The door to the entrance of the house flung open and collided against the closet behind it. Abel ran through the door, tossing his backpack aside with one arm while cradling a kitten in his other, and quickly ascended the stairs. 

Behind him, Abel could hear Angel rush to the front door and call out angrily, “How many times do I have to tell you, be careful when you’re opening the door! The closet door knob already broke once!” 

The house reeked of something intensely sweet, so Abel quickly shut the door to his room after he entered. He grabbed a sweater from the top of his laundry basket and laid it out on his bed. He carefully lowered the kitten onto the sweater, and in its hazy fever, it let out a strained mew. The kitten could only have been a month old at most. Its frizzled black fur was shorter than the length of a fingernail, and its tail was stumpy and pointed. One of its hind legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, and the tip of its left ear looked as if a sharp object had pierced it and then been violently ripped away. Thick red blood matted the kitten's thigh, and its torn ear was crusted over. Abel ran to the bathroom and grabbed his towel. He submerged it in warm water and wrung it gently before returning to the kitten and began dabbing at its wounds. Behind him, he heard the door creak open. 

“Abel?” Angel whispered. “Is it another cat?”

She slowly approached him from behind, and then let out a gasp. 

“What happened—”

“Close the door,” Abel interrupted, still trying to break up the clumps of dried blood. “Actually, could you go bring me the ointment from last time?”

Angel gave him a doubtful look, and left the room. A few minutes later, she returned carrying a baby bottle and an olive green tube of ointment. Abel took the tube from her and furrowed his brows at the bottle of milk in her other hand. 

“Is that the milk I drink in the morning?” he asked.

“Yeah. I thought it might be hungry,” she replied. 

“...Cats can't drink cow's milk. They'll get diarrhea.” 

“O-oh.” Angel's stuttered. “I just thought that kittens were different, you know. Like, in the movies…” Her voice trailed off. 

“Shhh.” 

The kitten had started whimpering again, and its tiny legs feebly pawed at the air. Abel uncapped the ointment and slowly spread it over the kitten's torn ear with a cotton swab he had gotten from his drawer. With his other hand, he carefully pressed the kitten down onto the sweater and cooed at the kitten in a gentle voice. 

After a few minutes, Abel heard the door behind him creak open and Angel whisper, “I’ll go see if the vet’s still open.” 

     ~ ◦  ◈  ◦ ~ 

By the time Abel finished treating the kitten, the sky outside his window had turned as dark as the kitten’s pelt. The kitten’s leg still protruded at an angel, but Abel had patched up the wounds on the injured thigh and loosely tied them closed with a bandage. Abel had done his best to wipe all the blood out of the kitten's fur and disinfected the torn ear before also bandaging it up. He had sat by the kitten, gently stroking its back until its mews fell silent and its chest rose and fell in steady intervals. 

Abel pulled his curtains shut and left his room. Downstairs, Angel had already set out a bowl of rice for him, accompanied by a small assortment of side dishes for the two of them to share. But the mild and pleasant aroma of their dinner was overpowered by the distinctly sweet smell from the evening, and Abel felt his eyes wander until they landed on a foil tray set aside on the corner of the kitchen counter. 

“Are those… brownies?” he asked. 

Angel gave him a pointed stare. “Not until you finish your dinner.”

When Angel looked away, Abel rolled his eyes and took his seat. 

“The vet was closed when I called, " Angel said. “They told me to bring the kitten in tomorrow morning when I send you to school.”

Abel wordlessly nodded, and took a spoonful of rice. 

After a while, Angel asked,  “So? Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Abel swallowed the food in his mouth. “I was walking home. You know the street in front of Ah Yi’s bakery? I saw a couple kicking some cats.”

“They were what?!”

“I think the lady tried touching the bigger cat and it scratched her.”

“The bigger cat? You only brought back a kitten. Is the other one…?” Angel asked. 

“She was wearing high heels. When they left I went to check on the cats. I think the man kicked the big one really hard into the wall, and then—” Abel faltered. “And then the lady must have stepped on it with her heels.”

Angel covered her mouth in shock, muffling a gasp. “I’m so sorry, Abel,” she whispered through her fingers. “You shouldn’t have had to see these things.”

