Chapter 4
CASH
Iliked my job at Sunny Fields. When I first started there, I didn’t, because I couldn’t even mop a floor without one of the residents cornering me to talk.
But I figured out pretty quickly that most of them didn’t expect me to respond, they just wanted me to listen.
Mrs. Huberman was doing that now, keeping pace with me with her walker as I ran the floor polisher over the linoleum outside the rec room.
“Well, and then she says it’ll cost six hundred dollars for the table decorations she wants.” The walker squeaked as she pushed it. “Six hundred dollars! Do you know what table decorations my George and I had when we got married?”
I shook my head.
“None!” Mrs. Huberman said, slapping the handle of her walker with a trembling hand. “Because nobody you invite to your wedding gives a good goddamn about table decorations!”
I nodded in agreement.
“Of course, back then, a wedding was about the couple getting married, not about…” She waved her hand vaguely. “About how many likes you get on Facetagram!”
I nodded again and tried not to laugh.
“Oh, well, here we are,” she said when we reached the door of the rec room. “I’m playing bridge with the girls. Thank you for walking me here, Cash. You’re a nice young man.”
I smiled again, and she wheeled her way inside.
When I had the corridor to myself, I put my earbuds back in and kept working.
I liked listening to audiobooks when I worked, and Grandma Jane, Danny’s grandma, had set me up with a library account that meant I could listen to as many as I wanted.
I listened to podcasts too, mostly ones about science and history because I liked that they both told interesting stories.
I didn’t listen to much fiction, but when I did I liked science fiction.
I liked things that made me think about worlds much bigger than this one, and planets and stars and galaxies, and the entire universe, and what all of that meant.
Sometimes even just thinking on a scale that large was dizzying, but then I could just take my earbuds out and I’d be in Goose Run or Brodnax again, same as always, where everything was small and familiar and safe.
Today, though, it was hard to lose myself in an audiobook the way I usually did.
I was thinking too hard about the dog, and about Mason the vet as well.
I hated that when he’d touched me on the shoulder this morning, I’d jumped like a scalded cat.
It was bad enough—weird enough—that I didn’t talk, but the jumping thing was even worse.
And it wasn’t as though I’d thought Mason was going to beat the hell out of me or anything.
I knew he wasn’t. But it had nothing to do with what I did or didn’t know.
It had nothing to do with thinking at all. It was instinctive.
Like Mr. Conrad said, I had a whole lifetime of unlearning to do.
I was worried about the dog too. What if I couldn’t find him a home? Or worse, what if his real owners turned up and claimed him back, and he ended up in that yard again? It wasn’t like I’d be able to rescue him a second time.
My gut tightened at the thought of the dog being chained to that post and nobody coming to save him.
I scowled at the ground as I tried to figure out a way to make sure that never happened, and I was still deep in thought when I reached the end of the corridor, shoving the polisher forward harder than I needed to and making it bounce off the baseboards.
“Everything okay, Cash?”
I looked up to find Mr. Conrad standing in the doorway of the visitors’ lounge. I stopped the polisher and tugged one earbud out.
“Did you work things out with the vet?”
I nodded.
“Then why do you look like someone stole your lunch money?”
Please. Like I’d ever had any lunch money to begin with. I huffed out a frustrated sigh, because I wasn’t sure we had worked things out. We’d figured out the bill, sure, and the dog had somewhere to stay for now, but after that, who knew?
“Did you wanna talk about it?”
I nodded again. Mr. Conrad was good at helping me untangle my feelings, and it felt like I needed that help today.
“Okay,” he said. “Come see me when you’re free. I’ll be in my apartment.”
I nodded and mustered up a smile for him.
By the time I’d put the buffer away, it was time for my break, so I headed to Mr. Conrad’s room.
When I knocked on the doorframe, he looked up from where he was working on his model at the big table and held out a section of the Colosseum in silent invitation.
I slid into my usual seat and took it, fiddling with a loose brick while I gathered my thoughts.
One of the things I liked best about Mr. Conrad was that I never felt like I had to rush.
I’d added three rows of bricks to the wall before I said, “The vet was okay.”
Mr. Conrad nodded. “Well, that’s good, right?”
I nodded and pressed another brick into place, the familiar click-click settling the itch under my skin. “I’m gonna help out there in the mornings, pay the bill that way.”
Mr. Conrad hummed. “And the dog?”
