“Most guys are,” says Jane.
They sit there swinging their legs. Diggy hates the silence. He positions his arm behind her and considers resting it on her shoulders.
“My brothers have found some amazing junk here. If people don’t sell their crap, sometimes they chuck it in the trash,” says Jane.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“Not really.”
“The alcohol is keeping me warm.” Diggy removes his varsity jacket and puts it on her shoulders. His heart pounds in his ears. “You can wear my jacket if you want to.”
“Really?”
“I may need it sometimes, but yeah.” He can hardly breathe.
“At school?”
“Yeah.”
She kisses him, slowly, deeply, her tongue working against his. Then they hug with her head on his shoulder. “I’m going to feel so tough,” she says in his ear.
“I’m not as hardcore as everyone says I am.” He smiles.
“I could have killed Trevor for wrestling you off,” she says. “One match doesn’t make him a better wrestler than you.”
“I’m not going to hear the end of it from Randy.” His finger sends a wave of pain up his arm. “And look at this. Dislocated again.”
She brings his hand to her face and sucks his skin.
Diggy
DIGGY GETS RID OF BONES FIRST. “IT’S BEEN REAL, YO,” HE calls, pulling his guitar from the back seat. “Stay in touch with yourselves.”
Next Diggy wants to drop off Gino, so he can be alone with Jane, but Gino cries like a little emo-bitch, saying he can’t go home until after his father’s left for the graveyard shift at the nuclear plant. “He sniffs my breath,” says Gino, “makes me blow into his face.” Gino’s father isn’t an engineer. He’s a square-badge guard.
“I should get home. I’m really tired anyway,” says Jane.
So Diggy drops Jane off instead of Gino. Diggy holds her for about five minutes in front of her door, knowing Gino’s watching. Diggy feels his eyes, but tries not to care. Finally, he decides he’d rather hold her than worry about what Little Gino thinks. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” she says, pulling her lips off his. “Are you sure about the jacket?”
“Keep it. Wear it tomorrow.”
In the car, Gino lowers the music and says, “You gave her your jacket?”
“You got a problem with it?”
“The first time I saw her,” says Gino, “I thought she’d been hit in the head with a hockey puck or something.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“I’m just surprised, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Like your little hobbit ass is ever going to have a girlfriend,” says Diggy.
“Mention her name to anybody and what’s the first thing they think of?” asks Gino.
“You short little turd,” shouts Diggy. “Shut the eff up.” Diggy head slaps Little Gino; the same way Randy smacks him. “You never got past first base and you’re cracking on me?”
At the fork, he veers onto Iron Ore Road. He presses hard on the gas pedal. They zip by the plank fence that surrounds the horse ranch, then past long stretches of dry corn stalks.
“Where to?” asks Gino.
“I have to check something out.”
At the Lobster Mobster Restaurant, he turns onto Route 33. They fly by the used car lots, then the hot tub place. “Where’re we going?” Gino asks again.
Diggy doesn’t answer. He’s almost there. Little Gino brings his legs on his seat, curling into a ball. Diggy slows and pulls off the highway. Fifty yards ahead, a spotlight shines on the SECRET KEEPERS sign.
“Crow lives here.” Diggy pulls into the parking lot. “Can you believe this?” Some of the rooms are lit. He drives to the edge of the lot. Television screens flash behind the curtains. A puppy is chained to the cyclone fence. The dog stands and trots forward, dragging the chain toward the headlights.
“That’s got to be Trevor’s new puppy,” says Gino, opening his door. “Come ’ere boy,” he calls.
Diggy positions the car so that the dog is at Gino’s door. The dog steps forward.
“If I had a puppy, he wouldn’t be chained in the cold,” says Diggy.
“Ditto that,” says Gino.
“Unhook him,” he says, leaning over the console to see the puppy.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Gino unhooks the chain from the dog’s collar.
Diggy reaches across Gino’s lap and snags the collar, yanking the dog into the car. The puppy twists and braces his legs against the front seat. His tail whacks the dashboard.
“What if we take him?” Diggy looks into the animal’s brown eyes.