Abel didn’t reply, and the two of them finished eating their meals in silence. Abel got up and gathered the empty plates. He brought them over to the sink and submerged them under warm water to washing later, and then turned to eye the brownies again. 

“Can I have one now?”

Angel let out a small sigh and smiled. “Yes, you may.”

Abel took a fork from their utensils drawer and a clean plate from their drying rack before going over to the tray of desserts. The brownies had evidently been poured unevenly, with one side of the tray rising higher than the other. Small chocolate chips decorated the top of the fudge, but Abel was slightly disappointed to find none mixed throughout the brownie when he inspected the slice he had picked up. In their place, he found thin streaks of light brown 一 likely undermixed batter. 

Despite this, Abel still relished in each bite of the brownie. The two of them lived in a small neighborhood with no big chain-stores nearby, with the nearest shopping district only selling Asian groceries and wares. Having dessert, not to mention one that required preparation time, was equivalent to eating a delicacy for the two of them. 

When Abel looked back at Angel, he saw her looking expectantly at him. 

“So? How is it?” she asked. 

“It’s really good. Can I have another one?”

“Don’t eat too many,” she replied sternly, but her smile betrayed her. “The recipe asked for so much sugar, my hand shook while pouring it.”

Abel picked out another from the center of the tray and took a seat next to Angel. 

“I thought you had a meeting with that professor today. How did you have enough time to make this?”

Angel’s smile dropped slightly. “His wife caught the flu. He said it’s pretty bad, so he took her to the hospital today.” 

Abel shrugged and said, “Don’t get too bummed out. Hey, at least these brownies taste great. You should make them more often.”

Angel ruffled Abel’s hair and chuckled. “You wish.”

Angel had been driving Abel to school for over a year now but still drove as slowly as when she first started. Once, while driving Abel to the doctors office for his annual checkup, she had driven so slowly on the local road that four cars behind her had started blaring their horns in unison. Abel had joked that she should put her “New Driver” sticker back onto her bumper so less people would honk at her. 

The car ride to school was always a quiet one. Neither of them had much energy to converse in the morning, and they had agreed on the first day to never play the radio, since the constant commercials drove the both of them insane. Abel would stare outside the window and count the streets as they passed by, noting any differences from the previous day. As the car pulled up to the intersection before Ah Yi’s bakery, Abel noticed two figures running down the street in their direction. A black man was at the front, with arms folded above his head, as if afraid of getting hit by a projectile. Behind him appeared to be Ah Yi, who waved a parasol wildly as she chased after him. All the windows of the car were rolled up, but Abel could still make out that Ah Yi was yelling as she ran.

Abel glanced up at the rear-view mirror, which hung at such an angle that allowed Abel to see Angel’s face. She was expressionless. 

“And you wouldn’t believe what he said during dinner!” Alexandra huffed. “Amir said my skin got even darker over the summer. Anthony! He’s nearly the same shade as me. If he spent an extra hour in the sun every day, we’d look exactly the same!”

“Sounds like he just wanted someone to punch down on,” Abel said. “He probably doesn’t usually get the chance to.”

“I know, right.” Alexandra said, and lowered her voice. “But I’m just so angry that he started the stupid conversation this time. Like, since we both have pretty dark skin, right? Back in India, we would complain about our crazy relatives and their obsession with whitening our skin together. He was like, the closest thing I had to a best friend.”

“Mhm.”

“I don’t know what happened after we moved, but we just stopped talking. And then we finally meet up again and he pulls this crap. I was even looking forward to the family gathering for once because Mamma said he would be coming.” She rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. “So much for that.”

Alexandra stood up to stretch her arms and looked back at Abel.

“Whatever! That’s enough from me. Anything happen to you yesterday? You look distracted, like something’s on your mind.”

“Oh, sorry,” Abel said, flustered. “I didn’t mean to come off like that. I was listening. I promise.”

Alexandra laughed. “Don’t worry, I don’t mind. I just like ranting to you; you’re a good listener. So, what's been on your mind?”

Abel hummed, and furrowed his brows. “I found another cat yesterday — well, two, actually — on the way home. There was this man and woman—I think they were drunk or something. One of the cats must have bit her, and then they started kicking the cats.”

