Strays (8 page)

“So you know what you have to do next time?”

Next time! Did he seriously believe there was going to be a next time?

“Can't I have a new dog?” I asked.

“Roman needs you,” said Kevin.

“Can't I switch with someone else?”

“Roman needs
you
.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I asked.

“It's no coincidence you two are paired up together. I think you have a lot more in common than you realize,” said Kevin. Then he left to help the rest of the group with their dogs.

The waters were rising
, churning in my stomach like rough ocean waves. Why were this dog's needs more important than my own?

*

“That was heavy,” said Talbot, once the other dogs had been collected and we were officially dismissed.

“I'm over it,” I announced.

“Over what?” Talbot asked.

“That dog.”

“He's so cute!” said Talbot.

“You think everyone is cute,” I said.

“You should see me with guys.”

We laughed.

“So, you coming to my place tonight?” asked Talbot.

“Yup. Can I bike there?”

“You better take the bus. It's up a steep hill at the top of Bay.”

“What time?”

“Seven. And don't be late. My parents are nuts about dinner starting on time. Speaking of which, there's my dad. See ya!” She ran off and hopped into her dad's car.

Tonight, I would be having a real family dinner.

As I was unlocking my bike, Oak approached me. “I think I would have been scared, too,” he said.

“Of what?” I pretended not to know what he was talking about.

“Actually, all things considered, you stayed pretty calm. A lot calmer than I would have been.”

“I don't really like dogs,” I said.

He loosened the hood around his face, exposing his chin. “The queen of the animal kingdom doesn't like dogs? How's that for ironic?”

I never would have expected the word
ironic
to come out of Oak's mouth. He was the school bad boy—not that I thought he'd be speaking in grunts or anything.

“You wanna go to Pergolesi and grab a coffee?” he asked, straight out of left field.

He knew about my passion for bio and my love affair with coffee? This guy was observant.

“I do, but I can't,” I said. “I have homework. Summer school. And then I have dinner plans. Rain check?”

“Sure.”

I nodded and Oak waved and got into his truck—an old, faded, cherry-red Chevrolet.

On my bike ride home I wondered if Oak was just being nice to me because a three-legged professional killer almost attacked me—or if maybe, just maybe, he kinda liked me? I couldn't decode Kevin's message about Roman and me—how we apparently had a lot in common. Besides both being mammals, I couldn't think of one thing. Roman had fear-based aggression. What was I afraid of? I guess I didn't love speaking my mind, but I still got frustrated when people didn't get where I was coming from.

In a way, Roman had it a lot harder than me—he didn't have the capacity to communicate. I, at least, had the ability to open up to people, should I ever choose to do so.

At home the neighbor's dog was at the fence, greeting me with growls and barks. I gathered the mail from our box, tucked the pile of bills under my arm, and approached the dog with a display of fake confidence.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. The dog followed me closely, never breaking eye contact.

In a stern voice I said, “Sit!” I watched his ears perk up as the ninety-pound bullmastiff lowered his body into a quintessential dog sitting position.

I couldn't help but smile.

“Stay!” I said, putting my hand up to his face on the other side of the fence.

The dog didn't move until I was through my front door.

At least one animal was listening to me.

*

After completing two hours of reading for Perry's class (it took me that long because I kept getting distracted, thinking about Oak), bouncing around on the Internet, and Googling Oak's name (his court case came up in a small article in the
Sentinel
with the headline, “Local Teen Genius Leads Police on a Cyber Goose Chase”), it was finally time to head over to Talbot's. I checked the fridge to see if I could bring anything to contribute to dinner. It was pretty barren except for a few vegetable juices and a bottle of champagne that Dad had purchased—no doubt to celebrate his impending promotion. The final interview was on Monday, and I couldn't wait until he stopped talking about it all the time.

