It was so good to see my friend again. I don’t know how long it had been since we drove away that morning without him. I also don’t know why humans stick to the fiction that dogs don’t understand the passage of time. Sure, we’re not fixated on the clock, every day broken up into equal parts. We know time by habits. Breakfast time. Walk time. Playtime. Sleep time which comes in several blocks. Maybe the best one of all, dinnertime. Snuggle time. We like to keep to a schedule as much as any of our human counterparts, but ours is dictated by our carnality. Hunger. The need to relieve ourselves. Sleep. Most of my kind, at least the ones utterly domesticated, don’t have the sex urge anymore. I once did. I remember it, so sometimes I behave in a fashion more suited to an intact male, but that’s just hubris.
Anyway, my point is that I was glad to see Dawg and demonstrated my joy with knocking him to the floor and play-biting his feet and neck. I might have picked a better spot than right under the humans’ feet, but I was in the moment—as dogs are—and not sorry even when Adam made me move out of the way. Dawg and I banged down the stairs and out onto the meager lawn, which is quickly interrupted by the gravel parking lot. The people came down after us, and even in my enthusiasm for play, I could hear their voices chattering in that comfortable way that humans have when they reacquaint with one another. I’d seen humans reacquaint more demonstrably, with close physical contact, but these two preferred the verbal greets. Sometimes I am verbal, too, but Adam always discourages my barking.
Sadly, our reunion was brief, only long enough to go mark some territory together, and then Adam had me back in the car and we drove away, once again leaving my friend to stand and watch us go. I kept my chin on the backseat, facing where we’d been, not where we were going. I saw Dawg sit beside the woman, Skye, lean his head against her knee, just like I do to Adam when he needs me to be his guide.
As usual, we arrived at the place I think of as Adam’s work. Frankly, the smell of the place bothered me, and instead of being happy to be Adam’s constant companion, I was grumpy about it. But there was Cody, and I was happy to see her, sniff out what she’d been doing, see if her girl mood was any better. I got a good whiff of female disquiet. Although that’s something I was beginning to realize is just Cody’s natural state of being, she seemed particularly agitated today. That aside, she is a very fine admirer of my attributes and gave me a good huggin’.
Alas, I was duty-bound to follow Adam into that office with the one human in this place I really didn’t care for. It wasn’t anything Mosley ever said or did, and I accepted his unenthusiastic hello with grace; it was more that he was just not my sort. I don’t think he was Adam’s sort, either. There is a vibration that anyone as sensitive as I am can detect when two humans face each other without honesty. I don’t mean lying or cheating or stealing kind of dishonesty. I mean the sort of dishonesty of intention. Adam and Mosley were pretending to like each other. Pretending is a sort of dishonesty. At least it is in my world. One time, Adam and I stood in a group of others and watched two men talking to each other. Their speech became more and more tense, until they started shouting at each other. Suddenly, they actually started poking sticks at each other. But, as hostile as the tone was, and the obvious aggression, there was no sense of true dislike. In fact, I got the very real impression that the two men doing this were quite fond of each other. Weird. Weirder still was that when the battle was over, with one man clearly the victor because he then addressed all these witnesses with a long tongue-language valedictory speech, all of us who had witnessed this open-air aggression clapped their hands together, I wagged my tail, and the man on the ground jumped to his feet, smiling and hugging his combatant. Pretending goes both ways, I guess.
Fortunately, Adam and Mosley only sat for a little while, not even long enough for a decent snooze. Adam scraped his chair back; I leapt to my feet. I shook myself while they shook hands, a tradition among human males that I have finally figured out is similar to our nose-to-nether routine. Hands are important to people, not so much hindquarters. With more false cheer, Mosley walked us to the door, closing it behind us with a thump.
I spotted Cody perched on the flat wall that separates the parking lot from the river. She was sitting with her knees up and her chin resting on them, the picture of deep contemplation. She turned and smiled at us as we approached, and I gave her my best tail-wagging greeting, making like we hadn’t just seen each other. I was truly overjoyed when she got into my seat in the car. Being a gentleman, I had almost offered it to her even before Adam ordered me into the backseat. Cody in the car meant that we were going back to the place where I slept well. Where my pal Lucky was waiting for us.
* * *
Adam casts about for chitchat, keeping the subject of Lucky, aka Dawg, out of bounds. He’s talked with Skye, who’s been honest with him about Cody’s very normal falling off of enthusiasm for the quotidian responsibilities associated with dog ownership. Being the kid’s mother, Skye is pretty sanguine about it. It’s exactly as she expected, so there you go. The good news is that she’s actually pleased with Mingo’s work. Maybe not exactly a win-win, but certainly a nice draw. The next best topic is art. The art lessons.
“Fine. I’m learning that I don’t know anything.”
