by Gurley, Jan
“So,” I couldn’t help myself, “Gonzo got into the Dean’s office after all?”
There was another burst of background laughter. “Guu-uys!” Helena wailed, then turned back to the phone, laughing, “No, not yet. We’ll tell you all about it early tomorrow.”
I knew I could say, no — I don’t want to meet in the circle before school. We’ll meet at lunch — and they would. All of them. If I said so, they would listen to me. Things might even go back to the way they were
Everything was changing. It felt like everything I cared about was slipping away. Ever since I'd seen that surveying pole, I'd wake up at least once at night, my heart thudding, as if I'd heard the distant sound of a chainsaw. Was I going to lose everything? Right then, I didn’t even know who I was any more. Was I the person who started the Greenbacks, or the person who was going to end up alone, my life destroyed, and the fairy circle replaced with a concrete snack shack?
I’ve never done anything harder in my life. I tried to sound cheery, “Firing squad at dawn!” I said to Helena, and hung up quick before I could take it back.
It was worse, after I hung up. My imagination went crazy. Helena would take over the group. It would be middle school all over again, the way someone who had been your friend could start inviting everyone over. Except you. By bedtime, the goddess Bianca had moved into our group, they had wildly popular cross-pod parties, and I wasn’t even allowed to sit in the tree circle at lunchtime.
The next morning, I got there before anyone. I flopped on the stump and closed my eyes. The air was cool, leaving a raw feeling in your nose if you inhaled too fast. I focused on the peace and the hope and after I stopped my thoughts, and opened my eyes, it was like magic — all my friends were there, sitting quietly. Like all I needed was the trees, and dawn, and I had the power to conjure them inside the fairy circle.
I sat up. Phoebe said, “Aren’t you cold?”
It was the second week of April and balloons of mist were drifting through the trees.
“Nope,” I said, in low-cut capped sleeve shirt. I stretched my bare arms over my head.
Viola said, a bounce in her voice, “Kate’s feeling powerful.”
Phoebe said, “You like the trees this time of day, don’t you?”
“Who wouldn’t?” I asked.
“You could get up early, couldn’t you? To see the trees like this, I mean? If you, otherwise, couldn’t have them to yourself?”
That was when my radar went off. Phoebe is not the most subtle of humans.
A big, exasperated sigh escaped most of the group. Tio said, “Phoebes…” in a complaining voice.
“What?” I asked.
Helena gave Alex a nod, like a cue on-stage.
Alex said, “You know how we always meet here at lunch?”
“So?” My heart was starting that galloping thing, like it does when you know your brain is sensing some kind of danger before your thoughts can identify it.
“What if…” there was a long, scary pause.
“What if we don’t meet any more?” I asked in a whisper.
“God no!” “What?” Verbal explosions of surprise ka-pinged around the circle.
Helena motioned them all quiet. “We’re thinking, Kate, that there’s only one way to make this thing work with the Dog.”
It began to dawn on me, where they were going with this. “Noooo…” I said it like a groan.
“There’s no other way,” Robin, of all people, announced.
I turned to look at Helena, pinning her with an accusing look. “You’re right,” she said, “it was my idea. But the fact is, we can’t keep letting him sit in the lunch atrium, starving, waiting for Dickie to swing by and make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
Alex said, “You said he needed new friends.”
But here? Every lunchtime, in my fairy circle?
Phoebe blurted out, “It’ll work. Really, it will. If you come early every morning, then you can be as relaxed about flopping as you want and you’ll get your daily tree-time and…” Her voice got small and died in the face of group horror.
My tree-time?
My pulse picked up again.
“These trees — the way I act around them? You guys have been…managing me?”
Viola said, “I think of it more as…dosing you.”
“Ex-cuse me?”
Tio stood up and said, “Admit it, Kate. If you go too long without some time with these trees, you get cranky and foul and—”
Viola interrupted, “You go into withdrawal.”
Great. Just great.
Phoebe said, “Kind of like the way, Kate, you set up my blow-off-steam schedule. If I can be a woman about it, so can you.”