I fiddled with a section of archway and whispered, “He can keep it for now, while we find it a home.”
“Got anyone in mind?” Mr. Conrad asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t like thinking of someone else taking the dog.
I didn’t even want to find him a home. I wanted to keep him, but I knew that Wilder was right. There was no way in hell I could afford a dog. The best I could hope for was a new owner who would let me visit him sometimes.
“Cash?” Mr. Conrad said, reaching out and placing his hand over mine where I was gripping the plastic block tightly enough that the edges were digging into my palm.
“I just—I wish I could keep him,” I said, my voice catching. “But I know I can’t.”
Mr. Conrad hummed again, and I waited for him to explain that dogs were expensive—like I hadn’t already found that out—and that I had to be realistic about this. Except what he said was, “It’s okay to want things.”
“But we can’t keep him,” I mumbled.
“I know,” Mr. Conrad said. “But it’s still okay to want things. It’s okay to be upset too.”
I raised my head and stared at him. “It feels bad.”
“I know it does,” Mr. Conrad said, clipping together three smaller sections to make a big piece of wall. “Do you think it feels bad because you like the dog, or because you see yourself in the dog?”
I knew what it felt like to be hurt and scared. It wasn’t that long ago that Chase and I were strays too, and we’d needed someone to rescue us.
I fiddled with a block. “Can it be both?”
Mr. Conrad smiled, his expression warm with understanding and sympathy. “It can absolutely be both, son.”
“Feels like,” I began hesitantly, and then had to stop and think carefully about what I was trying to say. It took a moment, but Mr. Conrad didn’t mind. He just sorted through the Lego blocks while I sorted through my thoughts. I drew a breath. “It feels like I’m breaking a promise I made.”
Mr. Conrad hummed. “I can see how it would. For the record, you know the dog would be happy with anyone who treated it with love and kindness.”
I nodded, even though it hurt to hear.
“But that doesn’t change how you feel,” Mr. Conrad said.
“I shouldn’t have promised,” I whispered. “Not even to myself.”
“I don’t agree,” Mr. Conrad said gently.
“You’re allowed to have hopes and dreams, Cash, big or small.
But a part of having hopes and dreams isn’t just celebrating when they work out, it’s managing your feelings when they don’t.
And not letting the knowledge that you might fail stop you from trying in the future. ”
I nodded and thought of my dirt bike and the house I lived in.
I thought of my job and the guys who weren’t just my friends, they were my brothers.
I thought of the audiobooks and podcasts that I played on my phone, and of buying Lucky Charms whenever I wanted them.
Things had been bad when Chase and I ran away from home, but our lives were good now.
Everything I had in my life, and maybe it didn’t look like a lot from the outside, was more than I ever thought I’d get, but I’d hoped for it all the same.
When Grandma Jane had told me about the job at Sunny Fields, I’d thought I couldn’t take it because I had no way to get to Brodnax every day.
The dirt bike had been nothing short of a miracle—if you could classify Grandma Jane’s husband never cleaning out his shed as a miracle.
The bike had been tucked away under a tarp, just waiting for someone to fix it up, a project that Danny’s grandpa had never quite gotten around to.
So when Grandma Jane had remembered the bike, Danny had asked one of the guys who used to work at Goose Run Gas, who was now a mechanic, to fix it up, and then Grandma Jane had helped Chase and me get our licenses.
It almost felt like the universe had sent that bike just for us.
Sometimes there was a solution to a problem you thought was unfixable because someone else, or a bunch of someones, stepped up to solve it. And most people were good and would help you out if they knew you needed it.
I thought of Mason and how he’d agreed to look after the dog, even though he didn’t have to.
“Maybe I can find a way to afford the dog,” I whispered. “I can try, at least.”
I didn’t make great money at Sunny Fields, and I didn’t have a GED. And even if I did, I couldn’t imagine going for an interview to get a better-paying job.
I thought of the dog’s face, and his big brown eyes, and the way he’d been so scared when I’d grabbed him and rushed him to the vet. But he hadn’t bitten me, and he hadn’t tried to run. He’d trusted me to help him, even though he had no reason to.
So, what if I could find a way to keep him? I could do odd jobs or pick up some yard work. Maybe I could get some hours at the bakery working in the kitchen, where I didn’t have to talk to people. There was always something going on around Goose Run if you just asked.