“And do what with him?” asks Gino.
“Keep him for a while.” Diggy pictures Trevor in the parking lot, lifting the chain, then looking up the road. How is that going to feel? A surge of power rushes through Diggy.
“Crow’s not the same guy he used to be. He’d kill you.”
PART TWO
Trevor
TREVOR IS WASTING HIS FREE PERIOD IN THE LIBRARY WITH HIS feet on a radiator. He squints at the athletic fields, hoping Whizzer might emerge from the pin oaks and maples beyond the fields. School is a long way from the motel, but maybe Whizzer is completely lost. It’s been three days of riding around with London and his mother searching for Whizzer or his body on the side of the road. It’s hit Trevor like a bad virus. He can’t focus. He hasn’t done any homework. He’s skipped wrestling practice. He can’t think of anything else.
He walked the highway calling Whizzer’s name, imagining him trotting from an alleyway with his tongue hanging from his mouth, scared and anxious. Trevor’s roamed all over town, down Main Street, through parking lots, around the flea market buildings, circling the elementary schools. He’s peered into backyards and over fences. He’s stopped people coming from the train. Holding Whizzer’s picture, he’s asked them if they’d seen his lost puppy. “A Lab mix,” he said, “about four months old.”
Jane sits two tables away. When their eyes meet, Trevor looks past her toward the main desk. He’s seen her sucking face with Diggy in every hallway.
Trevor’s phone vibrates in his pocket. “Hello.” Shuffling, noise in the background. “Hello.” He looks at the phone, a private number. “Hello?”
“Trevor?”
“Gino?”
“Yeah.”
“What up?” Trevor tries not to smile. Gino has never called him.
“What are you doing?” Gino’s voice is high.
“Nothing. What’s the matter?”
“You going to practice?”
“I suppose. Why, is something going on?”
“No, I just was thinking....” Gino’s voice trails off. “You hear anything about your dog?”
“Nothing new.”
“Okay, listen.” Gino heaves a deep breath.
“What?”
“Ah, forget it, I’ll see you at practice.” The call disconnects.
Trevor puts the phone on the table and looks at it. He wonders if Diggy and Gino have devised some type of revenge. Are they going to give him a “lights out” party, and jump him in the locker room?
Jane gets up, shoves her fingertips into her hip-hugger pockets, and approaches. She’s wearing a tight shirt that says “Jersey Girl, ’Nuff said.”
She slides into the seat across from him. “Heard anything about your puppy?”
He shakes his head. “Gino just asked me the same thing.”
“I saw your flyers. You named him Whizzer?”
“Yeah.”
“Like the wrestling move?” Her eyes are hard, unblinking.
They’ve always been aware of each other. He’s the Indian. She’s the girl with the birthmark. They pass each other in the halls with small nods of recognition or “Hey,” then “Hey” back. But they’ve never been friends and it wasn’t the birthmark that stopped him. Trevor knew, and he imagined Jan
e knew, the two different kids in the school shouldn’t hang out. It would have been unpleasantly weird.
“Did you ever think your dog could have slipped his collar?” she asks with an edge.
“I would have found the collar hooked to the chain. Right?” He says this as if it’s her fault.
“I think someone checking out from the motel must have taken him,” she says. “Did you check the ASPCA?”
“Twice.”
“I’m sure he’ll turn up.” She doesn’t take her eyes off him. Still doesn’t blink. Jane folds her arms across her chest. “Your mother is the motel manager?”
Why is she interested in his life? Is she going to tell this to Diggy? “She works the desk.” And cleans rooms. They get free rent. Bug off, Jane.
Trevor turns to the window. Rain is coming down at an angle. Some winter track guys run across the field with their sweatshirts pulled over their heads.
“Your father was Penobscot, wasn’t he?”
Trevor’s surprised. Everyone knows he’s Native American, but no one in the school knows the tribe. “How do you know that?”
“A presentation you gave in the fifth grade. You said a bunch of Indian words. The teacher thought it was extremely badass.”
