by Laura Tims
But then I realize it’s not her at all. It’s the unattached leash dangling from the fence.
Chapter Seventeen
I CAN’T FIND MY DOG.
We search all night. Kendra marshals the remainder of the party, and despite the presence of ten hungover kids in prom clothes combing a three-mile radius, despite yelling for Tito until the neighbors yell at us, despite how Eliot and Kendra and I keep hunting long after everyone else goes home, I can’t find my dog.
“I’m really sorry, but I have to leave,” Kendra says around four, near tears. “My mom’s coming back from her night shift, and I have to clean up the house.”
She keeps talking, but I fade out and turn away down a street I’ve checked twice—maybe Tito looped back.
Eliot jogs up to me. Before he has to apologize, too, I tell him, “You can go. It’s fine. I’ll walk home.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says calmly. “I was just going to point out it’ll be faster if we drive, now that it’s just us.”
So we creep around the neighborhood at five miles per hour, calling out the window for Tito. My body is tight, like half of me is tied to him and I’m stretching as he gets farther and farther away.
Eliot maintains a stream of encouragement: “Even if we don’t find him tonight, I’ve walked him around this neighborhood so many times that he definitely knows the way to my house. Stupider dogs have found their way home from farther away.”
My brain feels loose and detached. “If we don’t find him tonight, I have to explain to my family that he’s gone because of me.”
After only a moment of hesitation, he takes my hand.
Around six, the sun staining everything paler, we almost run over a thin shadow. Trez steps under a streetlight. She’s barefoot, her ankles dirty, her one unbroken shoe hooked on her left pinkie.
“Did you guys go to Greenhorn Street?” she pants. “I checked it, but that was hours ago.”
Greenhorn Street is four miles away.
“Trez, you can go home,” I croak. “We’ll give you a ride.”
She backs away and cuts across someone’s lawn. She’s light on her feet in the early-morning grass, like a cross between a fairy and a witch.
“I’m sure Tito’s at my house by now,” Eliot promises.
But when we get there, his yard and driveway are empty except for Gabriel’s car and Gabriel himself, standing on the front porch in a bathrobe with his arms crossed.
“Shit,” Eliot mutters, then glances at me desperately as I gulp and blink because it’s not Tito on the porch. “Sam, Sam, it’s okay. Don’t worry.”
The reassuring phrases I’ve taught him to say don’t feel reassuring now.
“I just have to deal with this”—he gestures at Gabriel, who is striding toward us—“but we’ll look again later. We’ll find him, Sam. I promise.”
He grips my wrist like he’s burning the promise into my skin, then gets out of the car.
Numbly I watch them argue in front of the house, Gabriel snatching Eliot’s keys and pointing repeatedly at the door, until finally Eliot throws up his hands and storms inside.
Gabriel comes out to the car and drives me home, somehow managing to say a lot without me hearing a single word.
My family isn’t mad, which is worse.
“I’ll bet you a hundred dollars I don’t have that he shows up in the night like the couch.” Rex fist bumps my shoulder.
But Lena’s eyes squish up, and she doesn’t comment on the hole in her tights.
Unexpectedly, Dad is the one who launches into action, and his plan is so detailed it’s like he took a workshop on locating lost pets.
“Your mother taught me Photoshop—did I ever tell you kids that?—so I’ll design a flyer. Rex, you’ll print three hundred copies at the library. Lena, you’ll call every shelter within twenty miles and give them a description of Tito. Sam, you’ll write a Facebook post and share it with all those lost-pet pages, and hopefully it gains some traction. As soon as Rex gets back, we’ll hang so many flyers there won’t be one person in the entire town who hasn’t seen Tito’s silly mug. He’ll be back before dinner.”
We all stare, speechless.
He blushes. “I always told your mother that if we had a dog, we’d have to know what to do when it got lost.”
