Nobody's Dog (2 page)

While I surf around, I crunch the last stale bites of a cracker left from yesterday. The phone rings beside me. For a second I think it's Grant.

“I'm going to be late,” Aunt Laura says even before I say hello. “Make yourself some dinner, okay?”

This is nothing new. She's always
slaving away in Emerg
, as she says.

“No problem,” I say. I'd rather be on my own anyway.

“Hey, didn't Grant leave today?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm sorry, Jakob. I know you'll miss him.”

I realize this might be a good time to score some sympathy for the dog situation. “Yeah, I really will. I was wondering, actually, if I could talk to you about dog adoptions again. I know you said no way last time, but I think I might have a better plan now.”

“Jakob, we've been through this —”

“I know, but it's different this time.”

“Jakob, I've got to go, okay? We're slammed here. We'll talk later, I promise.” She hangs up before I can answer.

Later, as I'm making myself Kraft Dinner in the microwave, Soleil knocks on the back door. Libby's there too — she says something to her mom I don't catch.

“Helloooo? Jakob?” Soleil presses her face to the window and her nose goes flat.

I let her in.

“Smells delish in here.” Soleil steps inside in some kind of dressing gown with her hair all slicked back. It makes her look like a movie star waiting in her trailer. Libby follows, looking embarrassed. Her hair's in braids and she looks six years old.

I don't understand the two of them — one all dramatic and the other weird and quiet. I found one of Libby's
drawings on the deck yesterday. I didn't move it or really look at it, but when I got home from school, it was folded up by our back door. I took it down the stairs to the suite and left it on their doormat.

“Whatcha got there?” Soleil peers into the microwave.

“Kraft Dinner, from scratch,” I say.

“Yum. You should throw something else in there, make it more nutritious. Got any peas or carrots?” Soleil pokes around the kitchen. She knows how to make herself at home.

The microwave beeps and I pull out my bowl.

“Hey — you look down, J-man. Are you okay?” She leans on the table. Libby stares at a pile of napkins.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I say, grabbing a fork.

“J-man, do you have a crush on a girl?”

“Mom —” Libby groans, then becomes a statue again.

“What?” Soleil holds up her hands. “I can ask that. Can't I ask that, Lib?”

Libby squeezes her eyes closed like she has a headache.

“You should have stayed downstairs, then,” Soleil says to Libby. “J-man, I'm just asking what's up. Any girls?”

“Nope,” I say. I'd have to actually have conversations with them for that. The farthest I've gotten is to look at Rosemary Stanford from afar and imagine her talking to me. I stir my Kraft Dinner and breathe in the steamy-cheesy fumes.

Soleil shrugs. “I'm a lowly tenant, but I can't help noticing the energy in here's all off.”

“The energy?”

“Yeah. Your footsteps sound — well, lonely. We just wanted to see if we could help.”

Libby coughs — at least I think she does. She stares at the floor.

“I'm fine.” I eat a forkful of macaroni and burn the roof of my mouth.

Soleil pulls out a chair and makes herself comfortable. “I know sad footsteps, J-man. My friend Johnny became addicted to gambling and lost all his money and then got depressed. He almost jumped off the Lion's Gate Bridge.”

“That's crap,” I say, even though it could totally be true.

“It is crap,” Libby says from her corner. “He jumped off a ladder and broke his ankle.”

“But he was practising for something bigger,” Soleil says.

Libby rolls her eyes.

Soleil looks at me sadly. “J-man, I hate to see you here alone, making your poor little dinner. You want to come downstairs and watch TV with us?”

Libby looks like she wants to put her hand over her mom's mouth to stop her talking.

I do kind of want to hang out with someone and not have to think about spending a whole summer, and possibly a whole lifetime, alone. But I can't make myself say yes. Even though I know it's lame, I'd rather sit in my room and wait for an email from Grant. “No, thanks,” I say.

“Okay then, suit yourself.” She gets up and smooths her weird dressing gown. “We're downstairs if you need us.”

Libby glances at me before she pulls open the door. “I could draw you sometime, you know. With charcoal.” Then she's gone.

“We're here to help, Jakob. Your aunt's working so hard.” Soleil smiles and touches my arm. She's just so
friendly
.

“Uh, thanks.”

I hold my dinner in one hand and close the door behind them with the other. I watch them go down the steps
and disappear under the deck. It's a little like watching a plane fade to a white dot in the sky.

