When I wake up the next morning after the party, the makeup washed off of my face, my costume a wrinkled heap on the floor, still wearing the headband at eight, all I can remember is Gina's smile and it's pretty sweet.

I get up and get dressed in a simple pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt before going to the kitchen. My mom is cracking eggs into a bowl, making breakfast. "Morning, Rozhan."

"Morning, mom. Did you call in today?"

She nods. "I've a vacation day—I'm not in the mood to deal with my boss right now." She's in her robe, an old, rough feeling grey thing she's had since I was six and it still smells like oranges. "Oh, speaking of..." She pauses. "...nothing, actually, Deming came by fifteen minutes ago. Asked for you. I asked if he wanted me to wake you up, but he said it was okay." She looks up and through the window in front of the kitchen sink. "...He's in the driveway."

"The driveway?"

She nods. "Go say hi to him—and tell him I'm making enough eggs for three if he's hungry."

Deming is in the driveway. Specifically, he's lying on his stomach on the driveway, staring beneath my mom's car. "...What is it?" I ask and he doesn't look at me, just points.

I crouch down next to him and look—but all I see is a patch of shade beneath the car.

"Yes," I tell him. "It's called a shadow."

"No, look."

I look again—and a part of the shadow moves. "What the fuck?"

"Look!"

"I'm looking."

It moves a bit more—and then finally, there's a shining pair of eyes, piercing through the dark. At first, I fear Deming and I have encountered a horrific, Eldritch monster that will feast on out souls with sharp, yellow, needle-like teeth, and then it meows.

"Oh no," I say. I’m doomed—not to an Eldritch monster, but to an animal I’m going to want to keep as a pet for sure.

"Here, kitty, kitty," Deming says and he snaps his fingers. There's another meow, but the cat doesn't come forward.

"It's warm still," I say. "You think it's okay?"

"Dunno," Deming says. "But I saw it run under there. ...It was walking weird."

"Injured, maybe? Did you see a collar or anything?"

"No."

"Hm." I stand. "I'm gonna go see if we have anything that can lure it out."

"Alright," Deming says. "I'll stay here and repeat 'here, kitty, kitty,' until you either come back or the kitty comes here like I want it to."

Right as I enter the kitchen, my mom pours the bowl of scrambled eggs into a frying pan—she never waits long enough for the oil to heat up enough, so it doesn't make the sizzling noise it does when I make breakfast. I open the fridge. "We found a cat," I say.

"A cat?"

"Yes. Beneath your car. Do we have anything you can give to cats?" I look around—for some reason, we didn't buy cat food at the store, what's with that?

"When I was younger and me and my friends found a cat, we would give them a little piece of salami."

"Well..." I look through the meat drawer. "Fresh out of salami, but I found a piece of turkey that's..." It doesn't look good. The turkey's gone bad, great. I throw that into the trash.

"We should have a bit of shredded chicken, the one your step-father made last night for dinner while you were partying. Check the second shelf." I check the second shelf. "Oh, Rozhan, it was terrible—he didn't put any seasonings in it, just a little bit of paprika. Like, less than a teaspoon of paprika." She shakes her head. "No idea what he was thinking. It's so tasteless, the cat might not even like it."

I find it in a plastic bag, shredded. "Hope cats like paprika."

Deming is still shouting, "here, kitty, kitty," when I come back out, so I guess the cat has yet to come. "I got chicken."

I kneel down and reach in—the chicken is kind of damp on my fingers and it's cold, but I pull out a small piece and toss it gently beneath the car. The cat mews and moves. I put another small piece down, this one closer to me.

Eventually, I manage to coax the cat out from beneath the car by placing a slightly larger piece of the chicken by my knee.

It's small—black, with just a single white mark near it's nose and on one of it's feet. And it's missing a leg. And it's ear is cut, and one of it's teeth jut out of it's mouth. It's dirty, absolutely filthy and I can see it's ribs. Slowly, I reach out and pet it, gently. The cat is so busy eating the chicken, it either doesn't notice it's being pet or doesn't care.

It's not wearing a collar. "Maybe a stray?" I suggest.

Deming shrugs. "Probably. It's teeth are fucked up."

It's a bit of an ugly cat and definitely a disabled cat.

It finishes the chicken and looks at me—I realize it's also missing an eye. It opens it's mouth and licks my fingers clean, while Deming gently pets it. "Pretty kitty," he says, though this cat is anything but.

The front door to my house opens and the cat looks up at my mom. I think it's going to run away, so I pick it up gently and cradle it in my arms. For a minute, it looks startled, but it also looks tired and it relaxes after a second. "Rozhan?" My mother calls.

   I turn to Deming and scratch behind the cat's ears. "You hungry?"

   "Sure."

   "Oh," my mother says when she sees the cat. "He's really..." Ugly. Half-dead. Too small to be healthy. "...I don't know what to say, he looks inbred."

   I find a small bowl and fill it up with water and put it down for the cat, whatever gender it is. They rush over to it, and I wonder where this cat came from. This street doesn't have a whole lot. I wash my hands before I eat , my mom warms up some more corn tortillas.

   "Do you have any idea who he belongs to?" My mom asks.

When it's done drinking it's water, it just kind of lies down and mews sadly. "No," Deming says. "But I'm wondering it it's owner is abusive or something."

"Poor cat."

Deming frowns. "Can cats eat tortillas?"

My mom shrugs. "I might have a can of tuna somewhere in a cupboard, but I don't know—it might be bad."

I tear off a piece of my tortilla. "I'll look when I'm done eating." Until then, the stray cat just stays on the floor, still and tired looking.

