Last Chance (2 page)

I nodded. The truth was, I was embarrassed by what had happened, embarrassed at having been packed into the back of a police car, and embarrassed that the first person I'd seen at the police station was a friend of my father's. I would have agreed to anything if it got me out of there.

Finally,
mercifully
(I thought at the time), the woman said yes, she had a favorite charity.

Wonderful, my mother said.

It was an animal shelter, the woman said.

I tried to keep a smile on my face. After all, the woman's window had been broken and her clothes had been ruined, thanks to me. Well, thanks to Billy, whom I had been trying to prevent from getting arrested. And even though she still smelled faintly foul—despite having washed up and changed her clothes—she was willing to give me a break. It was only smart to appear as grateful as possible.

“You mean, an animal shelter that looks after dogs?” I said.

“Dogs, cats, rabbits, the usual,” the woman said.

“I think Robyn might prefer some other type of charity work,” my mother said in the brisk, I'm-sure-wecan-reach-a-compromise voice that's become second nature to her since she started practicing law. “She isn't comfortable around dogs.”

“Oh?” the woman said. “Isn't that too bad. Perhaps she would be more comfortable appearing in court.”

My mother didn't even look at me before she said, “But, of course, she'll be glad to volunteer at the animal shelter anyway, if that's what you want.”

“It is,” the woman said, adding, “I would have thought that someone who takes to the streets to demand humane treatment for animals would at least
like
the animals in question.”

I supposed she had a point.

My mother agreed that I would volunteer at the shelter for the rest of the summer. I groaned. Both my mother and the woman turned to look at me. I forced myself to smile, even though
volunteering
meant that my original rest-of-the-summer plan—three weeks at a cottage up north with Morgan, one of my two best friends—was evaporating in front of my eyes like dew on a mid-July morning. My mother quickly put the agreement in writing and had us both sign it. The woman said she would talk to the chair of the shelter's fund-raising committee—a personal friend of hers—who would make all the arrangements. Someone from the shelter would call me later to discuss the details. And then I was free.

Free and doomed.

 

. . .

“You can't come up here at all?” Morgan said when I called her to break the news. She sounded even more disappointed than I was.

“Sorry,” I said. “But either I volunteer or the woman presses charges. If she does, my mom says I'd probably end up with community service, anyway. At least this way I don't end up with a criminal record too.”

When I told Morgan where I was volunteering, she laughed—for longer than was strictly necessary, in my opinion.

Billy, bless his heart, did not laugh. When I called him, he apologized. Abjectly. He said, “I wasn't going to throw that baggie at the guard. It didn't even belong to me. It was Evan's. It was his idea. He said it was a good way to make a real splash. When I saw that he was actually going to throw it, I grabbed it from him, you know, so that he wouldn't get into trouble—”

“What?”
I couldn't believe it. I had grabbed that stupid baggie out of Billy's hands to stop Billy from getting arrested and had ended up saving Evan Wilson instead. And I didn't even like Evan! He's one of those ultra-serious activists who make everyone else feel guilty about
everything
. “But I thought—”

“I would never do anything like that,” Billy said. “I'm not like Evan. You know that.”

Correction: I
should
have known. Billy would protest himself hoarse for a cause he believed in, but he would never harm another living creature—including a human being. Nor was he the type to damage property. Billy believed in reason, persuasion, and education.

“In that case, Evan is the one who should be apologizing to me,” I said.

“Actually, he thinks you're a hero,” Billy said.

“He thinks you were going to throw it. He told me he was impressed. He didn't think you had it in you—you know, because of your parents. He says it really made him reevaluate you, Robyn.”

Uh-huh.

“In fact, the other reason I called . . . ” He paused. He sounded uncomfortable. If he had been talking to me face-to-face, I bet he would have been flushed and would have avoided my eyes. “Evan was wondering . . . He asked me if maybe I could find out if you—”

“No way, Billy,” I said.

“But I—” he spluttered. “I—”

“If you're trying to find out if I'd be interested in going out with Evan, the answer is no. Billy, how could you even ask?”

“I'm sorry,” Billy said. I had no doubt that he was. “Sorry about everything, Robyn. Especially about the volunteering part.”

I told him it was okay—but I only said it because he was my other best friend.

“I
f you want my opinion,” my father said on Monday morning, “I'd say your situation is what they call ironic.”

I didn't want his opinion. But my father is the kind of person who is generous with his views. You never have to ask—he always volunteers them. He was sitting at the huge oak dining table in loft where he lives. The loft is located in what used to be a carpet factory in what used to be a seedy part of the city. The area is trendy now. The first floor houses a hugely popular gourmet restaurant, La Folie. The second floor consists of six apartments. Dad occupies the entire third floor. He owns the building too. He inherited it from his uncle before I was born, did nothing with it for years, and then converted it after he quit being a cop a few years ago. He could live off what he makes as a landlord. Could but doesn't.

“How exactly is my situation ironic?” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you were protesting the use of animals in product testing, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Specifically, the use of cats and dogs, correct?”

I nodded. I could see where this was heading.

“Take a dog-friendly cause, mix in a little dog poop, and the result?” my father said. “My dog-phobic daughter ends up being literally thrown to the dogs.”

