A Born Uplifter

I

Sara knew that Seth was running to catch up with her, but she had decided not to stop and wait for him. She was still mad at him for his awful prank yesterday, and she wasn’t going to give in to him so easily. In fact, she had pretty much decided never to talk to him again.

Seth didn’t understand why what seemed to him like an innocent and potentially very funny prank had affected Sara so negatively. He had no way of knowing that the spot he had chosen was the exact place on which Sara’s beloved Solomon had actually died.

Seth caught up with Sara. “Hey,” Seth said softly.

Sara didn’t answer.

They walked, neither speaking. Seth thought of many things he might say, but when he practiced them in his

mind they all seemed wrong.

Jason, Sara’s little brother, and his friend Billy raced by on their bicycles. “Sara’s got a boyfriend, Sara’s got a boyfriend,” they chided in unison as they passed by.

“Shut up!” Sara yelled back.

A cat scurried across the sidewalk right in front of Sara and Seth. The cat startled Seth, and he jumped a funny little jump in the air. Sara managed to contain her laughter, but she couldn’t stop her grin altogether. It broke the icy tension.

“That cat reminds me of one we used to have,” Seth said.

Sara watched the cat run off into the bushes. She had tried to catch that very cat many times, but never could.

He was wild and mangy and fast.

“Oh yeah?” Sara said, trying hard to stay mad at Seth.

“We called our cat Tripod,” Seth said, hoping to get some sort of response from Sara.

It worked.

“Tripod?” Sara questioned and laughed at the same time. “What a weird name.”

“Well,” Seth said, looking down with a very sad face,

“he only had three legs.”

Sara blurted out her laugh. It wasn’t nice to laugh about a poor crippled cat, but the shock of a three-legged cat in combination with his three-three-legged name was too much for Sara to contain.

Seth was very pleased that Sara was talking to him again.

“What happened to Tripod’s leg?” Sara asked.

“We never found out. Probably got caught in a trap or something. Maybe a snake.”

Sara winced.

“Yeah, we had a two-legged cat once, too,” Seth said with great seriousness. “We called him Roo, you know, short for kangaroo.”

Sara laughed, imagining a cat springing around on its back legs, but she was suspicious that Seth was making

this one up. What were the odds of having a three-legged cat and a two-three-legged cat?

“Geez, your family sure was hard on cats!”

“Yeah,” Seth said, very seriously. “We once had a one-legged cat, too.”

“Yeah, right,” Sara quipped. Now she was sure Seth was making it all up. “What did you call that cat? Pogo stick?”

“Nope, we called him Cyclops. He only had one eye, too.”

Sara burst out laughing. It felt so much better to be entertained by Seth than to be mad at him.

They came to the corner where Seth turned off to his house. Seth grinned, feeling glad that he had managed to make Sara laugh and play with him again. And Sara continued on down the country road toward her house.

She laughed and laughed and laughed. She wasn’t sure if Seth had a strange knack for turning tragedy into comedy, or if he was just the funniest person she’d ever met. But in any case, Sara could not remember ever

having laughed so hard. He probably never even had a cat. Sara grinned.

“Hey, Sara, was that your little brother on the bicycle?” Seth yelled back at her.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Sara called back. “I knew you’d meet him sooner or later. I just hoped it would be later.

Much later.”

“Hey, Seth,” Sara called out loudly, not sure if Seth was too far away to hear her.

Seth turned around, smiling, and stopped.

“I thought cats are supposed to have nine lives.”

“Oh, we don’t kill ’em, we just maim ’em,” Seth called back. “And I think it’s more like 14, but I lost count on some of them.”

Sara laughed again.

“I think that goes for people, too!” Seth yelled.

Sara continued on down the road. She didn’t know what to make of Seth. His life seemed mysterious, and in

some ways tragic, but he was very interesting. And he was funny. Was he making it up to be funny, or was he making it funny to keep it from being so tragic? And what was this business about having 14 lives? Was he kidding about that, too?

We are all birds of a feather, you know. Sara remembered Solomon’s words: Seth is an intense seeker, a born uplifter—and a true teacher.

Sara smiled. “This is going to be very interesting,” she said out loud.

CHAPTER 8