Even though Talbot had told me not to bike, I tried to cycle up Bay, one of the biggest hills in the city, until my legs felt like they were on fire, at which point I waited patiently for the 1 University bus to arrive and hooked my bike to the front. The bus dropped me off right in front of Talbot's house at UC Santa Cruz's faculty housing. I guessed her parents were professors.

The brown houses with green trim all looked the same, like a mini suburbia. Across the housing development were two huge fields of dried grass, cut in half by the road that the bus continued on up to campus. Cows grazed on the grass, and at the top of the hill were scores of redwood trees clustered in tight circles. Hidden among the shade of the redwoods sat UC Santa Cruz. It felt strange to be in such proximity to a university and yet, with my slipping grades and out-of-school problems, I couldn't have felt further away from a college-bound future. I would feel like a complete failure if I didn't make it to my vision of the Brown library.

I walked my bike up to Talbot's and rang the doorbell.

A little boy answered. “I'm Thaddeus, but you can call me Bug Man.” He held up a plastic container with all sorts of creepy crawlies in it.

“Thad! Get those bugs out of the house!” Talbot's mom's voice bellowed from the kitchen.

“Cool insects,” I said. It made him stop in his tracks.

“You like bugs?” he asked.

“I do!” I said, bending down to get a better look at the smattering of earwigs and potato bugs crawling around in the plastic container. “Did you know that there are over twenty million bugs per person on the planet?”

“No way!” said Talbot's brother.

“It's true,” I said.

“That's disgusting.” Talbot bounded down the stairs to greet me. “You can put your bike here.” She leaned it up against the hallway wall.

“Ah! An environmentalist. I like it,” said the man following behind her.

“That's my dad,” Talbot said.

I shook his hand. He squeezed it so hard it hurt.

“It's not by choice, Dad. She doesn't have a car.”

I stood there and smiled awkwardly.

“Well, that makes two of you then,” her dad said and walked into the kitchen.

Did he think that, like his daughter, I had been convicted of drunk driving as well?

Talbot stared at my feet. “We're a no-shoe household. You can put yours in the basket. Mom likes to remind us that she doesn't want everything we've potentially stepped in to follow us home.”

“Remind her about the shoes!” shouted her mom from the kitchen.

“On it!” Talbot yelled back.

“Watch your tone!” called her father.

Talbot rolled her eyes.

“You watch your tone…” she said, under her breath. “Come on, I have to set the table.”

In the kitchen, I met Talbot's mother, who looked exactly like Talbot but older and without a nose ring. In fact, her parents seemed so completely normal. I didn't know what I was expecting, maybe more piercings and tattoos between the two of them.

I followed Talbot around the table, placing forks and knives on either side of the fabric placemats she was setting down. At our house, we were self-sufficient. Every man for himself.

Dinner was a green-bean-and-tomato salad with mozzarella cheese that melted in my mouth and a huge bowl of pasta with fresh pesto Talbot's dad made from basil growing in their garden. Way better than my usual mac-and-cheese.

“So, Iris, where do you go to school?” asked Talbot's dad.

“Santa Cruz High.”

“Do you like it?” asked her mom.

I nodded, lying.

Talbot's dad followed up with, “What does your dad do?”

I hadn't come prepared for an interview.

“He's a manager at a juicing facility,” I said.

“And your mom?” asked Talbot's mom.

There was a certain look people gave me when I told them my mom was dead. I could see the pity in their eyes. They'd stare at me an uncomfortably long time and conjure up a specific smile that said both
That is so awful
and
I'm so glad I'm not you
. I wasn't interested in inviting these pity-party smiles to ruin my perfectly good dinner at Talbot's.

“She's a librarian,” I said. It was just easier to speak about my mom in the present tense.

“Oh really! Where?” asked Talbot's dad. “Thaddeus, stop playing with your food!”

Talbot's brother disassembled the vegetable village on his plate.

I struggled to remember the name of the library in the center of town that I had walked by so many times. Then it came to me. “Central Branch. On Church.” Little did they know that since my mom died, I avoided libraries like the plague.

