Gladys
Jude needs my help. Will be home by supper if not sooner. Yes I have my phone and will wear my helmet.
Your loving daughter, Gladys
She’d gotten up extra early and left the note on the kitchen table, then slipped out the back door. She hoped Mama would understand, possibly even approve of, helping Jude.
Even if it wasn’t exactly, precisely, exclusively Jude she needed to help.
Outside the wind laughed at her puny bike. Ha ha! it sneered, trying to knock her over. The dumb flag on the back flapped as if it was having a panic attack. The rain was cold, an end-of-summer rain she hadn’t dressed for. She accidentally sped through a big puddle, soaking her espadrilles and spattering her capris.
When she got to the tracks she stopped, even though there wasn’t a train in sight.
Every kid in town had gotten the lecture about the other side of the tracks. Parents read the riot act on the numerous dangers of playing there: broken glass, rusty nails, moldy walls, rats and bats and unsavory people. One of whom was found frozen solid in a basement last winter.
Blood beating up in her ears, she pushed off and pedaled across the tracks.
It was hard to see with the rain, but Jude’s directions were good. She passed a few houses with lights on, like lonely outposts on the frontier. The street he described had an abandoned red house on the corner, then an empty field, and then another house, this one with a pointy roof and a half-dead tree out front. She’d told Sophie that houses couldn’t see or hear, but now she wondered if they could have souls. Forsaken, that was the word for this place. If she didn’t know True was here, she’d turn around, speed home, and dive back into bed.
She walked her bike partway up the driveway, then stopped. The wind bent the tall grass and made the tree branches creak. Water trickled under the collar of her shirt and her toes curled inside her wet shoes. There were probably bats in that house, furry, possibly rabid bats hanging upside down from the rafters. Gladys had an irrational fear of bats. Irrational fears were more powerful than rational ones. Though she had plenty of rational fears right now, too.
She needed to focus.
She tiptoed up the back steps and inside. In the dismal kitchen, someone named ted had crayoned his name on the wall, giving the E extra lines, just like Sophie did. A beat-up broom leaned in one corner. Beneath a table were two familiar pans, both overturned.
“True?” she squeaked. “Are you here?”
Rain on the roof was the only sound.
Gladys stepped into the hallway, directly into a pile of poop. “Yuck!”
As she tried to scrape it off her shoe, the stink blended with the other noxious smells of mildew and rot. The window at the end of the hallway was so dirty, and the rain was coming down so hard, almost no light got through. Behind her, something batted the air. She spun around in time to glimpse a vanishing shadow.
Batted. No. Please no.
What was that faint scrabbling noise? Bats didn’t scrabble, did they? Rats, though. Rats scrabbled. Also people high on drugs.
The floorboards groaned, making her jump before she realized it was her own feet that had done it. She pressed herself against the wall, wishing Jude was here. He was so big. Although Gladys tried never to use being small as an excuse for anything, there were times—times such as right this minute—when she urgently wished she was much bigger and stronger.
Someone whimpered. Possibly her.
Halfway down the hall, a door stood partly open. Trying not to breathe, Gladys nudged it with her foot. Another nudge, and then she peeked around it.
It was a bathroom, with an old-fashioned bathtub, the kind with feet that looked like claws. Wedged underneath...
“You’re here!” Gladys crouched beside her. “I was so worried.”
True’s ears went flat. She looked confused and then, as if she was sorry but she couldn’t help herself, she bared her teeth, just the way she had behind Freddy’s. Gladys scooched back, wrapping her arms around herself.
“All right. I know it’s been a long scary night. I mean, a long scary forever. I’m so sorry. I got here as soon as I could. Are you hungry?”
Stepping carefully over the poop pile, she retrieved a pan from the kitchen, poured in the kibble—how could the bag already be half empty?—stepped back over the poop, and carried the pan to the bathroom, where she set it on the floor beside the tub. She was careful to keep her hands to herself, which was doubly hard since, huddled in her bathtub cave, True looked more huggable than ever.
“Breakfast!” Gladys said softly. “Come and get it!”
True eyed the food hungrily but didn’t move.
“Don’t be stubborn! I know you like it. You already ate half the bag!”
But when she inched closer, the dog growled and Gladys shrank back, a tiny bit frightened but mostly disappointed. And hurt. She’d hardly slept all night, worrying, and she’d expected True to be as overjoyed to see her as she was to see True.