So Lena curls up in a chair and starts making calls, and I write the Facebook post on my laptop. When Dad hands Rex the flash drive with the flyer on it, Rex jumps in his truck and rockets off.
Then we just sort of sit around waiting for him to get back.
After a while, Lena’s lip starts quivering.
“Do you think he’ll get hit by a car?” she asks weakly, and for a brief and terrifying millisecond I genuinely wish I wasn’t alive.
“He’s only missing.” Dad reaches over and gives her shoulder a firm pat. “If we do everything right, we’ll find him. And we’re going to do everything right.”
None of us mentions it when 8:00 a.m. passes, which is when we usually give Tito his meds.
LOST DOG
Answers to: Tito (also “Tits” and “The Animal”)
Description: Small mutt, 13 years old, brown with white-tipped tail, NOT a stray despite appearance. Does not bite. Has epilepsy, requires daily medication.
Reward offered.
After we hang so many flyers that the neighborhood changes color, we stop by several nearby shelters, none of which has Tito.
We go to McDonald’s for lunch, except by then it’s dinner. Instead of complaining about the fries, Lena eats hers like a paper shredder, feeding them mechanically between her teeth.
“Here’s what’s next,” Dad declares. He said it after Mom died, too, when we wanted to believe in a next even though one couldn’t be possible. “Good old-fashioned legwork.”
“What about me?” I ask.
Lena surfaces from her cloud of despair. “It’s too much walking.”
“I’m not—”
“—a helpless infant, I know,” she says thickly. “But it’s too much.”
I kick Rex under the table, but he looks away. Suddenly he’s on her side. Great. As much as I hate it, though, she’s right—my leg is already too sore from last night.
“I’ll stay home with you, Sam,” offers Dad. “They’ll leave me in the dust anyway.”
“I’m not worried.” Rex announces it like the whole restaurant is listening. “Tito is Tito. He couldn’t disappear.”
Legwork would work better with more legs, and I’m about to suggest they call some friends, but Rex’s crew ditched him after he was expelled, Dad stopped going to his coworker’s place for drinks, and apparently Lena never had friends to withdraw from. But I had ten people roaming the streets for me last night.
I can’t believe I ever thought I was alone.
On the drive home, Lena is having an inaudible conversation with Rex in the backseat when, at the top of his lungs, he shouts, “HOLY SHIT.”
Dad slams on the brakes and then twists to look apologetically at me, but I’m turning toward the backseat, where Rex is staring at Lena.
“You called me Rex,” he accuses her.
I wait for her to deny it, but slowly she flushes.
“Well, that’s your name, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t rub it in; but once we get home, he shoves all the McDonald’s bags in his truck onto the lawn to make room for her.
Inside, Dad and I pour glasses of water and sit in the kitchen without drinking them.
“Are you okay, Sam?” he asks.
I put on the smile. “Yeah. We’ll find him.”
“You don’t need to protect me,” he says wearily. “I’ve let you do it for too long. If you don’t want to tell me what your real feelings are, let me take a guess. You’re sad and scared, and you miss your dog. Close enough?”
I nod, my eyes hot.
“Well, those were the easy ones. I’ll try to guess right more often.” He straightens his back. “There is a new therap
ist. I don’t want to have another fight, and you don’t need to confide in me about how you feel if you’re not comfortable with that, but I need to know you’re confiding in somebody.”
“There is somebody.”
He lifts a hand, silencing me. “He seems like a nice boy. But you still need a therapist.”
“I don’t care as long as it’s not Dr. Brown.”
I don’t care about much right now, which is a good time to ask things I’d normally care about too much.
“Dad, do you remember when Dr. Brown asked us what we thought about the person who was driving the other car? You never answered.”
He chugs most of his water before speaking. “After the third time the police questioned you, my thoughts were that finding this person wasn’t worth causing you any more pain.”
I dig my fingernails into my crutches. “But don’t you wish you knew who it was?”
“I also wish your mom was still with us. You don’t hang your life on wishes that won’t come true.”