Deming helps me look through the cupboards—we actually find two cans of tuna, but one is rotten all the way through. After a quick internet search, we decide tuna shouldn't be too harmful, but this cat can't eat nothing but tuna. "Do you know what you're gonna do with this cat?" My mom asks, while Deming tears the top off of the can and I hold the cat. I've been petting them since the end of breakfast, and they just keep purring and, anyway, I think I'm in love.

I look up at her. The cat mews. "...Can we keep it?" I ask.

My mom purses her lips—from my experience as a kid, I know this likely means no, and it's almost definitely because we don't have the money. But for now, she's silent. Deming places the can down and the cat dives at it before I can suggest we put the tuna on a plate with no sharp, metal edges. This kitten doesn't need to get any more injured.

"We should put up signs," my mom says. "In case it's owner comes looking for it."

"Mom, I like them." I don't know what sex this cat is—it's fur is kind of long, dirty and matted and it makes it difficult to tell it's sex.

She sighs. "That's because you're a sap, sweetie. You've a heart too big for your body."

"I wish I could take him home," Deming says. "But my mom hates cats. She just does."

  I nod and stroke the cat's fur. I whisper, "I think I might be able to convince her to let me keep them."

   The cat purrs. "Pretty kitty," I say. "Mom, can we keep them?"

   "Honey, pets are a lot of responsibility," she says, which I think it what parents say when they want to convince their kids to drop it. "And this is a cat that's missing an eye and a leg. Not to mention, he could be sick—vet bills are expensive. And if we take him to the vet, he might be chipped or he could die."

   "Please mom. What if he doesn't have an owner?" My mom bites her lip. "They can be an early present for my birthday, that's just a month away at this point."

   "Hon," she says. "You know me. I've already bought your birthday present."

"...You can return it?" I suggest. "Mom, I love this cat."

She shakes her head. "You're a sap...But it obviously comes from my side of the family." She moves some hair out of her face. "I'll bring you with me to the store later and we'll try to figure out what to get for him...her...them."

   I am victorious. "What are we gonna name them?" I ask Deming. "You need to help me name them because you originally found them."

   "Yes!" Deming exclaimed. "I knew there was a reason to my listing down every name I liked in the notes app on my phone!" Immediately, Deming whipped out his phone and (presumably, I couldn't see) went to his notes. "Okay, tell me what you think of these names." He lists off some—Kiro, Lola, Ebony, Lacy, Jay, Baylee, Tracy. He pauses. "What about Irma?"

   My mom chimes in, "I like Irma—I knew a girl named Irma when I was younger. She became a vet and helped abused animals for awhile. Good woman."

"Let's name her Irma," I decide, but also because if we don't stop now, I know Deming and I will spend hours trying to choose the right name for this cat. "Do you like Irma?" I ask the cat. I know it's a girl name—at least, it sounds like a girl name—but I decide that it's a cat and likely doesn't care, and we don't know it's sex yet still.

   The cat doesn't even look at me—I get the feeling I'm going to call them 'kitty' more than I do their name, so I'm not too worried.

   After awhile, Deming and I chill in the living room and watch a home improvement show. Normally, when we watch it (mostly to make fun of the rich people who always find the smallest details to be these total dealbreaker), we have a bowl of popcorn between us—instead, we have a really ugly cat and neither of us can stop petting them. I'm too attached to Irma—if anything were to happen to her, I'm convinced I would just die, I would just keel over and die, and I know that makes me sound dramatic, but that's probably because I am pretty dramatic. Either Deming rubbed off on me, or I rubbed off on him so much that he took away a lot of my dramatic-ness. Could be either one.

"For real, though," Deming scoffs, petting Irma behind their ears. Irma's purring, their eyes shut. "What kind of white, rich bitch thinks that tiny ass stain on the carpet is such a big deal—you could literally buy an expensive rug to cover it up or just replace the carpet, it's not like you lack the money."

"I'm more pissed about her white dreadlocks," I say. "And she's making such a big deal over the fact that the fridge is black instead of stainless steal—you're literally spending two million dollars on this house, and you're gonna let the fridge tell you to not buy it? Stupid."

"This is why we're friends," Deming says. "Because we both hate the rich."

"Eat the rich," I agree.

   Deming and I start to relax—but there's something on my mind. "I hope you don't mind my asking," I say and he sighs like he already knows what I'm about to say. "...But things have been really off with you and I'm worried and I just want to know if everything is okay."

   "Everything's fine," Deming insists.

   "It's just...you've been acting kind of weird and Kohl and I have been—"

   "—Rozhan, I'm fine."

   "...We just worry, and like, we don't talk a whole lot about anything other than you, and we both—"

   "Rozhan." He turns to look at me, gaze hardened. "Drop it. I don't want to talk about it."

   I do drop it. There's a tense silence between us, and I think I said something wrong. I don't know what to do or say to break the tense silence, because if I say something wrong, I might just upset Deming even more, and that's the last thing I want to do.

   "...I'm just saying," I sigh. "You can talk to me. If you need to...and when you want to."

   "I know," Deming responds. The silence returns.

   In about five minutes, Deming gets sick of the silence, and goes to the bathroom. When he comes out, he says he got a text from his mom and needs to come home—and I know that that really means he just texted his mom to text him saying he needed to come home and then deleted his text asking his mom to do that because I made him feel uncomfortable. I know this, because I've pulled a similar thing, or have known when Deming has used it on someone else—he might be aware of that, but if he is, he's also aware that I won't confront him about it.

I just sit on the couch, petting the cat and wondering what's wrong—with him and with me.