Last Chance (6 page)

“They're not here today,” he said.

“Oh.”

We stared at each other. I knew who he was, but he obviously hadn't recognized me. I wanted to keep it that way.

He looked from me to the picnic table and back again. “It's a big table,” he said. “You've got a book. I've got a book.” He nodded at the backpack slung over one shoulder. “I'm quiet when I read. I don't even move my lips,” he said.

He seemed nice. I think that's what threw me. I knew what he had done a few years back. I also knew from what Mr. Schuster had told me, that he hadn't changed much. But he seemed nice, and his purple-blue eyes sparkled the way my father's gray eyes did when he was in a particularly good mood.

“Okay,” I said.

We sat down. I unwrapped my sandwich, took the lid off my juice, and opened my book. He tipped out his lunch bag—a sandwich, an orange, some cookies and . . . dog biscuits. Two big ones wrapped in plastic. He grabbed them, shoved them into his backpack, and looked across the table at me with a guilty expression on his face.

“They're homemade,” he said.

“You make
dog
biscuits?” I couldn't picture it.

He shook his head.“Not me.There's this bakery that I know that does. The biscuits are kind of expensive, but they're all natural and Orion likes them.” He glanced back at the office building. “Don't tell, okay?”

I didn't say anything. He pulled a book from his backpack—a thick, hard-covered book about dogs. I peeked at the cover as he opened it. He had printed his name on the inside front cover in big black letters. Something else was written under that, but I couldn't make out what it was. He also took out a yellow highlighter. Before he started reading, he looked at me again.

“I know I already asked you this,” he said, “but are you sure we haven't met before? You look kind of familiar.”

I didn't hesitate. “No,” I said. “I would have remembered.”

He grinned in surprise.

“Really?” he said.

I felt my cheeks burn.

“What I mean is—” I began.

“That's okay,” he said, amused at my discomfort. “I know what you mean. I think I would have remembered too.”

For a while, we read and ate in silence. Then—I'm not sure how—we started talking. Nick was telling me what he had learned about dogs and especially what he had learned about Orion.

“Dogs are really smart,” he said. “People didn't used to think so, but they've done all kinds of studies. This one guy, he wanted to see if dogs could count. So he took five meatballs and put them in one spot on the ground, and then he put just one meatball in another spot. Then he studied which meatballs the dogs would go to first. Guess what they picked, every time.”

I had no idea.

“The closest ones,” Nick said. “They went for whatever was closest, whether it was five meatballs or just one.
Except,”
he said, “when the five meatballs and the one meatball were the same distance from the dogs. Then they went for the five meatballs. Proving—”

“That to dogs, good food means whatever food they can get to quickest,” I said. “Kind of a whole new definition of fast food.”

Nick laughed. If I hadn't known him from before and didn't know why he was here now, my overall impression would have been that he had a future as a vet or a kennel owner. He really loved dogs. He glowed when he talked about Orion.

“My plan,” he said, “is to adopt Orion.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that Mr. Schuster had the same plan. Then I clamped it shut again and told myself that it was none of my business. Although I enjoyed talking to him, I was glad when my break was over and I had an excuse to leave. He didn't know who I was. With any luck, he wouldn't remember.

I ran into him again later in the day. I was on my way back from the kitchen with a glass of ice water when I heard a voice from inside my cubbyhole of an office.

“I told you, I'll get it,” the voice was saying. I peeked inside. It was Nick. He was using my phone. “Relax, Joey,” he said. “It's gonna be okay. I'll figure something out and I'll get back to you.” Silence. “Tell her it's going to be okay,” he said. “There's no way I'd let that happen.” Another long pause. “It won't be long before you're driving again. Then it'll all be good. You tell her I said so . . . . Yeah. Look, Joey, I gotta go.”

He hung up the phone and turned around. I could tell he was startled to see me standing there. He stared at me as if waiting for me to explain why I had been eavesdropping on his conversation.

“You're in my office,” I said.

He looked even more surprised. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to make a call.” He glanced around. “Is there any way you could maybe not mention this to anyone?” he said.

I shrugged. It was just a phone call. What was there to mention?

He brushed past me, strode down the hall, and pushed open an exterior door. A little later when I looked out the window, I saw him on the grass with Orion, putting him through his paces. He seemed as relaxed out there with the big dog as he had been at lunch. He sure didn't look like the violent criminal that Mr. Schuster seemed to hold in such disdain.

 

. . .

Toward the end of the next day, Kathy stuck her head into my office. “Need a break?” she said.

I didn't want to appear overly eager to stop, but you can only stare at a computer screen for so long before you crave a change of scenery. I nodded.

“One of our volunteer committees is meeting in about half an hour,” she said, “and we're shorthanded. Would you mind helping Janet set up?”

“No problem.”

She told me where to find Janet. “The quickest way,” she said, “is to go out that door.” She pointed down the hall. “Then cut across to the adoption center.” The adoption center was located near the parking lot.

I followed her directions and reached the parking lot just as a van pulled to a stop and its driver tooted the horn. Nick and his friends surged toward it from a patch of shade where they had been waiting. I glanced at Nick. He was looking at me, but there was nothing friendly about his expression. I ducked my head and tried to skirt the group, unnoticed, but Nick planted himself in my path.

“Hey,” he said. “It's been bugging me since the first day, but now I know who you are.” His purple-blue eyes were as hard as amethyst. “You're the girl who turned me in.”

