Crash

by Lesley Choyce

  “Let’s go find her,” I said to Ozzie.

  Now, it’s not like Ozzie is some great tracking dog or anything. He’s just a dog who understands my feelings, and he knew what needed to be done. So we went for a walk. I was really bundled up this time, ready for the worst, and I had Ozzie’s leash. I didn’t know how far we might have to go. I mean, how far could a girl roll a big suitcase in a city full of snow?

  The answer to that question was “far.” I don’t know how we did it, but finally, after me following as Ozzie led, there she was, sitting in a rundown coffee shop downtown. I took a chance and went in with the dog. I got looks, but no one said anything. Mackenzie was asleep at one of the tables, and Ozzie nudged her awake.

  “How’d you find me?”

  I pointed to Oz. “He likes you,” I said. What I wanted to say was that I liked her. I needed a friend. And I was getting the picture. I guess I’d had it from the start. Mackenzie was no extreme-sport teenage winter camper. “You look tired,” I said.

  “I am tired.”

  “Things didn’t go so well with Mom and her boyfriend.”

  “Been there. Done that,” she said. “You weren’t kidding when you invited me into your nightmare.”

  “Well, yeah. I guess you got the picture that we aren’t one big happy family. Too bad my dad wasn’t there to express his thoughts about Nick and Mom.”

  “Adults have their problems.”

  “So I’ve noticed. But here’s the thing. My mom wants to stay with Nick. Nick doesn’t really want me around. And he wants nothing to do with Ozzie. In fact, Mom wants me to give Ozzie away.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not giving Ozzie away.”

  Mackenzie gave me the soft smile I’d seen only once before. “Good for you.”

  “But what I’m leading up to is this. You need a place to stay. I’m freaking out there, being by myself with all the weird stuff happening in my life.” I took a deep gulp. “So come stay with me.”

  I don’t think she saw this coming. Hell, I didn’t see it coming. The words just kind of leaped out. She sat there in silent shock. I kept talking. “My dad is gone, and I’m not going to let Mom or Nick run my life. I’m sixteen, and they dumped all this crap on me. Wasn’t my fault. So as far as I see it, I’m on my own. And none of them are going to boot me out of my own house.”

  “But who owns the house?”

  “The landlord. It’s rented. But he doesn’t know what’s going on. So I think I’m okay there. Come stay as long as you like.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “I’ve been down this road too many times before.”

  “Where are you going to stay, then?”

  “I’ve got options.”

  “Yeah, but they must not be great options if I found you holed up in a tent in the park for New Year’s Eve.”

  “Like I said, it was a dare.”

  I smiled but didn’t call her a liar. “Let’s go,” I said. Ozzie wagged his tail, and that seemed to do the trick.

  It was dark now as we walked through the silent city. It felt like it was about to snow again. We were quiet at first. I was wondering why I was doing this. I knew nothing about this girl I’d found in a tent. Then she broke the silence.

  “If I’m going to stay with you, you’ve got to go along with my rules.”

  Rules were the farthest thing from my mind. “What kind of rules?”

  “My rules. Like you need to leave me alone when I need to be left alone.”

  “I’m okay with that.”

  “And just ’cause I’m in your house, it doesn’t mean you own me.”

  I nodded. I had a good idea of what she was talking about.

  “And if I go out to do some stuff on my own, you can’t always be bugging me, asking questions. You can’t be my father.”

  “Of course not.”

  “And you’re not my boyfriend.”

  I shrugged.

  “And we need to be kind and respectful to each other.”

  That one caught me off guard. I had been thinking of Mackenzie as tough and streetwise. But this was something different. “Of course,” I said. “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. The truth was, I was more than a little scared. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had no idea how the next few weeks of my life were going to unfold. All I knew was that Mackenzie was walking beside me, spelling out her rules. And she was going to be staying at my house. And that I wasn’t quite so alone anymore.