“So you must be an avid reader then,” said Talbot's mother. I didn't mention I had failed English.

“Yeah, and an avid batterer of English teachers,” said Talbot, under her breath.

“What was that?” asked her dad.

“Nothing,” Talbot said.

I shot her a look.

Talbot's dad wiped pesto off of his lips. “See that, Talbot, some people your age actually enjoy reading literature.”

Talbot rolled her eyes and said to me, “He thinks I should do better in school.”

“Better is an understatement,” added her mother.

I was sitting there privy to a conversation that was meant just for the three of them. It didn't quite feel right, and I could tell it was making Talbot uncomfortable.

Hoping to change the subject, I turned my attention to Thaddeus.

“Did you know that in Thailand they eat grasshoppers?” I said.

“Cool! I want to go there!” said Thaddeus.

But Talbot's mom brought the focus back to me. “So what are your college plans?”

“Hopefully, I'll be at Brown. It's where my mom went,” I said.

“You set your sights high. I like that,” said Talbot's dad. “I wish someone else would do the same.” He looked over at Talbot, who refused to make eye contact with him.

Even though it was easy to say I was going to Brown, I knew that in reality, it all depended on my grades and whether or not I'd get a student loan approved at the bank.

“Any idea what you'll study?” asked Talbot's dad.

It was beginning to feel as though I were back on trial with all these questions. Did they always hound Talbot like this? I suddenly appreciated my dad's silence.

Talbot forked her food. “Dad's a psychology professor. He's way into the
thought process
.”

“Or in some cases, the lack thereof,” her dad said and shot his daughter another look.

They were coming down hard on Talbot, and I could tell by the way she threw down her bread that she'd had enough.

I answered his question. “I don't know what I'll study yet. I'm a big science person, but I'm not sure where my focus would be.”

“It's important to make goals, Iris. Know what you want,” said Talbot's dad.

“Yeah, be sure and have a plan for everything and be bored the rest of your life,” said Talbot. “That's our family's credo.”

“That's enough, Talbot,” said her mother.

“What, aren't I entitled to my own crappy opinion?” asked Talbot, throwing her fork down.

“Enough!” yelled her dad. “You, young lady, can go to your room.”

Once Talbot was upstairs, her dad apologized to me. “She's just been so difficult. I'm sorry about this.”

We sat in awkward silence for the rest of the meal, including when the berry cobbler came out. I was happy not to have to make conversation. I didn't think I was very good at it anyway. After dinner I was allowed to go upstairs and found Talbot in her room, playing music and looking at a magazine.

“My parents are such jerks,” she said.

“It's okay. Mine are, too.” I felt weird making it seem as though Mom were still alive. But I didn't know how to get out of it now. I went on and on in elaborate detail about what awful things she had done to me in the past few months, mostly stolen from Sierra's former tirades. Talbot listened with a sympathetic ear.

“We'll be out of here soon enough,” she said.

“Where do you want to go to college?” I asked.

“College? It's not for me. At least not right away. I'm taking a year off to travel across the U.S. I mean, there's so much to see and learn through experience instead of learning it in a classroom.”

“That's so cool that your parents are letting you do that!” I was jealous of her freedom.

“Well, they don't know about that plan yet,” said Talbot.

“Oh.”

“But what can they do? I'll be eighteen—a full-on adult. Then they won't have control over me anymore,” she said.

I imagined, just for a second, what it would be like to ditch my Brown University plans and hop in a loaded car with Talbot, cruising the highways, meeting people from all over the globe, living a very different kind of life.

“Kevin is so hot,” said Talbot, applying bright red lipstick at her vanity. When she finished, she leaned in toward the mirror and kissed her reflection—leaving a stain of lip marks.

“Who?” I asked.

“Kevin. Dog trainer Kevin.”

“Oh, yeah.” He was good looking, in a stereotypical Santa Cruz surfer kind of way.