Strays Like Us Page 15

  “Easy for you to say.” Mr. Carder’s mouth tightened. “You’re not looking at spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair.”

  “Better a wheelchair than under the ground,” Margery shot back. “Now, I brought these girls over specially, like you asked. Was there something you wanted to say to them?”

  Mr. Carder sniffed. His eyes roved over the ceiling, and after another moment, he cleared his throat. “I ain’t never been someone who sits around and thinks about things,” he said finally. “I’m a working man. Been working at the same place for the last thirty-six years. Up at dawn, home at dusk. Even on the weekends.”

  “You work on the weekends?” Delia asked.

  “Never missed one,” Mr. Carder answered. “I like to keep busy. Hate to waste time.” He sighed, and when he did, it sounded as if all the air inside his chest leaked out with it. “Now all I have is time. And lying here on my back, I can’t do nothing but think.”

  I could feel Margery watching me from the end of Mr. Carder’s bed. She nodded when I glanced over at her, encouraging me to respond. “Whatcha been thinking about?” I asked, hoping that was the right question.

  Mr. Carder pursed his lips and squinted his eyes, and I took a step back, sure that he was going to start barking at me. But then the hardness around his mouth softened and his eyes grew slack. “The dog, mostly.”

  “Toby?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Carder said. “Toby.” He cleared his throat. “I ain’t done right by him. All these years, I guess I’ve been so busy that I didn’t really give him what he needed.”

  “He’s doing okay, though,” I said. “We gave him a bath and cleaned him up. He’s been sleeping in Margery’s shed out back. We fixed him up a nice bed with blankets and stuff.”

  “We got him a leash, too,” Delia chimed in. “So he can run around without actually running away.”

  “That’s nice,” Mr. Carder said softly. “That’s real nice of you girls. And I’m obliged to you.”

  I wasn’t sure what “obliged” meant, but I was pretty sure it was Mr. Carder’s way of saying thank you. I was actually starting to relax a little bit.

  But Mr. Carder wasn’t finished. “You know, when I get home, he’ll have to come back to me. To my house. And I don’t want no fussing.”

  Margery flicked her eyes at him. “John?”

  “That’s why I wanted you to bring the girls here,” Mr. Carder said. “It’s all well and good that you’re giving Toby some attention right now. But when I get home, he’ll be coming back over to my house. He’s my animal. Bottom line. And I don’t want no problems.”

  I could feel something flare inside. “But how will you take care of him?”

  “You leave that up to me.”

  I looked over at Margery, but she just shook her head. I bit my lip and tried to quiet the hard, mean little part of me. But it didn’t work. “He won’t want to go back with you,” I heard myself say. “Not after how nice we’ve been to him.”

  “Fred.” Margery shook her head again.

  A muscle pulsed in Mr. Carder’s cheek. “You don’t know anything about my dog.”

  “I know more than you do.” I talked as fast as I could, even as Margery moved toward me. “I know he likes being clean.” I pulled away as Margery grabbed my arm. “And warm. I know he likes chopped-up hamburger and salami. I know he likes to run! I know he—”

  “You know, from what I’ve heard, it sounds like Margery’s been real nice to you, too.” Mr. Carder’s voice was tight and clipped. Margery let go of my arm. “Does that mean you’re not going to want to go back to your mother when she gets out of jail?”

  My mouth fell open. The floor swayed beneath my feet. I was pretty sure if Mr. Carder had sat up in bed just then and punched me in the stomach, it would not have hurt nearly as much.

  “Okay, we’re done here.” Margery half pulled, half pushed me out of Mr. Carder’s room and down the bright hallway. I tried to twist out of her grip, but it was impossible. Her hand was like a steel trap. Delia trotted behind us, trying to keep up.

  “All right,” I said as we made our way around the corner. “All right! Let go of me!”

  Margery released my arm. She just stood there for a minute, breathing hard.

  “You told him?” I could barely get the words out. “About Mom?”

  Margery nodded.

  “When?”

  “Yesterday. When I came to see him.”

  “Why?” I clenched my fingers.

  “I’ve never had anyone live in the house before,” Margery said. “He just started asking questions.”

  “You had no right.” I glared at her. “That’s none of his business. That’s not anyone’s business!”

  “You’re right.” Margery held my gaze. “I’m sorry, Fred.”

  Her apology caught me off guard. I’d expected her to give me another excuse.

  “Fred.” Delia touched my arm. “I know I probably shouldn’t say this right now, but—”

  “Please stop talking.” I shrugged her hand off and glared again at Margery. “Can we just go? Now? I really need to get out of here.”

  “Yes.” Margery nodded at Delia. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  Margery didn’t say anything else as we dropped Delia off and drove back to her place. I was glad for the silence, grateful even. I had nothing to say to her. I didn’t know if I ever would again.

  I went straight to bed when we got home and stared up at the stars through the skylight. Mr. Carder’s words banged around in my head over and over again: Margery’s been real nice to you, too. Does that mean you’re not going to want to go back to your mother when she gets out of jail? What right did he have, comparing my situation to Toby’s? John Carder was a mean, stupid man who didn’t know anything about anybody. And Toby was just an animal that didn’t know any better. Who didn’t care where he was or who he was with, as long as someone was nice to him. Nothing about his situation was like mine. Nothing.