So much for thinking that this was a safe subject.
Cody adds, “Mosley says that even great artists have to practice.”
“So this kid carrying a violin case meets an old man carrying a cello case. The kids asks him, ‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall?’”
Cody flashes him a derisive look, followed by a sigh of weltschmerz. “Practice. Practice. Practice.”
“You’ve heard that joke before.”
“Everyone has.”
“And they said that vaudeville was dead.”
Cody is intent on her phone, thumbing, scrolling, and sweeping, using fine motor skills he imagines that she does in her sleep. Maybe Adam doesn’t need to engage her in conversation, since she’s already having one.
“Oh.” Cody puts her phone down. Then picks it up and studies it. Puts it down.
The look on her face is stricken, and his paternal urge is to see if there’s anything he can do to relieve her distress. He’s no one to this kid, just a convenient ride home, and Adam knows better than to ask what’s wrong. What bit of news or gossip flashed on the tiny screen of that infernal instrument has caused her to go pale? Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the quiver in her lips, the glint of moisture in her eye. And that’s enough to prompt him. “Cody, is everything okay? Did something happen?”
She nods, then shakes her head. Doesn’t look at him. Turns her face to the passenger window. Adam keeps both hands on the steering wheel, fighting against that ingrained fatherly gesture of patting her on the shoulder. This girl is so fragile, he’s certain that even an avuncular touch would set her off.
Fortunately for both of them, Chance is on the case. He pokes his head over the console and licks Cody on the cheek. She wraps her arm over his neck and buries her face into the skin of his neck. Adam allows himself a sigh and speeds up to make the crest of the hill. They’ll be at the LakeView in moments. Skye will sort this out. Even though Adam tells himself this, his fatherly impulses take over. “You okay?”
Cody pushes Chance away, back into the rear seat. “Yeah. It’s just stupid stuff.”
“Stupid enough to upset you?”
“There’s these kids.” Cody leaves it at that. These kids.
It doesn’t take a child psychologist to figure out whatever it was “these kids” said, it was upsetting to this kid.
“Jerks?”
“Big-time.” A little smile. “Bigger than the word jerk.”
Encouraged, Adam pushes it. “Assholes?”
Cody nods and gives him a crooked smile. “It’s so trite. The jock and the cheerleaders. Scuse me, this season they’re lacrosse players.”
“Cody, this may sound like old-guy talk, but there have been jocks and cheerleaders since high school was invented. And they love nothing better than to make the world think that their you know what doesn’t stink.”
“It’s not like that. Not exactly. They want the world to think that I stink.”
A generation ago, no one would give have given serious worry to a kid being teased. Not so nowadays, and Adam’s paternal antennae go up. “Are they bullying you?”
Cody puts the phone facedown on her lap. “No.”
“Does your mother know?”
Cody throws him a look of utter panic. “I can deal. It’s fine.”
“You don’t have to. If they’re bullying—”
“They’re not. It’s just stupid stuff. It’s fine.” Cody shakes her head. “Please, Mr. March. Don’t say anything. She’ll just get all freaked-out and overreact over nothing. It’s what she does.”
Funny, the woman Adam knows doesn’t seem like the overreacting type, but what does he know? She comes across to him as pretty well grounded and pragmatic. Kids have such harsh opinions of their parents. Adam knows from bitter experience that some parents deserve it, but somehow he can’t imagine that Skye is nearly the ogre her daughter portrays her to be.
“You know, Cody, it seems like you’re always asking me to keep things from your mother.”
The girl nods, shoves her glasses back up on her nose, and gives him a rueful smile. “She’s a helicopter mom. What can I say?”
Those sketches on the wall, all aboveboard, all theoretically done from casual observation as the girl sweeps the floor. All with just the faintest suggestion of sensuality.
* * *
You should just kill yourself. Save the world from ugly.
She should never have accepted Ryan’s friend request. This posting already has sixteen reposts, and they haven’t even gotten home yet. She checks her other social media accounts, and every one of them bears the marks of a campaign to wither her.
Chance plants his feet on the console. His shoulders are too wide to allow much more than his head to squeeze over, but this he does and snuffles at her cheek again. His dewlaps tickle. Mr. March usually orders the dog to back off, but this time he doesn’t, and she’s grateful to have the dog’s blocky head between them. Every little notification on her account that someone has liked or commented on Ryan’s outrageous posting is a slap, and it is getting harder and harder to hold back the tears. Neither can she simply put the phone down. It’s watching her own demise; her inexorable slide into the oblivion of total ostracism.
Liar and a thief.
We don’t like you.
Lesbo. Dyke.
We don’t want you here.
Your stink spoils our class.
Go back to wherever you came from.
Die, bitch.
