by Nick Pirog
Cassie
“Here, Cassie,” Mia says, dangling a piece of pepperoni in front of me. Mia is Julie’s best friend. Mia is Julie’s Hugo. I lean forward and gently take the pepperoni in my teeth.
I still try to be extra gentle around Mia, even though we’ve been friends for a while now. She was scared of me the first time I met her and she ran away from me. Julie told me not to be upset, that it wasn’t my fault and that Mia was bitten by a dog when she was younger. But I was upset. Who would bite an adorable little girl? And why am I getting blamed for this?
The next time I saw her was at Julie’s eighth birthday party (I only know this because Julie and I are the same age) and I went and sat a few feet from where Mia was sitting and eating cake. I could hear Mia’s heart beating in her chest and I thought maybe she was going to get up and run away, but she didn’t. Every few minutes I would get up and go a little bit closer until I was sitting right next to her.
I looked up into her little brown face and I tried to tell her, I will never hurt you. I will never ever hurt you.
I could see her bottom lip quivering, so I got up and walked away. It was hard. I wanted so badly to put my head in her lap. And I wanted to lick a scratch on her knee, but I made myself get up and walk away.
The next time I saw her was here, at this same place with the music and all the people.
“Just stick your hand out,” Julie said to Mia. “I promise you; she is the sweetest dog in the world. She won’t bite you.”
Mia reached out her hand. It was shaking. In it was a big piece of kettle corn. I slowly—the slowest I could possibly go—put my chin in her hand, then I stuck out my tongue and I licked up the kettle corn.
“That tickles,” Mia laughed.
That was the day we became friends.
Speaking of kettle corn, after we finish off the pizza, Julie, Mia, and I get some kettle corn and the three of us plop down in the grass and eat the entire bag.
Jerry
The beer tent is packed to the gills with small groups conversing, people leaned over the railing and gazing at the concert below, and a long, twenty-minute line to get beer and wine.
After a few minutes of pushing through the crowd, I spot a girl up against the railing talking with two guys. She’s clad in a red bikini top and white shorts and resembles the pictures I saw on Tinder.
I tap her on the shoulder and she turns.
With her dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, she looks like she belongs on a trashy reality television show. There’s a large purple octopus tattoo taking up the better part of her toned midriff, the tentacles wrapping around her hips and I presume onto her buttocks.
“Brook?” I ask.
“You made it!” she shouts, pulling me in against her big—but not too big—well, maybe just a tad too big—breasts.
She turns to the two guys—both of whom have thick beards and are covered in tattoos—and says, “Guys, this is my friend, Jerry. We met on Tinder.”
I raise my hand in a perfunctory wave.
Hey, dudes.
You guys on Tinder or what?
Brook has a beer cup in her right hand; actually, it’s three beer cups stacked inside one another, and says, “Let’s get you a drink.”
“Okay,” I say, happy not to have to make idle chitchat with the two gentlemen.
Brook grabs my hand and begins pulling me behind her. Instead of taking me to the back of the line, she pulls me up to the front and shouts, “Jake!”
A guy pouring beer from a tap—also with a beard and tattoos (I’m starting to see a pattern here)—snaps his head up and smiles.
Brook shakes her nearly empty beer cup at him and flashes two fingers. Ten seconds later, two frothing beers are hand delivered.
No payment appears necessary.
We find an open spot on the railing and Brook says, “I’m so glad you came.”
“Me too.”
We cheers and she gulps down a quarter of her beer.
“So you said your friend is in the band?” I ask.
“Yeah, Tyler. He’s the crazy one in the Speedo.”
“That takes guts.”
“Yeah, well, when you got the goods, you might as well show ‘em off.”
I force a laugh, then ask, “So how long have you been a cocktail waitress at Harrah’s?”
“Seven years.”
“You must like it?”
“Money is good, especially in the summer. You have to deal with a bunch of shitheads hitting on you and grabbing your ass, but—” she shrugs, “it is what it is.”
