Chapter 3
I take a corner so fast my tires squeal, only slowing down once I get a few blocks away. Bob trembles on my lap. I know it’s not safe for him to sit here while I’m driving, but right now, there’s no place I feel like he’ll be safer than pressed against my stomach.
The engine ticks as it cools. I cut the headlights but leave the key in the ignition, then lift Bob onto the center console. He hovers his front leg above the textured plastic.
“You’re okay, buddy,” I say, then drop my voice to a whisper because it hurts less. At least I can still talk. “Let me look at you.”
Bob whimpers as I probe his tiny leg. I don’t know what I’m feeling for. Everything feels small and fragile.
He shouldn’t have bitten that guy. He had no chance of doing any damage, and he put himself in danger for me. I don’t deserve him, but knowing this tiny dog would go to bat for me makes me want to rip apart every human that was ever bad to him limb from limb.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, pressing my nose against the top of his head. “I’m so sorry.”
Pulling up the GPS, I find an emergency animal hospital fifteen minutes away. Bob curls into a ball on the passenger seat as I drive, and I keep one hand on him the entire way there.
It turns out to be a hairline fracture. The vet wraps Bob’s leg in a blue hard cast. He needs a follow-up in a couple of weeks and has to take pain meds once a day, but he’ll be okay after a lot of rest.
“He has to wear a cone of shame,” she says. “To keep him from chewing the cast.”
Bob looks at me with such profound betrayal as she fits the plastic cone around his neck that I almost laugh. Almost. My throat won’t let me.
“The silver lining of all this is you look very handsome,” I tell him.
He does not look very handsome. He looks ridiculous, and every one of his estimated ten years, but he’s going to be okay.
The number that comes up on the card reader makes me sincerely hope that the vet tech miscalculated my total. The emergency treatment wipes out most of my savings, but it’s worth it for Bob.
I’m equally unhappy about the police officer waiting for me by the doors.
I knew the vet was looking at me suspiciously.
I should have worn a scarf. Cops never truly care about me when something bad happens.
It’s the same for social workers. My social worker said she had my back, but she always sent me to homes that were only in it for the stipend, and she never listened when I told her something was wrong.
But I know this cop won’t let me leave here without telling him what happened, so I tell him the basics—minus the part about the parking lot exorcism, because I’d like to avoid a psychiatric hold, thank you very much.
I promise to go to the hospital if I get worse, and mercifully, he doesn’t force me to go to the hospital.
I end up driving to a gas station near the construction site afterward, in a busy area with lots of people coming and going.
Bob sits in the passenger seat, the cone preventing him from curling up the way he usually does. He keeps snagging it on the seat.
“There’s nothing shameful about your cone,” I say, rubbing his ears. “It’s a cone of bravery, if you ask me.”
I sign his cast and make him a nest on my lap with a towel. He’s groggy from the meds, but he keeps his head up, staring at me like he’s fighting the drugs because he doesn’t want to take his eyes off me. I run a hand over his back until he drops his head with a gigantic sigh.
When his breathing evens out, I flip down the visor to examine the red line circling my throat. It’s ugly. I clean it with alcohol wipes, and each swipe sends a fresh bolt of pain through me.
I can’t believe that guy got the jump on me.
Dad drilled situational awareness into my head from the time I was old enough to walk.
I shouldn’t have been drinking. Alcohol dulls everything, which happens to be the reason I like it so much.
The year after I aged out of foster care, when I was still sleeping beneath underpasses, I was drinking so much.
I was honestly waiting around to die and didn’t care if someone snuck up on me because at least then I could join my family.
But I pulled myself together, and my rule now is I only drink once I’m settled for the night.
The smart thing to do would be to never drink at all, but I don’t hate myself that much.
Did those two cosplayers really perform an exorcism?
There has to be a logical explanation. Maybe I’m having a lapse in sanity. Or maybe my oxygen was cut off too long and messed with my head. Brain injuries can cause all kinds of visual distortions.
But no, Bob saw something too, and dogs don’t hallucinate. At least I don’t think they do.