  Chapter Five

  I settled Mackenzie into the spare bedroom and showed her around the house. “You sure it’s okay for me to stay here?” she asked. I could tell she thought it was too good to be true and that she wasn’t used to anyone being nice to her. The house wasn’t anything special, but I guess it was a castle compared to a pup tent in the park and wherever else she’d been crashing.

  “Consider this your home. You can stay here as long as I’m here. And I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

  She smiled a soft, sad smile and headed off to the bathroom to take a shower. An hour later, she showed up in the kitchen. I almost thought she was a different person. “You clean up real nice,” I said with a fake southern accent. It was some line I’d heard in a movie.

  Mackenzie blushed and said, “Thanks. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

  I found a frozen pizza in the freezer and baked it for us. It wasn’t very good, but she seemed to really enjoy it. I kept waiting for her to share her story, even bits of her life. But she didn’t. She got uncomfortable when I asked questions.

  “I have to go back to school tomorrow,” I said. “Can you take care of Ozzie while I’m gone? Let him out and keep him company?”

  “Sure. For some reason I didn’t think you were still in school.”

  “Yeah. I am. It mostly sucks. But I don’t have a clue what else to do with my life.”

  “I dropped out last fall. I found it didn’t quite fit in with my lifestyle.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at her putting it that way. “Your lifestyle?”

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “Sorry.” She was sensitive. “It’s got to be tough out there.”

  “Yeah, it is tough out there. I was couch surfing, crashing with some okay people and then some not-so-okay people. Showing up at school looking…well, you saw me.”

  I nodded. She was introducing me to a world I knew nothing about. “So you dropped out?”

  “I didn’t want to. Like you, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life. I guess all I really want to do right now is survive.”

  That shocked me, but I tried not to show it. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  I almost thought I was gonna cry. It wasn’t just her, I realized, it was me too. We were different, but after what had happened earlier, I was thinking the same thing. I just wanted to get through this and be able to live my life.

  Ozzie was sitting on the floor between us, and he looked up just then. “We’ll help you, won’t we, Oz?” I said to my dog. “We’ll get through this together.” And as the words slipped out of my mouth, I realized I had never made a commitment like that to anyone in my life.

  School sucked. I left Mackenzie at home watching crappy morning TV with Ozzie, and I hoofed it to high school. You could tell most teachers didn’t want to be there either on that first day back after vacation. Mr. Clayton, my math teacher, and Ms. Hollis, my biology teacher, both warned me that I was on academic probation and most likely to fail their courses. They weren’t offering any encouragement, just threats I didn’t need to hear. I wanted to tell them both to screw off, but I kept my mouth shut. Davis Conlon, a classmate who had been ragging me since I was twelve, said he’d seen me downtown. “That was one sorry-looking homely bitch you were with,” he said.

  I could have taken him right there, but I was thinking about ho
w pretty Mackenzie actually was. And she was living in my house. And I thought back to New Year’s Eve and my promise to my new self. I’d already broken a couple of my own “rules,” but I wouldn’t let Dickhead Davis Conlon drag me down. I gave him a hard look. “She’s a friend,” I said as calmly as I could. “A new friend. And we were hanging out.”

  “Yeah, I know about hanging out with her. I know who she is.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, but I wasn’t going to continue the conversation. The sooner I got away from him, the less likely I was to slam him into a locker.

  I made it through the school day and avoided a couple more traps. I decided my New Year’s decision was not such a bad one. I could pull things together at school if given a chance. I’d do it for me. And I’d do it for her.

  On the walk home, I began to worry that she might not be there, that she’d have disappeared like before.

  But I was wrong. She was in her room. The door was open, and she was asleep with her clothes on, curled up with Ozzie. I stood there for a minute, just watching her breathe. Ozzie didn’t even get up. He looked at me and wagged his tail gently. They both looked about as contented as anything could be.

