The Cat Who Knew Too Much

The first time Marcus saw the cat, he was zoned out in the lifeguard chair at the Pine Valley Pool, brain thoroughly fried from three weeks of babysitting middle schoolers who couldn't follow simple rules like "no running" and "please don't pee in the water." He felt like a zombie—summer exhaustion had turned him into something that barely resembled his former self. The cat, a sleek black thing with yellow eyes like judgmental flashlights, sat on the fence and stared at him like Marcus was the weird one.

"What?" Marcus muttered. "Never seen a zombie before?"

The cat's tail twitched. Marcus had started talking to animals more than humans since his best friend ditched him for the popular crowd when freshman year started. It wasn't his finest moment.

That afternoon, a group of seniors showed up—the kind who acted like they owned everything. Marcus tried to fade into the background, but naturally, someone knocked a speaker into the pool. Just as Marcus sighed, preparing to fish it out, the cat suddenly LEAPT from the fence, landed on some kid's discarded towel, and knocked a whole tray of nachos into the water as revenge for being ignored earlier.

Chaos erupted. Everyone was shouting, and Marcus somehow ended up laughing so hard he snorted, which made everyone stare at him.

One of the seniors, a girl with blue hair who'd been quietly reading on a lounge chair the whole time, walked over. "That cat is my hero," she said. "I'm Riley. You have nacho cheese on your whistle."

"Marcus," he managed, wiping his whistle. "And that cat has been judging me all summer."

"Welcome to the club," Riley said. "Everything judges us when you work here. Even the water looks at you funny."

They sat together while the pool drained and got cleaned up, talking about nothing and everything—how weird high school was, how they both felt like zombies half the time, how the cat was probably an alien conducting research on teenage misery. When Marcus's shift ended, the cat was still on the fence, watching them like it had planned the whole thing.

"See you tomorrow, zombie," Riley said, and for the first time all summer, Marcus didn't feel so dead inside.