She was probably right.
Except that she hadn’t seen what I had seen. She hadn’t heard Nick’s voice as he pleaded with Kathy to let him adopt Orion or, at least, to let his aunt adopt the dog. She hadn’t seen Nick sneak gourmet dog biscuits to Orion or heard Nick beg me not to tell on Antoine. I had.
On the other hand, nor had she seen Nick dart out of the school office four years ago with the money Morgan and Billy and I had worked so hard to raise. She hadn’t seen him offer a resentful apology to Mr. Schuster only because he’d been forced to. She hadn’t heard the sneer in his voice when he told me I had nothing on him after someone touched the fund-raising money.
“Take my advice,” Morgan said. “Forget about him. Hey, one more week and I’ll be home again. We can go back-to-school shopping.”
. . .
When my mother dropped me off at the animal shelter the next morning, she pressed some money into my hand.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“Bus fare,” she said. “I won’t be able to pick you up today, either. Your father’s tied up today too. I could ask Ted—”
“The bus is fine, Mom. It’s not a problem, really.”
That afternoon, Kathy and I sat opposite each other at her desk with a couple of boxes of thank-you cards and envelopes between us. Volunteers had spent all the previous day addressing the envelopes by hand. Now Kathy was going to personally sign each card, and I was going to put the cards into envelopes and seal them.
“The personal touch,” Kathy said. “It’s supposed to make people feel good about giving to us, and that’s supposed to translate into bigger donations. Heaven knows we could use the money.”
“I never realized how much fund-raising went on in an animal shelter,” I said.
She sighed. “It used to be relatively easy to get government funding,” she said.“But that’s not true anymore. I’ve been sending grant proposals to all the private foundations I can think of.” I remembered the proposal that I had couriered out for her on Friday. “We have more animals here than we’re designed to hold. We’re managing to get most of them adopted, but it takes time. And the more animals we have here, the more we have to spend on food for them and on keeping them clean and healthy. That’s why we’re doing this.” She nodded at the stack of cards that she was signing. “The only way we can keep all these animals alive is if we have enough money to look after them while we try to find them new homes. I told the staff yesterday. Now I’m telling the volunteers.”
I looked apprehensively at her. Telling us what?
“We don’t like to put animals down,” she said. “We have to do it sometimes when an animal poses a genuine threat to people or other animals. But we only have so much space, so sometimes we also have to consider it when an animal is unlikely to be adopted because of its age or temperament or when our shelter and other shelters are overcrowded and there is no chance of early relief.” She sighed again. “I found out on Friday that the government turned down our request for more funding. Over the weekend, our board of directors had to make a decision. For the time being, they’ve decided to impose a strict limit on how long an animal can stay here before we have to either get it adopted or find another home for it. After that . . . ” She shook her head.
Someone knocked on the door. Before I could turn around, Kathy said, “What is it, Antoine?”
Antoine gave me a hard look before saying to Kathy, “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” Kathy said.
“Alone?”
“I’m racing the clock here, Antoine,” Kathy said. “I need to get all of these cards signed, sealed, and into the mail today. You can ask your question right now while Robyn and I get this done, or you can wait until Thursday. Your choice.”
I stuffed a card into an envelope and sealed it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Antoine struggling to decide.
Finally, he said, “I was wondering if you’re going to assign Orion to someone else, you know, in case Nick doesn’t come back.”
Kathy scrawled her signature on a card, pushed it across the table to me, and drew another one from the box in front of her. She didn’t even look up as she said, “Nick is responsible for Orion, and Nick isn’t here.”
“Maybe I could look after him,” Antoine said. “You know, for Nick.”
Kathy was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “You’ve got your hands full,” she said. “So do the others.”
“Yeah, but Orion—”
“You know the rules, Antoine. These are last-chance dogs. When you and Nick and the others joined the program, you agreed to be paired with an animal and to take full responsibility for that animal. It’s up to you guys to show up, to put your best effort into the program, and to do whatever you can to help these dogs become adoptable.”
“I heard Stella say that Orion is making real progress,” Antoine said.
“He is,” Kathy said. “But this is a demonstration program. We explained to you what that meant. It’s been designed to run a certain length of time in a certain way to meet certain objectives. When it’s finished, it’s going to be evaluated. If it gets a good evaluation, we might be able to get more funding and to persuade other shelters to set up programs like it. Nick knows that too, just like he knows that Orion depends on him to—” She broke off abruptly. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer. “If you or Nick or anyone else wants to know what’s going to happen with Orion, you should look at the agreement you signed when you joined RAD. Do you remember that agreement, Antoine?” Antoine looked blank. Maybe he hadn’t read his copy carefully before he signed it. “The program is a partnership between the youth participant and the canine participant. If the youth participant drops out for any reason, the canine participant can’t continue.”
“So are you saying that Orion won’t be able to stay in the program?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Kathy said. Her phone rang. She picked it up, listened for a few seconds, and said, “Just a moment.” She looked at Antoine. “You’d better get to your session,” she said. “And, Robyn, can you give me a few minutes? I have to take this call.”
Antoine was halfway down the hall by the time I caught up with him.
