About a week passed, and the cut didn’t heal - rather, it began to swell red. She felt nauseous and had a high fever, having to call in sick to school. Maybe that cat was diseased, she thought. She forgot the name, but maybe it had that sickness one in ten cats have, and she got infected when it scratched her. The fever refused to recede. Her body felt heavy, and her joints and lymph nodes hurt badly. I wish that gray cat being run over and killed hadn’t just been me misunderstanding. It didn’t take long for her to start thinking that. If only that cat hadn’t been alive, I wouldn’t have to go through this. When she next woke up, her fever was completely gone. She didn’t hurt or feel nauseous; she was the picture of health. “I think my fever’s gone,” she informed her mother, who tilted her head and asked, “Did you have a fever?” What are you talking about?, the girl thought. She’d been bedridden by it for days. Yesterday, and the day before that... But as she went back through her memories, she noticed that separate memories existed alongside those days she had been bedridden. In those memories, she had gone to school yesterday, and the day before, and every day without fail for the past month. And she could remember everything: the lessons she had, the books she read at lunch, and all her meals. At once, she was filled with deep confusion. Yesterday, I slept in bed all day. Yesterday, I had math class, and Japanese class, and arts and crafts, and PE, and social studies. Her memories contradicted one another. Thinking to look at her hand, she saw the wound was gone - and she didn’t feel as if it had healed. It had completely vanished from where it should have been. No, she thought, it was never there. The cat that died was the cat I knew. That cat wouldn’t scratch people. The girl became convinced, without any reason, that she was responsible for temporarily keeping alive the cat that should have died.