Aunt Laura gets home at eight-thirty. She clunks the front door and throws her coat in the closet without hanging it up. I hear it because my room shares a wall with the hall closet.

“Jakob?”

“In my room,” I call back.

She shuffles to the kitchen. “You eat?”

“Yup.”

I hear her slump into a chair. “What a
day
. You?”

“Yeah.”

“Three cardiac arrests in an
hour
. My shoulders are killing me.” She always complains about her shoulders and back after cardiac arrests because they have to do CPR, pushing up and down on the person's chest, sometimes for hours. Sometimes she takes a sick day after, because her back seizes up. She opens and closes cupboards in the kitchen. She's forgotten about Grant leaving already. “Well, at least come out here and say hi.”

I drag myself down the hall.

Aunt Laura looks like her patients. Her brown hair is greasy and she has dark circles under her eyes. It's what I assume all nurses look like. “What did you have for dinner?” she asks.

“Salad.”

She looks at me suspiciously.

“Kraft Dinner,” I admit.

“The staple diet of teenagers.” She gets up, wincing, and goes to the kettle. “I'm making tea. You want some?”

I never want tea. I hate tea. She knows this, but always asks.

“Soleil came up,” I try. It's never easy having a conversation with Aunt Laura unless it's her complaining about the hospital, with me stuck pretending to care.

“Did she? Everything okay?”

“Yeah. She wanted to hang out, I think.”

“She almost got a part in a fabric softener commercial, apparently. I wonder how long she'll stick out the acting thing.” Aunt Laura drops a teabag into the pot. “What about Libby?”

“What about her?”

Aunt Laura swings her head to look at me. “She come up?”

“Yeah. So?” This line of conversation's starting to make me feel a little weird.

“She probably wants to hang out. She's a cute kid.”

“Exactly. Kid. She's, like, eleven.”

“Actually, I think she's twelve. You were twelve last year, remember? You could use more friends, Jakob. No offence.”

Yeah, because my one and only friend just left the country. “I'm kind of tired. It's been a long day,” I say, trying to nudge her toward our earlier conversation.

“Oh, okay,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “I'm going to have an early night myself. So many sick people today.”

“Right,” I say, backing out of the kitchen. She's not going to remember. Sometimes I think her brain is more switched off than mine, and I'm the one who had the head injury.

“Goodnight, then. I'm working a day shift tomorrow too, so see you same time, same place.” She watches the kettle, like that will make it boil faster.

My parents were so excited when I started high school. Like this was a milestone I might not have achieved somehow. Mom took me shopping in August and made me pick out lots of clothes. She seemed to be really worried that I not look like a loser. Dad said next summer break he'd take me camping in the Interior to study stars, just us, as a celebration of my first year in high school. I was never as interested in stars as he was. Even though his real job was an accountant, he was totally obsessed with astronomy. My mom said he wanted to name me Orion but she put her foot down. I liked the names of the constellations and the stories behind them, but he got all excited about solar flares and dwarf stars and all the statistics. There was only so much of that stuff I could listen to before I zoned out.

The best part, though, was it was just us out in the night with a telescope. I liked being around him, and I could tell he liked being around me. The night felt close and like it belonged to us somehow.
The light from that star took ten years to get here, Jakob
, he'd say.
That's some old light, eh?
When I started talking about dogs all the time, he showed me Sirius, the dog star. But that wasn't enough. I was talking about real dogs, so he bought me breed books and a DVD of
Old Yeller
. I don't think he remembered how sad the
ending was. If he was disappointed that I wasn't going to be an astronomer, he didn't show it.

The problem with nighttime now is it's not just me and my dad and the stars. It's the accident. It's pieces of memory that float in my head and won't stick together in the right order. It's the dreams I have whenever I fall asleep. They start out fine — I'm with my parents somewhere, at the store or pool or eating dinner — and for a moment I let myself feel happy. But then we're in the dark car spinning off the street. We tumble. Metal screams, I scream — or is it someone else? Sticky cold on my face. Something whirring back and forth, rhythmic. I hear this so often I've started to think of it as the heart of the car, still beating, though everything else is broken. And then I'm standing on the empty street — no crumpled car, just me — with the need to search busting out of me. My feet start moving and I think if I don't find it — but what is
it
? — I will die.