“What the—?! They’ve got to be psychopaths!”

Abel nodded his head in agreement. “One of them didn’t make it.”

“That's terrible! Isn’t that animal abuse or something?”

“Yeah, but I’m more worried about the one still alive right now. You remember the cat I found last time, right? It was also a stray. We found out later that the vet we took the cat to puts down stray cats. Angel felt really guilty about it afterwards, so this time she drove all the way to the next town over. She texted me that the vet there told her their policy for strays is turning them over to an open shelter.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“Yeah, I think that's what Angel thinks too. But I checked and all the no-kill shelters near us are at capacity, and the kitten was really injured when I found it. Its leg was twisted all weird for so long, I don’t know if the vet will be able to fix it. Kill-shelters don’t keep injured animals.”

“Let’s be optimistic! Maybe the good shelters will free up some space for a poor kitten.”
“Alex, do you know where they get the space from?”

“What do you mean?”

Abel smiled bitterly. “No-kill shelters aren’t actually ‘no-kill’. They can put down up to a tenth of the animals they receive and still be called a no-kill shelter. And when they’re overpacked, all the animals who don’t get euthanized for being sick or unfriendly are put on a time limit. 

“You know, the kitten has really pretty black fur too. I tried rubbing the dirt out with a towel before Angel took it to the vet. Its coat was really full and shiny. Its mother cat must have really loved it.” Abel paused and sighed. “But right now its color might be a problem. You know black cats are adopted less than white cats? I think it was by, like, ten percent, too.”

Alexandra wrinkled her eyebrows. “Why’s that?”

“Dunno. Some weird superstitions, I guess. I think it’s all bogus though.”

At that moment, Alexandra's phone alarm sounded, and a hushed, upbeat chime came from her phone. 

“Ah, sorry Abel. I’ve gotta go now,” she said and began gathering her backpack. 

“Is the period over already?” 

“No, my parents just set an alarm to make sure I take my medicine on time.” Alexandra rolled her eyes. “It’s something prescribed by the newest quack doctor they found. This one promised the pills ‘will make your daughter’s skin as white as snow in just a month’ or something like that.”

“They’re still at it?”

“Yep. Wait.” Alexandra looked back at her phone. “Have I shown you this app yet? You know how they’re always telling me I’ll never find a partner with my dark skin, right? I didn’t believe them but look at this.” Alexandra held out her phone for Abel to see. “I downloaded an Indian dating app, and they actually do separate the ‘dark-skinned’ people from the ‘light-skinned’ people. Isn’t that crazy?”

Abel raised his eyebrows. “That… wow. Is that normal? There's no way, right?”

Alexandra laughed, and said, “It’s insane, I know! Apparently all the popular dating apps have this though. Alright, I’m going to go now. If I don’t take these pills they’ll bring me to another quack, and that’d be another huge waste of time.” Her smile faltered. “Sometimes, I’m scared they’ll actually start bleaching my skin.”

Abel gave Alexandra a sympathetic smile and patted her on the back. 

“Chin up. Don’t worry about stuff like that. At the end of the day, they’re your family. And family won’t hurt each other.”

After dropping Abel off at school in the mornings, Angel would spend the next hour driving to the city to her job at an upscale supermarket. The pay was average, but the owners were good friends of her grandmother, so they were flexible with her scheduling. Most days she would spend the next nine hours standing behind a tiny register, counting money and forcing a smile so as to not cause unnecessary trouble for herself. Other days, she would drive to its adjacent city, which was affectionately known as the state's hub for intellects. A collection of the country's top universities were situated there, and thus became the apple of the state’s eye. 

Nearing the end of her high school years, Angel threw her name into a lottery for a chance to visit a lab at a top university. Against all odds, with a pool of over a hundred thousand applicants and only ten seats available, Angel was picked for the three week visit. Angel put her heart and soul into the program. She asked questions to any and all faculty she met and took up the leadership role for the culminating project. At some point, she caught the eye of a professor who asked her what her plans for the future were. He was a middle-aged man, nearly 6 feet tall, and had a sturdy build. His light brown hair was slicked back onto his head and rectangular glasses rested on the crook of his nose. He spoke slowly and clearly and seemed to always have an answer for Angel's questions. Embarrassed, she told him that she wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue pursuing education beyond high school. 

