I finally drum up some guts and climb the outside steps. The late-September air is still warm and humid. The overgrown field beyond the kennel’s gravel parking lot is backlit by the low evening sun, glowing and lovely.
Mitchell complains Ohio is boring, but he never stops to really look at it.
The office lights are off and the surgery room is dark. Gavin, the college freshman who answers the phones in the afternoons, is the only one around, putting a file away. He spots me and jumps. “Jeebus, kid! Make some noise or something.”
“I’m sorry. Just looking for Tina. Is she still here?”
“Left early. Her daughter was in a bad car wreck in Iowa or Illinois or someplace.”
Uh-oh. “That’s awful.”
Gavin glances at Dr. Snyder’s closed door. “Doc was cold as ice. Soon as she left, crying, he was grumbling that getting someone to cover her shifts will be a huge pain in his butt.” Gavin shakes his head. “Some people have no sympathy. It’s gross.”
“Yeah,” I say, my mind churning. “I guess not.” My phone pings with a text.
“You need something, or what? I’m getting ready to leave.”
“Oh. Uh, no. I just wanted to ask Tina—um, about one of the dogs.”
Gavin’s eyes brighten. “Anything I can help with?” Tina told me last week he wants to be a vet, that he’s always super interested in the animals who visit Dr. Snyder.
“No, it was just about, um, whether she fed one.” The lie feels flimsy. “It’s no big deal. I’ll go back down and make sure everything’s good.”
“Cool, then I’ll lock this door behind you.” He gestures at the back door I just came in. “Not trying to be rude, just, you know. I forgot once and the night-shift lady found it unlocked and told the doc. He almost fired me.”
“Oh. Right. Sure.” I go out the door and he locks it behind me. I turn and look through the window. He gives me a wave, then heads toward the front door through the dark office.
I walk down the steps, glad Gavin was only worried about his door-locking task and not Tina’s. I check my phone. The text was from Mom. Home soon? I’ve got dinner going.
Sorry, kennel is packed, I write. I hate lying, but sometimes . . . it’s necessary. A cat escaped and everything turned into chaos. Still trying to help settle things down.
I’ll cover your plate, Mom writes. Let me know when you’re on your way home. I’ll come get you if you’re there after dark.
At the sound of the opening kennel door, Roxy starts barking again, which sets off the schnauzer next to her and the mutt next to the schnauzer and a poodle a few cages over. I slip into room C and pick Chewbarka up. She smells like pee. I hug her and bury my nose in the back of her neck.
I can’t just leave her. The night worker will find her here with no tags or info, and she’ll ask what’s up and the vet will find out Tina lied and he’ll fire Tina and put Chewbarka to sleep.
I can’t let that happen.
But I can’t take her home. Mom was telling me all summer to stop moping, to get up and do something productive. I hoped volunteering at the kennel would fix that, but now she says I come home all sad because I want a dog. She’s not wrong, but still. Bringing a dog home would not improve relations. And Mitchell would give me no end of grief for being a sucker for a hopeless case like Chewbarka. Cole doesn’t talk to me anymore, but if he found out, he’d roll his eyes and sigh.
Last year, when things were still good between us, he would’ve wanted to help. But since the spring, when his voice dropped and he grew three inches and started hanging around Erin Rogers, he’s become . . . different. Tougher. Better at hiding how he feels, unless it’s anger at me. For forgetting his birthday. For kissing Fiona Jones, the girl he and Mitchell both liked, at a spin-the-bottle game at his end-of-the-year party in June.
I pace in the tiny room, holding Chewbarka to my chest. “It’s okay,” I tell her, or maybe I’m saying it to myself. “You’re okay. You’re okay.” Even if I take her home and lie that I found her as a stray, Mom’s been insistent that we are not getting another dog under any circumstances. She’d take Chewbarka to the pound, and Chewbarka’s so old that no one would adopt her and they’d put her to sleep within a week. Dad’s a dog lover like me, but I can’t plead my case with him because he moved out in August so his commute would be shorter. Me and Mitchell know that’s a lie, though, since he only moved twelve miles away and he’s supposed to come home on the weekends but mostly hasn’t and this is really a trial separation with Mom. I can’t ask Mitchell to help because he’s also mad that I kissed Fiona. I can’t ask Cole because . . . well.
There’s got to be a solution. One I can implement alone.
Maybe . . . maybe the tent’s still in the garage from when we were a happy family and went on camping trips. I could keep her in the tent.
But where?
My mind roves over our neighborhood: the gas station at its entrance, then the condo complex, then the houses. There’s a scraggly patch of woods between the back of the gas station and the start of the condos. It’s not big, maybe the size of a block, and it’s mostly honeysuckle so thick you can’t easily walk through it. But maybe