“A
ren't you going to deny it?” he said. He was standing so close to me that I could feel his breath on my face. I stepped back. He was a lot bigger than he had been when I knew him before, back when I was in junior high. He looked a lot stronger now too. He was staring at me so ferociously that I shifted my eyes down to the ground, just like I would have done if he were a dog. But he wasn't a dog, I told myself. He was just a guy.Yes, he was taller than me.Yes, he looked like he could do some serious damage if he wanted to. And yes, I wanted nothing more than to get away from him. But if I fled, he would think I was afraid of him. There was no way I was going to give him that satisfaction. Besides, I hadn't done anything wrong. In fact, just the opposite.

I looked up and met his eyes.

“Why would I deny it?” I said. “I just did what any normal person would have done if they'd been in my place.”

He nodded as if I'd said pretty much what he had expected.

“You recognized me, didn't you?” he said. His eyes were drilling into me. He seemed to be daring me to answer.

“So what if I did?”

The driver of the van looked in our direction. She was an older woman, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with a pair of sunglasses shoved up on top of her head. She was passing out boxes of juice to the rest of the boys, who crowded around the van. When she finished, she looked over at us, reached into the van, and tooted the horn.

“Come on, Nick!” she called. “This train is about to leave the station.”

But Nick didn't head for the van. Instead, he leaned forward, trying to intimidate me.

“You don't scare me,” I said.

“Is that right?” He stepped closer. I fought the urge to retreat a pace. “Then how come you pretended you didn't know me?”

“Nick!” The woman tooted the horn again. Only then did Nick tear his eyes from me. He adjusted the backpack that hung from one of his shoulders, wheeled around and marched toward the van. I turned and slipped into the cool of the building in front of me.

 

. . .

The next afternoon, I looked up from my computer and saw Nick and the other guys outside with their dogs.

“If I were your age, I'd be sneaking a peek too,” a voice behind me said.

I spun around, my face flushed, feeling like I'd been caught staring out the window at school when I should have been paying attention to the teacher. Kathy stood in the doorway to my office, smiling.

“Some of those guys are really cute, aren't they?” she said.

I glanced outside again. When Kathy was my age, she must have gone for the bad-boy type.

“I heard that they've all been in trouble with the law,” I said.

Kathy looked surprised. “Who told you that?”

“Mr. Schuster,” I said. “He told me that they have to be here because they've all been charged with violent crimes.”

Kathy looked around for a chair, but I was sitting on the only one in the room. She leaned against the wall instead.

“He really shouldn't have said anything,” she said. “But since he did, it is true that all of the participants of the RAD program have been mandated by the court to take anger management counseling.”

“RAD?” I said.

“Rehabilitate A Dog,” she said. “But the kids who participate in RAD don't have to be here. They all had a choice. They could have attended a traditional anger management program, one day a week for eight weeks. Or they could come here four days a week for eight weeks. RAD is a much bigger commitment, but these kids chose it because they thought it would be more interesting to work with dogs.”

“Mr. Schuster seems to think it's crazy to trust them with the dogs,” I said. I thought about how Nick had tried to intimidate me the day before and decided that I didn't entirely disagree with him.

Kathy shook her head. “They're young. They can change. And the program works. We teach participants how to work with the dogs to modify their behavior. All the dogs in the program have been abandoned by their owners. They have . . . ” She paused and groped for words. “Let's just say that they're very challenging dogs,” she said.

“Challenging?” I thought about my encounter with Orion. He had tried to scare me, just like Nick had. He'd even charged me. “You mean, they're vicious?” I said.

“No,” Kathy said. “Not vicious.”

“Have any of them attacked people?” I said.

She looked directly at me.“Bitten, yes.Attacked, no.”

I wasn't sure I saw the difference.

“Some dogs are really aggressive,” Kathy said. “You've probably read about dog attacks in the newspaper from time to time—a dog mauls a child or attacks and kills another dog. Sometimes we get animals like that. Sometimes we have to put them down.”

“But these dogs aren't like that?”

She shook her head again.

“The dogs in the RAD program have behavior problems that have made them unsuitable for adoption,” she said. “Most of them were never trained properly. Their owners may have disciplined them by hitting them with a rolled-up newspaper or some other object.”

The very idea seemed to exasperate her. “That's usually counterproductive. Instead of teaching the dog to behave, it teaches the dog that a hand coming toward it means punishment. It sees a hand reach out, and it bites. The dog owner may see that as an attack, but to the dog, it's self-defense. We have one dog in the program that was bought as a puppy. The owner kept the dog in the house when it was little and cute but never bothered to train it properly. Because the dog was never trained, when it got bigger, it started jumping up on people and making a nuisance of itself—and ended up getting punished by the owner. Finally, the owner chained it out in his backyard. The dog spent two years out there. It was never let off the chain and never let inside.

“Dogs are pack animals,” she said. “They're very social. They need to be around other creatures—dogs, human beings, it doesn't matter. Imagine how you'd be if you were chained out in a yard all by yourself, winter and summer, night and day, for two years. Someone finally reported the owner. We seized the dog. If we can rehabilitate him, he has a chance to be adopted. If we can't . . . ” She sighed. “Do you know what the leading cause of death is for dogs?”

The first thing that came to mind was getting hit by a car. But I guessed that probably wasn't the answer she was looking for. I shook my head.

“The leading cause of death for dogs is unwelcome behavior,” Kathy said.