Gladys

They stopped at every corner, cupping their hands and calling.

“True! Don’t be scared, girl!” Gladys.

“Pookie! Get your butt over here.” Jude.

“I’m hot. I’m thirsty. I’m hot. I’m thirsty.” Spider.

Gladys had left her bike at Jude’s house and needed to take three steps for every one of his. When they got to the old elementary school, now a drug clinic, he grabbed Spider’s hand and pulled him past. Some scruffy guys leaned against the parking lot fence. A woman slept on a bench, a bulging garbage bag at her feet. Whenever Gladys went by here, she fixed her eyes straight ahead. But Jude sped up as if the people were dangerous.

“Slow down!” she begged, struggling to keep up.

“I can’t stand looking at those losers.” Anger rose off him like steam.

“Kicking addiction is very difficult. Only an extremely small percentage of users manage to do it.”

“It’s their fault, getting addicted in the first place.”

Mama said people who went to the clinic were at least trying. They deserved respect, and the ones who didn’t quit, who couldn’t, deserved compassion. Gladys’s birth mother, she meant. Mama had talked Gladys through this again and again. Gladys could have given Jude a whole lecture on the subject of addiction, but for one thing, keeping pace with him was using most of her available oxygen and for another, why push her luck? He was already in a foul enough mood.

“It’s not useful to blame people,” she said. Also a Mama quote, but shorter.

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t help. It doesn’t change whatever went wrong or whatever bad choice they made. The only way to do that is learn from their mistake.”

His expression turned pensive.

The late-afternoon sun beat down and the sidewalk sizzled. Spider climbed a fire escape before they could stop him, pounded his chest, and climbed back down. The few people they passed regarded them with varying degrees of pity and disdain. No, they hadn’t seen a shaggy multicolored dog. No, they hadn’t heard barking that sounded like somebody shaking a bucket full of nails. Gladys’s hope began to ebb. Maybe the petrified woman had given True away. But what if True had run away? Skittish as she was, she might not stop till she was so lost she’d never find her way back. She could have gotten hit by a car and be lying on the side of some road. She could be dead.

Gladys stopped walking. Jude was almost to the train tracks, but he turned around, scowling.

“What?” he called back.

She couldn’t let him know she was losing hope. He’d say I told you so and head straight home. Then what would she do?

“My shoe.” She pretended to tie it, then scurried to catch up.

The afternoon shadows were growing longer and she wondered, where would True go once it got dark? Would she find a safe place? When you were as small as Gladys was, the world always seemed too big, but now, right now, it seemed bigger than ever before. There was too much world. It could swallow down a lost, scared creature without a trace.

True, remember when you told me you were looking for someone? Well, now I’m looking for you!

Gladys’s shoulders ached. Her feet grew leaden and her throat parched. Jude was already at the tracks, impatiently waiting for her. Gladys had never crossed the tracks, except inside a car. She wasn’t allowed. Not that she’d ever wanted to go there. Now she forced a smile, trying to appear nonchalant instead of worried sick.