Ouch.
I clamped my lips shut tight between my teeth, and tried to think about it objectively. If I got rid of all the embarrassment and emotion and the feeling that they’d been talking behind my back…well, they were kind of right.
“So who’s bringing the Dog here at lunchtime?”
They looked surprised, like they had expected me to invite him. I said, “Sorry, guys, that’s asking too much. I’ve never before invited anyone into our circle that I didn’t already know — deep inside — was nice.”
Tio and Gonzo shared a look. “We’ll do it.”
And with that, I flopped back on the stump, trying to soak up every second of the time that was left. I knew I was going to need it.
***
By second period, the Dog deep-freeze treatment was so extreme, I began to think, when I was around him, I ought to be able to see my breath hanging in the air. But his freeze-out didn’t seem to bother me as much as yesterday — probably because I had that time at the trees. Or maybe because I knew lunch was coming.
But what could I possibly tweet that was positive?
After four days of no lunch, you’d think the Dog would be glad to leave his chair in the atrium. Apparently not. All of us Greenbacks (except Tio and Gonzo) watched as the two of them (Tio and Gonzo) badgered and nipped at the Dog’s heels, getting him to move forward toward the trees. Maybe Drew thought they were going to do some weird Academy guy-hazing thing to him. But it was hard to imagine how the Dog could be worried — both Tio and Gonzo, combined, were half Drew’s size. Just watching the trip across the field proved that Drew wasn’t going to do anything Drew didn’t want to do.
More likely, the Dog was worried he’d return from the trees branded with some permanent Misfit Mark — a tattoo that forever spelled out his fall from Uni.
Tio and Gonzo looked completely frazzled when they stepped into the trees and paused to let their eyes adjust to the dimness.
The Dog walked straight in, stopped, crossed his arms and flicked his gaze from the base of one tree to the next. When he got to me, he paused for a moment and his eyes narrowed.
Tio and Gonzo flopped.
Robin said to Drew, “Pull up a tree.”
Phoebe handed her bag to Gonzo, who rooted inside and passed it to Tio.
The Dog finally sat, resting on his haunches, ignoring the trees. Tio reached in the bag, pulled out a hard green pear, and held the bag out to Drew.
There was a long moment with Tio’s hand stretched out toward the Dog, like the time Tio had offered to shake when they were introduced, except this time there was a heavy bag on the end of Tio’s hand. We waited, and Tio’s hand didn’t shake, despite the weight. The Dog, with a sigh, took the bag and peered inside. He looked up at all of us and raised his eyebrows. “A pomegranate?” he asked, lifting a small cracked one out of the bag.
“That’s what you get for being last,” Gonzo said. Then with a hint of fear or awe in his voice, added, “when it’s Phoebe’s week, I mean. I’m doing next week and we’ll be having personal calzones. Let me guess — I bet you’re a mozzarella, marinara, sausage, and basil kind of guy — right?”
In the long awkward silence, the Dog sat on his heels, pomegranate in one hand, bag in the other. Then, with a whoof of air, he l
et himself sink back onto the thick floor of needles, laid the bag on the ground, and started to peel the pomegranate. “Sounds good to me,” he said, not looking up.
Which was just as well, because the beaming joy on Gonzo’s face as he elbowed Tio with a see-see-I-was-right kind of nudge, was hard to watch.
If Drew hurt my friends, I’d…well, I mean, if he hurt them more than he already had…I’d, well…I’d make him even more miserable than I already had.
If that was even possible.
Phoebe stretched across the guys to grab the handle of the bag and slide it closer. She poked around inside, then said, her voice creaking with embarrassment, “I was sure there was still a banana.” Out of the darkness of the bag, she lifted a limp, brown, sack-like object — the world’s most geriatric banana.
I could see Tio gag, then swallow a little spit-up in the back of his throat. A week of blackened bananas would do that to you.
After a heartbeat of silence, the Dog looked around and said, “No one else claims it, I’ll take it. Toss it over.”