Maybe my face shows how I feel about that, because he hastily continues. “Sometimes it’s a relief, to be honest. It’s a full-time job, missing your mother. I don’t have the time to hate someone, too.”
I keep pushing. “You don’t think they should be punished?”
“They’ll never forgive themselves, and that’s a punishment, believe me.” He wipes his damp forehead. “And when it comes to your brother, I personally think that hating someone he doesn’t know is safer for him than hating someone he does.”
We’d both heard Rex when he said he wanted to kill the driver.
Consequences don’t occur to Rex like they do to other people. He doesn’t understand that drinking too much means a hangover the next morning, or that not doing his homework dooms him to fail.
I finally get why Lena is always throwing consequences in Rex’s face.
“What about Lena?” I ask.
“Lena is all about the future. Revenge is about the past.” He yawns. “Try not to think about it too much, Sam. What you need to do now is go to sleep.”
“You, too, Dad.”
“You’re not wrong,” he says, but he doesn’t move.
I go upstairs first so he can eat as many gummy dinosaurs as he needs without having to do it in front of me.
By Sunday morning, Tito still hasn’t come back.
Nor does he return on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
Eliot isn’t at school all week. He texts me a halfhearted excuse about Gabriel, but I’m too drained to take on another worry, so I spend lunch periods in the computer lab, making new flyers.
On Thursday, Kendra spots me through the open door. Within ten minutes she’s marshaled the whole lacrosse team, girls drawing ads for the school paper and emailing shelters across state lines.
All these people care about finding Tito, just because he’s mine.
Eliot texts me endless updates from his end:
Gabriel can confiscate my car keys, but he can’t confiscate my feet. Last night I searched East Ave from Hardy.
That’s miles though, I answer.
I ran into Trez. We split the distance.
I told her finding your animal wouldn’t change anything, and she said she knew.
I think I finally understand why you hit people for me. If I could hit whatever’s making this happen, I would. But I can’t, so I’m just going to find the animal instead.
If I found the couch, I can find him.
Then he texts me a picture of a headline.
Boy Who Can’t Feel Pain Seeks Help Locating Lost Dog
My Facebook post now has hundreds of shares. My chest unclenches.
It was a miracle that he found the couch. Maybe he has one miracle left.
On Friday, Rex lets me convince him to go with him as he searches on foot. We walk down our street together, shaking bowls of food.
“You’re not overdoing it, are you?” he asks worriedly. “Ten minutes and we’re heading back. Thanks to your boyfriend, the internet will probably have found him by then.”
I crack a small smile.
“It’ll be soon—I can feel it.” His confidence is contagious. “The couch had to be a sign that the universe is giving things back to the Herrings.”
He’s been different since Tito disappeared. His skin has more color; his voice is stronger. He’s not high, and he’s not hungover.
My leg throbs, but it’s just pain, no broken glass. I can handle pain. It turns out that without the anxiety, I actually have a pretty high pain threshold.
I stop by a neighbor’s fence and take half a Vicodin, palming it so Rex doesn’t see.
He sees. “I won’t try to take it. I’m done, Sam. Don’t give me any more, even if I ask. I’m . . . I’m gonna talk to the new therapist about antidepressants.”
I feel like I’m inflating with pride. “Rex—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, Sam. I never should have asked in the first place.” He looks away and grimaces. “You were in so much pain after the accident, but the pills put you to sleep, and I was jealous. I wanted to go to sleep forever. I stole the first one—I never told you that.”
It had taken me a good month after I’d left the hospital to realize I should be hiding them in my sock drawer. “Did you keep doing it?”
“Nah. Felt too much like a scumbag, stealing pain meds from my little sister. Had to ask. Still a scumbag move, but at least then I felt like I was getting the punishment I deserved, because you’d look at me . . . like you were disappointed.”
