Last Chance

by Norah McClintock

  The paramedics got out of the ambulance and hurried over to Mr. Schuster. Kathy was kneeling beside him. Mr. Schuster’s face was white, but his eyes were open now. A man with Kathy stood up and said something to the paramedics. I recognized him from the tour Kathy had given me on my first day—a vet. Relief flooding over Kathy’s face as the paramedics took over. She squeezed one of Mr. Schuster’s hands before moving out of their way.

  “Is he going to be all right?” I said when she stepped away from him.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She looked around at the staff members and volunteers who had gathered on the lawn. She started toward them, gently telling everyone to go back inside. “Mr. Schuster is in good hands,” she said.

  I hung back for a moment and looked across the lawn to Nick and the rest of the RAD group. They were all facing Mr. Jarvis. All except Nick. He was looking at me. Looking and not smiling. I wasn’t smiling either. I was remembering something that had happened nearly four years ago. It was, as my father would have said, déjà vu all over again.

  Four years ago, I attended an alternative junior high school called South Parkside Alternative—SPA, for short. The school was tiny: fifty kids in all, half in grade seven and half in grade eight, crammed into a couple of rooms on the top floor of a regular kindergarten-tograde-eight school. There were always ten times more kids who wanted to go to SPA than there were places, so those of us who got in thought we were special. SPA was more fun than regular school. We went on more field trips and did more activities, which was great but made some kids in the regular school jealous. At SPA we were encouraged to not just study issues but to get involved—for extra credit, of course.

  It was while I was at SPA that I became active in animal rights. Partly I was talked into it by Billy. Partly I was shamed into it by Morgan, who is one of life’s positive thinkers and who believes that the best thing to do when you fall off a horse is to climb right back on. While I wasn’t about to shake paws with the dog that had bitten me, I was (eventually) willing to show no hard feelings by working to defend animal rights. And that’s why Morgan, Billy, and I organized the pet pageant while we were at SPA—to raise money for Billy’s favorite animal rights charity.

  The pageant itself was the main event. We charged kids a dollar to enter their pets. We got pet supply stores and pet trainers in the area to donate items (little packages of dog and cat toys; baskets of dog, cat and hamster treats; and introductory dog training sessions) for prizes and a raffle. Two of the more artistic kids at SPA volunteered to do face painting—animal-themed, of course—for the little kids who attended. I let Morgan rope me into helping her with the cat race—which was pretty funny, because the cats didn’t seem to understand or, more likely, care that they were supposed to be in a race. You know cats. After twenty minutes of trying to herd felines of all ages and sizes in the general direction of the finish line, my eyes were watering, my nose was running, and the audience, especially its younger members, was convulsed with laughter.

  The pageant was a huge success and not just because school was let out early so that everyone could attend. We raised a lot of money.

  At the end of the day, while the rest of the SPA kids were cleaning up, Billy, Morgan, and I took the money inside to be counted. We were going to give it to our teacher to deposit in the bank so that she could send a check to the animal rights group.

  As we climbed the stairs to the top floor of the school, Morgan chattering away about how well everything had gone and Billy speculating about how much money we had raised (and probably wildly overestimating our results), I was still sneezing from exposure to the cats. SPA consisted of two large classrooms, a smaller room that served as a library, a multipurpose room where we held school meetings and ate lunch, and an office. Except for Morgan, Billy, and me, the school seemed deserted. Our teacher, Lois—we called all the teachers at SPA by their first names—said that she would come up after she had supervised the cleanup.

  Morgan unlocked the office door with the key Lois had given her. We put the money—a couple of tin cans filled with coins and a fat envelope stuffed with bills—on Lois’s desk. I pulled up a chair so that we could start counting. So did Morgan. Then Billy said he hadn’t had a chance to eat anything all day, and Morgan, who is one of those skinny girls who is always munching, said that she’d been too busy to eat too. Since they’d mentioned it, I realized I was hungry too. So we decided to go back down and grab a bite to eat before we counted the money. We closed the office door, and I checked to make sure it was locked.

  As we headed down the stairs to the school yard, I had a moment of panic. My keys! I was always losing them back then. My mother freaked out every time. She’s the kind of person who can’t sleep at night unless she’s already laid out her clothes for the next morning and has her briefcase packed and ready to go. Every time she had a new set of keys made for me, she attached them to a larger and bulkier key chain so that they would be harder to lose. The last key chain had a metal police whistle attached to it, and I had got into the habit of patting my pockets regularly to make sure it was still there. Usually it was. But that day, it was gone.

  I sneezed. Then I got that frozen-up feeling that always came over me when I thought about admitting to my mother that my keys were missing—again. I’m usually the kind of person who tears the house apart looking for something when I lose it. When my father loses something, which he hardly ever does, he stands in one place, closes his eyes, and tries to visualize the last time he had held whatever it was in his hand. He won’t open his eyes until he has that picture fixed in his mind. Then he goes directly to where he left whatever is missing. It’s infuriating. But it works. That’s what I tried that day.

  I stopped on the stairs, gripped the railing, and closed my eyes. I heard Morgan, who was almost at the bottom, sigh and say, “Not again.” She couldn’t believe how often I misplaced my keys. Top of the class, she’d say. You skipped a grade, but you’re completely scattered.