And I wake up searching. Looking in my closet or halfway out of bed. But I never find what I'm looking for.

The last day of school should be the best day of the year. Everyone drugged on summer, with the attention span of a hamster. There's no point in me staying after my last class, so I just pack up my books, close my empty locker and count the steps to the door.

I walk home from school the long way — through the soccer fields and into the woods — so I can walk down the ravine at Mahon Park. I want to remember the times we skated until dark and walked home through the forest. Grant used to tell me about the weird things his sister, who thought she was a witch, did with her friends on weekends. They'd dress in black and speak to spirits and Grant and I would laugh until it hurt as we walked to his house or mine, planning to show up as they were going into a trance or something. His sister was our running joke.

Beside the entrance to the park is a covered board where people stick notices and ads. If I'm walking this way I usually check the board. It's kind of like reading the newspaper, but better, because things are more random and strange. One time there was a handwritten note that said,
Anyone who's seen a pink T-shirt that says “I Really Am This Gorgeous,” call Maxine at 447-6947
. I told that one to my dad and he couldn't stop snorting.

This time, most of the notices are old and ripped, but there are two new ones — a lined page that asks for used clothing to be donated to some children's fund, and a small blue stickie that says:
Wanted: Daily dog walker/companion for Chilko, my four-legged buddy. Experience with dogs required. Call 554-9850
.

My heart stops. It's like someone's heard my thoughts and put this note here just for me. That's the perfect way for me to make some money and take care of a dog at the
same time. If I do that all summer, Aunt Laura can't argue anymore. I get a pen and paper out of my backpack and write down the number. My hand shakes a little. This has to work. It has to.

The house is empty when I get home. I pull my phone out and go to my room to call the number from the blue stickie. There was no name on it, so I wonder who to ask for and settle on “whoever left the blue stickie in the park.” I practise a few times before dialing.

The phone rings and rings on the other end, and my palms get sweatier and sweatier.

“Hello?” It's a man's low voice.

“Hi. Did you leave the blue stickie?”

“Pardon me?”

I gulp and try again. “Did you leave the blue stickie note? In the park? About the dog.”

“Oh — yeah, I did. That was quick.”

“It was?”

“I only left the note there two hours ago. Things move fast around here. I'm from a small town. Everything takes way longer.”

I pace from the window to my bed and back. “I'm calling about walking your dog. Is it for money?”

“Uh, how old are you?”

“Thirteen — almost fourteen. I'm fit and I know the area really well. I've lived here all my life. I know dogs too — I'm kind of an expert — and I have the whole summer off.”

The guy coughs on the other end. “Uh, that's a great offer, man. I'd love to take you up on that. Thing is, I need someone older to walk Chilko. He's kind of a handful. I just can't risk it — no offence — with a kid.” He pauses. “I
believe you about doing a good job, though. I'm sure you would.”

I sit on the bed and my stomach sinks into my shoes.

The guy clears his throat. “You there?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I appreciate your interest.”

I put the phone down and lie back. The faded glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling look ridiculous, so old and useless. I want to rip them all off and leave big, ugly holes in the paint.

“Stupid,” I mutter to myself, but that makes me feel even dumber. Now I'm talking to myself like a crazy person.

I grab my pillow and throw it at my closet door, but it's a pillow and doesn't do any damage. That makes me more mad. I pick up a book and chuck it at the door. It slams and drops to the carpet. I pick up another book. It hits my swivel chair, which teeters but stays up. I push the chair over, then knock all the papers, pens and junk off my desk. I start kicking the door. And all the time I'm yelling
stupid
over and over and over until I forget what it means and who or what I'm saying it for.

I spend the next few days on the web, looking for dogs, jobs and ways to trade lives with someone else. I email Grant with more questions about London, but he only talks
about the comic store and a skate park he found around the corner and how his sister's already meeting witches in the neighbourhood.

Soleil and Libby aren't around. In a weird way, I miss them. I miss them just being there, even if I'm not talking to them or seeing Libby's random drawings everywhere. Before they left, she pushed one through the letter slot in the front door. It was a smudged sketch of the fire hydrant outside our house.

