4
Nothing to Lose
Daniel
The classroom is painfully bright after the pitch-black vestibule with Ashley. Or at least I think it was her. I squint as my eyes adjust and my brain shifts out of that embarrassing giggle fit. Ash isn’t at our table.
Okay. Cool. Just made an idiot of myself in front of a cute girl.
At least it was too dark for her to see me laugh-crying.
Ms. Bernstein gives me a suspicious look as I go back to my seat. Braden clips my shoulder as he heads to the darkroom because he’s that kind of guy. I trip into the corner of table three. The kids sitting there laugh. I make it to my seat and collapse onto it. If this growth spurt doesn’t end soon so I can figure out what shape I am, I’m going to wind up breaking a bone.
I blink blearily at my worksheet. It made sense before I went in the darkroom, or as much sense as anything can make when you’ve had a total of six hours of sleep in three days because you’re hiding a—what, stolen? borrowed? rescued?—tiny dog in a tent in the woods. A dog whose tongue doesn’t quite stay in her mouth. Whose eyes go in two different directions sometimes. Who limps when she walks. Who pees all over herself constantly, which is probably the real reason that guy tried to have her killed. A dog I’ve fallen stupidly in love with despite my life totally upending because of her.
“. . . eleven, Daniel?”
“What?” I check my paper. “Um, I didn’t get that one yet. But I got f/4 for number ten.”
“Number ten is f/5.6. As we just said. Please try to pay attention.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I write f/5.6 for number eleven—or wait, she said it was for ten. I try to erase what I wrote but I’m using a pen. I scribble it out and the paper rips.
My eyes sting with incoming tears. I swallow hard and cover the mess on my worksheet. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a test or anything.
But it’s photography, the thing I shared with Dad that was just ours. Before he moved out in August, I took so many photos with his old Nikon D80 DSLR that the shutter button started to stick. Now I haven’t picked up the camera in two months and I can’t even do a worksheet right and I’m regretting choosing this class for my art elective because it feels like jabbing a bruise for forty-three minutes a day.
I rub my eyes and try to figure out question twelve. But thinking is impossible. When I was volunteering yesterday, Gavin said Tina’s daughter broke her back and that Tina will be gone for a month. I couldn’t think of a non-weird way to ask him to look up her number. I’ve been biking the three blocks to the woods to check on Chewbarka after school every day, and after dinner if I can think of an excuse to go outside, and after Mom goes to bed at eleven, and in the morning before her alarm goes off at 6:03. Last night I was so stressed I didn’t even go home between the late-night check and the early-morning one. I just lay on the stinky tent floor staring at the dark roof with Chewbarka asleep on my stomach, my mind a riot of all the things that could wind up with her getting killed. When I went home to get ready for school, I stuffed my hoodie behind the shed. I didn’t want to put it in the laundry smelling like pee and prompt awkward questions from Mom. Who totally suspects something is going on because I bombed two quizzes this week.
I can’t let her find out what I’m doing. She’ll tell me I’m too tenderhearted, then she’ll demand I tell Dr. Snyder the truth, and then Tina will be fired and Chewbarka will be killed.
I grit my teeth. I don’t care how hard this is. I’m not letting them kill her.
Ashley sits down and gives me a shy smile. A thought pops into my head that I could tell her. Just tell her everything. When we were talking about her beagle the other day, she said she loves dogs. She made that joke about her dog’s farts and then got embarrassed.
Maybe she’d understand. And what do I have to lose? She already thinks I’m a screwup after that vestibule mess. And she’s basically a stranger, so she’s not going to rat me out to Mitchell or Mom.
I could tell her. I really could. It would feel so good to not be alone with this.
When class is over, I get behind Ash as everyone is leaving. I tap her shoulder in the hall. “I can explain about the dog,” I blurt. “I mean, if you want to hear it. It’s a funny story.” I don’t know why I said that. And I’m suddenly less sure this is a good idea.
She smiles. “The mutant platypus-zebra mix?”
“Yeah. I mean she’s a Pomeranian.” Did I already say that? I can’t remember. “This lady Tina at the vet office where I walk dogs . . . um, had to go out of town all of a sudden. She—” Ah, shoot. “Where’s your locker? I’ll walk you to your locker.”
“In the 700 hallway.” She looks perplexed.
“Oh, right. I forgot you’re in seventh.” The grade levels aren’t supposed to go in each other’s wings, but no one keeps track. We set off through the swarm of kids. “So, Tina brought Chewbarka to work with her that day because Chewbarka, um, needed shots.” Yes, that could happen. “And then Tina got a call that her daughter was in a car wreck, in like Indiana or