“You ever want to do anything else?”
“Maybe a dental hygienist someday. We’ll see.”
I leave a few beats open for her to ask me a question. She rocks her head to the music and takes a long drink.
I take a sip of beer, then ask, “What do you do for fun?”
“Go out, have some drinks,” she pauses, “I like karaoke!”
I wait a few seconds.
“What about you?” she asks.
“I’m sort of a homebody. I read a lot, watch a lot of Netflix, play with my dog.”
“That’s cool.” She nods at my beer and says, “Finish that and I’ll get us a couple more.”
I take a few long chugs, dripping a bunch down my chin, then hand her what’s left. She slugs my remaining beer and says, “I’ll be right back.”
She leaves and I check my cell phone. I have a text message from Alex telling me that Julie left with her mom and that Cassie is tied to a tree. I step up one rung on the railing and glance backward over the top of the mesh divider. I can see the top half of Cassie lying next to a tree. Mia is sitting next to her, stroking her ears.
I text Alex back that Cassie is all good. A half minute later, Brook returns.
After a few sips and a second cheers, I say, “Okay, Desert Island.”
Brook slugs back two inches of beer, wipes her mouth and asks, “What’s that?”
“You can bring one book, one movie, and one TV series to a desert island, what do you bring?”
She scrunches her bottom lip, which is pretty cute, then says, “Book would have to be Style.”
“Style, like the magazine?”
“No, it’s a book.”
Oh, good.
“By Lauren Conrad,” she says, “You know, from The Hills.”
“Oh, okay.” I’m vaguely familiar with the MTV reality show from a decade earlier, but I’m more familiar with Lauren Conrad because she has a series of fiction novels based loosely on her time in L.A. “She actually has a bunch of novels as well,” I tell Brook.
“I heard that!” she exclaims, then continues, “Movie would have to be Crazy, Stupid, Love.”
“I love that movie. Steve Carell is hilarious.”
“Ryan Gosling is half naked in it,” she scoffs. “I mean, I am alone on this island, right?”
I nod and smile.
“And for the TV series, it would have to be a toss-up between The Real Housewives of Orange County and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. I have to pick just one?”
I almost say, “Yep, it’s a real Sophie’s Choice,” but considering her answers thus far, the reference would be lost on her.
“I guess if I have to pick one,” she says, “I’d have to go with…Orange County.”
I laugh, then say, “I would bring—”
“Let’s go dance,” she interrupts.
“Oh, okay.”
She slugs back her beer, beckons for me to finish mine—she ends up drinking a good half of it—then grabs my hand and leads me out of the tent and down the steep steps.
As I stumble behind Brook, using my free hand to brace myself on the railing, I catch my father’s eye in my peripheral. He gives me a huge grin and two orange thumbs-up (consequence of the big bag of Cheetos Puffs on his lap).
Brook and I snake our way to the now crowded dance section of beach in front of the sta
ge. Thankfully, my mother and Pete are gone. (Which the more I think about, the more troubling it becomes. Wherever they are, I hope my mom still has her hat on.)
Brook kicks off her shoes, turns into me, and begins swaying her hips to the beat. She might not be well read, but damn if she can’t move and the thought of where my mother and Pete are and what exactly they’re doing is pushed aside by the voluptuous femme fatale. I do my best to keep up, but I’m made of cardboard and I can only fake it so well.
Brook doesn’t seem to mind or is too buzzed to care. After two songs, she surprises me by leaning in and pressing her mouth to mine.
“I’m glad you came,” she says, running her hands through my hair.
It’s my first kiss in over a year and I expect it to burn a hole in my pants, but it doesn’t.
It does nothing.
“Me too,” I lie.
I fake it for another two songs, then say, “I’ve got to get going. I have my dog with me.”
“You brought your dog?” she shrieks. “I love dogs!”