On Monday morning, Aunt Laura makes me toast with peanut butter and a bowl of cereal for herself. She's still in her hospital scrubs from her night shift. They're light green and make her look seasick. Her face is always the most tired-looking after a night shift. When she first moved in, Aunt Laura wanted to get someone to stay the night with me. I put a stop to that because I'm old enough to take care of myself, and anyway, I'd only be sleeping. She had all kinds of reasons why I should be babysat, but I finally won. Maybe because I made her feel guilty for treating me like a kid, like my parents had. Truth was, they wouldn't have left me alone either. But she didn't know that.

“Any summer plans yet?” she asks, munching cereal.

I shrug.

“We had a kid your age in last night. Broke his jaw skateboarding.”

I look up and make the appropriate surprised face.

“He'll be drinking his dinner through a straw for the next few months. Promise me you won't do something stupid like that.” She reaches for the newspaper that's three days old.

“I won't do something stupid like that.”

“Good.”

“I have an idea, though,” I say.

“For summer?”

“Sort of, yeah. I thought I could get a job. Make some money.”

She examines her bowl then looks at me. “Well, that's not a bad idea. What kind of job are you thinking of?”

“I don't know. Maybe mowing lawns. Or a paper route.”

She frowns. “Lawns, maybe. But I don't like the idea of you out early in this neighbourhood. You can get a paper route when you're fourteen.”

“I'll be fourteen in four months. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can. You surprise me all the time.”

“This is really important.”

She narrows her eyes a little. That's never a good sign. “Why do you want a job so badly? What are you planning on getting?”

I stare at her soggy cereal.

“Jakob, is this still about the dog thing?”

I open my mouth to make something up, but she stops me with a hand. “We've been through that. Hasn't there been enough drama in the past six months? Do we need to add a high-maintenance animal into the mix? You've never even had one — you don't know how much work it is.”

“You've never had one either,” I point out.

“And I don't want to end up walking and feeding it when you get tired of it.”

“That won't happen. I know how to take care of a dog. I've been researching it forever.”

“Researching.” She looks at me. “That's all theory, not real life.”

“You sound exactly like my parents,” I say.

“Probably because they were right. It's not a good idea.”

“But it would help me get over it,” I say, blurting out whatever comes into my head. Who knows where it's coming from.

“Get over it?” She looks a little concerned.

“You know, it would be therapeutic to prove to myself that I can do it.” I try to sound like Dr. Tang, but I realize it's actually true.

Aunt Laura puts a hand on my arm. “A dog is not a psychological experiment. I'm sorry, Jakob.”

I pull away. Living with her is never going to be okay.

“It's just too much right now.”

“For you, maybe,” I mutter.

“What?”

“What about me? I don't have any parents. I'm basically an orphan.” I say it loud so it hits her in the face. “My best friend just left the country. What about me?”

She looks so sad for a moment I think I might have gotten through. But then her face crumples up in anger. “Don't talk to me about problems, Jakob. My life's been turned upside down too. I'm trying to do the best I can.”

I get up and put my plate in the sink.

“You're my nephew. You mean the world to me. I understand —” She presses her fingers between her eyes. “I know we're both still grieving.”

“Right. We're grieving,” I say quietly. This is the point where we both look over the edge of the cliff, wondering if we should go into all the stuff we don't talk about.

“Jakob, I'm sorry. I know it's hard for you, but a dog isn't going to happen right now. Can't you see that?” And this is where she steps back, every time, so we don't have to deal
with the stuff for another day. It always makes me breathe easier, but a second later I just feel angry. Like something's been grabbed out of my hands.

I head to my room, but she blocks my way. “I need to be alone now,” I say to her scrubs.

She puts her hands on my shoulders. “You're a good kid. We're both just trying to figure this thing out.”

“Whatever,” I say. “I don't really care.”

I can tell Aunt Laura feels guilty about our conversation because she rents us a DVD that night and we eat my favourite, take-out sushi, on the couch. It's not a great movie, but she never gets ones I'd pick anyway.

The sushi's not bad. She lets me eat all the dynamite rolls, which are my favourite. A battle breaks out in the movie between the hero and a hairy, pig-faced bad guy. We both groan at the bad special effects.

She sighs and mutes the TV. “I've got to pee. Can you handle the suspense until I get back?”

“Somehow I'll manage.” I inhale another bite of sushi.

But when she sits down again, she doesn't reach for the remote.

My jaw tenses up.

“I know this is hard, Jakob, but you really need to make some new friends this summer.”