Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

just have to get your new information on your own. That should be interesting, as I doubt you have ever got anything in this world solely on your own.”
    His already pasty complexion (the curse of a life on the airwaves; luckily Mr. Matt leads an outdoor life that prevents such disabilities), pales. I love the way people can change their skin color at the drop of a four-letter word or even a two-letter word like no.
    “You will be sorry,” he says, using the ancient playground threat heard around the world.
    “Not today,” Miss Marble says. She pauses to run a hand along my spine all the way to the tip of my quivering tail. “And not any other.”
    It is a great closing line, and I give her a two-tail salute at ninety degrees upright in recognition of same.
    Too bad it is ruined by this long, sustained piercing shriek somewhere on the premises.
    I beat Crawford Buchanan to the office door by sixteen lengths of my you-know-what versus his you-know-what.



Diet of Worms

    Temple was resting in her room, trying to figure things out, when she heard the scream, probably along with everybody in the house, and what’s worse, she recognized the screamer. She’d always had an ear for various vocal tones.
    She took off at a dead run, the cute little flapping Xoe Chloe mules keeping her from running quite fast enough. So she let them fly off in the hall and pounded on barefoot.
    Knowing the tone of the scream... alto vibrato... told her who but not where it was coming from. Her bare arms had broken out into so many goose bumps of unhappy premonition you’d think she’d been having a wet dream about Spike the Vampire.
    Holy shiitake mushrooms! she thought. Let me be wrong!
    Her heart was pounding way past the safety zone, her bare soles hitting hard on the concrete beneath the carpeting.
    Turn here? Maybe. Or there?
    Or... maybe just follow the dark flowing contrail that was Midnight Louie, ears back, tail straight back, body low as a jet-black Maserati?
    Where did he come from? No matter. Go with the flow, as long as it was feline.
    She zigged and zagged and bumped into blondes fleeing in the opposite direction. Where was Paris Hilton when you needed her? Overbooked, that’s where!
    She was entering the portion of the house allotted to the Teen Queen coaches, running her memory of the day’s schedule sheet through her mind like a white shirt through a mangle.
    Friday, Xoe Chloe interview with Beth Marble, office number three at two P.M. And at three P.M.... in office number four. Oh, my goddess! Oh, no! Let it not be—
    Louie’s low-flying tail vanished through a doorjamb just ahead. Temple almost turned an ankle making a right-angle dodge to follow him.
    Office. Very... plain. Almost stripped. A scale in the corner. A chart on a wall.
    A body in a leather desk chair, throat tilted back. Face... darkened. Red black. Unrecognizable.
    And oh, holy moley, wholly Molina! Mariah standing in front of the desk, chair and all. Screaming. Screaming for all of her just-teen worth. A real little belter.
    Something bad in the neighborhood. Someone dead in the neighborhood. The dietitian. The mousy, by-the-book, plain-Jell-O dietitian. Marjory Klein.
    Found dead in her office chair. By Mariah.
    Temple raced up to put her hands on Mariah’s shaking shoulders, pressed down hard.
    “It’s okay. I’m here. Hel-lo! Look. Even the silly cat that’s been prowling around the place is here too. He wouldn’t risk his skin if it weren’t safe. Have you ever known a cat that wasn’t totally cool?”
    Those last two words finally jerked Mariah’s focus off the dead body.
    “Cat?” she asked. “Cool?”
    If a cat could look at a queen, or even a dead body, maybe she could too.
    Louie used the opportunity to twine around Mariah’s ankles, over and over again. It was fine feline therapy but it wasn’t enough. Mariah suddenly spun into Temple’s embrace. Grabbed on to her like a leech. A growing girl big enough to rock Temple off her bare heels.
    But Temple recovered and held on back. They were roomies, after all, and that went way beyond silly reality shows and even Mother Superiors in common.
    “I’m sorry,” Temple told her. “So, so sorry. I was afraid it would come to this. Hoped not.”
    Mariah just sobbed. Temple remembered sobbing that hard. Long ago, when she was so young that every setback, real or imagined, was a total tragedy.
    This was all too real though. This was a tragedy, period. The dead woman was such an