by Annie Harper
“Got a medium mushroom and green pepper.”
Avery peers at the delivery guy from the hood of her blanket. “I ordered a large pepperoni.” He double-checks his receipt and the address. “Says medium mushroom and green pepper.” Avery sighs and reaches for the pizza with her blanket-covered hands. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.” She plops the pizza box onto the floor and doesn’t bother picking off the toppings. She hates mushrooms. It doesn’t matter.
Her phone rings with an unknown number while she’s searching for something to watch. It pings with a voicemail after she gives up and turns the TV off.
“Hi. Avery? This is Grace, from Halfway Home. I was wondering if I could ask you something. If you could call me at this number…”
Avery doesn’t even finish listening to the message; she fumbles the phone to call back immediately, then kicks herself for so easily getting her hopes up over nothing, again. Just because Grace remembered her after all doesn’t mean anything. When Grace answers, Avery pushes her expectations way, way down.
“Are you there? Hello?”
“Yes, this is Avery Puckett returning your call.” She is, after all, accomplished in the neutral-but-pleasant corporate employee business tone.
“Avery, hi! Thanks so much for calling me back!”
Grace sounds so genuinely excited that Avery badly wants to respond in kind, but no. Friendly and sweet is Grace’s necessary business mode; Avery needs to remember that. “Of course,” Avery responds, mildly. “Was there something you needed from me? More paperwork?”
“Oh.” There’s a pause, then a squeak in the background as if Grace sat in the metal chair of the rescue’s office. “Not paperwork, no. But it is about Rudy.”
“Is he okay?” Avery responds, annoyed at the concern in her voice. It’s just a dog and not even her dog. She doesn’t care; she can’t. “I mean. Is there a problem?”
“Sort of?” Grace hedges. “The thing is, he’s acting about the same: aggressive and snapping at anyone who comes near him. It took three of us to hold him down just so the vet could look him over, and, for a dog who weighs eleven pounds, that’s impressive.” She laughs, and Avery is not strong enough to resist the musical sound, can’t stop herself from imagining Grace’s beaming, bright smile.
“I did think he was a demon at first,” Avery says.
Grace laughs again. “He trusts you, though. So I could use your help.”
“Oh. Really? Me?” Avery unwraps from her blanket cocoon.
“Absolutely,” Grace says. “We have this program called ‘Pen Pals,’” Grace explains. “A special volunteer comes by as often as they can, once a week if that’s all they can manage, and they spend one-on-one time with our more difficult cases.”
“Just, like, hang out with him?”
“Sure. Spend time with him. You have a calming presence that will really be good for him. And then I’ll spend time with both of you to get him to a point where he can be adopted.”
Avery barely hears what came after “I’ll spend time with you” and, breathless and eager, says, “yes.” She squeezes her eyes shut and winces. “I mean. I’ll, uh, look at my schedule and check if I have some free time.”
“Great! Thank you, Avery. Seriously, you’re incredible.” And there’s that stupid flicker of hope again. She’s never felt this giddy and excited around someone; it’s ridiculous and bound to lead to disappointment. She has got to rein this silly crush in.
“It’s— Yeah. I’ll see what I can do.”
She can hear the confusion in Grace’s voice when she replies, “Okay. I will maybe see you around then, I guess.”
“Maybe,” Avery says, before hanging up the phone and pulling the blanket all the way over her head. She wasn’t totally lying about being busy— She does need to find a job, and a couch, and to figure out how to be around Grace without acting like a besotted idiot. And she definitely needs more ice cream.
Chapter Five
Avery spends the next day putting in online application after online application and even cold-calling a few places. Dead ends everywhere. Job hunting is so demoralizing that she wants to retreat into her blanket cocoon. No, she should get out of the house. A change of scenery could do her some good. What she needs is a mall pretzel.
The mall isn’t busy at all, to Avery’s surprise. But it is a weekday, in the early afternoon when most people are working. Most people haven’t been recently fired and have nothing better to do in the early afternoon on a weekday. Avery is surprised, too, at the Christmas decorations everywhere and the holiday music piped over the speakers in the food court. Is it that time so soon? She’s always liked Christmas, but it only takes a few years of working through the holiday to start thinking of it as just another day, like all the other days that blend together as one long, slow, pointless slog through life. Same old crap, just with lights and tinsel.