  “I gave them back to you,” I heard her say.

  My eyes popped open. I looked at her and sneezed again.

  “Just before we came inside,” she said. “You gave them to me so I could use the whistle for the cat race. I gave them back to you when the race was over. Seriously, Robyn, anyone would think you try to lose your keys a couple of times a week. Maybe you’re working out some issues with your mother. It’s classic passive-aggressive behavior.” Morgan’s mother is a psychiatrist, so Morgan has always been hyperaware of people’s behavior. She’s always more than happy to provide her analysis too.

  I closed my eyes again. This time I saw Morgan pressing my keys into my already full hands out in the schoolyard. I heard her saying, “Here. There’s no way I’m going to take the blame if you lose them.”

  I had held the keys in my hand. They had dangled from my finger all the way up the stairs. I had put them down when I’d set down a couple of tin cans filled with coins and pulled a tissue from my back pocket to blow my nose again. I turned now and started up the stairs.

  “Hey,” Morgan called. She tossed me the key to the office door. “Meet you outside.”

  I scooted back up the stairs and pushed open the door at the top. That’s when I heard voices—whispers—coming from the office. At first, I didn’t think much about it. Maybe some other kids were putting things away. I turned the corner and saw that the door—the one I had just locked—was open now. I heard more whispering, frantic, like mice scurrying. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t sound right.

  I sneezed.

  Then I heard an urgent whisper: “Someone’s coming.”

  Footsteps pounded toward me. Two boys exploded out of the office, almost bowling me over. One of them I sort of recognized—a short, dark-haired kid who went to the school where SPA was located. The other boy was a lot taller and a lot older. The younger kid paused when he saw me. The older kid barreled past me in a blur, grabbing the younger one on the way by. I heard a door crash against a cinder blo
ck wall and then footsteps fading down a flight of stairs. Shocked, I stepped into the office and looked around. The cans of coins were still there, but the envelope containing the bills was gone.

  I spun around and looked at the door through which the two boys had disappeared. Then I sprinted down the stairs and out into the school yard. After a frantic few moments, I located Lois. I sped over to her and told her exactly what I had seen.

  Based on my description, they caught the younger kid the next day, but I never heard anything about the older boy. And the money? We never got it back. Someone told me that the kid they’d caught said he’d acted alone. I knew that wasn’t true. I told Lois and the school principal that there had been another boy with him. But because I had recognized the younger one, I had concentrated on him. I hadn’t taken a good enough look at the other boy to be able to describe him. The kid I saw, the one I described first to Lois, and later to the police, was Nick D’Angelo. He was expelled from the school. I never saw him again—until now. Obviously, if he was participating in a program for kids who had been charged with violent crimes, things had gone from bad to worse for him.

  . . .

  I got Janet to unlock the door to the office across the hall from mine. I stood inside for five full minutes, maybe longer, trying to remember if I had bumped against the desk when I rushed out of the room.That would account for the knocked-over bills. But I hadn’t. I was sure of it. And as far as I could tell, nothing else could have knocked or blown them over. No pictures or calendars had fallen off the wall. The window wasn’t open. Nothing like that. But I had seen someone dart out of the office. Well, sort of seen someone. All I’d noticed was a flash of movement and the sound of footsteps. I’d told myself that it was just another staff member dashing down the hall. But if that were true, what had disturbed the piles of paper money that I had so carefully stacked? And why, when I’d gone to see what was happening, had Nick and Antoine been standing next to the door, far away from everyone else in their group? Nick and Antoine—two boys who were here because they had been in trouble before. Two boys who had helped carry in the money from Kathy’s car and knew which office it was in. Antoine had been fascinated by how much money the boxes might contain. Nick had lingered in the hallway long after Kathy had dismissed him. He’d said he wanted to talk to her. But had he really? Or had he been waiting to see what Kathy was going to do with the money?

  I was thinking about what to do—what I could do, given that I wasn’t even sure what had happened—when Kathy came back into the building. I asked her how Mr. Schuster was.

  “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m going to call the hospital in a little while. I should have insisted on taking him there on Friday after his accident. I know he has a heart condition.” She sighed. “He can be pretty stubborn, but he sure knows dogs. Loves them too.”

  “I saw him working with Orion last week,” I said.

  “Yes, well, that’s another story,” Kathy said. A story that she didn’t go on to tell me. Someone called her from down the hall, and she excused herself.

  After Kathy left, I kept thinking about the money. I finished sorting the coins into piles. I stacked the bills again and then stared at the stacks, trying to decide if they were the same size as they had been before or if they were smaller. I wasn’t sure. Kathy returned with three women who all seemed to know one another well. After nodding at me, they pulled up some chairs, settled in and started rolling coins, chattering to one another the whole time.

  I went back to my office and looked out the window. After the RAD group worked with their dogs, they usually took a break before reporting to another room in the shelter complex where they talked about what they had learned and, according to Kathy, how the lessons applied to their own lives. I waited until I saw Nick,Antoine, and the rest of the group come out of the animal wing and claim the picnic table.