  Chapter Six

  The school week ended, and I still hadn’t gotten into trouble. I had barely passed a math test and squeaked through one in biology. But I was doing the work and keeping my head down. At home, Mackenzie and I were eating whatever we could find in the freezer, and I was running low on dog food.

  The phone rang quite a few times, and I knew it was Mom because Nick’s number came up. Maybe my dad phoned too, but I wasn’t answering. Mac took Ozzie for walks while I was at school, and she started cooking dinner and making sandwiches for my lunch. Yeah, I know. We were like this little family. I learned not to ask her too much about her past, but a few things slipped out. Her mom had been hooked on crack, and she hated her father. Hated him and refused to talk about him. She’d been on her own for over a year. Social services hadn’t been much help. Group homes were definitely not for her.

  But we were okay. I was playing by her rules, and I was close to sticking to my own. On the weekend, we were sitting in the kitchen, talking, when my mom walked in without knocking. She looked at both of us and then straight at me. “Cameron, what are you doing? Who is this?”

  “I’m not doing anything to you,” I said. “I’m just trying to live my life.”

  Mom was holding back, trying not to explode. “You need to come live with Nick and me. And she has to go.”

  Mackenzie just sat there, staring at the floor.

  I had a lot I wanted to say about who had screwed up everything. But I held back.

  “Right now. You need to come with me.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then we need to call your father, and you can go out there and be with him.” I could tell by the way she said it that this was what she really preferred. It would solve all her worries. She’d have her little love nest with Nick, and I’d be out of the way.

  “I’m not gonna do that,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Look, Mom, I know what you think you see here, but it’s not like that. I’m going to school, and Mackenzie needs a place to stay.” Those words just didn’t seem right. But I knew whatever I said, it would sound all wrong. I felt so frustrated, I almost didn’t speak, but then it came out. “We’re good for each other. We’re both staying here. And that’s final.”

  My mom looked like she was going to explode. Ozzie growled. Mom started banging around the place, knocking things over and grabbing stuff that was hers. She had an armful of magazines and cookbooks and some clothes when she came back into the room. She glared at me. “Cameron, I want you to get in that car now,” she said in a low, mean voice.

  I shook my head and didn’t budge. She let out a frustrated huff and walked out the door. Mackenzie and I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, but it put a dark cloud over the rest of the day. We knew our warm little world could not last forever.

  “When I moved out on my mom,” she said, “I felt like I was abandoning her forever. I knew she was headed downhill, but I couldn’t stop her. And I couldn’t stay there and live that life anymore. But it was really scary. I stayed with friends for a while, but their parents eventually complained. Maybe you should move in with her.”

  “It’s not an option. But tell me more about you. How did you survive on your own?”

  “I had to work on it day by day. I tried a couple of shelters, but the people I met there were not good to be around. They were dragging me down, and I was better off on my own.” She saw the worry in my face, I guess. “Look,” she said. “I know I can’t stay here forever. This is great. But it’s not gonna last. Maybe I should move on before things start to get ugly.”

  I didn’t want to lose her. I swallowed hard. “Whatever happens, let’s face it together, Mac. You’re, like, the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. Maybe you’re the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.”

  She looked me in the eyes and leaned forward. She kissed me on the forehead. I wanted that moment to last forever.

  Nick arrived the next morning when I was getting ready to go to school. Ozzie was still in the bedroom with Mac, so he wasn’t around to growl. Nick had his speech well rehearsed, and he was playing Mr. Rational. “Look, Cameron, I understand how you feel about me and your mom, and you have a right to that. But she’s really upset, and I’m wondering if we can sort this out. Me and you.”

  “I don’t know, Nick. What do you want me to do?”

  “Move in with us. You’ll have the basement. You won’t hardly ever have to deal with me. It’ll be like having your own apartment.”

  I wouldn’t do that in a million years. But I thought I’d play the game. “What about Ozzie? Can he come too?”

