Last Chance (10 page)

“Thanks a million, Nick,” he said. “It's the last time, I swear. A buddy of mine told me he'd talk to his boss. He's sure the guy will hire me as soon as I get my license back—” He broke off when he spotted me and nodded at Nick, who turned and glared at me.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Kathy said to tell you that she wants to see you in her office,” I said. “Right now.”

He glanced back at the shelter. He didn't look as calm and cool as he had the day before when I had accused him of stealing. If anything, he looked panicked.
Good,
I thought. He turned back to the guy on the other side of the fence.

“You gotta get out of here,” he said.

The guy on the other side of the fence laughed. “Man, they really got you whipped, Nicky,” he said.

“Now
, Joey,” Nick said.

Joey.

Nick had talked on the phone last week to someone named Joey. He'd told him to relax, that he'd get it. Did he owe money to this Joey? And the thick roll of cash I had seen him pass through the fence—where would a guy like Nick get that much money? It looked like I hadn't been wrong about him after all. It looked like he really had taken some of the money collected by shelter volunteers.

Joey shrugged, a long, lazy who-cares gesture, before turning and bounding across the open field on the other side of the fence. Nick watched him go. When his eyes met mine again, they were hard and distant. He slipped his other arm through his backpack and brushed past me.

I trailed behind him, not eager to catch up, and hung back when he yanked on the door to go inside. I waited a few moments before going inside myself. As I headed for my office, I heard voices.

“You know better than that,” Kathy was saying. She sounded annoyed.

I heard Nick respond: “It's not my fault.”

“That doesn't cut it with me, Nick,” Kathy said.“And it won't cut it with Ed, either. You're lucky that I spotted Joey before he did. He'd have you out of the program today if he knew.” I heard a long sigh followed by a few moments of silence.

“You're not going to tell him, are you?” Nick said. He sounded scared.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn't,” Kathy said.

“Joey's not what you think. He's not a bad guy.”

“He knows he's not on your approved list, doesn't he? And he knows what happens if you break the rules, right?” Kathy said. “But he's such a good guy that he just ignores all of that, even if it gets
you
in trouble. Is that what you're telling me?”

When Nick spoke again, his voice was small, as if he were a little boy instead of a big, tough teenager.

“Please, Kathy,” he said. “Don't tell Mr. Jarvis, okay? Joey just needed some help and I couldn't say no.”
Right,
I thought. Joey needed money, and Nick knew exactly where to find some. “It'll never happen again, I promise.” He was begging her. I couldn't believe it. Tough guy Nick D'Angelo was actually begging. I wished I could have seen it with my own eyes.

I hoped that Kathy would tell him the same thing I would have if I were in her shoes: Sorry, Nick, but rules are rules. Why should Nick keep getting so many chances to break them?

I heard another long sigh.

“You've mostly been doing well here,” Kathy said.

“I have?” There was a note of hope in Nick's voice.

“Although you could have been nicer to Mr. Schuster.”

“He doesn't like me.” Good-bye hope, hello resentment. “He doesn't even know me. He doesn't know any of us, but he doesn't like us.”

“Have you given him any reason to? Any of you?”

Silence.

“You slammed into him, Nick. I know, I know. It was an accident. But he took a bad fall. He's seventy-one years old. And getting you to apologize was like pulling teeth. What would you think if you were in his shoes?”

A few seconds ticked before Nick said, “So, how is he, anyway?”

“He's going to be okay. It wasn't a stroke or a heart attack or anything like that. Just overexertion. He has to rest for a few days, and then he'll be back.”

“Are you going to tell Mr. Jarvis about Joey?”

“If you promise me that I won't see Joey around here ever again, I'll let it go this time. But this is your absolute last chance, Nick. I mean it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

There was a long silence. Then Kathy said, “You know the money from the fund-raiser that you and Antoine and Trevor carried in yesterday?” I caught my breath. She was going to do it. She was going to confront him. “After I sent you guys back to group, did you go in that office again, Nick? Did you touch the money?”

“No,” Nick said, without hesitating even a split second. He didn't sound indignant or wounded or even angry. Mostly he just sounded quiet and, if I hadn't known him better, sincere. I wondered if he'd been prepared for the question.

“Okay, then,” Kathy said after a moment. She sounded relieved by his answer, and again, I got the feeling that she didn't want to hear anything negative about him. I wondered why. “You'd better get back before Ed sends out a search party.”

I scurried into my office, dropped down in front of my computer, and started pounding away at the keyboard. A moment later, I heard footsteps. They stopped right outside my door. I looked up and saw Nick standing there, watching me. He kept staring at me after my eyes met his. His face was expressionless. He didn't say a word. Then he shook his head and walked away.

I
could have taken the subway and the bus to and from the animal shelter. It would have been a lot slower than going by car—the bus didn't travel on the highway—but I wouldn't have minded that much. It wasn't as though I had anything better to do, except sleep in. But my mother insisted on driving me and picking me up on the days that she could swing it, probably because she worked long hours and felt bad that we didn't have a lot of time together. On the days that she couldn't manage it, she'd say, “Call your father. He'll drive you.” The next day was one of those days.

“I can take you this morning, but I have a meeting this afternoon,” my mother said when I came down for breakfast. “I won't be home until seven. Call your father and ask him to pick you up.”

My father asked why my mother wasn't picking me up. I told him. My mother frowned as she listened to me. I was ignoring her prime directive. I was telling my father something about her. My father said okay, he'd be there, no problem.