  By the time I approached them, the picnic table was littered with chip bags and candy wrappers. Three or four of the RAD guys were talking at the same time, each one shouting to be heard over the others. A couple of others were laughing. They reminded me of the gang of boys at my school who always held down the same table in the same corner of the cafeteria and always made more noise than everyone else combined. Guys who thought they were so cool. Guys who were overcompensating, according to Morgan.

  I hesitated.Then I told myself that I was not the least bit intimidated by these boys, even though that wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. I drew in a deep breath, just like I do when I have to get up in front of the whole class and do a presentation or—shudder—give a speech.

  “Excuse me,” I said.The words came out of my mouth at the exact moment that one of the guys said something uproariously funny—or so his buddies seemed to think. They all exploded in laughter. I waited until they settled down a little.

  “Excuse me,” I said again. This time I tapped Nick on the shoulder.

  Every guy at the table turned to look at me. Every guy except Nick.

  “Hello?” I said, tapping him harder this time, feeling the bone of his shoulder.

  The guy sitting next to Nick nudged him and said something about me that made my cheeks turn red. He grinned up at me and then slowly licked his lips. I gave him the imperious,“just who do you think you are?” look that Morgan had perfected. Then I turned my attention to Nick.

  “Can I speak with you for a minute?” I said.

  He looked up at me.

  “Go for it,” he said.

  “Alone,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you alone.”

  This provoked a chorus from his friends: “Oooooooh!” They sounded like a bunch of kindergarten kids, but they leered at me like a pack of wolves. Dougie, who was sitting closest to Nick, slapped him on the back.

  “All right, man,” he said.

  Nick didn’t move. He just sat there, maybe looking at the can of Coke in front him, maybe looking at the tabletop, maybe just looking at the insides of his eyelids. He sure didn’t look at me. I had a pretty good idea of how Morgan would have summed up the situation: classic passive-aggressive behavior. That’s how Morgan summed up a lot of situations.

  Finally, in one surprisingly graceful motion, Nick swung his legs over the bench of the picnic table, got up, and turned to face me. He stood so close that I had to tilt my head to meet his eyes. He’d done that to me once before. He was probably in the habit of doing it, to intimidate whomever he was talking to. This time I didn’t back up. He jerked his head to the left. I followed him away from the picnic table. When we were out of range of the others, he said, “What do you want?”

  When I had decided to talk to him, I’d struggled with what to say. What I’d settled on was: “If you give it back right now, I won’t say anything to Kathy.”

  The skin around his eyes tightened. “Give what back?”

  “I saw you in the office,” I said. Straight-and-narrow people, like my mother, would have called that a lie. More creative people, like my father, would have called it a bluff.

  “What office?” Nick said.

  He didn’t look or sound like he cared one way or the other about me or what I was saying. Maybe he was a better liar than I was. Or a better bluffer.

  “The office where all the money is,” I said. “I know you took some. If you give it back right now, I won’t tell Kathy.”

  He reacted by not reacting—he just stood there. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t give any indication that he had even heard me.

  “I’m not kidding,” I said.

  He shook his head in disgust. “Man, and they say people change. You sure haven’t.”

  “Neither have you.”

  He looked at me—studied me—before finally saying, “You didn’t see me in that office.” He said it as if it were a fact, as if he had no doubts about it. “If you had, you would have gone to Kathy already. You probably would have called the cops too. People like you, if they think they’ve got something on you, they go straight to the cops. The only ti
me they ever try to make a deal is when they have no proof, when they’re trying to make you trip yourself up. But this time you got nothing on me.”

  This time.

  “Yeah? Well, I’m going to talk to Kathy right now,” I said.

  “You do that,” Nick said. He sauntered back to the picnic table and sat down again. The rest of the guys were all over him, probably trying to find out what I had said. Antoine turned and looked at me. I couldn’t read his expression any better than I could read Nick’s.

  I strode back inside, trying to look determined. But Nick was right. I hadn’t seen him in the office. I hadn’t even seen him in the building.All I had were suspicions—and Nick’s track record or, rather, his criminal record. And—this really bothered me—that he hadn’t denied it. When an innocent person is accused of stealing, he denies it. At the very least, he becomes indignant. Nick had done neither. Instead, he’d just taunted me.

  I hesitated outside my office door and reviewed what facts I had.

  Fact: Someone had been in that office and had at least touched that money. There was a good chance that whoever it was had taken some of it.

  Fact: The money had been raised for charity. What kind of person would take money that had been raised for a good cause? That was easy—Nick D’Angelo. He’d done it once before.

  I walked past my office door and knocked on the one next to it—Kathy’s door.

  Kathy’s expression changed from cheery to expectant to concerned as I spoke. Her shoulders gradually slumped. She caved back in her chair. She asked me a few questions. Finally, she said, “I’ll talk to Nick.”

  “But he’s not going to admit it,” I said.

  Kathy gave me a long, weary look. She seemed disappointed. What shook me was that I wasn’t sure who she was disappointed in—Nick, for maybe doing something terrible, or me, for telling her something she clearly did not want to hear. I wished that I hadn’t said anything.