Chapter 2
CASH
Mr. Conrad didn’t have a little dining table in his living area, the way most of the residents of Sunny Fields did.
He had a massive table instead, so large that he couldn’t even fit a couch in here, just his recliner.
The table was covered in bits of the Colosseum.
We’d been working on it for a few weeks now while our last project, the Titanic, overlooked us from the top of Mr. Conrad’s bookcase.
“You’re quiet today,” Mr. Conrad said and laughed a little bit when I snorted. “Something on your mind?”
I shrugged.
My shift had finished an hour ago, but I liked to hang around and put Lego together with Mr. Conrad.
He was—not easy to talk to, since nobody was, but easier than most people.
Mostly because he didn’t really talk that much either.
He listened a lot. He used to teach psychology at a college before he retired, and now he spent his time making Lego and reading books and listening to music.
Mr. Conrad squinted at the instructions and said, “How are things with Chase and Lee? Still a little wobbly?”
Not for them, but for me. I liked that Chase had a boyfriend, and I liked Lee.
I wanted Chase to be happy. Just, it was scary too, whether it was Chase stepping away, or Lee stepping into our space, or whatever the hell it was that was happening.
Scary, yeah. And I knew that was a problem—for me, again, not for them—because I shouldn’t have been scared of things changing, because not all change was bad. I knew that; I just didn’t feel it.
I had a whole lifetime of unlearning to do, Mr. Conrad had told me once, and that could be hard work.
“It’s good,” I said. I hadn’t thought about Chase all day, actually, which was unusual. Then again, maybe not, considering what had been occupying my thoughts instead. “I stole a dog.”
Mr. Conrad’s eyebrows shot up, and he cupped a hand behind his ear. “You what?”
“Stole a dog,” I whispered.
“Oh, I’m gonna need more words than that on this one, Cash,” he said with a smile. He read my expression and said, “What’s the rush? We’ve got as long as you need.”
Mr. Conrad never pressured me to talk. We just fiddled around with the Lego blocks like we always did, and the words came out, bit by bit.
Last night, after my shift, I’d stayed late watching a movie with Grandma Jane.
Then, when I was finally on my way home, I’d pulled my dirt bike over about halfway to Goose Run because I’d had way too many sodas and I really needed to piss.
Wasn’t like there was any traffic around at that hour.
So I turned the bike off, went behind the nearest tree, and…
anyway, when I was finished, that was when I heard the whining.
There wasn’t much out that way. Couple of houses set back from the highway down dirt roads and a few leaning mailboxes.
I’d tried to remember what they looked like during the day, but it didn’t matter.
This was rural Virginia—of course the owners had shotguns, and lurking around their places at night was a pretty dumb thing to do.
Going closer, close enough to be in full moonlit view of the house as I looked for the source of the whimpering, was even dumber.
I did it anyway, though, because I couldn’t ignore the sound of an animal hurting.
Inside the house, the TV was blaring and light from the screen danced on the windows. I barely breathed as I crept closer, the sound of grit crunching under my soles as loud as thunder.
I found the dog tied to an old fence post, like someone had just forgotten it there.
And it was bleeding pretty badly. I couldn’t undo the chain, so I took its collar off it, the tags jingling in the quiet.
Then, my heart racing, I shoved the dog down the front of my hoodie and bolted back to my dirt bike before anyone even knew I was there.
Mr. Conrad blinked at me when I’d finally gotten enough words out for him to get the gist of the story. “Some people shouldn’t own dogs,” he said. “They didn’t see you, did they?”
I shook my head.
He pulled his mouth down in an unhappy frown. “You shouldn’t be sneaking around other people’s property, Cash, especially at night.”
I looked away, guilt and unease twisting up my gut.
I tried to shrink into the space between my shoulders.
But you didn’t hear the sound it made, I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t.
Words were always harder to get out when I could feel the mood shifting around me and every instinct in me was telling me to be quiet, be small, and you might get lucky enough to be overlooked.
So I stared at the piece of Lego in my hand like my life depended on memorizing its exact dimensions, not daring to breathe.
Mr. Conrad was silent too, and then he let out a long sigh. “When my Simon was, oh, he must’ve been about seventeen, he went to a party.”
