Show and Tell

The rain had come in the night, the soft grey kind that doesn't fall so much as hang — a curtain of mist over Willowbrook that made the whole town look like a photograph someone had left out to fade.

Milo had not slept much.

All night the words had gone round and round. Unknown animal. That was what Spark had said when Whiskers — orange, white-socked, notch-eared Whiskers — had hopped into the blue laundry basket the morning before. Spark, who had known that cat a hundred mornings. Spark, who knew everything.

Now Spark sat on Appa's workbench, its light a dull grey, stuttering like a hiccup that wouldn't stop.

Appa did not answer right away. Appa never did. He was the kind of man who treated a broken thing the way a doctor treats a patient — slowly, with respect. He wiped his hands on a cloth and reached into a drawer, and pulled out something soft with age: Milo's old alphabet chart. A is for Apple. B is for Ball.

Milo looked at the grey, flickering light.

Appa said it like the most ordinary fact in the world, and then turned back to his bench, because to him it was ordinary. Machines break. People fix them. That was just Tuesday.

But to Milo, something had cracked open.

I could fix it. Not Appa. Not some expert. Me.

At school it was, of all things, Show and Tell.

Mrs. Mehra ran it every Friday — each kid brought one thing and stood up and told about it. Today a boy held up a seashell and explained how you could hear the sea inside it. A girl brought her grandmother's bangles. Kabir, naturally, brought a cricket ball signed by someone nobody had heard of and talked for far too long.

Milo barely heard any of it.

Because Show and Tell — that was exactly it, wasn't it? You showed the thing, and then you told what it was. This is a shell. This is a bangle. You held it up and you named it, and the name stuck to the thing.

That was what Appa meant. That was what Spark needed. Someone to hold up Whiskers — show — and say: this is Whiskers — tell. Over and over, until the name stuck.

Priya looked at Milo's face — the fierce, hopeful, slightly-mad look on it — and did not even ask what for. That was the kind of friend Priya was. She just nodded and slid the silver camera across the desk.

On the way home the rain had thinned to a drip, and Mrs. Kamala was on her verandah with a shoebox in her lap.

Milo stopped. They always stopped for Mrs. Kamala — ever since the flood, ever since Spark had found the safe way through the water and brought her home. Back when Milo had trusted Spark without leaning the whole weight of their life on it.

Inside the shoebox were photographs. Hundreds of them, soft-cornered and faded. Her wedding. A young man who must have been her husband, laughing. A child on a bicycle.

Milo stared at the little brown square. A memory you can hold.

That was it. That was exactly it. Spark had lost its memories of Whiskers — but Milo could make new ones. Hold them. Hand them back.

That evening, Milo became a photographer.

It was not easy. Whiskers, like all cats, had decided that the one thing in the universe most worth ignoring was a child pointing a silver box at it. Milo crept. Milo crouched. Milo lay flat on the floor with their chin on the cold tiles.

Click. Whiskers on the windowsill, ears up, the grey dusk behind.

Click. Whiskers mid-yawn, pink mouth wide, the notched left ear catching the lamplight.

Click. Whiskers curled in the blue laundry basket, one white-socked paw tucked under, exactly where Spark had failed to know it the morning everything broke.

Milo circled the cat like a planet circling the sun. From the front. From the side. From behind, where the white sock showed plain against the orange. Close up on the torn ear. Far back, the whole cat, tail and all.

Tara shrugged, the way only a fearless seven-year-old can shrug at the hardest thing in the house, and wandered off to find a snack.

When the rain finally stopped and the house went quiet, Milo sat on the floor and looked at everything they had caught.

Dozens of little Whiskers, glowing on the screen. Yawning, sleeping, blinking, cross. Milo made a new folder, and over it typed a name in big careful capitals:

WHISKERS.

There it was. A box of held memories, just like Mrs. Kamala's. Each one saying the same quiet thing: this is Whiskers. And this. And this.

Milo looked over at Spark, sitting in the dark, its light pulsing that faint, uncertain grey-blue — almost as if it were waiting.

For the first time since Unknown animal, Milo did not feel scared. Milo felt like a teacher with a lesson ready and a long night finally ending.

Milo carried the camera to bed and set it on the pillow beside them like a treasure.

Tomorrow they would feed the photos in. Tomorrow Spark might know Whiskers again. The thought was so big and so hopeful that Milo's chest ached with it.

But Milo was impatient. That was always Milo's trouble. Lying there in the dark, with the WHISKERS folder full and glowing, the waiting felt impossible — like standing in front of a wrapped present and being told to leave it till morning.

And somewhere in the dark, Spark's faint grey-blue light pulsed once — patient, waiting, not knowing what was about to be done to it — and asked, soft as the last of the rain:

But Milo was already asleep.