  I fell asleep after a long, long time, only to be awakened again by a faint knocking. I squinted as pale light streamed down through the window. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” Margery said, sticking her head in. “It’s almost noon. You hungry?”

  I rolled over and pulled the covers on top of my head. After another moment, I could hear the door click softly behind me. When a second knock came, it was dark again. This time, Margery walked into the room. She set a tray on the little table next to my bed and sat down. I could smell something like chicken. Maybe cooked carrots. Corn bread. My stomach growled.

  “Come on, now,” Margery said, shaking one of my shoulders. “You’ve been sleeping for almost eighteen hours. You’re all caught up. It’s time to eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.” My voice was muffled against my pillow.

  “Too bad.” Margery pulled the lip of my comforter down. “You need to eat anyway.”

  I snatched the cover back. “I don’t want anything.”

  There was a pause. “Being angry at me isn’t going to help anything.”

  I didn’t answer.

  Margery sat for another moment without moving. Then she picked up the tray and walked out of the room.

  After a few more minutes, I heard the door open again. I threw back the covers, ready to start yelling, when Toby leaped onto the bed. He pushed his nose against my neck and made little whimpering sounds as Margery shut the door behind us. I turned and pulled the covers over my head again. “Go away,” I muttered.

  But Toby didn’t go away. He stayed there for hours as I lay thinking about Mom and Margery and Delia and Mr. Carder. He pressed up against me, motionless as a stone, and didn’t make a sound. After a long time, I turned and looked at him. He raised his head as I reached for him, and crept forward a few inches so that I could scratch the back of his neck. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” I whispered. “You know that, buddy?” He licked my wrist as I petted him, and snuggled in tight along the inside of my arm, and a
fter a while, we both fell asleep again.

  I could hear voices in the kitchen the next morning, and although I still didn’t want to see or talk to anyone, my stomach was so empty I felt nauseous. Toby was gone; Margery had probably come to let him outside so he could pee. I pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans and headed downstairs.

  “Hey there!” Margery flipped a pancake inside a black skillet. “You hungry yet?”

  I nodded and glanced over at Delia, who was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs. I sat down across from her.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here.”

  I shrugged, but my face burned, thinking of what she knew.

  “Margery and I were going to take Toby over to the park and start teaching him to come when his name is called.” Delia looked at me hopefully. “You want to join us?”

  “Nah.” I shook my head as Margery slid a blue ceramic plate with three pancakes in front of me. A pat of butter glistened on top of them, and the edges were brown and crisp. I folded the top pancake in half and shoved it in my mouth.

  “Use your fork, please.” Margery eyed me from the stove.

  I grabbed the fork and started cutting the other two pancakes, still chewing the first.

  “You want syrup?” Delia pushed the bottle over.

  I nodded, dumping the thick liquid over the pancake stack.

  “Slow down, now,” Margery said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  I forced myself to ease up, but I didn’t stop eating. Margery slid two more pancakes onto my plate and four slices of bacon to go with them. I inhaled them all and sat back finally as I finished the last gulp of milk.

  “Full?” Margery asked.

  I nodded.

  “Feel better?”

  I shrugged.

  Delia dragged a chunk of pancake through a puddle of syrup on her plate. “Come with us!” she pleaded. “It’s not even that cold out today. Toby’ll want to see you. And he’ll probably listen to you more than he will to us.” She glanced at Margery. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Margery wiped her hands on a dishcloth, then took my plate and glass from the table. “I think Delia’s right. The two of you will have much better luck with him than I will. He’s much more accustomed to being around the both of you. Why don’t you go take a hot shower, Fred? It’s amazing what a full stomach and a clean body can do for a foggy head.”

  I gave her a look, but inside I’d already given in. I got up and headed for the shower.

  It wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

  “I’m so nervous about tomorrow I could puke,” Delia said as we led Toby toward the tennis courts. Margery had told us it was a good place to teach him name recall because it was a big enough space for him to run around in, but it was also fenced in. Teaching him to come back when his name was called was the most important of all the commands, because if Toby learned it, he could keep himself out of danger. If he was racing toward a road, for example, and stopped when he heard his name called, it could prevent him from getting hit. If he got lost in the woods but heard us calling his name, he would only have to move toward our voices to find his way back out again.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s Monday,” Delia answered. “We have school.”

  “And?”

  “And that means I’ll be seeing Michelle,” Delia said. “You know, in science class.”

  I watched Toby as he raced up and down the length of the court. I wished I felt half as carefree as he seemed to be. But I could barely even look at Delia. Knowing that she knew the truth about Mom had changed everything for me. The weird thing was that I wasn’t even sure why. And what was even weirder was that Delia didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. If anything, it almost felt as if she wanted to be my friend more than ever. “You’ll be fine,” I said.

  “But I really want to stand up to her!” Delia said. “And I know I did it with you, but I didn’t even really think about it when that happened. It just sort of came out.”