Those men saw the ghost and knew what it was. Not only that, but they knew how to trap it, like they hunt ghosts professionally.
Oh, sure. Professional ghost hunters. And I’m a Disney princess.
But they have to be, because that smoke thing was for sure a ghost, and Old Guy asked me how long I’d been able to see the dead. Like most people can’t.
I pinch the bridge of my nose to the point of pain. Obviously most people can’t see the dead. It’s not normal to go around seeing ghosts everywhere.
I grip Dad’s dog tags under my shirt. I wonder what he’d make of this. He’d probably laugh.
Ghosts, princess? For real?
He’d be right to be suspicious. Dad was in the army before becoming a SWAT cop, so he was practical about everything.
He didn’t believe in God, and neither did Mom in the traditional sense, but she used to say the universe was bigger than what we could see.
According to her, there were forces out there we’d never understand.
Mom wouldn’t doubt this for a second. She’d already be opening all the car windows so we could burn sage to cleanse the place.
The thought makes my chest ache, but in a good way. Picturing her here makes this whole thing feel a little more okay.
I bite down on my cheek to stop myself from laughing. What was that thing Dr. Doofenshmirtz said?
If I had a nickel for every time someone tried to murder me, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
I install the privacy shades over my windshield and windows, then recline the driver’s seat and pull my sleeping bag over Bob and me. I won’t risk any more Jim Beam, so I hold Bob as close as the cone of bravery allows and try to convince my brain to turn off.
Every time I drift toward sleep, my body jolts awake to pressure around my throat. The third time I wake up, I give up and pull the shade down enough to watch the night attendant mop inside.
Around 3 AM, I hear a voice from the backseat.
I turn around so quickly my neck twinges, but there’s nothing there. Just my crinkled mattress pad and an empty water bottle on the floor.
“Hello?”
No reply. All I can hear is the distant rumble of the highway.
Bob lifts his head, ears pricked forward, staring at the empty backseat. The cone bonks against my arm.
“Do you hear it, too?”
He growls low in his throat, the vibration traveling through his tiny body.
Oh screw this.
I wrap Bob in a towel and haul ass out of the car. The gas station attendant startles when I barge inside. There’s an array of playing cards spread across the counter.
He gestures at the cards with one hand, a little sheepish. “Sometimes, it gets boring in here.”
“Can I play with you?”
He shrugs. “You know Kings in the Corner?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll teach you.”
I pull up a stool, and we play cards for an hour. He’s patient about explaining the rules, and I’m grateful he doesn’t talk much beyond the game. Bob falls asleep against my ribs. Only when my eyes start closing on their own and I can’t fathom another game, do I drag myself back to the car.
I didn’t think it was possible for everything to hurt worse, but by morning, my body has proven me wrong.
The pulsing in my neck flares with pain every time I swallow.
My throat hurts so much that even breathing makes tears well in my eyes, and my whole body is this weird combination of exhausted and wired, like I drank twelve cups of coffee and then got run over by a car.
There’s no way I can work today. I can’t fire a screw gun when I can’t keep my eyes open, and I certainly can’t stop myself from falling off scaffolding. Ghosts are real, and one tried to kill me.
I hate this. I hate feeling like I’m letting Ray down.
But I physically cannot do my job right now. Pretending I’m fine will get me or someone else hurt, so I text him that I’m sick.
RAY DAD’S FRIEND
Feel better. Shout if you need something.
His kindness makes me feel more like a steaming pile of garbage. I do need something, but I have no idea what that is, and I’d have to be on my deathbed to ask Ray for help with this.
I also know I can’t just stay in my car all day. I’m scared the voice was real, and that the car will fill with smoke. What if yesterday happens again? Do I throw salt at it? Phonetically pronounce some Latin?
I need answers. Real ones.
Bob’s more alert this morning. He ate his breakfast and pain pill and is now contorting himself to nibble at his cast despite the cone.
“What do you think? Should we go find the guys who saved us?”
Bob perks his ears forward, his tail doing a tiny wag. I’m taking that as a yes.