The curve of a tail, the edge of an ear, the gleam of an eye, the sharp claws barely glinting through her gray thick fur on her paws’. Anything. The image of my little brothers cat flies through my head like the airplane my family had boarded and left on….
“Yesterday!” I call desperately, the beam of my flashlight hitting nothing but an old sock and a pile of dust. Where is she? I groan. This is getting us nowhere. The search for my little brothers cat has proved just as I thought it would. Fruitless. I bite the inside of my cheek, and taste rust. Yuck. I spit, knowing that the carpet of my brother Leo’s room can’t get any grosser. I lean up against the headboard, not wanting to get up.
    “Clio?” I hear Elliot call my name on the stairs.
“In here,” I sigh, standing up and stretching, hearing my back crack sharply. The pink door sighs open, and there he is. Tall with wavy dark-brown hair and green eyes, I grin at the boy in the doorway. Mom has told me countless times that out of all the boys I could’ve “picked”, it was strange that the one I ended up with looked related to me. My reply, after I got over the weirdness of it, was that he was a lot cuter then anyone lucky enough to catch any looks at all in our family. I’ll admit. That’s a lie. My family is… not what the rage is at my high school- hot, really. Just ‘classically beautiful,’ as my best friend Celia always says bitterly. With her long nose always tucked away in books, and her large sunglasses sliding down her face, Celia isn’t gorgeous, like all her heroines are. I knew she would have some wordy phrase to help me handle the loss of the kitten and perhaps my brothers trust. I hope we find Yesterday before they come home! 
    Elliot smiles, and I’m again amazed at how perfect his teeth are. “Any luck?” I ask hopefully, guessing the answer, still believing… “No,” he frowns as my shoulders slump. “Hey,” he mutters, touching my face tenderly, “We’ll still find Leo’s cat.”
The warmth of his hand sends a shock down my spine. I wonder how the shock would feel to Leo, when he comes home to a cat-less house. The weight of my promise to take care of Yesterday pushes down at my already collapsed shoulders. Something wet trickles down my face. I hope my tears won’t embarrass Elliot, like they had to my last boyfriend. But Elliot is anything but awkward, and
he wipes the salty drops from my cheeks with his thumbs “We should check outside again, then.” Hand in hand, we walk upstairs, through the immaculately clean kitchen, through the spotless mudroom (how that worked out made me shake my head. Only my mom would clean that place.) Out on the back porch, in the light of the dusk, I trip and land on my knees in the garden and feel my thick wool tights rip. Whatever. I have to get new ones, anyway. I stand up and beam at Elliot. From his smirk I know he knows the look plastered on my face is artificial. He shakes his dark head and holds up what I tripped on- my running shoes. “When’s your big meet?” he asks casually. The meet. The meet I had been talking about nonstop for the past 3 weeks, the race I had trained for until my old shoes wore out and my mile sped up to five minutes and thirty nine seconds. I was fast. I knew it. I could win. I cough, brushing off some invisible dirt from my grandma’s skirt. I had inherited all of her old fashion stuff when she fell from her bike on the way to the store and was hit by the only milk truck around. She died in the hospital, not just of a broken hip, but also of old age. I think it was the way she would’ve wanted to go.
“That milk truck,” Gram used to say cheerfully, childishly, as she swung on the ancient swing out front, “…is the replacement for the milk boys. You know, your Poppy was a milk boy…”
    “I’m not going to the meet,” I swallow, still not looking up. The roses are illuminated with the orange of the sunset, matching the colors of our old Victorian house. 
I can feel Elliot’s eyes on me as I choked out an excuse. “My shorts are totaled. I feel sick.” I look up into Elliot’s reproachful face. He loves to see me run like “Edward after a deer.” Celia’s new man was from Twilight. Gross.
    “Plus,” I murmur firmly, staring Elliot down. “Family is more important then winning,” I can see he wanted to convince me that he should stay back, that he could look for the kitten fine by himself- something totally unfair to him, something that only someone as loyal as him could offer.
    I shake my head. The only thing we argue about is stuff that makes him sound like the nicest person. He says it’s only when I don’t care enough about what I work for hardest.
    I snatch a flashlight out of his pocket and start walking down the shadowy sides of the house. I look back, my leg stinging: the crunch of another person on the gravel hasn’t followed me. Elliot’s standing in the space between the house and the bushes, outlined in the dying sun’s last rays. There’s a deadly, teasing smile on his face.