Her mother had disappeared from her life when she was just nine, and her father left to another country shortly after, leaving her to take care of Abel on her own. He would occasionally send back wads of cash tucked between pages of old books which he would send through mail. Her grandparents from mother’s side didn’t want to take in young children at their age but sent monthly allowances to avoid the shame of being branded as having abandoned their grandkids after their daughter did the same. In addition to her grandparents’ help, a kind aunt from her father’s side took pity on the two of them and would often visit, bringing treats and new clothes for them. She once confessed to Angel that she wished to legally adopt them, but their father took offense to her offer and told her he could provide for them by himself. Angel knew that providing for two growing children was quite a financial burden for her grandparents and aunt and didn’t want to add to it by attending college. So she had decided to enjoy her life as a student one last time through the program before throwing herself into adult life and finding a job. 

The kindly professor listened earnestly, and thought for a moment. “I see lots of potential in you. If you can promise me that that passion will never die out, how about I offer you an opportunity?

In the afternoon, Abel's ten-minute drive to school turned into a forty-five-minute walk back home. Abel didn't mind, though. Their parents had left them with a decent-sized middle-class house in the middle of a relatively wealthy neighborhood. Rows of houses stretched as far as the eye could see, and occasional playgrounds and family-owned stores selling miscellaneous goods dotted the path. It was a town where owning a car was an absolute necessity, for both traversing the town and leaving it. The streets in the afternoon were always quiet and scenic, and Abel could count the number of people he'd seen while walking home in the last week on one hand. Only in the early mornings and late nights did the streets become loud, with cars looking to leave or return, packing the streets and filling the air with a symphony of different horn blares. 

About half an hour into the trek, the trees and houses would give way to two long sidewalks, each forming the sides of a road that gradually thickened until it split off into another path that connected to a highway. The constant sound of cars driving to and from the highway discouraged prospective home-buyers from considering any houses too close to the busy street, so eventually, all the unsold houses were knocked down, leaving only the skeletons of their infrastructure and a few remaining intact brick walls. The isolated area became a popular dumping ground for unwanted pets, a place where the rich folk who lived nearby could reliably get rid of animals they became bored of with the certainty that they would never be found by colleagues, friends, or relatives. 

It was between two walls that would have once formed an alleyway where Abel had witnessed the drunken couple abuse the cats. In Abel’s rush to save the kitten, he had left the limp body of the larger cat on the ground, unburied and unmourned.  The next day, Abel walked down the same path and stopped to inspect the alley. The cracked concrete seemed to have been hastily wiped down recently, and the body of the cat was nowhere to be found. Perhaps a sympathetic passerby had taken pity on the cat’s gruesome death and taken it upon themselves to clean up the scene, or perhaps the perpetrators had returned after sobering up to remove the evidence of their misdeeds. Regardless, to an untrained eye, it was as if nothing had happened there. 

     ~ ◦  ◈  ◦ ~ 

Ah Yi’s bakery was at the end of the street. She was a beautiful woman with a small, thin frame and fair skin. To maintain the porcelain-white skin she prided herself on, she would always don a large wicker hat before leaving her house, and the chemical scent of sunscreen followed her wherever she went. Twenty-five years ago, a famous American toy maker was visiting China when he took one look at the young daughter of a street merchant and became instantly smitten. He proposed to her the very next day and confessed to her that she was twice as beautiful as any doll he had ever laid his eyes on. Wishing to travel the world, she accepted his proposal, and at the age of seventeen, she married a man twice as old as herself. 

But their marriage was a tumultuous one, and Ah Yi eventually settled down in a quiet, remote town whilst the toy maker continued on to conduct business and “other” affairs. He would occasionally bring back expensive gifts from abroad, but Ah Yi lived most of her days in boredom and isolation. One day, Ah Yi discovered a passion for baking within herself and demanded her husband open a bakery in her name. So, not long after, a run-down building a short drive away from her house was cleaned up and converted into a small bakery for her use. 

