Last Chance (16 page)

“Not very well,” I said. Which was true. A few days ago, I thought I had Nick figured out, but now that he was living up—or was it down?—to my original expectations, I wasn't sure.

“L
et me get this straight,” Morgan said when she called me that night. “Your mother is defending the guy who stole the money from our pet pageant in junior high?”

“She's representing him,” I said. “But it's not for stealing money. It's for joyriding and leaving the scene of an accident.”

“Boy, you must be really mad,” Morgan said.

Huh?

“Why would I be mad?”

“Come on,” Morgan said. “It drove you crazy when he took that money and spent it on something stupid. What did he do with it again?”

“Treated a bunch of kids to a night at the arcade,” I said. Morgan was right. It had really bothered me. We had worked for weeks to organize the pet pageant to benefit a good cause, and Nick had blown the money in one night and had ended up with nothing to show for it. “But that has nothing to do with this.”

“Of course it does,” Morgan said. “You have a history with him. You caught him stealing—twice. Now he's in trouble again—big trouble. And whom does he get for a lawyer? Your mother. Perfectionist Patti, the lawyer with the double A-type personality. She'll get him off for sure. And you're going to tell me that won't bother you?”

“First of all,” I said, “if my mother ever hears you refer to her that way, she'll bar you from the house. Permanently. Second, I already told you, she's not
defending
him. He admitted he did it. He's pleading guilty. She's just representing him on sentencing.”

“Oh,” Morgan said, sounding a little deflated. “So now when Nick D'Angelo messes up, he fesses up, is that it?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. That had been bothering me ever since my mother had told me.

“What?” Morgan said.

“What do you mean, what?”

“Something's bugging you. I can hear it in your voice. Come on. Tell me. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” I said. But that wasn't true. “It's just that, well, people at the animal shelter like him. Apparently he's doing really well there. He's a sort of role model for the other kids in the RAD program. He looks out for some of them too. He knows a lot about dogs. He even volunteers at the shelter one day a week when he's not there for RAD. And there's this dog—Nick has been working with him. I heard him ask if he could adopt him.”

“Yeah?” Morgan said. “So?”

“So . . . ” I wished I knew, but I didn't. “So nothing, I guess.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Morgan said, “You like him, don't you?”

“No!”

“Uh-huh.” She didn't believe me. “Either you have a dark side that I don't know about, or he's incredibly hot. And since I've known you practically your whole life, I'm going with hot. Am I right?”

“Well . . . ”

“I knew it,” Morgan said, sounding insufferably smug. “What does he look like?”

I told her. She sighed.

“What a waste,” she said. “Majorly cute and behind bars.”

“Yeah, but . . . ”

“But what?” Morgan said.

But . . . I felt the same way my mother did. I could not understand why someone who was so close to being able to get out of his group home, and who cared about Orion so much, would throw it all away by doing something as phenomenally stupid as taking a car and going joyriding. He didn't even have a driver's license. What kind of sense did that make?

When I explained it to Morgan, all she said was “I bet if you ask your dad, he'll tell you that most people who get into trouble with the law aren't criminal masterminds. I bet he'll tell you the opposite is true—they're people who
don't
think before they act. Come on, Robyn. You said he's in that program at the animal shelter because he was charged with a violent offense. He has a history of not thinking. What's not to understand?”

She was probably right.

Except that she hadn't seen what I had seen. She hadn't heard Nick's voice as he pleaded with Kathy to let him adopt Orion or, at least, to let his aunt adopt the dog. She hadn't seen Nick sneak gourmet dog biscuits to Orion or heard Nick beg me not to tell on Antoine. I had.

On the other hand, nor had she seen Nick dart out of the school office four years ago with the money Morgan and Billy and I had worked so hard to raise. She hadn't seen him offer a resentful apology to Mr. Schuster only because he'd been forced to. She hadn't heard the sneer in his voice when he told me I had nothing on him after someone touched the fund-raising money.

“Take my advice,” Morgan said. “Forget about him. Hey, one more week and I'll be home again. We can go back-to-school shopping.”

 

. . .

When my mother dropped me off at the animal shelter the next morning, she pressed some money into my hand.

“What's that for?” I said.

“Bus fare,” she said. “I won't be able to pick you up today, either. Your father's tied up today too. I could ask Ted—”

“The bus is fine, Mom. It's not a problem, really.”

That afternoon, Kathy and I sat opposite each other at her desk with a couple of boxes of thank-you cards and envelopes between us. Volunteers had spent all the previous day addressing the envelopes by hand. Now Kathy was going to personally sign each card, and I was going to put the cards into envelopes and seal them.

“The personal touch,” Kathy said. “It's supposed to make people feel good about giving to us, and that's supposed to translate into bigger donations. Heaven knows we could use the money.”

“I never realized how much fund-raising went on in an animal shelter,” I said.

She sighed. “It used to be relatively easy to get government funding,” she said.“But that's not true anymore. I've been sending grant proposals to all the private foundations I can think of.” I remembered the proposal that I had couriered out for her on Friday. “We have more animals here than we're designed to hold. We're managing to get most of them adopted, but it takes time. And the more animals we have here, the more we have to spend on food for them and on keeping them clean and healthy. That's why we're doing this.” She nodded at the stack of cards that she was signing. “The only way we can keep all these animals alive is if we have enough money to look after them while we try to find them new homes. I told the staff yesterday. Now I'm telling the volunteers.”