Phoebe looked at him, measured the distance between them with her eyes, then looked at the dark puddle of watery banana lying deceased across her palm. She said, “I think I better bring it to you.”
***
Today’s tweet: The Dog explores new cuisine.
***
The rest of Friday and Saturday passed faster than I expected it to. My nerves made it feel like time was sprinting away and leaving me standing in the dust. There was no real way for me to know what happened with the Dog until the weekend was over. Which made me feel like a bystander to my own life.
I had the Saturday-killing eleven to seven shift, so I put on my Dino-Dog hat and lifted the steam lid and slapped dogs into buns. Sometimes a mindless job isn’t such a bad thing.
We had a serious lunch-run, which forced Mr. Gremio to actually leave the back room and (gasp) help serve customers. He then, of course, needed the next four hours alone in the back room with the window-air conditioner set on high to recover. When he does this, I imagine him tilted back in a chair with a damp washcloth over his eyes, fanning himself with a pop-open, ribbed, vintage fan that hangs from his wrist by a crocheted strap.
Or possibly gambling online. Your choice.
By the end of the spring afternoon (one of the few times in nature when hotdogs smell appealing), I was greasy, damp-haired, and my mustard-yellow polyester shirt stuck to the middle of my back. Even my Dino-Dog hat wilted. Gremio made us use a three-foot-long pair of skinny metal barbecue tongs and my hand ached from clamping tiny bits of floating flesh with it. After all these months, I could probably pick up a greased dime off a vibrating air-hockey table with those stupid tongs.
In one try.
With my eyes closed.
I had started to re-stock for the evening shift when two cars wheeled into the lot. It was almost like a clown act — the number of huge guys that climbed out the doors, past the tilted-forward sports car seats. Somebody hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, that’s for sure.
The penny didn't drop until I heard a voice yell, “Hey, Dog!” And not about the dino-dogs.
This can’t be happening to me, I thought. Surely he wouldn’t intentionally bring them here. But how could he know I worked here? With a growing sense of horror, I scanned the group of guys…
Oh no. There he was. Andrew Petruchio-Bullard.
My heart sunk deeper than a six-hours-boiled sausage. I wiped a hand across my forehead, flapped the front of my polyester shirt-sack a bit and then muttered to myself, “Give it up, Kate. Nothing’s going to make any difference in how you look.”
His team bumped and shoved and joked around him. Guys at the edge of the crowd shifted trousers and tilted sideways to stick a leg out and shake it. Some stretched a ring of arms overhead. But Drew stayed put in the middle of the group, his very stillness drawing attention to him. Every one of these guys looked up to him, had to shuffle around him out of his way.
That’s when I realized it could be hideous for him too, if the guys saw me.
I tugged the wrinkled ends of my stretched out paper Dino hat lower. I could at least keep my face down. With any luck, no one would recognize me.
No one did. In fact, it was so clear that no one could recognize me — since no one knew me — that I felt a little stupid for worrying. I put dogs in buns, dogs in paper troughs, dogs in carriers. For twenty minutes I was too busy to think.
Then, as it slowed, I heard Drew’s voice say, “Nah, I’m not hungry.
I looked up and he was facing my way. He recognized me and his smile faltered. Then righted itself. Two guys near Drew did a half-turn to see what was up. The one on the Dog’s right gave me a long look as he took a pull on his soda-can. I was pretty sure it only had soda in it. At least I hoped it did.
The staring guy took a step toward me. Then another.
I tapped my cartoon-big tongs on the counter, narrowed my eyes, and looked as scary and shrew-like as I could.
The staring guy called out, “Dog — she’s rough, ain’t she? Think there’s any diamond under all that rough?” His words slurred a bit. So maybe it wasn’t just soda.
Drew said, without looking my way, “C’mon, Peter. Let’s go claim the picnic table.”
But Peter took another step toward me. “I bet she likes it rough. Looks like she could go toe to toe — know what I mean?”
Drew said, “You don’t know a thing about that girl, man. She'd rip you a new one. C’mon.” More and more of the guys were elbowing, turning to watch.