Cassie
Julie had to leave and she tied me to a tree. Mia kept me company for a little while, then she had to leave too. I don’t get to see Mia very often, only a few times a year, so I gave her a bunch of extra licks when she said goodbye.
Now I’m just sitting here listening to the music (which I don’t like; I much prefer music without words) and watching all the people. A bunch of people come to pet me. A few of them smell like the magic grassy brown squares. I bark at one girl, hoping she’ll give me one, but all I get is a few more scratches.
(What I wouldn’t give for another magic grassy brown square. There are so many doors in my head that I still need to open.)
At some point, I drift off to sleep.
“Cassie!”
I blink my eyes open.
It’s Jerry.
“Hi, girl,” he says, rubbing my ears. “How was your nap?
It was a great nap, Jerry.
“Oh, hey there,” a girl behind Jerry says.
She takes a few steps toward me and leans down. She has big bumps on her chest. I know all girls have these bumps, but hers are much bigger than others.
I lean forward and sniff her bumps.
They smell salty.
Why do her bumps smell salty?
And why are her bumps all swishy?
I want to investigate this mystery further, but Miss Big Bumps grabs my head between both hands and says, “Who’s a good doggy? Who’s a good doggy?” She shakes my head when she does this.
I bark.
Kindly take your hands off my face.
“Cassie!” Jerry yells. “Be nice.”
She shook my head, Jerry.
Babies, soda pop, and my head.
Things you do not shake, Jerry.
“Well, we should be going,” Jerry says to Big Bumps.
Yes, Jerry.
The faster, the better.
“Oh, okay,” she says. “Text me soon.”
She leans forward and she presses her face to Jerry’s mouth. I know this is how human’s lick, but it still makes me angry.
That’s my mouth!
“Bye, doggy,” she shouts, then she turns and leaves.
Jerry grabs my head with both hands. (It’s okay if Jerry grabs my head. If I like you, then you can grab my head.)
He says, “You don’t like her?”
No, Jerry, I do not.
Her bumps are all swishy, she shook my head, then she licked your face.
“That’s okay,” he says. “I don’t like her either.”
~
I stop at the dirt path that leads down to the water.
Jerry stops and turns around.
“I don’t feel like it, Cassie,” he says. “Can we just go home?”
I want to go in the water, but if you want to go home, we can do that, Jerry. We can snuggle on the bed and watch Netflix. That’s almost as good as going in the lake.
Jerry leans down and I feel him adjust my collar. Sometimes my fur bunches up and my collar gets tight.
I hear a light click.
Then Jerry stands up. He’s holding my leash in his hand. He has a big grin on his face.
“Last one in the lake is a stinky, smelly, dog,” Jerry yells, then he darts down the path.
I twirl, twirl, twirl, then I race after him.
Chapter 10
“THE WHARF”
Hugo
The only good thing about being so small is that it’s easy to hide. From my spot in the bushes, I watch the humans and cars crisscross the street. The humans are holding round colored objects above their heads, which protect them from the rain. Cars race through the street. Every once in a while, a car driving through the rising water near the curb splashes water into my hiding spot.
I’m cold and wet. What little fur I have is matted to my tiny body. I used to have so much fur. Thick black and tan fur. I could play in the snow for hours and not get cold. Jerry would always say, “How can you shed as much as you do and still have so much fur?”
That was then.
That was before I became a stupid little baby cat.
A small puddle has formed in the dirt beneath me and I lap up the water. (I drank from the lake that wasn’t my Lake twice, but both times it made me sick.) The rainwater is delicious and I drink my fill.
I’m no longer thirsty, but I’m hungry. Starving. It seems like forever since my last meal of kibble, though I know it’s only been two days.
My tiny stomach rumbles.
How can a stomach so small rumble so loud?
This is what Cassie must have felt like when she lived on the Street. When she said she was a “scavenger.” Always hungry. Always wondering where and when her next bite of food would come.
But she survived.
