Leftovers (17 page)

I make it easy for her. “You have to go, Mom. Go home. Get some rest. Just leave the pictures.”

“Sarah, I—”

“I want to burn them. I don't want anyone else to see them—ever!”

The cop and my lawyer start to saunter back up the dock, leaving the Hush Puppies box behind. The cop stops to light a cigarette.

I'm not a moron. I rush down the dock, grab the untended box and charge back at breakneck speed, elbowing past
the cop, my lawyer and my mother. I run away from the dock, away from the lodge, all the way to my cabin, with the hated Hush Puppies box tucked under my arm like a football.

“Sarah!” Mom shouts after me.

“GO HOME, MOM! PLEASE!”

Over my shoulder, I flash her a peace sign.

No one comes after me.

I have a lighter in my knapsack. I've never smoked, but I stole the pink plastic Bic from the restaurant as soon as I was old enough to figure out how to use it. I always figured that if I was ever lucky enough to stumble across the photographs by accident, it would make sense to burn them before my father could stop me. If it meant burning the house or the restaurant to the ground in the process, so be it.

When I reach my cabin door, breathless from my sprint, I am shocked to find Judy tied to the railing of the steps. I'd bedded her down myself before leaving for the movies with Sullivan. But here she is, fast asleep, with a note tucked under her collar. It reads, in big awkward guy-printing:

Sarah, I don't know what's happening. Please let me know what I can do to help

Sullivan. XOXOXOXOX

I can't deal with Sullivan right now.

I snatch the lighter from my pack, and with the Hush Puppies box still clutched under my arm, I rouse Judy and lead her by flashlight along the path to the beach.

There's a stiff breeze on this side of the island. Overhead, the sky is gloomy. I fear rain. I'll have to work fast. From the other side of the island, I hear a motorboat pulling away. Bye, Mom.

My thoughts turn to one of Dr. Fred's earlier bonfire chats. One about wilderness survival. More specifically, fire building.

Make a teepee, I remember. Dried leaves go on the bottom, then twigs, then sticks, then logs—in that order. Flick on the lighter. Touch it to the tinder. And...
WHOOSH!

My fire is...spectacular.

I frantically rip the tape from around the Hush Puppies box. I toss pictures in the flames one at a time, upside down so I don't have to see the images, the puzzle pieces of my childhood, as they bubble and shrivel and peel before turning to ash.

A foul chemical stench pollutes the air.

Judy is lying upwind, out of the smoke, quiet but watchful. She may not understand my particular circumstances, but I want to believe she recognizes my emotions. In any case, it seems she knows that what I am doing is very, very important, and that it's not time for horseplay or interruptions or midnight swims.

Almost an hour later, when the last of the photographs are burned, I rip the Hush Puppies box into pieces and
throw the chunks into the fire, where they sizzle and spit before succumbing to the flames. As much as I like dogs, I'll be happy if I never have to look at another basset hound as long as I live.

I lie back on the beach and stare up at the smoke-filled sky, oblivious to the pebbles and Judy's discarded fetch sticks poking into my back.

The big dog shuffles across the sand and rests her head on my lap. I place one of my hands on Judy's shaggy chest and feel her heart go
kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
With my other hand, I rub her ears and let the breeze blow the ashes of my father's sins into the river, where they will travel past Montreal and Quebec City to the Atlantic. But my memories of the terror and humiliation refuse to budge.

I straggle from my cabin to the flagpole the next morning, Judy tugging me merrily along after another sleepover. Since I don't need to draw straws for duties—I only need to prove I'm awake and mobile—I walk wordlessly past the flagpole, past the barn, past the stares, and down to the dock, where I spend my usual first half hour of the morning tossing sticks for Judy and deciding what to make for breakfast.

“Hey,” Sullivan says, sidling up beside me and bumping his hip against mine. His spiky hair is flattened on one side and he smells like guy-sweat and flannel and dog, like maybe he really did sleep in the barn last night.

“Hey, yourself.”

“I've got ten minutes before I need to start scooping out the kibble. You okay?”

“Sure,” I reply, throwing a stick into the water for Judy, who takes after it like a missile. The big dog's bizarre near drowning less than a week ago seems to have had no
lasting effect on her love of the water. I'd still like to know what made her flip out that night of the Dog Daze Festival. Unfortunately, I've been too flipped out myself to give it much serious thought. Dr. Fred's explanation is that dogs are just like that sometimes when they get overexcited. Some barf. Some bite. And some bolt.

Just like humans.

“Is everything okay with your mom?” Sullivan asks.

“I guess.”

“You aren't leaving Moose Island, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Not really.”

“Am
I
in trouble?”

I turn and gape at Sullivan. His blue eyes are so... clueless. “Huh?”

“Well...I thought maybe your mom called for you when we were in town last night. Maybe freaked when you weren't here? I don't know...maybe you aren't allowed to date yet? Or maybe she thinks you're only here to work?”

“You really don't know what happened last night?”

Sullivan shakes his head. “Mom won't even tell Dr. Fred what happened last night. She says we don't need to know unless you want us to.”

Yay, Victoria.

I reach out and squeeze Sullivan's hand. It's sticky with who-knows-what, but I don't care. “It's better this way. Trust me.”