The first time he’d asked, he said he’d pulled a muscle. The next time it was a migraine. Eventually neither of us bothered pretending anymore.
“At least you tried to feel better. It wasn’t good, but you were trying.” I let Tito’s food bowl drop to my side. “I just sat there and felt awful because I thought the awfulness should be felt.”
“At least neither of us went crazy and threw out all the furniture.”
We both laugh.
Then I hesitate. “You know, Lena doesn’t mean—”
“I know.” He sighs. “She’s like everyone else on this planet—trying to do the right thing, only she’s too much of an idiot not to mess it up.”
Late that night, I have to get out of bed to use the bathroom.
I find Rex sitting in front of the door, alone in the dark hallway. He jumps when he hears my crutches. Instead of saying anything, he looks back at the closed door. There are soft kitten noises coming from behind it.
“You’ll have to go downstairs,” he whispers. “Lena’s crying in there.”
I’m so tired that all I do is stumble down to the kitchen bathroom and go back to bed.
But I can’t sleep, and when I peek into the hallway again half an hour later, the door is still closed and Rex is still sitting there, his back against the wall, elbows on his knees and hands dangling between them, staring at nothing in the dark.
Hours later, during that dull navy-blue sliver of time when it’s impossible to tell if it’s night or early morning, I’m woken up again, this time by a text.
I need to talk to you. Meet me in the McDonald’s lot.
It’s from Anthony.
I hurl my phone in my drawer, slam it shut, and curl up under the farthest corner of my covers.
But this could be my last chance to ask him why.
I get dressed, cold and shaking. The hallway is finally empty. I find Rex’s keys downstairs on the kitchen table, and then I steal his truck.
The McDonald’s parking lot is deserted, an expanse of nothingness only broken by the pale yellow pool beneath the streetlight. I park beneath it and lean against the pole, trying to calm my stomach.
Half a minute later, Anthony parks next to me.
He gets out of the car. He’s disheveled and pale, thinner, his eyes puffy as he faces me under the light. His tiger smile is gone, just blank confusion.
It’s impossible to be afraid of him like this. Like you can’t re
ally be afraid of a worm, only sickened by it.
“I know what you made Trez do,” I manage.
And I’m going to ask why, the question big and bloody in my mouth, except I already know, don’t I? Eliot already explained.
He did it because he thinks other people are lesser and worth sacrificing.
Because he was never brave enough to question what he was taught to believe.
He’s not evil, and that’s the saddest part.
Anthony doesn’t seem surprised by what I’ve said, but the desperation in his expression deepens.
“You have to believe I didn’t mean that to happen,” he says hoarsely. “If you need to blame someone, blame Trez; she was driving. You can’t want me to blame myself—do you know how fucking horrible that would be? I liked your mom.”
But he already is, I realize.
He blames himself deep down, but he won’t face it, so the guilt and sadness will stay forever as white noise that covers everything, and all he’ll know is that something in him is broken.
“Say something.” His voice cracks. He’s begging. “God, Sam . . . you were the only one, you . . . and your dog, who ever liked the real me. That pathetic . . . I thought, if I could ever really have a friend someday, not a fake one, it’d be you.”
I was friends with a little kid who snuck my dog home in his sweatshirt. Not him.
“But suddenly you were all about this Eliot asshole. . . .” His hand spasms. “People like me when I pretend I’m someone different, okay? You and Rex were running around reminding everyone of the truth. I just wanted to be the version people liked. I don’t deserve to suffer forever for that, right?”
I would have stayed his friend. But he won’t even try to understand how badly he hurt me, my brother, my family.
I can’t feel sorry for him when Eliot learned how to try.
“How can I have a chance with you if you don’t talk?” He takes a jittery step forward, then back. “You were the only one who cared. You and your goddamn dog . . .”
He chokes on the word dog, and something shifts strangely inside me. It reminds me of Kendra’s birthday party and how I felt the wrongness of the situation before my brain registered the dangling leash.