Across from the food court, there is a Santa’s Village going up: a snow-dusted North Pole with small workshop buildings and posed reindeer and a huge artificial Christmas tree. A woman with long, black dreadlocks and an ugly Christmas sweater rushes around, obviously managing the employees who are assembling the village. Avery finishes her soft pretzel and sweeps salt into a little pile. A packet of papers drops, scattering the salt pile beneath it. Lutz Events: Making Magic! A leader in event programming. Sprinkling salt like snow, Avery picks up the packet.
Would you like to be part of a magical experience?
Avery spots the woman in charge of the fake North Pole construction, who is busy dropping the applications onto other tables. Her criteria for hiring must be adults who have nothing better to do than be at the mall food court on Tuesday afternoon. Avery does need a job and doesn’t want to go through the torture of job hunting. On the other hand, she isn’t fond of kids or Christmas. But on the other other hand, she would be in daily proximity to the soft pretzel stand. Avery hops over miniature train tracks to address a man who is arranging huge teddy bears and gold-wrapped presents next to Santa’s throne.
“Got a pen?” she asks.
As it turns out, the ugly, light-up, jingle-bell-festooned Christmas sweater is part of a uniform. It comes with a matching ugly, light-up, jingle-bell hat. Tracie, the manager with the dreadlocks, apologizes when she hands the uniform to Avery, along with forms to fill out and an employee handbook. She starts in two days, after the village is completed and her references are checked, so she does indeed have time to stop by the shelter the next day to see Rudy—and Grace.
“Can I help you?” At the front desk, Deb looks up at Avery as if she’s never seen her. “Who are you?”
“Avery Puckett? Here to volunteer? Grace asked me?” With every question, Avery sounds and feels more unsure. Deb is right, who is Avery, anyway? How can she help a dog? She doesn’t have any experience with dogs; she has no couch; she eats peanut butter directly from the jar and calls it dinner. And Grace will be able to tell what a mess Avery is right away and realize she made a mistake and ask Avery to leave, and that will be that. It’s not worth the humiliation just to see Grace smile again. But, she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Rudy. She did go to all that trouble to catch him, ruining her third favorite poncho and everything.
Deborah hands her a clipboard. “Fill this out.” Avery has filled in her personal information on so many forms lately she’s starting to get existential about it. When Avery pushes the clipboard back to Deb, she tosses a volunteer badge onto the counter. “Tino will show you what to do.”
Tino is a tall, brawny man with a tattoo of a tiger covering half of his neck, who is busy spraying the concrete floor of a large kennel with a high-powered hose. When he spots Avery he points the nozzle of the hose at her; water drips down his beefy arm and onto his scuffed combat boots. Avery steps back.
“You the new volunteer?”
Avery looks at the plastic badge clipp
ed to her sweatshirt. She doesn’t want to point out the obvious, because Tino is a large man who is pointing a high-powered hose at her face.
“Yes?”
Tino drops the hose with a sudden clack. Avery startles. “Come with me.” He takes a still-jumpy Avery to the large kennels in the back. Rudy got an upgrade since she dropped him off; he’s now in a large pen outfitted with a little, blanketless cot, metal food and water bowls, and a door flap to an outside enclosure. “He’s been goin’ after everyone,” Tino says, gruffly. “Can’t get near him unless you wanna lose a finger.”
Avery starts to apologize, as if it’s her fault Rudy hates everyone. She’s particularly worried that Rudy has made himself an enemy of Tino of the tiger neck tattoo. But then Tino crouches outside the pen, pitches his voice high, and croons, “Poor widdle baby boy’s so scared. Sweet angel boy, it’s okay.” Avery stares at him. Tino looks up. “You can go in.”
