Walking home from the library usually helps me organize my thoughts after an afternoon of studying. Calculus has a way of filling every available corner of my brain, so by the time I reach our apartment building I’m normally ready to think about literally anything else. Unfortunately, my brain had other plans. As I rounded the corner toward the front entrance, something caught my eye near the brick wall where Mr. Whiskers always stretches before coming inside for dinner. It wasn’t a hole. It wasn’t a crack. It wasn’t even particularly noticeable. It was simply a spot that looked…different. Most people would have walked right past it without giving it a second thought. I stopped, stared at it for several seconds, stepped to one side, then the other, and finally took three steps backward as though changing my perspective might reveal some hidden truth. It didn’t. The wall stubbornly remained a wall. Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something about it had changed. Maybe the color was slightly different. Maybe the texture looked smoother. Maybe I was imagining the whole thing. I considered taking a picture so I could compare it later, but I decided that photographing suspicious walls was probably how neighbors started asking uncomfortable questions.
My phone buzzed just as I reached the front steps. Pandora had sent a message. *Running about twenty minutes late tonight. Sorry!* I read it once, slipped my phone into my pocket, then immediately pulled it back out and read it again. Twenty minutes wasn’t unusual. Life happened. Classes ran long. Checkout lines existed. None of that bothered me. What caught my attention was the wording. Pandora usually texted, *I’ll be about twenty minutes late.* Today she’d written, *Running about twenty minutes late.* Running where? Running from what? And then there was the exclamation point. Pandora wasn’t someone who sprinkled punctuation around carelessly. Every exclamation point felt intentional. My eyes drifted back toward the wall. I couldn’t explain why, but somehow the suspicious patch of brick and Pandora’s unusually enthusiastic punctuation had become connected inside my head. The connection made absolutely no logical sense, which unfortunately had never stopped my imagination before.
When I walked into the apartment, John Mercer was exactly where I expected him to be, stretched across the couch watching a nature documentary. Judging by the narration, the program was about fish that lived somewhere unimaginably deep in the ocean, and every single one of them looked like evolution had simply gotten tired and decided, “Good enough.”
“They’re uglier than I expected,” John said.
“The fish?” I asked.
“Everything.”
I nodded. “Fair.”
I set my backpack down and hesitated for a moment before asking, “John, have you noticed anything different about the wall outside?”
He muted the television and looked at me with the expression of a man trying to determine whether this conversation required actual thought or simply patience. “Which wall?”
“The one by the entrance.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even look.”
“I walked past it ten minutes ago.”
“Maybe it changed.”
John stared at me for several seconds.
“Hal.”
“Yeah?”
“Walls don’t usually sneak around when nobody’s watching.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I realized I didn’t actually have any evidence that this particular wall hadn’t.
Mr. Whiskers was waiting in the kitchen beside his food bowl, wearing the familiar expression of someone who believed dinner was already several minutes overdue. He looked at me. I looked at him. Then he blinked once and slowly turned his head toward the back door before looking at me again. Now, I know people say cats are impossible to read, but I was fairly certain that meant something. It wasn’t until after I’d filled his bowl that I remembered he performed exactly the same routine every evening. Even so, the timing felt strangely convenient. As he buried his face in dinner, I found myself wondering whether cats noticed things humans ignored. Dogs barked at everything. Cats judged everything. Perhaps this fell somewhere in the middle.
I tried reading while I waited for Pandora, but my attention kept wandering. Every few minutes I’d glance toward the window overlooking the front walkway. The suspicious spot on the wall remained exactly where it had been, continuing its impressive career of doing absolutely nothing. Twenty minutes passed. Then twenty-five. Then thirty. I wasn’t anxious exactly. Curious was probably the better word. Curious had simply put on a fake mustache and was pretending to be anxiety.
A knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. When I opened it, Mrs. Jenkins stood there holding a small plate covered with aluminum foil.
“I baked too many blueberry muffins again,” she said. “Would you boys like a few?”
John appeared almost instantly.
“We’d love some.”
Mrs. Jenkins smiled as she handed me the plate. “I saw Pandora earlier. Poor thing was carrying enough grocery bags to stock a small restaurant.”
“Grocery bags?” I asked.
“Oh yes. She looked exhausted.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
Mrs. Jenkins laughed. “Home, I imagine.”
Of course.
Where else would groceries go?
Still…
Pandora hadn’t mentioned grocery shopping.
Mrs. Jenkins wished us a pleasant evening and disappeared back into the hallway before I could accidentally ask another ridiculous question.
John reached for a muffin.
“You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’ve connected seven completely unrelated things.”
“I’ve only connected four.”
“That’s somehow worse.”
“I think something’s going on.”
John took another bite.
“I think you’re eating too much library air.”
Before I could defend myself, the front door opened and Pandora stepped inside carrying three grocery bags.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said. “The checkout line wrapped halfway around the store.”
She placed the bags on the counter and smiled.
“I figured I’d grab dinner while I was out. Oh, and I bought Mr. Whiskers his favorite treats.”
At the word *treats*, Mr. Whiskers appeared with such astonishing speed that I briefly wondered whether he’d been hiding inside another dimension reserved exclusively for cats.
John folded his arms.
“So?”
“So what?”
“The mystery.”
Pandora looked back and forth between us.
“What mystery?”
I pointed dramatically toward the window.
“The wall.”
She walked over, looked outside for perhaps two seconds, and laughed.
“Oh! Maintenance painted over the bricks this morning. Mr. Whiskers scratched them up so badly they finally decided to cover the marks. One of the workers told me while I was leaving.”
I blinked.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I looked at John.
John looked at me.
Neither of us said anything.
Just then Mr. Whiskers wandered outside through the open doorway, completely ignored the freshly painted section, walked six inches to the left, and enthusiastically began scratching the wall all over again.
John started laughing first.
Pandora joined in.
Even Mrs. Jenkins looked out her window, saw what the cat was doing, and shook her head with a smile.
I watched Mr. Whiskers proudly continue his work and realized I’d spent nearly an hour constructing an elaborate theory involving suspicious punctuation, grocery bags, mysterious walls, and feline body language when the real explanation was simply that our cat was apparently committed to keeping the maintenance staff employed.
I still look at that spot every time I come home.
Not because I think it’s suspicious anymore.
I’m just curious whether the maintenance crew or Mr. Whiskers is going to win.