EIGHTEEN | LUCAN

MY PHONE MUST HAVE been off when my parents tried to call. I don’t know. I remember it ringing at one point. Next thing I knew I was wrapped up in witnessing Des hopped up on rage and then disappearing into the woodwork like I’d imagined the whole thing, so forgive me for spacing on Dad and the completely unimportant barbecue, you know? Excuse me for lurching past Mom as she hissed at me and for telling Julian that whatever choice words my father had had for him were probably an understatement. I couldn’t claim responsibility for Dad’s behavior while he’d waited in the condo with my mother and her young stud. I couldn’t be held accountable for Mom’s sexaholic tendencies or for the three of them stressing the small white dog that shouldn’t have been my responsibility either.

Ivy couldn’t show soon enough. The dog needed out. I needed out.

Mom tapped at my bedroom door as I hung up the phone. She didn’t wait for me to answer. She barged into the middle of the room, the pointy toe of her red shoe connecting with the USB drive I’d left on the floor. “Do you mind?” I said, pointing at a still agitated Nanook at my feet. “I’m trying to calm her down. You two are freaking her out with all your screeching.”

“We weren’t screeching,” Mom insisted loudly. “If your father comes back here to pick you up tonight he’s not setting foot inside the building, you understand, Lucan? I’m not suffering through one of those ridiculous chest-beating displays again.”

“Tell that to him, not me.” The attitude in my voice set Nanook barking again, and I bent my head down to her and said, “Shhhhhh, you’re okay, girl.” I patted her on the back in what I hoped was a reassuring rhythm.

“I don’t understand why you weren’t here when he came to get you,” Mom added, her eyebrows sharp.

I said nothing and concentrated on petting Nanook.

“I don’t want him here,” Mom snapped. “From now on, if Alessio has to speak to me he can do it over the phone.”

“I get it, okay?” I shot her an irritated look. “You know he never comes in anyway. You must’ve asked him up in the first place.” Which might have been okay, if the goon hadn’t been around too. What had she done? Called Julian over for bathtub playtime the second she’d thought I was gone for a few hours?

Mom got the picture and left, closing my bedroom door firmly behind her. I didn’t know what to do next, and then I shuffled past Nanook, opened my laptop, and started typing the longest email I’d ever written to Michael. I told him about Dad probably calling Mom a whore while I was gone and lobbing who knows what kind of insults at Julian. I told him about sleeping with my iPod in case master bedroom activities got rowdy and how Des was so fucked up that I wasn’t sure I could hang out with him anymore. Then I came to the part about Nanook and Ivy and hit delete. I deleted the whole damn email because I couldn’t tell the difference between what I needed to say and what was surplus and might come back to haunt me.

Fubar.

Everything around me was fubar.

The land line rang, but someone snapped it up before I could get there. Knuckles rapped on my door. Male knuckles; it wasn’t Mom’s knock. “Yo, Lucan, there’s a girl on her way up to see you. Your mom buzzed her in.” Julian smirked through the door; I could hear it in his thick, cheesy voice. “Maybe you’d better keep your bedroom door open when she gets here, buddy. We don’t need your dad barging back in here, complaining about me being a bad influence again.”

I gritted my teeth and swung the door open, my head bent so I wouldn’t have to look Julian in the eye. I called for Nanook as I walked past him, and she scurried along next to me. Funny how silent she was again, like everything had returned to a state of cool as I stood by the front door waiting for Ivy. She didn’t even bark when the doorbell rang.

“Hey,” I said, face to face with Ivy. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”

“No, thank you.” She touched my arm. “I should never have …” She looked past me, and I spun around to glare at Julian grinning behind me.

“Julian,” he announced, reaching out to shake her hand. “And you are?”

Ivy hesitated for a second. “I’m Ivy. I just came to pick up the dog.”

My shoulders were stiff. My cheekbones ached from trying to control my face. “You don’t have to talk to him,” I said, turning back to face her. “He doesn’t live here.”

Julian thumped me on the back, not hard enough to hurt me but hard enough to make him impossible to ignore. “Relax,” he drawled. “I’m just saying hello to your friend.” He curved his hand around my shoulder and squeezed the way a father would, only Julian wasn’t my dad, he was mocking me, pissed about what I’d said to him earlier and aiming to make up for it.

“Don’t touch me,” I told him. My face felt like that same chicken wire skull I’d seen on Des earlier. I shoved my hands into Julian’s chest, and he stumbled backwards.

“You little bastard,” he cried in surprise. He took a slow step in my direction. Nanook snarled at him like she had rabies. He froze in his tracks, but she stood her ground, barking with a ferociousness that made it clear she didn’t care who had the size advantage.

Gratitude swelled up under everything else I was feeling. This dog I’d only known for two days liked me enough to defend me against a feral mountain gorilla. I swept Nanook up into my arms and looked at Ivy. “Let’s go.”

