When Friendship Followed Me Home (12 page)

34

THE DUMBEST THING I EVER DID

I called but she wouldn't answer. I texted her and got nothing back. Now I really understood how she felt when I didn't reply to the texts she sent those days leading up to my mom's funeral. Then my phone did beep. It was Strand.

The store was crowded now, and I felt a little dizzy waiting on line to pick up the money. Flip yipped at me and put up his paw and cocked his head. He did a little dance that made everybody laugh, except me. When it was my turn at the counter, the man handed me six hundred dollars. “We gave you top price, I promise,” the guy said. “The books were in excellent shape overall. You averaged around a dollar fifty each. You had just about four hundred volumes there. What, you think they were worth more?”

“No, the money's great,” I said. “Thanks. It's a lot more than I thought I'd get.”

“Then why do you look so . . . ?”

“So what?”

“Like somebody just socked you in the face?”

• • •

I was so messed up, I took the wrong train, my old one, to where I used to live. I didn't realize my mistake until the last stop when everybody got off. I got off too. I needed to walk around outside where there was more light.

Flip and I went to the boardwalk. His tail wasn't up and wagging the way it usually would be on a nice day, when we were walking by the beach. My sadness was getting into him. This man in a wheelchair was coming from the other direction. He had two beggars cups and no legs. He was telling me some story about why he needed money, but I wasn't really listening. I was too busy staring into his eyes. He looked really familiar, but I just couldn't figure out from where. I gave him fifty bucks. That was how the guy at Strand paid me, all fifty-dollar bills.

The man in the wheelchair looked at the bill, then he looked at me, and then he looked up to the sky and howled and said, “Woohoo!” He did a wheelie and spun around and said to anybody who'd listen, “Now
this
kid is an angel! Seriously. This kid has true power. This young man
understands,
okay? He has wisdom. Man, you're a gift, okay? You and that beautiful dog. You made my day, little brother. You made my day. It's not the money, I swear. It's your heart. Bless you.
This is everything, man. This is everything.” That's when I knew who he reminded me of. Mom. Same eyes, filled with laughing, even during sad times, when she made me give that crummy old dollar to the woman who had sold Flip. I'd said it was nothing, just a lousy buck, but she made me look into her eyes and hear her when she said it was everything.

This man in the wheelchair was a magician for sure. He made me feel like maybe my mom's spirit was still around, traces of her. He made me feel good. Flip too. His tail was up and whipping around. I needed to keep feeling this way, that maybe the beautiful moments in your life, the people you love really can live forever. All you have to do is remember them, like Halley said.

I found somebody else on Neptune Avenue, an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of blankets and a ripped plastic bag filled with clothes. She didn't flip out like the man in the wheelchair when I gave her fifty dollars, but she was just as happy, I'm pretty sure. She was missing teeth, but she smiled like she didn't care. Her laugh was pretty, like a song you can dance to.

A woman in the deli was going to have to put some food back because she didn't have enough money, until I gave her fifty dollars.

The hot dog vendor in front of the aquarium didn't have any business and looked pretty hopeless until I bought franks for me and Flip and told him to keep the change.

I'd given away all but one of the fifty-dollar bills. I figured I'd keep the last one and put it with the money I was saving up from my coupon deliveries, for when I turned sixteen and I could live on my own.

Except I wouldn't be following Halley up to college anymore. All that lightness I'd felt that last half hour, giving away the money, was gone now.

I was about to get back onto the train when I remembered what Chucky told me, that Rayburn was living just down the street with his cousin. I turned around to look back to the end of the block. “What do you think, Flip?”

Flip cocked his head.

• • •

The house was even worse than Chucky said. It was more than beat-up. Half the windows were broken. The little front yard was weeds and garbage. Flip looked at me like, Are you sure you want to do this?

I went to the door and knocked. This guy with slicked hair and no shirt answered, even though it wasn't warm that day. There weren't any lights on in the house, and sheets over the window blocked out the sun. The house smelled like rotten food. The guy nodded, like, What do
you
want?

“Damon around?”

“Damon!”

Rayburn was squinting when he came to the door. The
sun was low and bright in his eyes. He rubbed them, like he couldn't believe it was me. “Coffin?”

He looked bad. Really bad. He looked smaller than I remembered, shorter, thinner—and dirty. His hair was all greasy. I gave him that last fifty-dollar bill, knowing the second the money left my hand that it wouldn't feel anything like it did when I gave away the other bills.

He looked at the bill, then at me. “What's your problem, man?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

When I was walking up the steps to the house, I was thinking that if there was a heaven, and my mom was looking down, she would be proud of me. But now she just felt so far away. It all felt bad now, even when I gave away the other fifty-dollar bills, like I'd bought people into being happy, into making me feel good. Still, I gave it a shot with Rayburn. “I heard you were having a hard time,” I said. I headed down the steps.