Could I?
~
My first day on the Street didn’t go so well.
After waiting at the lake that wasn’t my Lake for a day and a half for Jerry to come, I finally smelled my way to a bunch of shops on the water. I know what shops are; Jerry would take Cassie and me to the shops all the time. The Bakery Shop. The Ball Shop. The Food Shop. But where there are shops, there are humans. Swarms of them. I could smell so many different types of food: fish, hamburger, cheese! But I never had a chance to find any. I was too busy running from humans.
Every time a human saw me, they would try to pick me up. I would run away from one human, only to have to run away from another. One human caught me. A Jerry-human. I hissed and I’m ashamed to admit this, I bit him.
This was the first time I ever bit a human on purpose. (I bit Jerry a few times on accident when we would play tug-o-war with my rope.) The Jerry-human yelled and dropped me to the ground, and I scampered to my hiding spot in the bushes.
I was rethinking my plan, trying to figure out how to get through all those humans and to some of that delicious food, when I saw a dog. A big brown and white dog. A boxer.
I have a bad history with boxers. The only fight I ever had with another dog was a boxer. Gallagher. We were wrestling at the dog park, like always, and then he went crazy and bit my shoulder. I had to go see Dr. Josh and he gave me something called “stitches.” But maybe this boxer could help me. Maybe he could help me find the Lake. Or at least, some food.
The boxer was tied to a tree near one of the shops. I wiggled out of my spot in the bushes, then scampered up to him. He was brown with a white circle around one of his eyes. His face was flat and his nose upturned, the way boxers’ faces are.
I lifted one of my tiny little paws and meowed.
“Hi.”
His front legs stiffened. He leaned down and gave me a sniff.
“Can I ask you a quest—”
Before I could finish, he started barking and lunged at me.
“I’m not a cat!” I wanted to explain. “Well, I mean, yes, I’m a cat right now. But I used
to be a dog.”
Luckily he was tied to the tree and he couldn’t get to me. I scampered away, then looked back over my shoulder at the boxer on his hind legs, straining against his leash. I ran and ran, whizzing through all the human’s legs, then finally found a hiding spot under the pier.
Couldn’t the boxer tell I used to be a dog? Or was all my dogness gone?
All he saw was a cat. A cat he wanted to chase, or eat, or kill. But could I blame him? That’s how I saw cats when I was a dog.
What if all the cats I chased used to be dogs?
I stayed under the pier the rest of the day and night.
~
Thankfully, humans don’t like rain and there are far fewer of them today. And although I can’t smell the food as well—it’s hard to smell things in the rain other than rain—I know it’s there.
I wiggle out of my spot in the bushes and scamper behind a tree, then run down the pier. Some of the shops have big overhangs which shields the outdoor part from the rain. I slip through the opening in a small red metal fence to where there are a bunch of tables and chairs. Under one of the chairs, I see them.
Two French fries.
I gobble the first one so fast I don’t taste it. I try to eat the second one slowly, like how Cassie would, knowing it might be awhile before I get another chance to eat. But before I’m even done thinking about eating it, I’ve already eaten it.
I continue scavenging under the tables for more food. I find a piece of bread and a pickle. Jerry was always eating pickles when he was working on his computer. So, of course, I love the smell of pickles. But I hate how they taste. Still, I force myself to eat it.
“Hey! Get outta here!” someone yells.
I look up.
It’s a she-human. She looks like Mom, but bigger. Like Mom, she has a broom. She pokes the broom at me and says, “Shoe! Shoe!”
(I don’t know why she’s talking about shoes. I haven’t eaten any shoes in a long time; not since I was a puppy.)
I slink back through the red bars and run down the pier. I run past a bunch of shops, then come to a metal railing. Through the railing I can see the lake that isn’t my Lake. There are a bunch of boats, though different than the boats on my Lake; these are bigger and one of them blares its horn. When the horn dies, I hear barking.
