Long Gone Cat

Chapter 3

Cat

Cat was at a loss with what to do with herself in New York. In her first couple of weeks, she took the initiative to be an unabashed tourist in the city that was her new home and visited every major landmark that she could think of. She was quite dismayed to find out such sightseeing was not very fun when you had no brother, parents, or even any friends to share it with.

Here she was, in a city of more than eight million people, and she'd never felt more alone in her life.

It made her look forward to going to work, where she could be busy for hours, causing the time to fly by. But on her days off, she became bored. Boredom always led to sadness, sadness inclined her to sing, and singing took her back to a painful place she was not ready to face just yet.

The loneliness was way worse. It was almost suffocating, the idea—no—the reality of having absolutely nobody left in the entire world.

Uncharacteristic of Italian families, Cat's parents had both been only children; as a result there were no loud, boisterous aunts and uncles, no hordes of cousins running around screaming and laughing at family gatherings. There were no family gatherings, period. Her grandparents had all passed long before Cat could even remember, so up until about a year and a half prior, it was just Dad, Mama, Anthony, and Cat.

Then there were the lost battles with pancreatic and breast cancer, and in a twelve-hour stretch of time, Anthony and Cat had become orphans at the ages of twenty-three and eighteen, respectively.

It was a harrowing blow; not something two people who were essentially still kids should have to deal with. Not something anyone should have to deal with, but Cat promised herself they would get through it. They would be okay, because they still had each other.

Twelve months later, however, one small patch of black ice on a winding mountain road had taken away the only person Cat had left in the world.

How does one even begin to move forward in the face of something like that? Cat had no idea, and she spent weeks in her cold, dark, empty house, doing nothing but soaking in the numbness that enveloped her. Maybe it wasn't weeks. Maybe it was months. Cat had stopped counting. Her life had become an unrecognizable haze of groggy mornings, silent afternoons that felt endless, and creepy nights in a creaky old house that dragged on until three a.m., four a.m., sometimes five, when she would eventually cry herself to sleep.

However long it lasted, she drifted through time until one morning she was staring into a cup of coffee and New York City popped into her mind out of nowhere.

New York seemed like the farthest and most interesting place she could get to—and Cat just needed to leave. The house and city that had, at one time, represented everything she loved about her life now only represented pain and emptiness, so there was really only one thing that made sense in her mind. So she left Seattle and the only home she'd ever known.

Cat figured as soon as she arrived in the city, everything would become instantly so exciting she'd be able to forget all about her soul-crushing losses and start a new life where nothing devastating would happen to her again. Much to her dismay, when she stepped out of the moving truck in Brooklyn, nothing happened. She was still sad and lonely; only now she was sad and lonely in an unfamiliar place.

She was running out of ideas. And while she'd never have the gumption or stupidity to actually take her own life—wherever her family was, she knew they'd be pissed if she took that route—she was starting to think accidentally getting struck by a speeding taxi might not be such a bad thing.