Strays (12 page)

Inside, as I got ready for bed, I thought about all of the stories we had reviewed in Perry's class—all of the women in fairy tales who needed to be saved.

I didn't want to be anything like them.

T
he funny thing about anger is that it sneaks up on you, and then suddenly you've reached full throttle. And then the feeling slowly slinks away until you feel normal again. When I awoke the next morning, I remembered how angry I had been the previous night, but connecting it to any one actual incident proved to be more difficult. It was as if the anger had been sitting there, pooling within, waiting to be released. It didn't really matter what triggered it.

I hadn't realized how much damage I'd done to my closet wall until that morning, when I had to pick up the pieces of plaster that had gathered on my carpet. I moved my clothing out of the way, revealing the entire wall of destruction.
How had I been capable of this?

I spent the weekend holed up in my home, rotating between watching TV on the couch and making fresh pots of coffee. I thought maybe Oak would try to reach out to me, but my phone stayed radio silent.

On Monday morning, I turned on the TV to keep me company as I got dressed for an early morning therapy session. English class had been cancelled for the day due to personal reasons, and I had rescheduled my appointment for that morning. To my dismay, the cable was out, so I left Dad a note on the kitchen table.

Once I arrived at therapy, I decided that it was time to tell Doug about my closet wall.

“It's interesting how we choose to deal with our anger, isn't it?” he said, after I brought him up to speed on Friday night's hammering session.

“It's the best way I've found to deal with the problem. No one gets hurt,” I said.

“But you're not really doing anything to deal with the issue,” Doug said, much to my disappointment.

Here I was thinking that each time the hammer made contact with the wall, I'd avoided hurting someone.

“So what should I be doing, then?” I asked. He was, after all, the expert.

“Try talking to the direct source of conflict.”

“It's that easy?”

“No. It's not easy. Not easy at all. But it works. And you'll feel a whole lot freer once you do it.”

Doug spent the rest of the session sharing some confrontation strategies with me. I didn't know whether or not I was ready to use them. But they were good to keep in my proverbial back pocket, just in case.

At the end of the session, Doug walked me to the door. “And this concludes our last session.”

“That's it?” I said. “I thought we were just getting started!” As much as I'd hated therapy at first, I'd come to rely on it.

“You've done great, Iris. But budget cuts dictate we don't have as much time as we'd like to counsel incarcerated teens.”

My time was officially up for good.

*

Not to say that I wasn't still annoyed at Oak for trying to be my knight in shining armor—it was the last thing I wanted—but when I saw him at dog training, I was ready to forgive him on the spot.

“Hey!” I said, mustering the biggest smile I could. I knew I had come down too hard on him. I'd reacted instead of thinking things through, as Doug would have suggested.

Oak barely waved, then turned his back toward me and struck up a conversation with Randy.

“You missed all the fun the other night,” said Talbot, hiding behind wide-rimmed sunglasses. “That party was off the hook! The entire under-eighteen population was there! The cops finally broke it up at eleven, but then we just moved down to Lighthouse Field Beach. We did it all over again last night!”

“Iris!” said Kevin. He wasn't holding a new dog for me. In fact, there were absolutely no dogs present.

“Where are the mutts?” asked Randy.

“Let's gather over here,” said Kevin, motioning us toward the shade of a cypress tree. It was an especially sunny day, and even though we were all wearing tank tops and shorts, I could feel the sweat dripping down the nape of my neck.

“I have an issue,” Kevin said.

“We all have issues,” said Talbot, rubbing her temples. She seemed to still be recovering.

“My van broke down last night,” said Kevin. “I'm getting the battery replaced today, but I had no way of transporting all the dogs. And you,” said Kevin, looking straight at me. “We'll have to come up with a completely different solution for your situation. We're looking for a new dog for you.”

Although I was secretly relieved that I didn't have to deal with my discomfort working with Roman, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I had let both the dog and Kevin down.