His cousin came out and said, “What's up? Problem out here?”

“Dude just gave me fifty bucks,” Rayburn said.

“Why?”

“That's what I said.”

“Maybe he's got a crush on you. That little dog, man. That's a girl's dog. Hey, why'd you give my boy Damon fifty bucks?”

I was moving faster now, heading for the front gate. It was lopsided and dragged on the concrete and hard to open. Another guy was out there now, also no shirt, lots of tattoos. They started calling me names, I probably don't have to say which ones. One of the guys threw half a sandwich at me. Flip and I ran, and they were laughing really loud now. I looked back over my shoulder, and Rayburn was laughing too. He couldn't look weak in front of his boys. He cursed me, but his heart wasn't in it, I could tell. His eyes were wet, like he was going to cry. He looked mad, then sad for a second, then mad again, like he remembered he wasn't allowed to be nice. I was mad too. Mad at myself. How could I be so stupid? I really was losing it. Losing everything, my mind, my money. Losing everyone.

35

THE FAKE MARBLE ANGEL

I saw Leo from outside the house. He was on the phone, pacing in the kitchen. I didn't bother to go in. I took the alleyway into the backyard and sat on the rock next to the fake marble angel. Her eyes had no pupils, I noticed now. Leo came out. His shirt and shorts were all sweaty. “Went for a run,” he said.

I nodded.

“Jeanie's still out there,” he said. “Yeah. So how'd you do? You make out okay with the books? You didn't let them rip you off, did you?”

“They paid me fine.”

“Good. A man makes money, right? Attaboy.” He slapped my back as he walked past me. He bent to pull a weed from a crack in the patio. Flip slinked away from him, toward me. Leo stood up and turned toward the weed bucket right when Flip was sneaking behind him. Leo stepped on Flip's foot, Flip yelped. Leo hopped to get off Flip's paw and tripped over a crack in the concrete. He put out his hands to break his fall,
but like I said, Leo was a big guy. He landed hard and cursed. “I think he broke my wrist,” he said. I tried to help him up but he pulled away. “Get off me,” he said. He looked at his wrist. “If it's broken, I'm gonna be mad.”

“I'm sorry, Leo,” I said.

“Really mad.” His eyes landed on Flip. “Stupid dog!” Then he kicked Flip—hard too. Very hard. Hard enough that Flip flew from where Leo kicked him, into the fence. Flip yelped and then staggered and sat and panted and whimpered. He was shivering when I picked him up.

“I can't believe you just did that.”

“Stupid little rat!”

“He didn't mean it,” I said.

“You can't train him not to be in the way all the time?”

“He weighs like ten pounds,” I said. “You could have killed him.”

“Stop with the drama, will ya? He's
fine.
Look at him. Freakin' dog.” He rotated his wrist. “Ah that kills. Yeah, I think it's broken.”

“You wouldn't be able to move it around like that if it was,” I said.

“Excuse me, what'd you say?”

“Freaking idiot.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Where do you get it into your head that you can speak to
me that way? I open my house to you, and this is how you talk to me?”

“I said I was sorry, okay?”

“No, not okay. What'd you just call me?”

“It slipped.”

“Let it slip again. I need to hear it, just to be sure I heard what I think I heard. Hey, I'm talking to you!”

Him being so mad, well, it got me even madder. I practically yelled it. “I said you're an
idiot.
”

And that's when it happened. Leo swung out at me with a big, meaty, open hand, the one connected to his supposedly broken wrist. He slapped me across my face hard enough to make my head whip to the side. My cheek stung and then went numb. Everything got really still, really quiet. The only thing I heard was the birds. A crow, I think, across the street in the park, and then maybe a sparrow or whatever it was, tweeting high-pitched.

I guess his wrist really wasn't broken. He wasn't rubbing it anymore. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at it a little. He looked scared. Maybe as scared as I was. All I had to do was call the cops, and they'd pull me out of there fast. Yup, I'd be on my way to foster care. That was the problem: They didn't let you bring pets into the foster homes. Flip would be taken to the dog pound. He buried his head in my armpit and trembled so bad I thought he was having a seizure.

I scooped up the dog carrier backpack and went into the
house, into my room, and got my money sock, which had nine dollars in it because I gave the rest to Aunt Jeanie to put in the bank for me. I grabbed the little picture of me and Mom from the beach that day. I was trying to stuff the bigger one of Laura into the backpack when Leo came in.

“Champ,” he said.

I grabbed Flip and the backpack and pushed past Leo and ran, but I had to go back to get my stupid inhaler. Leo was following me around, desperate. He kept saying, “Champ, please, we have to talk about this. Hang on just a minute now,” and you bet I didn't. Flip and I were
gone.