Every afternoon, Abel would stop by Ah Yi’s bakery and pick up a free bun. She would wait for him under a different colored patio umbrella each day, sometimes reading the newspaper, other times writing in a leather-bound notebook no larger than the size of Abel’s palm. Ah Yi was an old friend of his mother’s from when the two of them still lived in China, and she was ecstatic when she first met Abel by coincidence on his walk back home.

“Abel, dear!” she would exclaim in her thick, Chinese accent. “Come inside, try my new recipe.”

She led him inside the small bakery and handed him a small, triangle-shaped bread. The top of the slice was dyed a hot pink and the base an equally saturated green. Small raisins were sparingly distributed across the top of the slice. 

Abel rested his school bag by the counter and thanked her profusely before accepting the bread. He ate in large mouthfuls that would have elicited a disapproving look from Angel, but Ah Yi would smile and laugh, telling him no one could compliment her baking better than he could. 

Behind them, the muted chime of the front door sounded, and a well-dressed middle-aged man carrying a heavy briefcase stepped into the store. He took a sweeping glance of the place and then asked Ah Yi if he could take his time picking. Ah Yi always had quite a large assortment of bread on display on account of how few travelers passed by the street. Abel once asked Ah Yi why she opened a bakery in such a remote place, and Ah Yi answered that she didn’t bake for the money. That, she already had more than enough of.

After a minute of browsing, the man asked Ah Yi if she sold coffee at the bakery, and Ah Yi left into the kitchen to prepare the drink. Abel sat at the counter and brought out his homework. From the corner of his eye, he watched as the man opened his briefcase and started swiping bread from particularly populated displays and putting them into his bag. 

Abel watched in disbelief, and as Ah Yi called out from within the kitchen that the coffee was almost finished, the man closed his briefcase and ran out the door. 

When Ah Yi emerged a moment later, she disappointedly remarked, “What a pity, he left already.”

“Ah Yi,” Abel said,  “that man just stole a lot of your bread.”

When Ah Yi gave Abel a disinterested “sure,” he pointed at the shelves where the man had taken the buns. 

“Count them! I’m not lying, he took the bread and ran today.”

Ah Yi sighed and looked at Abel pityingly. “Abel dear, when you grow older you’ll understand that some people aren’t as fortunate as us. That man probably has a family at home to feed.” She smiled and ruffled Abel’s hair. “It’s ok though, I’ll make sure you’ll grow up to become a wise and compassionate man.”

“Ah Yi, today morning I saw you running after a man.”

Abel watched as Ah Yi’s smile dropped, and a scowl formed on her fair face. 

“You mean the black man?”

Abel nodded. “Why were you chasing him?”

Ah Yi clicked her tongue. “I thought I had seen an end to those dirty people when I moved here. Do you know how terrible it feels walking amongst them?”

“Was that man dirty?”

“Just look at the color of their skin, Abel. Only filthy people who did bad things in their past lives end up with skin the color of coal.” Ah Yi’s nose wrinkled in concentration, as she recalled the man from the morning. “He sauntered in like he owned the place. They do that, Abel, you know? They act all disrespectful everywhere and then demand free things on the news.

“He went to grab a bunーto steal it, no doubtーso I chased him out.” Ah Yi started smiling again, and described as she hit the man with her parasol. “He ran really fast, like all those thieves do, but I reached out with my parasol and hit him in the head a few times. I told him to never come back, and he ran away screaming, ‘I’m sorry’. Serves him right!”

Ah Yi chuckled, and then offered, “You like hearing about your mother, right? Let me tell you about the time when…”

Something in Abel’s stomach had started clenching and twisting about itself as he listened to Ah Yi speak. The feeling only continued to grow more and more painful until he couldn’t take it anymore and excused himself. Abel stepped outside and drew a deep breath. Suddenly, he felt a vibration in his pocket. Angel was calling him. 

“Abel,” she said, out of breath. “Where did you put the ointment you use? And the bandages.”

“I keep them in my desk. Top right drawer. Why do you need it?” 

“A car hit a cat outside the house. Its body went flying, Abel. Itー” her voice choked up. “It’s barely breathing. I don’t know what to do. It mouth is wide open but it’s chest won’t rise. It’s like it’s pleading for air!”