  “Well, just do the same thing with her.”

  Delia’s face fell. “That’s just it, though. I don’t know if I can.”

  “You can.”

  “I don’t know.” She started twisting her fingers. “I mean, what if I tell her to lay off, and she comes back at me? I won’t know what to do and I’ll stand there, looking like an idiot.”

  “Just take a breath and keep going.” I tried not to sound annoyed, but it was getting hard, especially since Delia was using that whimper voice again. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Delia. You just gotta do it.”

  “Yeah.” Delia looked away from me and over at Toby. “I know.”

  “Toby!” I clapped my hands twice, the way Margery had instructed us. “Come on, Toby! Come on back now!” Toby startled as his name was called but went back to nosing a pile of leaves in the corner of the tennis court. “Come on, Toby!” I shouted again. “Come on, boy! Time to go, now!” Toby ignored me.

  “Hold up one of his treats,” Delia said. “That’s what Margery said, remember? Or throw it toward him and then move back a little. So he comes after it.”

  “I know what to do,” I answered rudely, reaching inside my coat pocket. But the truth was, I’d forgotten about the treats and the fact that Margery had said that using them would be the best way to get Toby to return to us. I tossed one at him. “Come on, Toby,” I said again. “Come on, now.”

  Toby lunged as the meat kibble bounced near him. He pounced on it and looked over at me expectantly.

  “Throw another one,” Delia said.

  “I got it, Delia.” I tossed another kibble.

  Toby ate it and then stopped, looking up at me as if we were playing a game. I could feel my impatience flare again. Why wasn’t he listening?

  “Maybe say his name aga—” Delia started.

  “I told you I got it, all right?” I turned on her. “Geez, Delia, can’t you just lay off for two seconds?”

  The stung look came over her face again, just as it had in Margery’s backyard. I braced myself, waiting for her response.

  “You don’t always have to get so—” she started.

  “Yes, I do!” I threw the rest of the kibbles on the ground. “And you know why? Because you’re totally all over me all the time, grabbing me, pulling at me, whining and asking me questions! It’s aggravating, Delia! I know you don’t have friends, but that’s not my problem, okay? You’re just going to have to figure things out. Because I can’t do it for both of us anymore, all right? I just can’t. It’s too much!”

  Her lower lip trembled as she took my words in. I knew they had hurt her. She would probably start crying now, too, and I’d have to convince myself I didn’t care about that, either.

  “You’re mean.” Delia clenched her lower jaw. “You know that? You’re mean and rude, just like Michelle Palmer. Actually, you’re even worse than Michelle Palmer because she’s just dumb and all she cares about is whether or not she looks good in tight jeans. But you, Fred …” Delia’s voice quavered. “You’re one of the best people I’ve ever met. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re strong. But you have this awful side that wants to hurt people because you’re hurting, and you don’t know what else to do with it except push it on someone else. Being mean isn’t going to make you feel better. And it isn’t going to fix the whole situation with you and—”

  “Don’t you dare say my mother!” I pointed a shaking finger at her.

  Delia looked like she was about to cry. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to say me.”

  Her answer made me suck my breath in.

  But I didn’t have a chance to respond because she turned around and walked off the tennis court without so much as a backward glance.

  I spent a long time in the shed that night, looking at all the strange pieces of junk Delia and I had selected for my sculpture. I held the copper coil in my hands and shifted it back and forth against my palms, like a Slinky. One end of it was s
plit, and the tiny filaments poked out like strands of hair. I ran my fingers down the length of the teapot spout and rapped my knuckles against the middle of the windmill blades. They made a small, hollow sound, and Toby, who was curled up in his nest of blankets, lifted his head at the noise. I stood the old rake up, surprised that the handle was so much taller than me, and turned it upside down, studying the thick, rusted teeth on the other end. They were as wide as a man’s fingers and twice as long. The seven or eight hubcaps Delia had carted in were all different sizes, and some were so grimy they looked almost black. I lay them out side by side on Margery’s worktable and walked up and down the length of it. The piece closest to me had a dent in one side, as if someone had kicked it with a heavy boot. Bits of chrome gleamed on the larger ones like the bright silver scales of a fish.

  Last was the set of kid’s handlebars, which, unattached to the bike they had once belonged to, now looked long forgotten. A child’s plaything, kicked to one side. I held them in my hands, the cool, smooth slope of them sliding against my palms. And then I placed them very gently in the middle of the table, in between the row of hubcaps. Whatever I was going to make in the next few weeks would stem from them. I didn’t know why, or what they’d become, but somehow they matched how I felt, so they would be my starting point.

  That much I knew.

  I’d counted on going back to my original plan at school on Monday, which involved keeping my head down, staying out of everyone’s way, and saying as little as possible, but it didn’t turn out like that. Instead, as soon as I walked in the front door, a tall, thin girl with a ring in her eyebrow made a beeline for me and slapped me on the back.

  “You’re Fred, right?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged her off. “Who’re you?”

  “Bridget Dodd.” She steered me toward a small group of girls standing in the hallway. “We all heard about what you did to Michelle Palmer last week. And we just wanted to say great job.”