Commit suicide. Do us all a favor. Don’t be a coward. Do it.
“Block whoever it is.” Mr. March has his eyes on the road, and the dog is between them, but still, somehow he’s figured it out. “You don’t have to put up with that.”
“But if I do that, I won’t know what they’re saying.”
“They’ll stop saying it if they don’t get a rise out of you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“If I had a nickel for every time my kid said that to me…”
Mr. March pulls into the parking lot, and she’s out of the car almost before he stops it. Cody stalks away, then remembers that her backpack is in the backseat, so has to stalk back, yank open the door, and retrieve it.
“Cody Mitchell, where have you been? You know that I needed you here this afternoon.” And there she is, the she-devil herself. “You went to the AC?”
“Yeah, what of it? I did. I don’t want to be your slave here, your minion.” Cody bolts for the cabin, Dawg close on her heels.
“Cody, darling, I need you now. Right here. Now. We still have two rooms to do and guests arriving any minute.” It wouldn’t do to show anger in front of guests, so Skye’s voice is a strange concoction of level tone and hissing, the righteous maternal outrage packaged in a pretty box.
If she slams the door hard enough, she won’t hear her mother’s restrained beckoning. Cody knows that she’s her mother’s daughter when she refrains from slamming the cabin door, but once inside, she takes it out on the bathroom door, slamming it shut behind her, and when it bounces open, slamming it again, over and over, until the dog barks at her to stop this loud and unpleasant game. He needs a walk. Cody comes out of the bathroom. “Let’s go.”
Dawg tap-dances in front of her, blocking her path to the hook where his leash hangs, getting underfoot as she swaps out her cowboy boots for sneakers. Cody feels like she’s running against the clock. Skye will burst in any second now, and if she’s still inside, she’s going to get yelled at for sure. It’s not that she can’t take the dressing-down—that’s easy enough, meaningless enough—but Cody’s nerves are frayed and she’s more afraid that she’ll say something that will start a conversation she has no intention of having with her mother. Or that she’ll start to cry.
More than anything in the world, she wants her mother to hold her, to lie and tell her that this will all go away someday. That she’ll outlast them. But one loving touch and she’ll lose everything.
* * *
Randy dropped to the ground gracelessly. The sound of his head striking the cement was like a ripe fruit splitting open, sickening, but Cody had no time to think about it. She was close enough, so gleefully running to catch up with him, that she could smell the urine he released. The black car was gone. She was alone on the sidewalk. There was a moment’s complete cessation of breath and sight and hearing; she was fixed in Lucite, boxed in by what she had seen, the suddenness of it, the extraordinarily fine line between life and death.
Cody’s backpack thumped against her spine as she ran not the way she had come, but down the first cross street, not blind to her destination, home and the safety of her closet, but with intention. Down this street, get between the school on one side and the factory on the other, dash up the alley between three-decker houses, left and then right, over the hill and down the jogging path that wends its way through the cemetery. Her only thought was to get home, where she should have been, not here on this street to witness what she had.
A black car. It slowed, moved off. Cody didn’t know if it was the same one. Cars all looked so alike. She made the alley, where hopscotch patterns were scribbled on the bumpy surface, a safe place for little girls to play out of the traffic. Her head was down; every oxygen-denied breath burned the back of her throat. The open end of the alley was mere steps away. And then it was blocked, the black car facing her, the passenger door opening.
Giant. Black glasses obscured his eyes. Lantern-jawed, like a cartoon character. Distinctive. He strode toward her. Johnny Mervin. Her dad’s friend. His killer.
The lantern-jawed man swept Cody up by the straps of her backpack, slamming her against the brick wall, his breath stinking of chaw and garlic. “You say one word and you die.”
“I won’t.”
“I know who you are. I know where you live. You speak of this, you die.” He leaned his face even closer. “And your mother dies, too.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“That’s your truth from now on.”
He slammed her against the wall one more time for good measure.
“Hey, we gotta go.” The driver leaned out the window of the black car. Sirens split the air.
Johnny dropped Cody and she landed hard on her backside. He bent from the waist, leaning so that his lips were at her ear. “I’ll find you, wherever you go, for the rest of your life.”
Before she could scramble to her feet, they were gone.
* * *
Cody can’t control the constant fear of a lantern-jawed man in dark glasses waiting for her. She can’t take the chance of breaking down in front of Skye. She can’t risk their lives.
* * *
“Cody? Are you in there?” It’s Skye, and she’s bearing down on the cabin.
They never use the back door, and the door sticks so much that Cody has to wrap both hands around the knob and brace one foot against the jamb to be able to pull hard enough to get it open.
“Cody, I need to talk to you.”
After all the years of being stuck, it finally gives. Cody kicks open the screen door with its spiderwebbed mesh, the dog right behind her.