Clearly she didn’t know everything.
As certain people had pointed out to her.
Gladys slid down onto the floor. She’d brought soap, a towel, and an old comb she’d found in a bathroom drawer. She’d planned to clean True up, but that wasn’t going to happen. Her phone pinged with a text from Mama.
What are you and Jude up to?
Who’d have guessed this decrepit place had cell reception? A second later, another text.
And where?
Where was she? Someplace she’d never been. Someplace where, not very long ago, she’d have been astonished to find herself. Someplace she definitely could not reveal to her mother, who’d jump in the car and speed directly here.
Just hanging out. She hesitated, hating to lie to Mama. At the house, she added, and hit send. Guilt washing over her, she quickly texted Jude.
Found her!
The bathroom’s only window was set high in the wall and its glass was murky green. Hunched on the floor, cold and wet, Gladys tried not to notice the spiderwebs in every corner, or the stink of unidentified, rotting objects, not to mention the stink of her own poopy espadrille. She tried not to think about a bat getting tangled in her hair, and she tried not to notice the skittering, scratching sounds in the walls, and she especially tried not to imagine a dead body in the basement. She gave Jude another minute, then texted again.
We need more dog food!!
Still no answer. She tried not to think how she’d lied to Mama, how she’d need to keep on lying. She tried not to think about all the possible reasons Jude wasn’t answering her.
When it came to not thinking, Gladys really was an abject failure.
Hello? she texted. U there?
True’s head poked out from under the tub. Pyramid ears, the left one with a notch, shaggy eyebrows, summer-sky eyes. As she angled herself toward the door, her sweet face settled into that familiar, patient, hopeful expression. She rested her head on her paws, waiting.
Who? Who was she waiting for? The bad boyfriend, that guy with the motorcycle? Mrs. Marsh said he used to play with True in the yard. Maybe he’d loved True. But if he really had, wouldn’t he have taken her with him when he left? It’d be difficult, on a motorcycle, but if he loved her enough, he could’ve figured it out. Instead he’d roared off and left her in his dust. With a woman who despised her. True didn’t understand. She’d given him her heart, as trusting as a baby, and now she just kept waiting.
“He gave you up,” Gladys said. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look like he’s coming back.”
The rain was gentler now. It tapped softly on the window, and Gladys could hear True’s quiet breathing. In out, in out, her eyes on the empty doorway.
“It’s okay to let your sad out. Go ahead. It’s a mistake to bottle up your true feelings, the way Jude does.”
When Gladys said his name, True’s left ear twitched. She swiveled her head to fix Gladys with a hopeful, expectant look.
“Jude,” Gladys said again, testing. This time both ears pricked upright. “Jude?” Her tail swept the floor.
Gladys swallowed.
“He’s not here,” she said. “But I am! And I always will be. You can depend on me. Looking for you was all my idea, you know. I had to practically force him. Not that you can actually force Jude to do anything.”
A soft, inquisitive whine. Jude?
“I don’t know where he is. Anyway, my name is Gladys. Gladys.”
With an apologetic sigh, True turned back toward the door.
Gladys leaned against the wall.
It wasn’t the motorcycle guy True was waiting for. Maybe it used to be, but not anymore.
It wasn’t Gladys either.
“True,” she called softly. “True?”
Reluctantly, the dog turned to look at her. Wordless communication flew between them.
It’s him, isn’t it? Gladys.
He’ll come, won’t he? True.
The little cave opened inside her. Dark and cold, it was a place with no words. A place before words, where fierce feelings prowled around, thudding into each other, scaring and confusing her. Gazing into True’s troubled eyes, Gladys knew the dog had an emptiness inside, too, a wordless place aching to be filled with light and warmth.
What good were words and definitions after all? Gladys had them now, thousands upon thousands of them, but here she was, helpless to name what was inside her. All she could do was reach out, slowly and gently, to touch the top of True’s head the way Jude did. Like Jude, she ran her hand slowly and deliberately along the matted, dirty fur, trying to calm whatever was going on inside that bony rib cage, trying to speak with her heart.
Gladys picked up her phone, hesitated a long moment, then texted him again.
True needs u I can tell
This time, he answered right away.
How?
How what?
Can u tell?
She waited, but there was no answer.