The Wabanaki Confederacy: Abenaki, Micmac, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Maliseet tribes run through his mind. His father taught him the names of the tribes. He used a stick and drew a map in the dirt. With the stick on the landmasses he chanted, “Passamaqouddy, Maliseet, and Micmac Nations.” He circled them and finished with “The Wabanaki Confederacy.” He made Trevor repeat the words with him.
“How’s Diggy doing?” he asks.
“How do you think he’s doing? First he gets your knee in his mouth and eighteen stitches, then you dislocate his finger and take his spot at one-fifty-two.” She glares at him. “You know what I think? I think the knee-lift to his face was on purpose.”
Trevor remembers the feel of it, the impact. Diggy asked for it, and he got it. Trevor leans back, surprised at himself, pleased that he’s not apologizing and making excuses.
“You know, one-seventy is not going to be easy for Diggy,” she says.
“He’ll have it easier than I would.”
The bell rings. She gets up and slams the chair in against the table.
Diggy
AT LUNCH, JANE’S GETTING EXTRA HELP IN GEOMETRY, SO DIGGY has no choice but to sit at the wrestling table. He can’t sit alone. As he approaches, Gino’s eyes flash at Diggy, then dart over to Trevor. Diggy knows Gino’s a walking, talking time bomb. Diggy sits and lets out a long, slow breath.
“To what do we owe this honor?” asks Jimmy.
“Is the little lady on the rag?” asks Bones. “Or maybe she’s trying to wash Africa off her face.” Everyone erupts into laughter.
Diggy grabs Bones’s sandwich and squishes it until wheat bread squeezes between his fingers. “Next time, that’s your face.”
“You ever touch my lunch again, I’ll break your jerkass hands.” Bones isn’t laughing. “You’ve got to learn how to take a joke.”
“You’re a joke.” Diggy dumps his own lunch, turkey sandwich, an apple, a protein bar, and a slice of cake, from a brown bag onto the table.
“That’s like a week’s worth of food,” says Jimmy.
“If you’d move up a weight class”—Diggy bites his sandwich—“then you could eat too.”
Pancakes holds a “lost dog” flyer with Whizzer’s picture on it. Bones snatches it from his hand. He cranes his neck around to Trevor. “Sorry to say this dude, but he’s got to be roadkill by now. Why would anyone steal a mutt? He was a mutt, right?”
“He was half Lab,” says Trevor.
“That’s a mutt, yo,” says Bones. “And a mutt is a mutt, right, Gino?”
Gino fixes his eyes on his square of cardboard pizza from the cafeteria kitchen.
“Who made you the expert?” says Gino.
“If he was going to be a big dog,” says Jimmy, “maybe somebody needed a guard dog. Trevor, you ever think of that?”
“Yeah.” Trevor nods. “The police mentioned that.”
Diggy chews his sandwich, barely tasting it. His stomach feels like it’s on a seesaw. He looks at Gino, who has tears pooling in his eyes.
“Principal Anderson is going to make an announcement tomorrow during homeroom,” says Trevor.
Diggy puts his sandwich down. He’s lost his appetite. “Trevor, he’ll probably show up when you least expect it,” he says.
The wrestlers look at Diggy.
“He was a puppy,” says Bones. “How’s a puppy just going to show up?”
“I don’t know, anything’s possible, right?”
“Thanks,” says Trevor. “I’m not giving up either.”
Everyone, except Gino and Diggy, leave the table to play handball. Gino’s wide-eyed and worrying like a three-year-old on his first day of nursery school. “Give him back,” he says.
“Or else what?” Diggy hunches over the table.
“You’ve got to give him back,” says Gino. “Chain him somewhere and somebody can drive by and find him.” A tear leaves the corner of his eye.
“It’s a dog,” says Diggy. “Not a person. When I’m ready, I’ll give him back.”
“You better give him back now,” says Gino.
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“No, but I can’t think about anything else.”
“Just chill.”
“I can’t. It’s freakin’ me out.”
“You told someone, didn’t you?” Diggy’s eyes narrow.
“I almost told Bones last night.”
Diggy reaches across the table, grabs his shirt, and twists it in his fist. “Stop worrying. I’m going to take care of it.”
