your strength until this dry period passes. Any attempt to alter its course could have grave consequences.”

  Yes. As though having to go to class on Saturday was not bad enough, my horoscope compared my life to the Gobi Desert. And said there was nothing I could do about it. Horrorscope was more like it.

  As the full meaning of its words sank in, I realized I had two choices. I could either continue to soldier on, dead inside but wearing the mask while the fates Riverdanced over my whole life’s happiness. Or I could take action. Because as far as my eyes could see, there were no Graver Consequences than sitting around as my life ebbed from me a little more every day. My friends, my boyfriend, my whole world was 4,000 miles away, going on without me. If that horoscope told me nothing else, it was that things could not get any worse. (Yes, Fates, I hear you laughing. I know, I’m so, so funny.)

  I’d been waiting patiently, but the time for patient waiting was over. It would have been jolly to email a friend for some moral support, but it was 11:00 on Friday night in Los Angeles and all my friends would probably be out doing something really fun. Without me. Plus, ever since my dad saw the bill for the day I spent fourteen hours hitting the GET MAIL button on my email screen praying to see Jack’s name pop into my inbox, I wasn’t supposed to go online from my room. As was always the way these days, I had to be an Army of One.

  I took a big breath and marched next door to my father and Sherri!’s room at the Grissini Palace Hotel (& Insanity Emporium), full of brave purpose, and knocked. But all the Brave Purpose in the world could not have steeled me against what I faced when the door opened.

  My father was standing in the middle of the sitting area wearing a shiny yellow shirt and shiny black bike shorts with yellow piping.

  To express the complete dreadfulness of it, you’ve got to understand that for the entire seventeen years of my life, my father has exclusively worn safari suits. Some people have a signature color, like my superchic friend Polly (pink). Or a signature scent, like my demon cousin the Evil Hench Mistress, Alyson (Bubble Yum). My father had a signature look. That of an explorer of the African outback.

  If there is such a thing as the African outback.

  True, he let me iron the sleeves on the safari jacket he wore for his wedding to my stepmother, Sherri!. And while we were in Las Vegas, he nightmarishly substituted khaki shorts for the long pants. But fundamentally, there was always a Ready for Safari feel to his look.

  No longer. Unless they’d started holding safaris during the Tour de France.

  I would not be lying even a little if I said that I would have taken the Nightmare on Khaki Street ensemble over what I saw before me. Because what I saw before me wasn’t just a code red toxic fashion disaster. It was another sign of what I had been trying to deny. My father and his mind had split ways.

  I know, I should have seen it earlier. The writing was on the wall forty-four days before, when the happy Isle of Jas (population: me) had been brutally destroyed by the dread beast Dadzilla.

  What? You have not heard of Dadzilla? Allow me to introduce you:

  Behold!

  I am Dadzilla, the

  frightening & super evil

  monster with big ///////

  fangs for crunching up the

  cherished dreams

  of young girls like

  my daughter, Jasmine.

  Whose are my most favorite and extra

  good, washed down with a sip of

  her teensy-tiny tears of girlish dismay.

  (Tears of dismay are quite delicious.)

  I know multiple sly tricks to coax forth

  the small sweet tears, such as: The Why Not

  Ruin Jas’s Life one, which, after years of hard toil,

  I have finally perfected. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

  Whatever can this mean? Ruin Jas’s life? Perfected? I will present Dadzilla’s action plan in a single easy-to-read chart:

  * * *

  FRIDAY BEFORE MY SENIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL STARTS:

  Learn that the guy of my dreams, who is a rock star and taller than me (Jack!!!), dreams of me too.

  SATURDAY BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS:

  More learning about that, plus KISSING!

  SUNDAY BEFORE SCHOOL STARTS:

  Father announces we are moving to Venice, Italy. In twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  “And pack something warm,” Dadzilla adds. “I don’t know when we are coming back.”

  Naturally, I asked what any normal-thinking person would ask: “Are you speaking in code?”

  To which he replied: “Why is everything a joke to you, Jasmine?”

  A joke. Of course. Because, which is more likely? That a father would pull his daughter out of her respectable high school the day before her senior year was starting, thus guaranteeing that the only college she’ll be able to get into is one with “——& Beauty School” in the name? Or that a father is speaking in code because the FBI has the house bugged?

  That’s right. Someone was suffering from Acute Crazy in the room, but it wasn’t me.

  I tried to plead with him, but that just made it worse. Not for Dadzilla the quaint arguments of reason and logic. My saying “But I can’t drop out of high school” was like a peanut-butter-and-cracker snack pack to him, just making him thirsty for more.

  “Nonsense,” Dadzilla replied, gnashing his fangs. “You are not dropping out of school. You will just do your work from Italy. Six hours of Italian instruction a day, and for the rest of your classes, it will be like you are being homeschooled.”

  I was just about to point out that it seemed to me one crucial part of being homeschooled was being AT HOME, when Sherri! came in.

  Sherri! is the very best stepmother in the world, and I am not saying that just because her superpower is to be unhateable. For one thing, she is the only person I know who exclusively writes in glitter pen and dots her i’s with a heart (or butterfly,
depending on her mood). It is also super fun to go shopping with her because she is always being mistaken for the movie stars she body-doubles for (last year, Sherri! won the Golden Breast, Thigh, AND Hand awards for her excellent work, and this year she is up for the Golden Ankle as well).

  But more than any of that, or her quiet brilliance at the management of my father, I love her because she’s a beacon of hope in my sad world. The fact that—despite being young and gorgeous and able to attract any male of any species in our solar system—she genuinely loves and wants to be with my father shows that we Callihans must have some special superpower that bewitches mates of whom we are completely unworthy. Since this is the only explanation apart from intense mental illness that I could come up with for why my boyfriend, Jack, might like me at all (and say that he wanted to be my boyfriend even though he was the hottest man on the planet and I was, well, me; and moving halfway around the world; and we’d only had two real dates, during which I’d been grounded, so they took place at my house), it was reassuring to see the phenomenon at work in my father and Sherri!’s case.

  Also, of all the women my father dated after my mom died when I was six, Sherri! was the only one who talked to me like I was an equal. Which I guess isn’t that surprising since she is only eight years older than I am (yes! And with my dad! Callihan Super Attractor Beam is so strong), but it is still notable and has earned her a special plaque-with-silver-flower-holder attached in my Most Favorite People Hall of Fame.