“Thank God! We get the afternoon off!” cheered Talbot, flopping herself backwards on the grass.

“Not quite,” said Kevin. He distributed our leashes.

“Um, but we have no dogs,” said Oak. It was now perfectly clear he was avoiding all eye contact with me.

“Who says you need a dog to practice training techniques?” said Kevin, standing now, holding a leash, and pretending to walk an invisible dog.

“He has to be kidding,” I said, observing how ridiculous Kevin looked.

“What command am I giving now?” Kevin shouted to us from across the grass. He tugged the leash upwards.

“Sit!” Randy and I yelled at the same time.

Talbot held her ears. “Can you guys whisper?” she asked.

“Sorry!” I mouthed.

“How about now?” Kevin asked, moving his extended arm down in a sweeping motion.

“Lie down!” yelled Oak.

“Seriously, you guys!” said Talbot, scooting herself away from the group.

Kevin ran back to us and told us to get our leashes.

“We're running through the whole shebang today—stay, sit, walk, lie down, newspaper retrieval, fetch, jump up, bark…” He seemed way too excited about making us look like complete idiots.

“Bark?” I asked. “Really?”

Randy laughed and started barking.

“Randy!” yelled Talbot.

So that's how we spent the afternoon, running around the grass, training invisible dogs on leashes. People who saw us probably thought we were visiting from a neighboring asylum, out for our daily breath of fresh air.

And the crooked smile on Kevin's face suggested that this wasn't so much an exercise in dog training as one in humility—which, by glancing at Oak, I was beginning to think could come in handy.

*

When our session was over, Oak took off before I could speak with him. I guess being yelled at in public wasn't his thing. I didn't blame him for being upset, but I wished he could have at least given a girl a chance to explain herself.

“Wanna hit the beach?” asked Talbot. “I could go for a long nap on the sand.”

“Sure,” I said. It sounded pretty good, actually.

I left my bike locked near dog training, and we strolled to Natural Bridges, a big stretch of beach by Santa Cruz's standards.

“Don't you feel so lucky to live here?” said Talbot, always the optimist, laying out her towel on the sand. Not anticipating a beach trip, I hadn't come prepared and sat crossed-legged on my sweatshirt.

I didn't feel all that lucky about anything in my life.

Talbot took off her shirt and shorts, revealing a small turquoise bikini with green piping. She had more confidence than I'd ever have.

“So what's with Oak giving you the cold shoulder today?” she asked. I knew it would only be a matter of time before she brought it up.

“Was it that obvious?”

“Um, yeah, he's usually like all over you,” she said.

“No, he's not.”

“Well, at least with his eyes. He knows where you are at all times during dog rehab.”

I had been so busy thinking about him that I'd failed to notice him thinking about me.

“We had a fight. Friday night. Didn't you see?”

Talbot nodded. “Yeah. I didn't think it was that big of a deal.”

“It continued. After the beach, I mean. We fought in the street.”

“How dramatic!” said Talbot, who seemed excited by the theatrics, whereas I was so embarrassed by the whole thing.

“I just don't want him to think he needs to help me,” I said.

“I think it's nice to have a guy look out for you.”

“Yeah, but I don't want help,” I said.

“Okay, okay.”

We sat there quietly, soaking in the sun's rays.

“Did you see the way everyone looked at me the other night? Like I was some sort of monster,” I said under my breath.

Talbot sat up, took off her sunglasses, and looked straight at me.

“Hey! That was one jerk. You can't base everything on his stupid opinion. No one even likes that guy,” she said, lying back down.

“Maybe I scared Oak away,” I said.

“Um, I don't know if you've noticed, but the guy is kind of fearless.”

That was exactly what I liked about him.

“You're so lucky. I wish I had some summer loving,” Talbot said, eyeing three surfers exiting the water with their surfboards under their arms. “I got a letter from Mr. Ettinger.”

I thought it was funny that she still called him that.