“Yes. In. Right.” She enters the pen, and Tino closes the door, latching the metal handle securely. Rudy is cowering in a corner, growling and baring his teeth and shaking like a leaf. He’s even more funny-looking cleaned up and in the light of day. “Um,” she says, standing stiff and awkward as Tino waits. “Hey… Rudy. Uh, how’s it going?”
Tino narrows his eyes, seeming to clue in to the fact that Avery has no idea what the hell she’s doing. Tino points to a clean patch of cement floor. “You sit down there, and I’ll get some treats. He hasn’t been eating, but maybe you can get him to.”
When Tino leaves, Avery lowers herself to the cold, hard floor. She doesn’t know what a dog expert would do, but if she were in this chilled, dark pen with all kinds of scary noises and gross smells and people poking and prodding her while she was already scared out of her mind, well— She’d probably just want to be left alone. So she doesn’t talk to Rudy, doesn’t call him over or touch him or tell him he’s okay. When Tino brings the treats, Avery puts them down nearby and doesn’t try to entice Rudy at all. She just sits with him. And maybe he can tell she’s giving him space, or maybe he just needed a minute, because he does creep closer. After a while he’s sitting near her—close, but not too close.
It's a start.
Chapter Six
Grace appears outside of the kennel door; she crouches down, with a smile for Avery. Avery’s heart flutters. Rudy barks and charges at Grace. “I know, I know.” Grace stands, moving back, and Avery nearly reaches for her. “I’m glad you were able to come by,” Grace says, after Rudy retreats to his corner and settles for growling at her.
“Not like I have anything better to do,” Avery says. Grace’s face falls, clearly disappointed. Avery may have overplayed her whole “cooly unaffected” vibe. “I mean,” she tries, “I’m not just here because I have nothing better to do. I mean. I have things. To do. That I… Also… Want to do?”
Grace gives her an amused chuckle. “I need to make rounds, then I’ll be back to help you, okay?” She stands, reaching up to pull her loose hair back in a ponytail. Her forearms and biceps flex with the movement; her T-shirt pulls up and tight across her stomach and chest.
“Sure, yeah, yep, yeah.” Avery winces and snaps her mouth closed and then, for some reason, waves cheerfully until Grace is out of sight. She covers her face with her hands and groans. Grace is just a girl—a cute girl with the most beatific smile in the world and nicely toned arms, and she smells like sunshine and laughs like sunshine and overwhelms Avery completely.
Rudy is still in the corner, still trembling with just a bare cot and no blanket in his cold cement cage. “I’ll go find you a blanket, stay here,” Avery tells him, as if he can understand her or has any choice in the matter. Avery tracks Grace down at the row of kennels nearest to her office, where she’s filling out a kennel card for a white-muzzled golden retriever lying at her feet.
“Oh, hey.” Grace glances up. “I just have this intake to finish and then I’m heading back to you.”
“Actually I was hoping to find a blanket…” The golden retriever sighs heavily and closes his eyes. He looks well cared for, not dirty and starving like Rudy looked when she found him. He even has a collar with happy little snowmen printed on it. “Is he lost?”
“She,” Grace corrects, tugging the plastic shelter leash clipped to the dog’s festive collar. “And no. She’s an owner surrender. They’re moving out of state.” Grace clicks her tongue and says gently, “Come on, Pepper.”
Avery follows Grace and Pepper’s slow stroll to the large kennels. “Wait. They just left her? Just like that?”
Grace opens an empty kennel and guides Pepper inside, then bends down to pat her head. “It happens more than you think. I’m sure they had their reasons. On the plus side, we have a lot of information about her, so it should help get her adopted.” She crouches down to hug and pet her, whispers encouragement, then closes the door and turns to Avery with a determined look. “I try not to judge.” Grace’s decisive tone and the determined set of her mouth makes it clear that she is now finished with the conversation. Pepper curls up on her shelter-issue cot and sighs. Avery’s heart aches; she can’t imagine how Grace does this every day. After giving Pepper one last glance, Grace claps her hands and strides down the hall to Rudy’s kennel. “Shall we?”
Avery scrambles to keep up. “Grace, uh.” When Grace throws a smile over her shoulder, Avery trips over her own feet. “Do you have any blankets?”