“Have you seen him?” I said. “Nick, I mean.”
Antoine eyed me suspiciously.
“Why do you want to know?” he said.
“Because—” Because why? I wasn’t even sure. “Because I don’t think it’s fair that Orion has to pay for something that Nick did.”
That’s when Antoine surprised me. He said, “I’d hate it if Jackie was stuck here forever because I messed up. Man, you should have heard Orion barking when the rest of the guys went in to get their dogs. That’s why I volunteered to take care of him until Nick comes back.”
If he comes back, I thought.
Antoine looked at me. “Nick said it was nice of you to go and see Orion, especially considering how scared you are of him. Of Orion, I mean.”
“So you have seen him?”
“We live in the same place.”
Oh.
“Are you going to tell him what Kathy said?”
He looked down at the ground.
“There are too many animals here, Antoine. The shelter has a new rule. If an animal can’t be adopted after a certain amount of time, they’re going to put it down.”
“What?” He stared at me, stunned. “Since when? Who told you?”
“Kathy did. Just before you showed up.”
“They can’t do that!”
”They have to.”
Antoine looked like he couldn’t believe it. “I told Nick I’d talk to Kathy, you know, to make sure Orion was going to be okay,” he said finally. “But after what she said and after what you just told me, I’m thinking maybe I’ll tell him that she wasn’t around today.”
“You mean you’re going to lie to him?”
Antoine bristled at that. “He’s my friend.”
�
��So maybe you should tell him the truth.”
“You know, Nick’s right. You’re a real pain!”
“He said that?”
“He told me how you got him busted a few years back. He told me you were a real brownnoser back then, and that you haven’t changed much. He said you tried to get him in trouble with Kathy.”
“I thought he took some money,” I said.
“Yeah, well, he didn’t. Nick’s not like that.”
“I saw him do it before.”
“That’s your story.”
“His is different?”
Antoine just shrugged.
“He took a car that didn’t belong to him,” I said.
“Says you,” he said. “Says the cops.”
“Says Nick,” I said. “He’s not denying it, Antoine. He said he did it.”
Antoine’s face darkened. This was obviously news to him. “How do you know?”
I didn’t want to bring my mother into it. Antoine would probably stop talking to me if he knew she was Nick’s lawyer. So instead I said, “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He hasn’t told me anything.” He shook his head, as if he were struggling to absorb what I had just told him. “I only got to see him for a few minutes. He asked me to talk to Kathy.” He shook his head again. “No way would Nick take a car. He says doing stuff like that is stupid. He tells me that all the time.”
He sounded so positive. It had to mean something that even Antoine couldn’t understand why Nick would give up so much—the chance to finally leave the group home, the chance to live with his aunt and, maybe, Orion—to do something as stupid as go joyriding.
“What are you going to do, Antoine?” I said.
“Am I going to tell him that if he doesn’t come back, Orion doesn’t get to be in the program anymore? That he might get put down?” He shook his head firmly. “I didn’t even tell him that Orion was sick. He’d freak out. He’s crazy about that dog. And he’s got enough to worry about already, you know?”
. . .
I went downtown after work to pick up my new sandals. After I paid for them, I called my mother’s office. I thought that if she were finished for the day, we could go home together.
“She’s in a meeting,” Tralee told me. “But she should be out pretty soon.”
“Tell her not to leave without me,” I said.
As soon as I turned the corner to the street where my mother works, I stopped dead in my tracks. Nick was standing on the sidewalk outside of her office. As usual, he was dressed in black from head to toe, and as usual, his backpack hung off one shoulder. His friend Joey was with him. Nick glanced in my direction. I know he saw me, but he turned away as if he hadn’t. Joey saw me too, but he didn’t try to hide it. He gave me a critical once-over before dismissing me. I walked toward them.
“I saw Orion today,” I said to Nick.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at me. Instead, he focused on the ground.
“I don’t know if anyone told you,” I said. I knew Antoine hadn’t. “But he’s been sick.”
That got a reaction. Nick’s head bobbed up. He glanced at Joey. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked angry. “He’s going to be okay, right?” he said.
It was a funny question. If I was as fond of a dog as Nick was of Orion and someone told me that the dog had been sick, the first thing I would have asked was what exactly was wrong with him or how had he gotten sick.
“I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that he was really sick on Sunday. Yesterday, too. They think maybe he caught something.” I had talked to one of the kennel attendants, who reminded me that there had been a virus going around. “He was feeling a little better today, except that Antoine told me he was barking like crazy when all the other dogs got out for the program today and he had to stay in his kennel.”
Hurt flickered in Nick’s eyes. I think Joey noticed.
“Why don’t you take off, little girl?” Joey said.
I ignored him.
“Kathy says if you don’t come back to the shelter, Orion won’t be able to finish the program,” I said. “And if he doesn’t finish the program, he can’t be adopted.”
“That’s not fair,” Nick said. “Orion is doing great. Kathy would never let anything happen to him. Besides, my lawyer’s going to fix it so I can stay with the program. And the wheels of justice don’t turn as fast as they make you think on TV.” He glanced at Joey, who nodded. “My court date is a couple of weeks away. That will give me time to finish the program. Orion will be okay. Anyway, my lawyer said it would look good when I go to court if I could show that I’d done the program.”