“From jail?” I asked.

Talbot nodded.

“But isn't he like banned from even thinking about you forever?”

Talbot was quietly contemplative for a moment. “He sent it to a friend of mine, from school. So it wouldn't be obvious it was to me.”

“What did it say?”

“Just talked about jail. The food. His roommate.”

“You're making it sound like college,” I said.

“Well, to me, they're both a kind of prison, don't you think?”

I hadn't thought about college in those terms before. It didn't seem like a punishment to me, just the next stop in my educational path. But then I thought about how college wasn't even on the radar for Oak and how at this time next year, Talbot would be cruising the country's highways, going wherever she pleased.

“He says he misses me, and he's been thinking about me,” Talbot said.

“Are you going to write back?” I asked.

“I have to figure out a way to do it. If they find out he's talking to me, he could get more time.”

The afternoon heat was oppressive. Pools of sweat formed under my arms, at the back of my knees; even my palms seemed sweaty.

I looked out at the expansive ocean and watched as the waves hypnotized me into a reverie, taking me back to all those times I swam with my mom. Maybe I hadn't been completely lying when I told Talbot she was still alive. Life wasn't only about the physical being. If I could let those waves wash over me, maybe there was still a piece of her out there left behind for me.

“Wanna go for a swim?” I surprised myself with my own question.

“This is kind of embarrassing, but I'm scared of the ocean,” said Talbot.

“Do you know how to swim?” I asked.

“In a chlorinated pool? Yes,” said Talbot.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. “
You're
afraid of something?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“You just seem so…full of adventure,” I said.

“You don't worry about what's out there? The things you can't even see?”

My only fear of the water had to do with how I'd react after returning to it after so long. It wasn't what was out there—it was that it might remind me of what was missing right here.

“C'mon.” I stood up and shook the sand off my legs. I'd been down to my black sports bra for options this morning—it would pass just fine as a bikini top. And if I swam in my shorts, they'd dry out pretty quickly in this heat.

“Where are we going?” Talbot asked.

I reached out for her hand.

“I am going to take you on a tour of the ocean.”

Talbot hesitated. “The last time I attempted to go swimming, a huge wave crashed over me and filled my entire bathing suit with sand. I had to be rescued by a lifeguard. He was super cute, by the way, which was the only positive thing about the whole experience.”

I continued to hold my hand out to my friend, and she took hold. We walked together toward the water's edge, getting our toes wet. Talbot followed me as I waded in past my waist, approaching the point where the waves were breaking.

“Those waves are so big!” shouted Talbot.

Returning to the ocean felt like coming home, as though I had been reunited with a part of myself I'd been missing. It completely invigorated me.

“I've swam in bigger!” I called back and dove under the crest of the next wave, feeling a tingle as the cold water washed through my hair, sending a shiver all the way down to my feet. When I surfaced, Talbot was treading water, trying to see below her.

“Where did you learn to swim like that?” she asked.

“My mom,” I shouted above the crashing sound of the waves that were now behind us. “She was part fish.”

I had spoken in the past tense, which meant I had given myself away. But Talbot hadn't seemed to notice.

This was my favorite space in the ocean—past the waves, where the water sloshed but wasn't violent. A place where I could forget I was even in an ocean. The place where Mom and I would have contests to see who could tread water the longest or who could swim out to the buoys and back the fastest. Once she put me up to the challenge of seeing who was brave enough to swim toward a passing pod of dolphins. Mom was everywhere in these waters, and my only regret was that it had taken two years to get back to her.

Talbot was too far away notice the tears streaming down my face.

“What the hell is that?” she screamed, looking down.

“Stop looking down!” I said.

“No, seriously, there's something down there!” She was panicking.

I swam over to her. She was awkwardly treading water, keeping her limbs in close, which made her movements more frantic and exhausting.

“Where?” I asked.

“There! It was right there. Oh my God. I think it's a shark. We're totally gonna die!”