The truth is, my neighbor is usually too stoned to know which day it is, let alone if I’m still breathing. But I’ll manage. I’ve lived through worse things. “My dog was doing okay when you checked on him?” I shift in my seat with a hiss, dropping my head against the headrest.
Given Sol’s track record with breaking promises, he wasn’t my first choice for keeping Toaster alive in my absence. Unfortunately, he was my only choice.
“Oh, yeah, the ragamuffin was happy as a clam at high tide. Your neighbor must’ve stopped by before I got there.”
I frown. “What?”
“Someone was already at the house. The dog was eating like a king. Had multiple bowls filled with kibble, enough water to hydrate the Sahara, and a few chew toys that looked like they were put to good use.”
My heart stutters.
There’s no way Rock took the time to spoil my dog. He told me once that he didn’t trust dogs, convinced they were plants by the government to condition us.
“Right.” I clear my throat. “Thanks for going over there to check on him.”
“Told you before, I got you. Better late than never, eh?”
I rub a hand over my chin, my mind reeling with possible good Samaritans.
Surely it wasn’t her…
I close my eyes, and a pretty girl flickers across my memories: big blue eyes clouded with confusion and dread, pink cheeks dampened with tears, and dark hair threaded with violet streaks while wisps of pale blond framed her porcelain face.
She sang to me.
Everything about that night is a blur, but the sound of her voice—a soulful, throaty melody—somehow trickled through the haze and buried deep.
Annie?
Stella loved the movieAnnie. The music, the bright, hopeful energy of it. She used to sing the songs around the house, her voice filling the empty spaces with a kind of innocence I can’t get back. I’d catch her twirling in the living room, laughing at her own off-key rendition of “Tomorrow,” a little girl lost in her own joy.
I swallow hard, trying to smash the foggy pieces together until they take shape.
Panic, screaming, chaos.
Softness, warm touches, sweet songs.
At some point, the girl I inadvertently kidnapped found an ounce of sympathy for me and kept me alive. I can’t help but feel like she’s responsible for keeping my dog alive too.
It doesn’t make sense.
Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation would have jumped from the car at the first stoplight and left me to bleed out and rot on the side of the road.
But she didn’t.
I squeeze my eyes tighter, willing the memories to brighten, to glow. She was talking to me, trying to keep me coherent. Asking questions. I think her name was Annie, but I can’t be sure.
Annabelle, Annemarie, An—
“Saw that store clerk all over the news,” Sol says, flicking the radio dial until the Police serenade us from the speaker. “Looks like he’s in deep shit.”
I blink away the fading images of the woman and stare down at my dirty boots. “It’s my fault.”
“Don’t do that pity-party shit, man. Who in their right mind shoots at a guy who’s just trying to feed his dog? That’s a hell of an overreaction.” He swerves onto a side road and barrels toward my part of town. “Deadly force isn’t justified against a person who poses no imminent threat. According to Google, anyway.”
I cringe.
I’m dreading the legal mess I’ve landed myself in. The cops came, asked their questions, and left. The clerk’s story kept changing. First, he said I lunged at him. Then it was that I had something in my hand. Everything about that moment is a black-tar haze, but I know I didn’t do anything to warrant getting shot.