I looked apprehensively at her. Telling us what?

“We don't like to put animals down,” she said. “We have to do it sometimes when an animal poses a genuine threat to people or other animals. But we only have so much space, so sometimes we also have to consider it when an animal is unlikely to be adopted because of its age or temperament or when our shelter and other shelters are overcrowded and there is no chance of early relief.” She sighed again. “I found out on Friday that the government turned down our request for more funding. Over the weekend, our board of directors had to make a decision. For the time being, they've decided to impose a strict limit on how long an animal can stay here before we have to either get it adopted or find another home for it. After that . . . ” She shook her head.

Someone knocked on the door. Before I could turn around, Kathy said, “What is it, Antoine?”

Antoine gave me a hard look before saying to Kathy, “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Kathy said.

“Alone?”

“I'm racing the clock here, Antoine,” Kathy said. “I need to get all of these cards signed, sealed, and into the mail today. You can ask your question right now while Robyn and I get this done, or you can wait until Thursday. Your choice.”

I stuffed a card into an envelope and sealed it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Antoine struggling to decide.

Finally, he said, “I was wondering if you're going to assign Orion to someone else, you know, in case Nick doesn't come back.”

Kathy scrawled her signature on a card, pushed it across the table to me, and drew another one from the box in front of her. She didn't even look up as she said, “Nick is responsible for Orion, and Nick isn't here.”

“Maybe I could look after him,” Antoine said. “You know, for Nick.”

Kathy was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “You've got your hands full,” she said. “So do the others.”

“Yeah, but Orion—”

“You know the rules, Antoine. These are last-chance dogs. When you and Nick and the others joined the program, you agreed to be paired with an animal and to take full responsibility for that animal. It's up to you guys to show up, to put your best effort into the program, and to do whatever you can to help these dogs become adoptable.”

“I heard Stella say that Orion is making real progress,” Antoine said.

“He is,” Kathy said. “But this is a demonstration program. We explained to you what that meant. It's been designed to run a certain length of time in a certain way to meet certain objectives. When it's finished, it's going to be evaluated. If it gets a good evaluation, we might be able to get more funding and to persuade other shelters to set up programs like it. Nick knows that too, just like he knows that Orion depends on him to—” She broke off abruptly. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “If you or Nick or anyone else wants to know what's going to happen with Orion, you should look at the agreement you signed when you joined RAD. Do you remember that agreement, Antoine?” Antoine looked blank. Maybe he hadn't read his copy carefully before he signed it. “The program is a partnership between the youth participant and the canine participant. If the youth participant drops out for any reason, the canine participant can't continue.”

“So are you saying that Orion won't be able to stay in the program?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” Kathy said. Her phone rang. She picked it up, listened for a few seconds, and said, “Just a moment.” She looked at Antoine. “You'd better get to your session,” she said. “And, Robyn, can you give me a few minutes? I have to take this call.”

Antoine was halfway down the hall by the time I caught up with him.

“Have you seen him?” I said. “Nick, I mean.”

Antoine eyed me suspiciously.

“Why do you want to know?” he said.

“Because—” Because why? I wasn't even sure. “Because I don't think it's fair that Orion has to pay for something that Nick did.”

That's when Antoine surprised me. He said, “I'd hate it if Jackie was stuck here forever because I messed up. Man, you should have heard Orion barking when the rest of the guys went in to get their dogs. That's why I volunteered to take care of him until Nick comes back.”

If he comes back,
I thought.

Antoine looked at me. “Nick said it was nice of you to go and see Orion, especially considering how scared you are of him. Of Orion, I mean.”

“So you have seen him?”

“We live in the same place.”

Oh.

“Are you going to tell him what Kathy said?”

He looked down at the ground.

“There are too many animals here, Antoine. The shelter has a new rule. If an animal can't be adopted after a certain amount of time, they're going to put it down.”

“What?”
He stared at me, stunned. “Since when? Who told you?”

“Kathy did. Just before you showed up.”

“They can't do that!”

”They have to.”

Antoine looked like he couldn't believe it. “I told Nick I'd talk to Kathy, you know, to make sure Orion was going to be okay,” he said finally. “But after what she said and after what you just told me, I'm thinking maybe I'll tell him that she wasn't around today.”

“You mean you're going to lie to him?”

Antoine bristled at that. “He's my friend.”

“So maybe you should tell him the truth.”

“You know, Nick's right. You're a real pain!”

“He said that?”

“He told me how you got him busted a few years back. He told me you were a real brownnoser back then, and that you haven't changed much. He said you tried to get him in trouble with Kathy.”

“I thought he took some money,” I said.

“Yeah, well, he didn't. Nick's not like that.”

“I saw him do it before.”

“That's your story.”

“His is different?”

Antoine just shrugged.

“He took a car that didn't belong to him,” I said.

“Says you,” he said. “Says the cops.”

“Says Nick,” I said. “He's not denying it, Antoine. He said he did it.”

Antoine's face darkened. This was obviously news to him. “How do you know?”

I didn't want to bring my mother into it. Antoine would probably stop talking to me if he knew she was Nick's lawyer. So instead I said, “Didn't he tell you?”