    “You said,” he started out, teeth glinting, his lips curving up. “You said that you didn’t go to your mom’s new gig in Amsterdam because of this meet. You gave up a chance to go to Europe to go to this meet!” He knew there something else to tell. I glared at him. “I… forgot… about my shorts,” I lied bluntly. He smirked again and crunched his was over to me, laughing. “You’re hiding something, kid. Spit it.” I knew Elliot wouldn’t rest until I admitted.
    I leered, trying to pull it off and not totally smash my ego. “Well, um, my parents left on a plane, and planes tend to crash, so I saw no fit reason to attend, ohm, even though, you know, it would’ve been fun…” I trailed off lamely, pushing some hair back into a clip. Silence.
Then my phone rang, loudly, to announce that Celia needed to talk. I picked up, hung up. Zombie.

An hour and a half later, even with the bonus of Celia’s help, no whisker was to be seen. “Take care of her!” the toothless monkey called my brother had told me. It had taken a lot of convincing on my part to get him not to try to bring Yesterday on the plane with him. “Okay,” he had finally agreed. “But remember to tell her a good night story before you tuck her in,” 
Celia found me, later, on the starlit porch, tracing the designs on my skirt, feeling a few threads come loose. I think something came loose in my head, too, because no matter how long we looked that evening, we didn’t find that cat. Not even in the bushes. All I had to show for the effort were my arms and legs covered with scratches and a sinking heart. The covers didn’t feel so soft when I went to bed, and I didn’t want to think about the empty house that was flooded with aridity. My mind jogged to the meet. With the fresh rain crashing across the windows, what if it was cancelled? What if? Then I trip on the track and remember that Yesterday is missing, that Yesterday is too little to find her way home. Yesterday in the rain, Yesterday wet. I think I had lost something more than that cat.

My family came home on Saturday. Leo races through the yard, up the stairs, and into my arms. He squeezes so hard my heart thumps painfully. “Clio!” he screams happily. I laugh and detangle myself from him. I squat down next to the plump six year old, “I think you grew,”
“I think you didn’t,” he giggled.
“Fair enough.” I grin, but as he steps into the house, it falters. Don’t ask, don’t ask…
“How’s Yesterday?” he pulls off his green jacket, looking even younger than ever. What now? I can’t lie to him. I can’t tell him the truth. I have to tell him something. I’m spared a few minutes when Mom and Dad come up behind us.
“Hey, kid,” Dad ruffles my hair, but I’m too nervous to think about the time I used to arrange it.  “How are you?” Mom smiles, tired, sore.
“Good. Yesterday…. was beautiful,” I wince. Nothing is entering my brain. Nothing is entering my eyes. All I can do is listen as mom and dad as they set down their large suitcases. Mom starts to talk about how amazing Amsterdam was, but I interrupt her.  “I need to talk to you guys,” I grimace, the carpet swimming in front of my eyes. Silence again.
 Once Leo is out of the way, I tell them about the cat. They’re not mad. They’re not angry. They’re just…
“… sad, Clio, because this could happen to anyone, and it’s sad it had to happen to you. I’m sure Leo will love the-“ Stop trying to make it better. I glance at dad. He’s trying too hard.
“What about Leo? He won’t trust me.”
“He’s young. He can heal.” Mom runs a hand through her golden hair. She and dad are slumped on the couch like someone has cut their strings, and they can’t move anymore. I’m glad I didn’t come on the plane.
“He’s not that young,” I whimper, “He won’t be as forgiving as you think.” Mom and Dad exchange glances, knowingly. “The best thing we can do in this sit-,” Dad begins again, but a loud yell cuts through the house.
“Clio! Come look! I founded an animal in the sink!”
I get up to go see Leo, but he runs in to the kitchen as I’m coming up the stairs to see him, him carrying one of the baby turtles Celia’s little sister was selling. “Oh!” I act surprised. “Look at that!”  The turtle blinks. Leo is positively turning lights on in the cloudy day with his smile.
“He was in the sink,” he repeated, petting its green shell. “His name is Felix,”
“Really?” I try to sound excited, but probably sound depressed.
“Yeah. I can’t WAIT to show him to Yesterday! They’re gonna be best friends, just like us, right, Clio?” Leo is so oblivious to my mood. “Where is she?” he glances up at me with those big green eyes. My throat closes up.
    “She went for vacation,” I kneel down to look Leo in the eye. “But she’ll be back really soon,” I promise. Leo regards me silently.  Tears began to go down his face as he realized what I meant through the ‘vacation’ thing. “Really soon?” he sniffs. “I… yes, really soon.” The walls of the white kitchen seem gray now that he’s crying. I try to wrap my arms around him, but he pushes them off coldly. “You promised you’d take care of her. Taking care of her doesn’t mean letting her out for vacation.”
If only I could appreciate his maturity.