I could imagine him telling this story to all of his friends. He'd probably even make the rounds of the tables at La Folie downstairs. According to my father, if you've got a good story, you practically have an obligation to share it, even with complete strangers.

“You call it irony, Dad,” I said. “I call it your fault.”

My father raised an eyebrow and lowered his cup of coffee.
“My
fault?”

“You're the one who always says that a person has to stand for something.”

My father stands for law and order. Since retiring from the police department, he's been running an enormously successful private security business. I stand for animal rights—among other things. I believe that all living creatures deserve equal consideration on our planet. That's why I'm a vegetarian. It's also why I'm against inhumane treatment of animals.All animals. Even dogs.After all, you can't be against human encroachment into the natural habitats of lions and tigers and grizzly bears (which I am) and think that it's perfectly fine to blind or even kill a dog by exposing it to high levels of chemicals used in testing hair dye or mascara. Yes, I'm afraid (terrified) of dogs. But I'm perfectly willing to live and let live. I'm just not always sure that our canine socalled friends share that philosophy.

Some people, dog lovers like Morgan and Billy and my father, think my extreme nervousness around dogs is the result of childhood trauma. They're right. It is. They think I should get over it. Easy for them to say. They weren't attacked by a German shepherd when they were eight years old. From what I can remember and what I have been told, the attack was unprovoked. It was also terrifying. I ended up in the emergency ward, getting stitches in a part of my anatomy that made it next to impossible for me to sit down for the better part of a week. I got into the habit of sleeping on my stomach at about that time.

Other people—my mother, for example—think my aversion to big, mean-looking dogs is one of my more admirable qualities. Common sense, she calls it. She is 100 percent opposed to people keeping what she believes are vicious dogs. Of course, this may be because of the trauma
she
suffered when she saw the German shepherd sink his teeth into my posterior. She says she had to hit it with her purse twice before it left me alone, and even then, it was the dog's owner—who had been at the other end of the park when the dog attacked me—who actually pulled the dog away. My mother had wanted to hit him too, but even before she went to law school, she still knew the difference between self-defense and assault.

As far as volunteering at an animal shelter, well, I'm no fool. I knew what kind of dog gets dumped at an animal shelter—the kind that nobody wants. The problem dogs. My father knew it too, despite his amusement. I think that's why he was nice to me on the drive out to the animal shelter. He didn't insist on blaring '70s headbanger rock full blast on his Porsche's sound system the way he usually does. Instead, he offered to let me program the music and didn't complain when I chose the sounds of silence. Not the Simon and Garfunkel song but actual sounds of silence.

The German shepherd's snarling face hovered in my imagination as my father pulled into the animal shelter's parking lot. The shelter was located on the outskirts of the city and was surrounded by summer-scorched fields planted with “For Sale” signs. My father killed the engine of his Porsche and turned to look at me. He had never backed down from anything in his life, so when he gave one of his speeches about facing and conquering your fears, you knew he wasn't talking about anything he hadn't done himself. Whatever else he was—and Mom had a few theories—he wasn't a hypocrite. He wasn't totally insensitive, either. He looked at the low-slung building shimmering in the early-August heat, frowned, and said, “Are you sure you're okay with this, Robbie?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

I was not fine. I was scared. But I told myself the same thing I had tried to convince myself of the previous night: I had nothing to worry about. The shelter's director had told me that I'd be working with computers, not dogs. She also told me—after I asked—that all the dogs were kept in kennels and that when they weren't in their kennels, they were always with either a volunteer dog walker or a staff member. So I was looking at a low-risk situation, as my father might have said. I got out of the car, stared at the unfamiliar building, and gulped back the fear that was burning the back of my throat.

I heard a soft whirring sound beside me as my father lowered the driver's side window.

“Hey,” he said, crooking a finger at me. I stepped closer to the car and felt the chill of the air-conditioned interior. My father crooked his finger again, and I bent down. He kissed my cheek. “You're going to be fine,” he said. “It's an office job. Office jobs are all the same. Maybe someone swipes your lunch out of the fridge. No sweat, right?”

Perspiration trickled down the back of my neck. I offered him a shaky smile.

“That's my girl,” he said. “It's going to be a piece of cake. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?”

I discovered the answer to that question right after I watched my father drive away.

W
hen I turned toward the main entrance to the animal shelter, I found myself facing a massive ebony beast with dead-looking eyes and a mouthful of teeth that screamed, “Born to bite.”

I happen to know
a lot
about vicious dogs. It's my obsession. For example, I know that there are nearly five million recorded instances of dog bites every year in the United States alone. I know that one million of these bites are serious,
every
year, and that twenty people die from them,
every
year. I know that more than half the victims are under the age of eighteen, that dog bites are the leading cause of facial disfigurement among North American children. Also, the number of dogs has increased by 2 percent in the past ten years while the number of reported dog bites has jumped by 37 percent. So whenever I see a dog off a leash with no human nearby, I react exactly as I did when I found myself face-to-face with the black monster in front of the animal shelter: I stop dead in my tracks, look down at the ground, and mentally review the rules on dog-bite avoidance—which I also know.