I glanced back and saw that Mr. Conrad’s gaze had gotten a little distant, the way it did when he talked about the past. Distant but content, because his past was a good one.
“Anyway, he saw a bunch of boys taking a drunk girl into a bedroom, so he followed them and got her out of there. Laura and I got a call from the police to pick him up from the hospital because those other boys hadn’t taken kindly to being interrupted.
” He shook his head. “I tore strips off him, Cash.”
I jolted in surprise.
“Because he was hurt,” Mr. Conrad said. “Because he’d put himself in harm’s way.
I had never been more proud of him, and there I was yelling at him that he should have been more careful.
I was so scared for him, you see. So scared and so proud and so angry all at the same time.
People are messy, and dads are no exception.
So, yes, Simon did the right thing, and so did you, because neither of you could ignore someone who needed your help, but I’m allowed to be a little scared for you too. ”
I nodded, feeling some of the tension in my shoulders ease.
“I’m not angry at you,” Mr. Conrad said. “Just worried that it could have gone badly.”
It kind of had, but Mr. Conrad didn’t know that part.
I’d taken the dog straight to the vet in Goose Run. Except it hadn’t been the old guy who’d opened the door. It had been a young guy, with hazel eyes and messy dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. He’d been wearing pajama pants and a hoodie and his feet had been bare.
I didn’t tell Mr. Conrad that I’d fainted when the blood went everywhere, or that I’d run away from the vet before he could ask me for money.
Or that I’d lain awake the whole night worrying about the dog and didn’t get any sleep before today’s day shift, and then spent all of today doing the exact same thing.
And not just worrying about the dog either, but also worrying about the vet and what would happen if he found me.
I didn’t know what dog operations cost, but I had less than twenty dollars in my wallet, and I was pretty sure it was a hell of a lot more than that.
“Where’s the dog now?” Mr. Conrad asked. “Somewhere safe?”
I nodded, though it might have been a lie.
Mr. Conrad was easier to talk to than most people, but that didn’t mean I could admit to him that I’d left the dog with the vet, and I didn’t know if the vet was going to look after him or not because I hadn’t paid.
He would, right? He’d seemed nice. He’d gotten me a soda after I’d hit the floor.
But I didn’t know for sure. What if he wasn’t nice?
What if he put the dog to sleep because nobody was going to pay for it?
What if I’d killed it by taking it to him?
My hands started to shake.
“Line the blocks up for me, Cash,” Mr. Conrad said. “Biggest to smallest for me. You’re not in any trouble and nobody’s angry.”
I sucked in a breath and began to arrange the Lego blocks.
“Good,” Mr. Conrad said. “That’s it. Keep doing that. And how about you keep going until you can tell me what’s eating you up right now?”
We didn’t build much of the Colosseum in the end.
It was late afternoon when I got home. I’d eventually spilled my guts to Mr. Conrad, and he’d told me to tell Chase and have him call the vet to ask what to do about the dog.
Mr. Conrad knew me well enough to know that I could never make a phone call.
He didn’t know Chase at all, though, or he never would have suggested I get him to do it instead.
Chase wasn’t great with people either, except he was a lot more aggressive about it.
I killed the engine of the dirt bike in the driveway, took my helmet off, and then trudged toward the house’s sagging porch.
I had no idea how I was going to tell Chase what I’d done.
He’d be pissed, because why’d I have to do something so stupid over a dog that wasn’t even mine?
And that wasn’t to say he wouldn’t get it—he would—but sometimes I thought he got mad when I did dumb stuff, or stuff he considered dumb, because he didn’t have that luxury.
Our whole lives, Chase had looked after me and only me.
He didn’t have room in his brain to think about anyone else, even himself, which was why things had gotten off to a rocky start with Lee.
And why he got pissed when I did something like drop a few bucks in a charity jar instead of keeping them for myself.
Like, he would crawl over hot coals to give me his last dollar, so why the fuck would I just go and give mine away like it was nothing?
There was a kind of messed-up Chase-logic to it.
So I had no idea how I was going to break it to him that I’d probably have to sell most of my stuff, and maybe even all of it, to make things right with the vet.
The front door opened before I even got to it, and Chase glared at me. “What the hell did you do?”
Turned out that maybe I didn’t have to break it to him.
“Guess who came into the bakery today?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows. “The new vet. And guess what he told me?”