  Nick didn’t like that, but I guess he thought he was going to be the hero peacekeeper. “Sure,” he conceded. “Keep him down there. And you’ll have your own entrance, so you can just take him out the back to the yard, and I think it might all work.”

  “What about Mackenzie? Can she come too? She needs a place to live.”

  I knew Nick wouldn’t go for that. “No. Your mom would never allow that. That girl’s not your responsibility. I don’t know her story, but that’s what we have social services for. They’ll take care of her.”

  “I’m not moving in without Mackenzie.”

  I guess it was noble on Nick’s part to come over at all and offer what he was offering. But I knew that if I moved to his place, Ozzie would be gone in no time. And I’d be under his rule. Nick liked to have his way. This was all a ploy to keep my mom happy. Nick pounded his fist into his palm. Once. Twice. Three times. I thought the next one might be directed at me. He sucked in his breath and said, “Cameron, I’ve been trying to be reasonable with you. We both have. But this is bullshit.”

  Funny that he would use that word.

  “Yeah, Nick,” I said. “I figured out it was all bullshit a long time ago. So you might as well suck it up and live with it.”

  Nick stormed out, and the house grew quiet again. I watched him drive away in his big black truck. When I turned around, I saw Mackenzie standing there. She had heard the whole thing.

  Chapter Seven

  We made it through another weekend. Mackenzie and me and Ozzie. I put Nick out of my mind. And I didn’t answer the phone, even though I knew my mom and probably my dad were calling. By now we were almost out of food, and I wasn’t sure what we’d do next.

  The freezer was close to empty, and we sure didn’t have anything fresh in the fridge. It was like a science experiment in there, and I had to throw out anything that looked like an alien life form. When I came home from school on Monday, though, there was milk, cheese and salad stuff in the fridge, and Mackenzie was cooking spaghetti and meatballs. The kitchen was all steamed up, and that made me smile.

  “I’m starving,” I said. I hadn’t taken any food to school, and I couldn’t afford the cafeteri
a. “How’d you do this?”

  Mackenzie smiled that sweet smile she had when she didn’t feel scared or lost in the world. “I have survival skills.”

  I grabbed a carrot from the counter and chomped down on it. “Really? Like what?”

  “I went downtown and bummed money from people.”

  “Panhandling?”

  “You could call it that. I’m good at it sometimes.”

  “How much did you get?”

  “Twenty-four dollars.”

  I smiled and gave her a hug. I’d been careful about being physical with her. I knew she liked me, but I remembered her rules. The first time I’d hugged her, she had stiffened and pulled away. This time she hugged me back. It felt good. I wanted to kiss her. But I didn’t. I just didn’t want to upset whatever it was we had.

  “How does it feel? Begging from strangers?”

  “I don’t think about it. That’s part of what survival skills are all about. Sometimes you just do what you have to do.”

  But I didn’t like the thought of Mac out there on the street bumming change. “Maybe I can get a job.”

  “No, idiot. You gotta stay in school.”

  “Well, maybe a part-time job.” I realized I would do just about anything to keep what we had going. But I was living in a bubble.

  The spaghetti was heaven, and I filled my gut and then fed Ozzie from the new bag of dog food Mac had bought. That’s when the doorbell rang.

  At first I didn’t answer it, but it kept ringing, and I knew whoever it was wasn’t going to go away. And Ozzie had begun to bark, and I knew he wouldn’t stop.

  When I opened the door, I recognized him. The landlord. Mr. Powell. I’d met the guy about a dozen times before, but I didn’t think he even knew my name. He scowled at me.

  “Your father here?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Your mother?”

  “She’s out too,” I said.

  Ozzie came over and stood beside me. He did one of the low growls he did sometimes when he felt threatened.

  Mr. Powell looked over my shoulder and saw Mackenzie in the kitchen. Then he looked down at the hardwood floor in the entrance. “That damn dog’s scratched up the floors.”