Peter said, completely oblivious, “She can be insane for all I care. What’s that line we learned in English –“ [I was appalled when Peter actually make a hyuck-hyuck leering-doofus sound], “’If she’s mad, I’ll be madly mated.’ Oh I’d mate that, all right” [can I just say — ew] “– you see that curl, stuck to her neck, going all the way down her—“
“Peter,” Drew barked, “c’mon. I’m not asking again.”
“I want her number. No harm in that, right?” By this time all the guys were watching and a few started the “woof woof” chant. Someone shoved Peter from behind and he took a giant, staggery step toward me.
“You handling those foot-longs all day, baby?” he slurred at me. “Let me show you a real foot—“
Drew moved so fast, I didn’t see him shift. He was just there, yanking the guy, Peter, backwards. “Dude,” Drew said, low enough that only me and Peter could hear it, “I’ll get her number for you. Now take your foot out of your mouth and go sit on the table.”
Drew turned him, a hand at Peter’s shirt collar, and shoved him towards the other guys. They grabbed Peter and started pushing his head back and forth, laughing and looking back as they ambled toward the edge of the lot.
I took a deep, shuddery breath, and right then, when a scared little knot in my shoulders started to loosen, the skinny guy on the team, the one who carried the sloshing barrel off the field, jumped up to get a look from the middle of the crowd and said, in a loud and carrying voice, “Hey! Isn’t that the girl from the Leadership dance?” He boinged up again, “That’s her! The one with the boner — and the lips!”
Drew froze, standing three feet away from the counter. The tide of guys carried the skinny guy away to the picnic table at the far side of the parking lot, leaving me and Drew in a painful silence.
“Sorry,” I said. “You won’t live that down for a while. I thought no one would recognize me.”
Drew rubbed a hand up the back of his neck. “Yeah, right,” he said, “the way you look.”
“I grant you, it’s kind of distinctive, but none of them have ever seen me in this glorious outfit before, now have they?”
He gave me a level look, like maybe I was being deliberately dense.
“What?” I said.
The small back door opened and Mr. Gremio charged out. He shook a fist at the distant figures of the guys and said — but not very loudly — “I heard that! You bother my employees
and I’ll have you know I donate twelve pounds of hotdogs to the Annual Police Benevolent Society fundraiser! I got my finger on the button!”
I sighed. “It’s okay, Gremio.”
He glared at me, “Don’t you get smart with me, missy. That’s Mister Gremio.”
After he slammed the door, Drew raised his eyebrows at me. “Missy?” he said, laughter shimmering in his voice.
Suddenly, it was much more awkward. I didn’t know where to put my tongs, or where to look. “Here,” I barked at him, “take two of these.” I slapped two dogs into buns and slopped a ladle of chili on each. “ And don’t thank me. Not until you’ve burped them for a day or two. Then you can decide what’s the appropriate response.”
I watched the Dog saunter over to the picnic table. The guys woof woof-ed at him as he crossed the parking lot.
The skinny guy shouted, “I bet you got more than her number, didn’t you, Dog?”
I glanced at the clock. Six o’clock and these guys were already geared up for trouble. Really, it wasn’t my problem. God knows I couldn’t do anything to stop the Dog if he didn’t want to be stopped.
But what if he just needed an excuse?
Like the way my mom always encouraged me to use her as an excuse — starting from middle school, I had permission to say anything I wanted, if it would help get me out of a bad situation. “Oh, my mom’s sick, I’ve got to run.” “My mom’s such an evil hag — I have to be home by midnight.” It was all okay by her. Maybe because she knew sometimes people just need a way to say no.
Drew sat on the table, above all the guys like the top Dog, glancing back every so often at the stand. Was he the only one still clear-eyed because he had no money, or because, even if he didn’t realize it yet, he wanted things to be different?
Or was I reading too much into the situation?
I pushed my paper hat back on my head, then made a decision. Only one way to find out.
I dug out my cell, popped it open, snapped a photo of the Dino-Dog sign and tweeted Help. Pushed send.