We were quiet in the elevator, all of us. I followed Ivy out to her car, and we stood beside it until she said, “What just happened back there? Are you okay?”

“Can you open the door so I can put her in the back?” I muttered. Ivy hit the remote, and I set Nanook down in the backseat. She started barking when I closed the door and wouldn’t stop.

Ivy opened the door and left it ajar for her. “It’s all right, Nanook,” she soothed. “You’re going home. It’s all right. Good girl.” Ivy switched her attention to me, her pupils tiny in the bright summer sun. “Are you okay?” she repeated.

I nodded a little, but I wasn’t ready to elaborate.

“So that was your mom’s boyfriend,” she continued, one hand in her pocket and the other diving into her long hair. “Nanook doesn’t seem overly fond of him.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.” I shrugged wearily. “She was cool with Des when we were over at his place last night.” Until we’d started to argue, that is. Nanook wasn’t down with conflict. If she’d been at McKenna’s earlier she probably would’ve taken a chunk out of him. I’d nearly done that myself, and I really, really didn’t want to talk about any of it. “So you’re going to hand her over,” I continued, motioning to Nanook in the backseat. “Just like that? Hey, Jeremy, I stole your dog, but it’s all good now?”

Ivy threw her hands halfway up into the air before losing momentum. “I don’t even know.” She stared blankly into the backseat. “I’m sorry I got you involved. I’ll figure it out, I guess.” She tucked her right hand partway into her pocket again. “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“Yeah, thanks.” I didn’t know where, but I walked around to the passenger side and climbed into the Volkswagen.

Ivy slid on her sunglasses and started the car. She was that Hamptons girl again, somebody who should’ve been hanging out on a yacht in a blue blazer and crisp white shirt. “Where to?” she asked.

My eyes were on her iPod, which was sitting in the storage compartment directly behind the gearshift. I wanted to pick the thing up and skim through it, just for something to do that wouldn’t involve answering tricky questions like where did I want to go?

“You can put something on,” she told me, pressing the iPod into my hands. “I don’t know if we have any overlap in musical taste. I mostly like old stuff.”

“I like a lot of old stuff too.” I started flicking through her tunes. As we pulled out of the parking lot I opted for a Ramones album. A frenzied drumbeat skidded out of the speakers. “You know, I can help you bring the dog back,” I added after a few seconds. “I don’t know what I’m doing now anyway, so …”

“I could take you over to your dad’s,” Ivy offered, her mirrored glasses beaming me a distorted image of myself. “You’ve helped me enough. I can’t ask you to take the dog back.”

“Look, I’ll just run up to the door with her, put her down on the ground, and ring the bell. No biggie.”

“You’ll get caught,” Ivy said, but my distorted self didn’t seem worried.

So this is what we did: Ivy pointed out Jeremy’s house from down the street. I got out of the car with Nanook in my arms and trekked towards the house. I set her down two lots away, and she sped towards the Waites’ place, just like I’d counted on. I followed her up the path, stood on their doorstep, and pressed the buzzer.

Nanook’s tail was going like crazy, as though she understood what it all meant. Then a woman in her forties opened the door and gasped. “Hannah!” she yelled. “Hannah! Nanook is here. She’s back!”

“So she’s yours?” I asked casually. “I was just walking by and saw the dog hanging around out here. I thought maybe she got locked out or something.”

“Oh!” The woman was full of exclamations. She grasped my hand and pumped it energetically. “Thank you for letting us know. She’s been missing for two days. I know it doesn’t sound like a long time, but the kids were so worried.” A preteen girl careened towards Nanook from inside the house, grabbing her around the middle.

“You are so bad,” the girl scolded, her face already melting. “Where have you been?”

Nanook’s tail wagged in response. There was a much more complicated answer to that, one I was happy Nanook could never share. “I’m glad it worked out,” I told them. “See you.” I walked away before they could ask my name or mention a reward.

I strolled to the opposite end of the street and rounded the corner where Ivy and the Ramones were waiting for me. “Thanks, Lucan,” she said as I got in. “I don’t know how I would’ve done that without you.”

“Confess?” I guessed.

Ivy shook her head and shifted into drive. “Not that. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but … no. He deserved it. The dog and everyone else didn’t, but he really did, you know?” She touched the rim of her glasses. “It’s better if you don’t know, actually. I’m starting to think that any emotion that intense has to be wrong by definition.”

I rubbed my eyes as I glanced out the window. “I think you might be right about that.”

“Hey.” Ivy moved her head in time to the music. “You still didn’t tell me where you want to go.”

My phone rang in my pocket. I didn’t even realize I had it on me. I flipped the top open and glanced at the screen: Home. No one I needed to speak to, then.

I slouched in my seat, scratched at my ear, and finally shrugged at her. “I wish I knew.”