The comment startles me, and I study my corndog as though the explanation might be skewered on a stick and wrapped in deep fried cornmeal. “How do you mean?”
“For coming up with this idea.”
“The zoo or The Test?”
“Both. I meant The Test, but I’ve gotta admit I haven’t visited the zoo for years.” He looks down at the table, not meeting my eyes. “Not since I was six and I came here for some special freebie day for underprivileged kids.”
There’s a darkness in his voice, in his face, that wasn’t there a minuted ago. I’m not sure whether to ask about it or change the subject.
The old Lisa would gloss things over to keep the conversation bright and easy.
That’s not what I do. “Was it not a good experience?”
He shrugs and glances out over the aviary beside us. We’ve chosen a table where we can watch birds fitting from branch to branch, and his gaze follows a golden-breasted starling being pestered by a cluster of speckled mousebirds.
“Part of the deal was that poor kids got a free backpack,” he says. “It was supposed to be a back-to-school thing, I guess. I was so proud of that damn backpack, and I wore it around the zoo all day like a fucking superman cape.”
I smile at the mental picture, though there’s a twinge of uneasiness in my gut. I remember my own mom lecturing us—Cassie, Missy, me—about setting aside part of our allowance to donate to poor kids who needed school supplies. It seemed like a charitable idea at the time, but now I bristle at the memory of her words. At the self-serving place they may have come from.
“Did something bad happen with the backpack?” I ask softly.
He turns away from the birds and looks at me. “I was standing there licking my free orange popsicle and watching the polar bears when this group of boys comes walking up beside me.” His voice sounds distant and a little hollow, but his eyes hold mine. “I heard one of them snickering and then he said, ‘Look, there’s one of those welfare kids with the ghetto backpack.’”
“God.” I wince. “Kids are so horrible.”
He clears his throat. “I didn’t realize he was talking about me at first. I had no idea—” His voice dries up there, and he shakes his head for a second before glancing back at the birds. “Anyway, it felt pretty shitty.”
“Did you throw the backpack away?”
There’s a flicker of irritation in his expression. “Hell no. I couldn’t afford to be prideful. Not then, anyway.”
I nod and start to reach across the table for his hand. At the last second, I realize that might feel like pity, and I know it’s the last thing he wants right now. Instead, I grab another french fry. “That’s really lousy. I’m sorry that happened to you.”
The words sound cliché and hollow, but I hope he knows how much I mean them. That I really do care. That I hate more than anything how, at some point in my life, I’ve probably been one of those elitist kids. Not a bully, mind you, but certainly a self-congratulatory princess doling out hand-me-downs with little thought about how it felt to receive them.
Dax reaches across the table and gives me a small smile. “Hey. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For listening. For bringing me here today and making it a great experience.” The smile gets bigger. “And for fucking me senseless last night.”
I smile back and curl my fingers into his. “You do that a lot, you know.”
“Fuck you senseless?”
“That, too. But I meant changing an uncomfortable subject by saying something crass.”
He studies me a moment, then nods. “Good point. You’re probably right.”
“I’m not complaining. Just an observation.”
He gives my hand a squeeze then lets go and picks up his second corndog. “Come on. Let’s finish eating so we can get to the Warty Pig demo.”
I laugh and pick up my phone, which just buzzed with an incoming text message. “That’s Sarah,” I report. “She says thanks again for helping with yesterday’s field trip to Helping Paws.”
“It was fun.” He grins. “Junie and all her friends seemed to love it.”
“She had a total blast.”
