Mr. Conrad blinked at me when I’d finally gotten enough words out for him to get the gist of the story. “Some people shouldn’t own dogs,” he said. “They didn’t see you, did they?”
I shook my head.
He pulled his mouth down in an unhappy frown. “You shouldn’t be sneaking around other people’s property, Cash, especially at night.”
I looked away, guilt and unease twisting up my gut. I tried to shrink into the space between my shoulders.But you didn’t hear the sound it made, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t. Words were always harder to get out when I could feel the mood shifting around me and every instinct in me was telling me to be quiet, be small, and you might get lucky enough to be overlooked. So I stared at the piece of Lego in my hand like mylife depended on memorizing its exact dimensions, not daring to breathe.
Mr. Conrad was silent too, and then he let out a long sigh. “When my Simon was, oh, he must’ve been about seventeen, he went to a party.”
I glanced back and saw that Mr. Conrad’s gaze had gotten a little distant, the way it did when he talked about the past. Distant but content, because his past was a good one.
“Anyway, he saw a bunch of boys taking a drunk girl into a bedroom, so he followed them and got her out of there. Laura and I got a call from the police to pick him up from the hospital because those other boys hadn’t taken kindly to being interrupted.” He shook his head. “I tore strips off him, Cash.”
I jolted in surprise.
“Because he was hurt,” Mr. Conrad said. “Because he’d put himself in harm’s way. I had never been more proud of him, and there I was yelling at him that he should have been more careful. I was so scared for him, you see. So scared and so proud and so angry all at the same time. People are messy, and dads are no exception. So, yes, Simon did the right thing, and so did you, because neither of you could ignore someone who needed your help, but I’m allowed to be a little scared for you too.”
I nodded, feeling some of the tension in my shoulders ease.
“I’m not angry at you,” Mr. Conrad said. “Just worried that it could have gone badly.”
It kind of had, but Mr. Conrad didn’t know that part.
I’d taken the dog straight to the vet in Goose Run. Except it hadn’t been the old guy who’d opened the door. It had been a young guy, with hazel eyes and messy dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He’d been wearing pajama pants and a hoodie and his feet had been bare.
I didn’t tell Mr. Conrad that I’d fainted when the blood went everywhere, or that I’d run away from the vet before he could askme for money. Or that I’d lain awake the whole night worrying about the dog and didn’t get any sleep before today’s day shift, and then spent all of today doing the exact same thing. And not just worrying about the dog either, but also worrying about the vet and what would happen if he found me. I didn’t know what dog operations cost, but I had less than twenty dollars in my wallet, and I was pretty sure it was a hell of a lot more than that.
“Where’s the dog now?” Mr. Conrad asked. “Somewhere safe?”
I nodded, though it might have been a lie. Mr. Conrad was easier to talk to than most people, but that didn’t mean I could admit to him that I’d left the dog with the vet, and I didn’t know if the vet was going to look after him or not because I hadn’t paid. He would, right? He’d seemed nice. He’d gotten me a soda after I’d hit the floor. But I didn’t know for sure. What if he wasn’t nice? What if he put the dog to sleep because nobody was going to pay for it? What if I’d killed it by taking it to him?
My hands started to shake.
“Line the blocks up for me, Cash,” Mr. Conrad said. “Biggest to smallest for me. You’re not in any trouble and nobody’s angry.”
I sucked in a breath and began to arrange the Lego blocks.
“Good,” Mr. Conrad said. “That’s it. Keep doing that. And how about you keep going until you can tell me what’s eating you up right now?”
We didn’t build much of the Colosseum in the end.
It waslate afternoon when I got home. I’d eventually spilled my guts to Mr. Conrad, and he’d told me to tell Chase and have him call the vet to ask what to do about the dog. Mr. Conrad knewme well enough to know that I could never make a phone call. He didn’t know Chase at all, though, or he never would have suggested I get him to do it instead. Chase wasn’t great with people either, except he was a lot more aggressive about it.
I killed the engine of the dirt bike in the driveway, took my helmet off, and then trudged toward the house’s sagging porch.
I had no idea how I was going to tell Chase what I’d done. He’d be pissed, because why’d I have to do something so stupid over a dog that wasn’t even mine? And that wasn’t to say he wouldn’t get it—hewould—but sometimes I thought he got mad when I did dumb stuff, or stuff he considered dumb, because he didn’t have that luxury. Our whole lives, Chase had looked after me and only me. He didn’t have room in his brain to think about anyone else, even himself, which was why things had gotten off to a rocky start with Lee. And why he got pissed when I did something like drop a few bucks in a charity jar instead of keeping them for myself. Like, he would crawl over hot coals to give me his last dollar, so why the fuck would I just go and give mine away like it was nothing? There was a kind of messed-up Chase-logic to it.
So I had no idea how I was going to break it to him that I’d probably have to sell most of my stuff, and maybe even all of it, to make things right with the vet.
The front door opened before I even got to it, and Chase glared at me. “What the hell did youdo?”
Turned out that maybe I didn’t have to break it to him.
“Guess who came into the bakery today?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows. “The new vet. And guess what he told me?”
“Okay.” Danny, our roommate, appeared beside Chase and put a hand on his shoulder. “Want to let him in before you give him the third degree? And we’re not mentioning the d-o-g while Gracie’s here, remember?”
“She canspell, Danny,” Chase said and rolled his eyes.
