Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde

it back to the closet door.
    It was easy to get him cornered in there.
    I took him by the scruff of the neck. I thought, I’ll do this just like Frank showed me. But I couldn’t pin him to my side. I had to dangle him in the air and lower him down into the carrier. So his back legs were swinging free, and he got panicky, and I felt one set of back claws rake down the side of my wrist. Bad one, I could tell. But there was no time to think about it now.
    I closed the carrier and ran over to Frank’s apartment. Banged on the door. I could hear a lot of noise in there. Lots of voices. Dozens. They had people over. Multiple people. Maybe even a party.
    Maybe I’d even heard the party before. Through the wall. And just hadn’t really focused on the fact that the voices were coming from Molly and Frank’s. Maybe it just didn’t sink in until I was standing in front of his door. Wishing I hadn’t just knocked.
    I turned to run back to my own apartment. Then I froze again. I couldn’t bring myself to yell for help to Frank when they were having a party. Then again, I couldn’t just go home without any help for my cat.
    Before I could decide whether to run away or not, Frank answered the door.
    “Elle, honey, what’s wrong?”
    “I need your help with Toto. He’s sick. But you’re having a party.…”
    Frank looked down at my hands. At the hall carpet at my feet. “He’s bleeding? Where’s he bleeding from?”
    “No. No, he’s not bleeding. No, the bleeding would be me. But he hasn’t eaten for days, and his face is so swollen up that he can barely see out of his good eye. And he doesn’t even run from me. Toto. Doesn’t run from me. So this is really bad.”
    “You better come in,” he said.
    It felt good to have him just sort of take over. Just take me under his wing like he always did so well, and then I knew Toto and I would both be okay. It made all the scared places in my gut feel warm and settled.
    Then I walked into their apartment. And then nothing felt warm and settled anymore.
    I looked around at their friends. Some just looked like anybody else you’d meet. But about half a dozen of them were, like … I don’t know any other way to say this, so I’ll just say it. Like men in dresses. Like you could just see by their faces and shapes thatthey were men. But they were wearing makeup and women’s clothes and either wearing wigs or just had their hair done up in a women’s style. One of them looked really fifties old-fashioned in a high-necked dress, white gloves, and a single strand of pearls. Another was wearing jeans and a skinny spaghetti-strap tank top, but his shoulders and arms looked too big to pull it off. Then a few others were sort of in between. And a lot of the women looked really gay. And some of the men who were dressed like men were …
    You know what? I think I kind of stopped trying to take it all in at that point. Some of them just looked and felt strange to me.
    I tried to turn back to Frank. To follow him into the kitchen. He was trying to lead me into the kitchen. But he had stopped for a minute while I looked around. He looked vaguely uncomfortable.
    On the way into the kitchen, I saw one other thing. One huge other thing, sitting over by the window.
    It was a top surgery tree.
    Not that I know what a top surgery tree is. I had no idea. But it had a sign on top that said TOP SURGERY TREE . So there you go. So that’s what it was. It was like a Christmas tree but with no green needles. Only bare branches. And on the sharp ends of the bare branches people had stuck money. Twenty- and fifty- and hundred-dollar bills.
    But, like I usually do with anything I have no frame of reference for, I just sort of put it out of my head again.
    But the people. That stayed with me. And rattled me a little bit.
    We stood at Frank’s kitchen sink, and he washed my wrist off with antibacterial soap, and it stung like crazy.
    “You’re supposed to be entertaining your guests,” I