Grace stops at Rudy’s kennel. “Why, do you need warming up?” Avery’s mind supplies an image of Grace warming her up. “I’m kidding,” Grace says with a laugh. “I know, he’s cold. Unfortunately, we had a horrible flea infestation last summer and had to throw away all the bedding and…” She unlatches Rudy’s kennel, then pulls another nylon leash from one of her cargo pockets. “We are completely out of funds, currently. Actually, behind on funds.”
So that’s what the chart was about. Avery clears her throat, finding her voice again. “And what happens if you don’t get more funds?”
Grace’s usual bright smile is strained. “Gotta be optimistic,” she says, not answering the question at all. “Now, we are going to attempt to get a leash on this guy. Care to join me?”
They’re completely unsuccessful at the leashing attempt, but Avery gets to spend nearly forty-five minutes in an enclosed space with Grace, listening to Grace talk about dog behavior, and some of the other animals that have come through these doors, and how every case, no matter the outcome, no matter how difficult, has made her more sure that this is her life’s purpose. Forty-five minutes goes by in the blink of an eye, and Avery leaves the shelter certain that Grace is the most incredible person she has ever met.
Chapter Seven
In a stroke of luck, Avery gets assigned to the Santa’s Village cash register instead of wrangling sticky toddlers on and off Santa’s lap. However, she had not counted on the endless dithering of parents who want a photo of their child screaming on Santa’s lap for a bargain basement price and in sizes they don’t offer as if Avery, the lowly cashier, is trying to grift people on behalf of her corporate overlords.
“If we get the largest photo pack, then we can give them to everyone as gifts,” one dad points out, as Avery waits slumped against the register with her cheek smashed against her fist. They’ve been at this for a while, as the line stretches on behind him: a beast growing larger with every indecisive back-and-forth.
“But,” says the other dad, “If we get the five-by-sevens like we said, that won’t be enough. And how do we decide who gets the eight-by-tens? And the one eleven-by-fifteen?”
“Cage match,” Avery mutters, not as much under her breath as she intended.
Both parents look at her and demand, “What?”
“I, uh…” Avery stands taller, then points out options on the display screen, yet again. “I said, you can add key chains to the five-by-sevens and make it even. And then keep the portrait size for your
self.” Either they think that’s reasonable, or else their kid incessantly kicking the cashier stand is finally irritating them, too, but they agree to Avery’s suggestion and go on their way.
“Nice up-sell,” Tracie comments between customers.
“Thanks,” Avery says. She’s sort of good at this gig, and it’s even kind of fun sometimes. Too bad it’s temporary.
When the line finally starts to dwindle, Santa takes his lunch break, and Tracie puts up a sign notifying everyone that Santa is off to “feed his reindeer.” Avery finishes the last handful of parents waiting to purchase pictures, then takes her break, too. One of the “workshops” is the breakroom, which houses a card table and some folding chairs and a block of cubbies for employees' personal items. The man who plays Santa is inside, munching on gingersnaps and sipping a cup of coffee. He’s authentic looking, that’s for sure, with a real, snow-white beard and round, ruddy cheeks and a spot-on, jolly, ho-ho-ho laugh.
“No milk with your cookies?” Avery jokes as she sits across from him.
He winks at her. “If Santa’s going to make all these children’s wishes come true, he needs a little fuel.” He laughs his Santa laugh.
It’s a weird reply, and it’s weirder still that’s he’s keeping up the Santa schtick in the employee breakroom. He must be one of those method actors, taking himself way too seriously. Avery pretends to be occupied by her phone, and eats her pretzel in silence until he leaves.
After she goes back to the register, Tracie bustles past, dragging a ladder. “Will you steady this for me?” She nods to Avery, who doesn’t have any customers and spots Tracie as she climbs up to fix a garland that’s come undone over Santa’s throne.
“What are your Christmas plans, Avery?” Santa says.
Avery frowns. She doesn't remember introducing herself. He must have overheard Tracie. “Not much. I’m not a big Christmas person.”
