What Happens Next (13 page)

I felt like God was watching and some giant cosmic hammer would swing down and flatten me if I didn’t pay for it. When we got into the parking lot, I had it all planned. Paige would stand outside with our bags and Kirsten and I would do a loop-de-loo around the store, walk up to the counter, and casually pay for the gum. No big deal. But when we got to the door, I was so afraid that I leaned halfway inside, chucked my ill-gotten gain toward the candy rack, and yelled, “Run!” We took off as though our very lives depended on it, convinced that the candy police were hot on our tails. One of our bags split open and we lost half our legitimate purchases somewhere between Everything’s A Dollar and Paige’s front porch.

“Can I help you find something?” a voice says behind me. I jerk around and the clerk is staring at me.

“Uh, uh…” I stammer. She looks down at what’s in my hand.

“Ohhhh,” she says. She’s a college-age girl who looks like she doesn’t actually go to college. She has stringy blond hair and long artificial nails, and she reeks of a sickly sweet, dessert-type perfume.

“Uh, I have to go. My dog is waiting.”

I try to put the box back on the shelf, but my hands are shaking so badly that I knock off about ten other boxes. I squat down and start to pick them up. The reality of my situation sets in. No—it floods in. A voice says:
No one will blame you, your mom will understand, she will pay for a trip to the clinic.
And another voice argues:
But you couldn’t live with having done that… ever… because he or she would still have been part of you… half from you…

The store is getting very small and I am trying to grab boxes, wobbling around, toppling over, and grabbing the shelf to balance myself.

“Hey, calm down. It’s okay,” the cashier says, kneeling down to help me. “I’ve had several scares myself. Chances are good that you’re not.”

“I only have fifteen dollars,” I say, looking at her and trying to choke back a nervous breakdown. “You’re out of the store brand. I don’t have enough….”

She looks up at the empty space on the shelf. She reaches up and grabs the box next to it. The one that tells you in plain English if you’re pregnant or not pregnant. The one that costs twenty dollars. She hands it to me.

“We have a replacement policy. If we’re out of the store brand, you get the lowest priced brand name instead.”

A wave of relief washes over me.

“Really?”

“No,” she says, shrugging, “not really.” Then she adds with an awkward laugh, “But we should!”

I smile a nervous smile and we both stand up. I pull my money out of my pocket and hand it to her all wadded up. My hands are still shaking. I look at her as she is smoothing out the bills. I memorize her face. Underneath her smudged black eyeliner there is a kindness, and I wonder if she knows Shelley Keep It Green. She will be the Drugstore Madonna to me now.

We walk to the counter and she rings me up. She hands me my change and I drop it in the little plastic box that is sitting on the counter with a little girl’s picture pasted on it. I give the dollar and nine cents to Mia Peeples, age four, of Dogwood Lane, who needs help paying for an operation.

Then I thank the cashier and go to retrieve Ronan. As I open the door to leave, I stop halfway through it and look at my Drugstore Madonna, who is leafing through a magazine, and a need wells up inside me. Before I can stop it from coming out, the need spills quietly out of my mouth.

“I didn’t want to.”

She looks up from her magazine.

“He took it,” I say. “He stole it from me.”

I can feel my face getting hot, my eyes burning.

Her eyes are hurting and I am regretful now. I am sorry that I have handed her, uninvited, a piece of what I carry.

“I’m so sorry,” she says.

“Me, too,” I say with a trembling chin.

I confess these things to the Drugstore Madonna because I don’t know her and she doesn’t know me and I will never come into this store again. Ever. But I don’t feel better having done it. The burden is actually heavier now.

“Thanks,” I say, then turn and walk out the door.

I look down at Ronan. My mind says one thing: Run. Like he has heard me speak out loud, Ronan takes off and we run, as fast as we can, into the cold, starless night, the February air drying my face a little more with each step.

13

There is a God:
NOT PREGNANT
. I can only assume that stress, heavy exercise, and rapid weight loss have thrown my period off. I’ve lost sixteen pounds in five weeks, mostly off of my ample chest and plentiful thighs. But the badonkadonk junk? Still in the trunk. My ass is as big as it ever was.

So basically, none of my clothes hang right anymore. My mother has noticed my slimmer face and figure and keeps asking me if I’m sick.
No, I’m not sick,
I tell her.
I am going out for track and watching my weight. Jeez, shut up about it already.

My mom has not sold a house in over a month. It is February, and while “lookers” are numerous, “buyers” are not. While we are not necessarily hurting to pay bills, I don’t want to ask for money for new clothes. So I need a job if I want to buy them. I have filled out job applications at a pet supply store, Starbucks, and The Diner. I can walk and jog to all of these places. I figure it’s not just for the clothes money, but it will be a good way to keep busy after school and on weekends.
Downtime
is no longer in my vocabulary.

So far, none of the places have called. Probably because my applications are so pitifully void of anything other than my name and address. There is always McDonald’s; they’re
always
hiring. Especially work virgins—they love to break in doe-eyed work virgins. If you’re sixteen and have a pulse, you’ve got a job. But I’m not that desperate yet. I’ll dip into my babysitting/birthday money before I go that sad route. Besides, there’s no point in buying clothes yet. I’ve still got nine pounds to lose. I figure by the time I fill out applications, then interview, then start working and finally get a paycheck, I will be at my desired goal weight and I can go shopping for new jeans and bras. I’m shooting for a C cup—a size I haven’t seen since sixth grade.

I choose a pair of sweatpants, a black tee, and a hoodie before heading out the door. I run to school now. I load up on the deodorant, wash my face, and fix my hair in the locker room before anyone gets there. Only the janitors are there, and they don’t seem to mind as long as I clean up after myself.