“Only a prick could do a thing like this.”
“You took him too. We get caught, you’re going down as hard as me.”
“You pulled him in the car! I didn’t know what you were doing.”
Diggy releases him. Taking the dog was dumb, and he wants to give him back. But no one suspects anything. It’s perfect revenge. Trevor’s moping around at practice. Greco’s probably already wishing Diggy was back at 152.
“What are you doing with the dog anyway?” whispers Gino. “You want a dog so bad, get your own.”
“This is a lesson. Every time I drove by that motel, the dog was chained up. It was animal abuse.”
“That’s baloney and you know it. You wanted to get back at Crow for taking your spot. You need a shrink,” says Gino. “You’ve got issues.”
Diggy shoves Gino’s shoulder. If anyone finds out, nothing will ever be the same for Diggy. He could be arrested, and no one would hear his side. His heart crashes in his chest. “You open your mouth, you’re going down, same as me.”
Diggy
DIGGY CARRIES THE PUPPY FROM THE POOL HOUSE AT THE BACK of the property. The leafless sycamore branch, about two feet around, rises from the green mesh pool cover. Twenty feet up the trunk of the tree, he spots the gash where the tree branch snapped. The water is coated with translucent new ice. He wonders if the puppy could break through and drown.
The puppy slurps his ear. “Happy to see me?” he asks.
His parents are at the county club for the night. Diggy puts Whizzer in the family room. Whizzer tears around the rug, running up and over the couch, around and around. He charges into the kitchen, stops, then charges back toward Diggy.
Whizzer wolfs down a porterhouse steak cut into tiny pieces, then laps up an entire bowl of water. After he’s finished, he looks at Diggy as if to ask, Is that all? “You’re a rowdy one, aren’t you,” says Diggy.
He snuggles with the puppy on the leather wraparound couch and watches one episode after another of Survivorman. He TiVo’d an entire week. In the first episode, Survivorman roasts scorpions over a fire and pops them in his mouth like potato chips; in the next he cuts the meat off a dead elk and cooks it on a fire, then he builds shelters
with pine branches.
Diggy likes the smell of the puppy’s fur and the feel of the puppy’s solid body. “Trevor was looking for you,” he says to the dog. “But he couldn’t find you, could he?” Diggy wants to feel in control, but the truth is he never intended on taking the puppy. It was just the way it went down. Trevor needed to learn a lesson about respect and there’s the dog hopping into the car. Diggy may have gone too far.
He microwaves popcorn and tries to teach the puppy to roll over. It’s no use. He feeds the dog popped kernels, which are swallowed without chewing. After four episodes of the show, he leads the puppy back to the pool house. For the fifth night, Diggy locks the puppy in and examines the dark sky, knowing Trevor is lying awake in the motel, wondering if his dog is roadkill. He has to give the dog back. He rubs his tongue across the scar tissue forming on his lip. “But you didn’t have to wrestle me off,” he says aloud. “So don’t try to make me feel lower than whale crap.”
Jimmy
JIMMY AND POPS SIT ON METAL FOLDING CHAIRS FACING A BATTERED wooden door labeled “Franklin B. Scales, Attorney at Law.” Jimmy bites and tears tiny pieces of flesh where his skin meets his fingernails. He considers going to the police and telling them the truth, but would they arrest him? He was there. He stole the lumber too.
Pops leans on his elbows, his sandy-blond hair hanging over his forehead. He’s got his “good” clothes on: black jeans, scuffed dress shoes, and a worn leather jacket. He looks like a goon in a gangster movie, squeezing the filter of his stubby cigarette, sucking it like it’s his job not to leave one bit left. “When this is over”—suck, puff—“I promise you”—suck—“I’ll make this up to you.”
And how are you going to do that, wonders Jimmy. How are you going to give back the practice I’m missing today, or all my sleepless nights?
The attorney’s door opens. A man in gas-station coveralls emerges. “He’s all yours!” The man pushes out the door.
The attorney, white faced, with a wispy comb-over, looks like he just rose from a coffin. He’s got to be in his seventies. His office is packed with boxes filled with files and papers.
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