36

THE MOBILE MOTEL

The texts started coming in from Aunt Jeanie. Please come back
to the house.
We're waiting for you
at the house.
We'll be
in the house
expecting your call. She never used the word
home
. I checked for a text from Halley. Nope. I disabled my location tracking. This hacker kid in one of the foster homes taught us how to do it. He was always running away, and he was good at staying hidden until he ran out of money or got sick. The cops were definitely going to try to trace me when Aunt Jeanie called them, which eventually she would have to. That's when Leo would have to tell her he hit me. I didn't want him to go to jail or anything, but no way was I going back there. No way. What a mess.

The sun set, and the air up by the park got cold fast. Flip and I got on the bus, and I held him too close, even though he didn't try to squirm away. I was shaking really bad, and that got him shaking worse. I tried to stop thinking about how I couldn't do anything right, that maybe it was good
Mom wasn't around anymore. This way she wouldn't see how bad I messed everything up—and everyone, Jeanie and Leo, Halley most of all.

I was so freaked, I started to wheeze. I had to take three shots off my inhaler. It was hard to hold the medicine in my lungs, like you're supposed to for a few seconds, before you breathe it out, because I was crying, like the kind of crying where you're so panicked that your heart is beating faster than when you're sprinting. Except you're not sprinting. You're just sitting there, realizing, seeing your life for what it really is, a mistake. It had to be, feeling so bad like this. That's when it all started to hit me, that Mom was dead. I mean, I knew she was gone, but now I
really
knew. She was in fact totally and absolutely nowhere, Tess Coffin. Because if she was
some
where, she wouldn't let me and Flip be in such a bad way. Somewhere like an intersecting dimension, where maybe she could whisper the right words into my mind and tell me what to do. I'd felt lost at some of the foster homes I was in, but never like this. Now I had zero protection, and worse than that, how the heck was I supposed to keep Flip safe? I just didn't know where to go.

I clicked up a video of Mom. She was in the supermarket, trying all the cheese samples, acting all fancy with a fake British accent.
“Now this one has a
weighty
flavor. Do try one, luvvy.”
And she got that sad old lady in the hairnet to crack half a smile. Then I clicked through pictures of Halley
and me, selfies she took and texted to me, and our foreheads are touching, and Flip's in every one of them. And then I stopped looking. I shut my eyelids so tight they hurt. I tucked Flip inside my hoodie, and pretty quickly he stopped shivering and poked his head out from the hood and licked my neck.

• • •

Somebody shook my shoulder. The bus driver. The bus was pulled over and empty. “It's midnight,” she said. She was holding Flip. “He had to pee. I took him out.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Lucky it was me and not somebody else. They would have taken him out and kept right on going with him. He know any tricks?”

“Flip, surf.”

He surfed her lap and kissed her. “I want you to sit up close, by me,” she said. “It's very late. I'm supposed to call the police, but I won't.”

“I'm—”

“I know,” she said. “I know.” She gave me half of a foot-long hero from Subway. I shared the turkey with Flip. She had a bottle of water for me too, and Flip lapped it up from my palm. She put her hand on my forehead and said, “I know,” and then she got back to driving. The city passed by the windows. All the lights. The people in the windows of the apartment buildings just doing normal stuff, watching TV,
cooking. The people in cars. They all seemed to be leaning forward a little too much. Time slowed down until I thought it just might stop for real. If I didn't have Flip to take care of, I wouldn't have cared if I lived or died, and I was sure nobody else would have either, not really, not anymore.

• • •

At one a.m. another driver came on board. The nice driver talked softly to him. She pointed to the left side of her face, the same side where Leo slapped me. The other driver kept shaking his head. He took out his phone, and that's when I got off the bus, and Flip and I ran. When we were clear of the bus I stopped to look at my face in a car window. It wasn't that bad. My lip was a little puffy, and you could see red where his hand went across my cheek—nothing too crazy. In a day or so it'd all be gone. Except it would never be gone, not for Leo either probably.

We went to the Long Island Rail Road waiting room. It was big and I remembered from the times when me and Mom took the train back to Brooklyn from the mall that lots of people slept there. I figured Flip and I would be safe enough until I could figure out what to do, but I couldn't and we weren't. Some creep sat next to me. “You hungry?”

“No.”

“I see. Sure. Then maybe you need a place to stay tonight?”

“No.”
I looked for a cop, and then I remembered I couldn't let one see me.

The creep smiled and nodded. “I like your dog. May I pet it?”

I tucked Flip under my arm and got out of there, and the guy followed and kept saying, “Wait. Hey, wait,” and I ran. Yup, Mom was dead for sure.