On my way out the door, I notice that the newspaper is sitting at Mrs. O’Leary’s door, still wrapped in orange plastic. It doesn’t seem right; Mrs. O’Leary never forgets her paper. She rises at four thirty sharp and has the paper completely read—cover to cover, coupons clipped, crossword done—and neatly folded at our door by seven for my mother to peruse over her morning coffee. She always sets the funnies on top with little notes written to Liam and me in the margins. All Mrs. O’Leary asks is that we take all the papers to the recycling headquarters once a month along with her glass and plastic.

I knock on her door but she doesn’t answer. I peek in her front window and see that her television is on, set to mute with captions running because she has trouble hearing it now. Her door is locked, so I go around the house, pull back some overgrown shrubs, and peek into a side window. My heart drops into my stomach. She’s in the hallway outside her bedroom, lying facedown on the floor.

I run back toward the front of the house. I trip coming up the porch steps and bang my shin really hard. I scramble inside and run through the house to find my mother. She’s in the shower.

“Mrs. O’Leary! Mom! Help! It’s locked! She’s on the floor!”

My mom jerks back the shower curtain, sopping wet, the shower still running; grabs her robe; and runs to the junk drawer where she keeps a spare key to Mrs. O’Leary’s half of our house.

Massive heart attack. The funeral was small—just her nephew, his family, a few scattered people from her bridge club, the priest, and us. I wanted to bring Ronan, but the priest wouldn’t allow him in the church and the nephew didn’t care enough to protest. Poor Ronan has howled nonstop for days. His howls of grief can be heard around the clock, far and wide, throughout the greater Cleveland area. My mom finally broke down and has been letting him inside at night.

We are watching
America’s Got Talent
; I’m rooting for the black, dreadlocked guy from West Virginia who sings Sinatra. I love an underdog. A commercial comes on, so I get up to bring Ronan in for the night. When I get to the door, I see that a van is pulling up. Mrs. O’Leary’s nephew is backing a van up to the garage like it’s a moving truck. He gets out and heads over to the dog-run gate holding a leash.

My mom and I run out and ask him what he’s doing.

“Getting rid of your problem. Thanks for keeping an eye on him, feeding him and whatnot.”

“Where are you taking him?” I ask.

“The pound. My wife is allergic and I don’t have time to take him to a wolfhound rescue. The nearest one is in Canada, and I can’t take a day off work to drive him all the way to Toronto.”

I freak. And I mean completely out. A beautiful specimen of a dog like Ronan? Unneutered? Sitting in the pound? He’ll be snapped up by the first piece of breeder trash to come along. He’ll be half-starved and sitting in his own crap in a week while the bloodsucking puppy mill owner sits back making a fortune off puppies. Ronan—my guardian angel—an unloved, shit-covered, flea-bitten puppy maker? Hell, no.

“Yeah, you’re not taking him to the pound,” I say. “Unbelievable. I mean, your aunt loved this dog. So he’s staying right here. This is my dog now.”

I snatch the leash from him before he tries to wrangle Ronan up into the van.

My mother, who has been fairly adamant about the fish-only rule, just looks at me like I have become possessed. I throw her a daggered look that says,
Mother or not, I will scratch your eyeballs out if you mess with me on this.
The nephew looks at my mom.

“Fine,” she says. “But I’m paying the vet bills with your college money.”

The nephew shrugs, climbs into his van, and slips quietly out the drive, happy to have his problem solved. My fears abated, I kneel down, hug Ronan close, and think,
This is my dog now.

14

It is the middle
of March, the grading period is almost over, and my grades are a disgrace. Three Cs. My mother, thankfully, is not a grade Nazi, so she will probably just tell me to do better next time, which I will.

I have a hat on, but my hair spills down behind me in frozen little coils. I took a shower before bed, so it was still damp when Ronan and I woke to go running. The weather is starting to break, but the snow is still piled up in places in dirty, half-melted clumps. Streetlamps light us up, every hundred feet or so, as we pad quietly down a deserted Lake Road, the park entrance just ahead.

I am deep in thought, tuned into the feel of my body, thumping along and enjoying the ease of my slimmer frame. I am thinking about how many calories I am burning, trying to do the calculations in my head, when an old white pickup truck passes us, slams on its brakes, and then pulls into the park entrance, blocking us from going forward. Ronan lets out a growl, bares his teeth, and leans forward, stretching his leash. This is the first time I have seen him act like anything other than a complete teddy bear. I turn to run us the other way and can hear the driver’s side window being lowered behind me. I fumble for the pepper spray that I keep in my pocket.

“Murphy?” a voice says.

I turn around and recognize the face. It is the Living Stoner, a cigarette dangling from his lips. My Spidey senses, which were at five-alarm panic, quell, sending a warmish chill of relief up my spine, down my arm, through the leash, and into Ronan, who relaxes immediately. I breathe out and walk closer to the truck. I am sure I look frightful: sweating, breathing heavily, and sporting a red nose.

But it’s not like I care or anything.

“Hey, Corey,” I say, tilting my head back because he is so high up. He doesn’t look at me. He can’t take his eyes off Ronan. He takes the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and blows a stream of smoke away from us, out the side of his mouth and into the cab of his truck.

“What the hell kinda dog is that?” he says, still looking at Ronan.

Ronan looks longingly over at a cluster of trees. I release his leash to the full extent and let him sniff his way over.

“He’s the banana snow-cone making kind.”

On cue, Ronan raises his leg and prepares to let loose on a mound of remnant snow that has piled up against the trunk of an enormous tree.

“Oh, look,” I say. “He’s about to make a fresh batch. Want one?”

“Ha, ha. You’re a riot,” the Living Stoner says and stamps out his cigarette in the ashtray.

When Ronan finishes, he walks over, rears up, plants both paws in the window and drags a huge meaty tongue across the Living Stoner’s face.