“Okay.” Sullivan squeezes back, but I can tell he's confused and hurt that I'm not sharing. “Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“If you change your mind, don't forget, you can trust me too.”

Taylor is in the kitchen when I get there, slapping boxes of Raisin Bran and Corn Flakes onto the kitchen table. A punch bowl full of canned fruit cocktail is already there, a ladle plunked down next to it. The nauseating smells of burnt toast and way-too-strong coffee fight for airspace.

“Get the milk, would you,” she orders me.

I am speechless. Immobile. Who the hell gave my job to Taylor?

“Just thought I'd help,” she tells me. “Got a problem with that?”

“Uh...no...,” I say. “I guess not.” I've had less than four hours' sleep in the past forty-eight hours and don't have the energy to do more than scrape charcoal spots off the toast anyway.

“I never told anyone either,” Taylor says a few minutes later as she “helps” me dump a heaping plate of toast and a jumble of jam and peanut butter jars on the table.

“Told anyone what?”

“Don't play dumb,” she says, wiping her hands on a damp dish towel. “About what happened to me. The abuse. Not even after I got pregnant and had the abortion. I told everyone, even my mom, that the kid's father was some guy I met at a party one weekend.”

I cock my head at her. “But...your poetry? About... Uncle Joe?”

“I never wrote a poem in my life until the morning I got here. Victoria told me I needed an ‘outlet'—besides spray-painting churches and cutting myself.”

“But...you seem so...comfortable...reading it out loud.”

Taylor gapes at me. “Comfortable? It nearly kills me! But what's that saying? ‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' I'm not just here to shovel dog shit this summer. I'm here to toughen up. My plan requires it.”

“Your plan?”

Taylor twirls her eyebrow ring around and around a few seconds. Then she clomps over to the kitchen door, peering out to make sure that we're alone. “My mom's birthday is coming up in a few weeks,” she tells me. “I'm going to mail my poems to her, wrapped in pretty paper. Then she'll know all about what she could have prevented if she'd just opened her”—Taylor glances left and right, double-checking for signs of Victoria—”fucking eyes. I mean, the signs were everywhere.”

Taylor pulls out a kitchen chair and plunks down at the table. “My final poem will be sweet and simple: ‘Roses like sun. Violets like rain. Don't fucking expect to see me again.'”

“It makes a clear point,” I tell her.

“When I leave Camp Dog Gone Fun, I'm hopping a Greyhound—the bus, not the dog—to Montreal. I got accepted with a full scholarship, including residence, at McGill. Don't look so damned surprised, Sarah. My body's been fucked over, but my mind's as sharp as that fancy knife you use.”

Taylor pauses a minute, then asks, “So what did your mom find that brought her out here so fast last night? Videos? A journal? Or did your Uncle Joe get drunk and bring her the goods himself?”

“I don't have an Uncle Joe.”

Taylor laughs. “You are so naïve. Neither do I. ‘Uncle Joe' is my dad, the kind, upstanding, Catholic choirmaster who raped me.”

“My father wasn't a rapist,” I say quietly.

“Okay, so be in denial.” Taylor crosses her arms over her chest.

“He never touched me!” I insist. “Ever.”

Taylor scrapes her chair back. “You are so full of shit!” she hisses as she stalks off toward the rec room.

“Taylor, wait!” I call.

She steps back into the kitchen and stands awkwardly against the door frame, her hair as short and as green as a fresh-cut lawn, her chains and face jewelry and spiked neck and wrist collars as forbidding as a barbed wire fence.

“My father took photos,” I tell her, gripping the counter for balance. “Polaroids. At his restaurant. After it closed every Tuesday and Thursday night. It started
before I can even remember. When I got old enough to be uncooperative, he got me a dog and told me he'd run Brownie over with his car if I refused him or told my mother or anyone else.”

I suck in a breath and hold it as long as I can before letting it out. “When he died a little over a year ago—”

“Lucky you,” Taylor interjects.

“—the restaurant was boarded up while the legal and insurance stuff was sorted out. I figured I just had to make a copy of my mother's key, get into the city on my own, figure out where he hid the pictures and destroy them. Easy as pie.”

“But, as we say here at Camp Dog Gone Fun, it's a dogeat-dog world,” Taylor says, laughing darkly. “You ended up here instead.”

With shaking hands, I pour myself a coffee and take a huge gulp, burning my mouth. Sputtering, I continue. “My mother's boyfriend won a camera in a raffle at work. He was just joking around, wanting to try out his new camera on me.”

Taylor yanks a chair out from the table again. I think she might be gearing up to pitch it across the room, but she just kicks it around and straddles it. “The sick bastard!” she says.

I almost laugh. “He didn't want me to pose naked or anything. I was just sitting in the kitchen doing homework.”

Taylor unhooks the spiked collar around her throat and does a few neck rolls before refastening it. “But you
flipped out anyway. Just like you did after the picnic the other night.”

I take another gulp of coffee. “I smashed his camera, grabbed his keys off the counter and ripped out of the driveway in his car, not thinking about anything except finding the pictures.”

“But you didn't find the pictures because you crashed his car instead. Sucks.”

I pull another kitchen chair up to the table and sit down beside Taylor. “I was doing okay, you know—until a stupid cat ran out in front of me.”

“Like it matters. You were doing okay this summer too—until your mom beat you to the buried treasure. That's what happened, right?”