I was sitting in my broom closet of an office a little later, giving Kathy an update on my progress, when I happened to glance up. By now I knew that the RAD program ran four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. This was Wednesday, so I was surprised to see a familiar figure stroll past my door. So surprised that I said, “What's he doing here?”

“Who?” Kathy said. She looked over her shoulder at the door, but by then he was gone.

“Nick D'Angelo,” I said.

“Oh,” Kathy said. “He volunteers here on Wednesdays.” Volunteering? Nick? I guess I looked surprised because Kathy said, “Nick was a volunteer here long before he enrolled in the RAD program. He's been volunteering with us for, let's see, almost a year and a half now, I think. Despite everything else that's going on in his life, he's stuck with it. He's been here every Wednesday all summer. He's a good kid.”

“But he's—” I stopped myself. I had been going to say that he was in the RAD program because he'd been in serious trouble. But I realized that I didn't actually know what he had done to end up in the program.

“He's what?” Kathy said.

I shook my head and looked back at the files we had been reviewing, but I still felt Kathy's eyes on me. “You shouldn't judge people too quickly, Robyn” she said. “Especially young people. Just because someone does a couple of stupid things, that doesn't mean his life's course is set and can't be changed.”

I wasn't sure what she was referring to. Did she mean whatever Nick had done to end up in the RAD program? Or did she mean something else?

“Nick told me what happened when you two were at school together,” Kathy said.

“He did?” I would have thought that was something he'd want to keep to himself.

She nodded. “A couple of days after you started here. I've gotten to know Nick fairly well. I know he's not perfect—who is? But he tries. I think he wanted to be the one to tell me.” She looked me in the eye. “He also told me he didn't touch any of the money we collected at the mall,” she said. “And I believe him. Okay?”

Everything I'd sensed had been right. Kathy liked Nick. She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Okay,” I said. Then, mostly to change the subject, I said, “When you first told me about RAD, you said that the kids in the program were each paired with a dog and that it was up to them to train the dogs and to teach them the right kind of behavior so that they'd have a chance of being adopted,” I said. “You said if the kids in the RAD program didn't succeed, if the dogs didn't learn how to behave properly, then the dogs might, well . . . You said you might have to put the dogs down.” Kathy waited for me to get to the point. “But the first week I was here, I saw Mr. Schuster working with Nick's dog.”

Kathy eyed me speculatively and then shook her head. “Mr. Schuster has his own ideas about how things should work,” she said. “He's interested in adopting Orion. So if I don't pay close attention, he'll give Orion extra training to hurry along his progress. I've asked him not to, but . . . ” She shrugged. “He's promised not to do it again.”

 

. . .

At noon, I took my sandwich, my drink, and a book outside, as usual. I was settling in at the picnic table when I saw Nick come out of the Adoption Center with a man, a woman, and a small girl. Nick's hands gestured toward the animal wing, the dog-training area, and the clinic. It looked like he was giving them a tour of the place. Maybe he was going to show them the animals that were up for adoption. I turned my attention back to my book.

I had finished two chapters and was on my way back inside when I heard a shriek. I spun around. The same little girl I had seen earlier was standing on the grass behind me, shaking her head frantically as she clung to her mother's hand. And no wonder. Right in front of the very small girl was a very big dog—Orion. The little girl was obviously unfamiliar with the principles of dog-bite avoidance. She was staring, wide-eyed and terrified, right at Orion. Fortunately, Nick had a firm grip on Orion's leash.

Nick dropped to his knees in front of the girl and slipped an arm around Orion's neck.

“You don't have to be afraid of this guy, Laura,” he said.

Laura kept shaking her head. No way was she going to buy that. She may have been young, but she clearly had good instincts.

“I'm going to show you something,” Nick said. He stood up. “Watch this.”

Curious, I watched too.

“Sit,” Nick said. Orion plunked his rear end down on the ground. “Good sit,” Nick said. He slipped a treat into the big dog's mouth. “Lie down,” Nick said. Orion dropped the front of his body down onto the grass. “Up,” Nick said.

The little girl, who had been watching closely when Orion sat and then lay down, pressed herself against her mother when Orion got to his feet again. Nick smiled at her before making Orion sit once more.

“Shake a paw,” he said.

Orion extended one of his paws. Nick turned to the little girl and asked her if she wanted to shake it. At first she said no. Her mother shook Orion's paw instead. When nothing bad happened to her, the little girl tried. After Orion had dropped his paw, she pressed up against her mother again. Nick explained to her that dogs are different from people. He said that people recognize other people by what they look like—the shape of their face, the color of their eyes, the size of their nose—but that dogs remember things by smell.

“That's why they're always sniffing each other,” he said, “and why they've always got their noses to the ground. They can smell if other dogs have been around. They can even tell which dogs.” He extended a hand to Orion's nose. “That's how they remember people too. By smell. You want to meet Orion, Laura?”

Laura looked up at her mother and then over at Nick. She hesitated but finally nodded.

“Give me your hand,” Nick said. Again, Laura looked up at her mother, and then over at Nick. He gently took her hand in his. Slowly he brought both hands closer to Orion. Laura looked from Nick to Orion and back again. Nick smiled at her. “He'll smell you and then next time you see him, he'll know you,” he said.

Nick guided her hand again, and Laura patted Orion on the head.

“See his tail wagging?” he said. “He likes you.”

A smile lit the little girl's face, like sunshine breaking through a cloudy sky. She looked up at her mother, beaming.