Cat's Mystery - the beginning of a story of the Aunt Family

[aldersprig]

This is entirely because of the way Stone has been shaping up in my mind
🔎
There were any number of mysteries to Cat’s new school.

Some of them, she’d been expecting: from things she’d heard, and from the last two times she’d changed schools, she knew that every school had its own slang, and that every locale - city, town, village - had its own places that you couldn’t find on a map. The Quarry. The Old Grocery Store. Down by the Tracks. This one, Demville-Latta, was pretty rural, a good thirty-forty minute drive to the nearest so-called city, so in addition to needing a Demville-to-English dictionary, you pretty much needed a car to get to any of these mystery places.

Her parents were not yet convinced of this necessity, which meant that her mystery-detangling was pretty much limited to school and the bus, at least until either her parents gave in or she made some friends with cars.

Among the other mysteries were Track, really? This school’s only good team sport is track? and What the heck is going on with the Cunningham-Bauer-Talbot-Green-etc. family? That family encompassed two teachers, a bus driver, and, at last count, at least ten students, nine of whom rode her bus. They were the closest-knit group of cousins she’d ever seen - and yet sometimes they seemed just like any other family, arguing and sulking and teasing each other.

She’d been warned on day one not to “mess with” that family. That, of course, only intrigued her more.

That would be a nut she would take time to crack. Not too much time, of course, because, after all, she didn’t know how long she’d be here, but enough time that she didn’t come off creepy, stalkerish, or needy.

(By this point, she had how-to-deal-with-new-schools down to an artform. The problem was, new schools didn’t really have how-to-deal-with-new-kids down to anything but a mess.)

The mystery she decided to focus on first was much simpler, although it touched tangentially on that Cunningham-Bauer-Talbot-Green-etc. family mess, in that Miss Cunningham seemed somewhow to be involved.

It was: What is Mrs. Realle doing on lunch break, and why does it seem like Miss Cunningham and Mr. Fentner are involved?

It wasn’t so much that she thought it was anything bad, it was just that she was curious, and she learned far more about a place by sneaking around than she ever did by just going to classes.

So she slipped out of PE and went down to the girls’ room instead of to the cafeteria, which put her in the right place to walk back into that hall with teachers’ offices, the maintenance closet, and an abandoned classroom with 50’s-era science equipment. She slipped into the classroom, hid behind one of the giant lab tables, and waited.

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Comments

[thnidu]

So, what's going on here? And will Cat find out? And will she get away without getting caught?

• last two times she’d changes schools,
-> changed

• closest-knit group of cousins she’s ever seen
-> she'd

• anything but a mess. )
-> mess.)
> Close up space.

• and, at least count, at least ten students, nine of which
-> last count
-> of whom

• Among the other mysteries were track, really?
-> Track
• It was: what is
-> What
> Capitalize

• to the girl’s room
-> girls' room

[aldersprig]

We shall have to find out!

[kelkyag]

<intrigued> An outside perspective on the Aunt Family could be fascinating. Or frustrating -- poor Cat.

And four new family names! :)

[aldersprig]

Cunningham has been used before - Robbie mentions her. I had to go /digging/ :-)

Like in my family, nobody uses anyone’s last names, even though the immediate two-blocks family is Maier Benjamin Vogt Alfieri VanderTang.

[kelkyag]

Heh. I fail to feel guilty that you feel a need to check your references.

The teachers have last names, and Ms. Stone and the doctor from that one snippet with the new baby, and ... that's all I remember off hand.

[aldersprig]

Yeah, last names tie things down to ethnicities to some degree, which is part of why I avoided them.

(See again, Maier, VanderTang, Vogt…)

[kailing]

is this our first time seeing the outside view? i like it :)

[kelkyag]

Outside and unfamiliar, that I can recall at the moment, yes. There've been friends and neighbors and folks marrying in -- Robbie, Johias, Mark, Janelle -- and relatives from other branches that do things differently -- Deborah, Karen, Chauncey -- and the occasional outside rival-to-enemy -- Tansy, Rhoda Burks -- and folks who've left the family -- Pearl, Willard -- but nobody who wasn't aware of it. Lam (the kitten), or Imogene and the other trapped ghosts, might be the closest to an outsider viewpoint before Cat. <gets distracted by the cat thing>

[aldersprig]

Robbie’s the most vocal of the outside views that I can think of.

[kelkyag]

He has the most screen time so far, too. But he grew up in the same town as them, is at least somewhat aware of their internal politics, may have some magic sense of his own, and more or less just got adopted, so he has far more internalized assumptions and a less foreign perspective than Cat does.

[sauergeek]

Four last names for one family? I mean, I know the surnames of all four of my grandparents from before they were married, but it's highly unlikely that my family would be referred to by anything other than the single surname we all share.

Four last names at least suggests a fair bit of criss-crossing intermarriage, which has got to make it tricky to keep track of genetics.

Also: I have "Curiosity killed the cat; satisfaction brought it back" in the back of my mind, based on her name.

[aldersprig]

In one block, my family has Benjamins, VanderTangs, Maiers, Voghts, and Alfieris.

We have a lot of women in our family.

Edit
Which is to say, I didn’t think it was a lot at all. None of my cousins - except the ones I’ve never met - shared a maiden last name with me.

They don’t marry IN the family all that often, preferring to bully people into marrying and staying around :-)

[kelkyag]

They're counting Family matrilineally as well as patrilineally, and Cat is talking about mobs of cousins -- first, second, maybe more. If the daughters who get married take their husband's names, which was probably standard until Eva's generation or so, that's a lot of family name sprawl in a few generations, all still Family. And likewise, the right couple or two having all girls can see a name die out in the Family rapidly.

[clare_dragonfly]

If I look at me, my sister, and all my cousins, we have four last names comfortably among us--my mother's maiden name (three cousins), my father's last name (my sister), my father's sister's husband's last name (one cousin), and my married name (me, obviously). So you could easily [for certain values of easy] refer to us all by sticking those last names together.

I'm the first in my family to get married, so it's reasonably likely that one more last name could get added to the batch at some point, and entirely possible to swap out the current set for an almost entirely new set, if everyone (including the boys) got married and took the spouse's name. True, were we all to have children in school at the same time they wouldn't be first cousins, but my family comfortably uses "cousin" for second and third cousins, as I imagine is going on here.

[sauergeek]

Hrm. I have four female cousins and two by-blood aunts on one side, and five female cousins and one by-blood aunt on the other side. That'd add up to a lot of surnames in a hurry on either side if they'd all stayed in one place. (As it is, I think there are two cousins still living in Michigan, and the rest have scattered.)

And those of you with closer-knit families (I have met some of my great-aunts and great-uncles and second cousins and once-removeds, but I couldn't tell you many of their names...) would see that add up in a hurry. Makes sense, it's just not a naming method I'd seen before.

[clare_dragonfly]

Ooooh, intriguing.

::goes back to prompt post to find out what the heck I prompted:: OK, this is neither of the kinds of Cat I was thinking of when I capitalized Cat XD

[aldersprig]

*grins*

An Oz/Narnia Talking Animal or…?

[clare_dragonfly]

I was thinking Suncat or Radar, actually. (OK, I was originally thinking the cats in the "Cat Who" mysteries, but they don't talk, and talking cats are better.)

[aldersprig]

Oh!

Oh, ha :-)

[eseme]

Eeeeee, Aunt Family! I do think perspective from the outside will be interesting!