I couldn’t believe it. He was acting as if nothing serious had happened, as if he hadn’t done anything wrong, and as if, of course, he’d be allowed to go back. He didn’t seem even remotely concerned about the poor man he’d knocked off his bike.
“You hit someone,” I said.
Finally. He flinched. For a split second I thought I saw pain and regret in his eyes, maybe even remorse. He glanced at Joey again.
“The guy walked away,” Nick said. “How bad could it be?”
“Hey, Nick, you don’t want to be talking about this with anyone,” Joey said. “The less you say, the better. Right?”
The less he said? He had already been caught. He had admitted he’d done it.
“Yeah, I guess,” Nick said. He looked defiantly at me.
That did it. That made me mad.
“You’re too much,” I said. “You put everything you have into helping a dog, but there’s a man in the hospital because of what you did, and you don’t even care. Antoine tried to tell me you’re okay. He said you’re always telling him not to do anything stupid. But look at what you did! And you think it’s all a big joke.”
Joey stepped between Nick and me. He moved in close and kept coming, trying to back me away from Nick.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” he said.
Nick grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away.
“Leave her alone,” he said. He sounded angry—with Joey, not with me. He looked at me, his eyes not nearly as hard as they had been a moment ago.
“I’m sorry about the guy,” he said. “But he’s going to be okay.”
“Nick!” an angry voice called.
All three of us turned. A woman was standing in the door to my mother’s office building, her hands on her hips, glowering disapproval at him. It was the same woman who picked him up every day from the animal shelter. Nick shot a worried look at Joey. Joey shrugged, like it was no big deal. He walked away, just like that, without a word.
“Are you trying to make things harder on yourself, Nick?” the woman said. “I trust you to go to the rest-room and what happens? You leave the building. And then I find you out here with Joey.” She shook her head.
“He just showed up,” Nick said. “My aunt must have told him I was seeing my lawyer.”
The woman was as stern as a school principal. “Your aunt wouldn’t do that, Nick. Your aunt wants you to stay out of trouble, not get into more of it. I know you’re not allowed to receive calls from Joey. Did you phone him, Nick? Because I can’t think of any other way that he’d be here, can you?” Of course Nick didn’t answer.
“About the RAD program,” Nick said. “Did my lawyer fix it? Am I still in?”
“That depends. Am I going to see Joey around again anytime soon?”
“Never. I promise,” Nick said. He sounded like a little kid now. Please, please, please.
“You were ordered to do an anger management program,” the woman said. “So, yes, you’re still in RAD. But only until a judge says differently and only if you follow the rules. You got that?” Nick nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
. . .
Maybe Nick was allowed to stay in RAD, but he must not have been allowed out otherwise. He didn’t show up at the shelter the next day for his once-a-week Wednesday volunteering. I didn’t see him again until Th
ursday when he arrived with Antoine and Dougie and the rest of the RAD guys. They all took their dogs outside for ten or fifteen minutes. Nick brought Orion to one side of the fenced-in lawn they started to practice what they had been learning. Nick had Orion sit, lie down, sit again, and then shake a paw. It looked like Orion hadn’t forgotten a thing while he was gone. Nick smiled, dropped down on his knees, and scratched behind the dog’s ears. Then he put his arms around Orion and hugged him. He adored that dog. I still couldn’t figure out how he could be so attached to an animal and, at the same time, not seem to care at all about someone he had injured.
“Robyn?”
I tore my eyes away from the window. Kathy stood in the door to my office, her face flushed. She was dressed more formally than usual, in a skirt and light jacket.
“Go and tell Mr. Jarvis and Stella they can get started. We’ll be around in a few minutes. And tell them not to let the guys know what’s going on, okay? I want everyone to act the way they would if this were a regular day.”
But it wasn’t a regular day. It was a big day. The chairman of the shelter’s board of directors had called Kathy at home that morning. He’d said that he was bringing some visitors to observe the RAD program in action. Apparently, there was a possibility that these visitors might fund the program so that it could continue. Kathy wanted everything to be perfect. All morning, shelter staff had been running around, tidying up, and making sure that everything sparkled. Kathy was especially eager. She wanted the visitors to understand how the program helped both the kids and the dogs. She also wanted to talk to them about expanding the program to other shelters. It was, she said, the best opportunity she’d had in a long time.
The visitors had arrived thirty minutes ago, and Kathy had been showing them around. I could see them over her shoulder—two men in suits (one of them the chairman of the shelter’s board of directors) and a woman in a summer dress. They were in the office across the hall from mine, watching a video of the RAD participants and their dogs on the first day of the program. Kathy had showed me the video while she was setting up earlier. She said it would make a big impression because, in it, the dogs all barked and jumped up on people and generally misbehaved. A lot of the RAD participants looked uncomfortable. One of them—Dougie—looked terrified. They had no idea how to control the rambunctious dogs. The plan was that the visitors would watch the video—the “be-fore”—and then go outside, watch the RAD group in action and see the “after.”
Last Chance Page 12
