Rotten (9780545495899)

by Northrop, Michael

  Mom has some words of her own for me when I get inside. “You’re being a brat,” she says. “You think you’re the only one this affects?”

  “No,” I say.

  I get out of the room fast, but she follows me down the hall.

  “It’s my house, too,” she says. “My money, my dog. My window.”

  She’s being generous: It is pretty much entirely her house and money. The dog is debatable, and the window is shattered.

  “I know,” I say. “Fine. I’ll pay for the window.”

  “With my money.”

  She’s got me there, but I don’t regret it. I’m supposed to take a shot like this and what, say “thank you”? I spend the rest of the night watching TV in the front room with JR. Every time he tries to leave, I bribe him with more food. By nine, he’s stuffed so full, he barely even moves. He’s asleep on his side by the time I turn off the TV and head upstairs.

  I sleep for crap and wake up to the sound of Mom’s car starting in the driveway. I get up fast and throw on yesterday’s clothes. It’s Saturday morning, and I don’t even know why I’m rushing at first. My brain is still foggy, but something’s taking shape in there. I take the first few stairs at a walk and the last few at a run.

  I’m in the living room now. “Johnny?” I say. “Hey, boy!”

  He’s not in his corner. I look down the hallway and check the kitchen. Nothing. Through the kitchen window, I see Mom’s car lurch into reverse. I shoot through the door and into the yard. The grass feels cool and damp under my bare feet.

  “Stop,” I shout, but she already has.

  She has to; there’s another car pulling in behind her. I recognize it — a big boat of a thing — but it’s strange to see it in the driveway. He usually parks it along the curb. I guess he plans to get out this time.

  Mom gets out of her car, and I can see she’s a little confused, and then Aaron gets out of his. Both doors slam closed at the same moment, and that sets JR off barking in the backyard. He’s in the backyard.

  “Morning, Mrs. Dobbs,” says Aaron.

  “Morning, Aaron,” she says, not correcting him on the Mrs. thing.

  “I hear you’re harboring a known fugitive,” he says.

  “I think I’m harboring two,” she says.

  “Can I speak to the one with two legs?” he says.

  “Can you let me out first? I have a meeting at the bank.” She says it to him, but she looks at me during that last part.

  “Sure,” he says. “Sorry, I usually park along the side there.”

  “Hey, man,” I say.

  He nods, and then I wait while both cars pull out. Aaron backs his into its normal spot on the edge of the lawn. By the time he gets out and heads toward me, I still have no idea what he’s doing here.

  “Got a sec?” he says when he reaches me.

  “Got all day,” I say. “What’s up?”

  He reaches into his pocket and fishes out a smartphone that looks a lot like mine. “Got something for you,” he says.

  “That my phone?” I say. Aaron and I have the same model, and I think mine is upstairs in the charger but it’s too early to swear to it. I see Mom over his shoulder, shifting from reverse into drive and heading down the road.

  “Wake up, man,” says Aaron. “I didn’t come here to give you a phone. It’s way better than that.”

  “Yeah?” I say, trying to focus. “What?”

  He shakes his head, disappointed. He wants me to guess, but I have no idea. “Dude, man, I got nothing,” I say.

  He looks at me, like: You sure? I just stand there like an idiot and he gives up.

  “A witness, man,” he says. “I got your frickin’ witness.”

  Now I’m awake. “What?” I say. “Who?”

  “Me,” he says, holding his phone up higher, “and my little friend.”

  He turns the phone back around and touches the screen a few times. Then he holds it out to me.

  I hear Aaron’s voice: “But you did hop the fence, right? I mean, you were kind of asking for it.”

  The next voice is Mars: “What, screw you! I reached over first, but he kept backing away. Seemed more scared than anything. So I hopped the fence. I always do.”

  “And you just kept after him? Dumbass!”

  “Yeah, I guess it was kind of, like, he wasn’t exactly growling, but he was showing some teeth — big teeth!”

  “And you stuck your hand in there anyway.”

  “Yeah! I thought he’d stop, like I’d win him over with my awesome petting!”

  “Dumbass!”

  “Yeah!”

  Aaron lowers the phone. And now it’s his voice, for real. “Did you even know these things have an audio recorder?”

  “Yeah, but I never used it,” I say. “My mom uses hers to make, like, little notes to herself about work and stuff….”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I still don’t think Mars knows.”

  I smile. I can’t help it.

  “You boned him, man!”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking away. “Feel bad, but it’s all on here. Have another one about the nerve damage thing.”

  “And it’s crap?”

  “Course it is.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Wow. You, uh, want to come in, see the beast?”

  “Sure.”

  We head for the living room.

  “Happened to the window?” he says.

  “Threw a mug through it,” I say.

  He nods, like that’s the most normal thing in the world.

  “Was that the dog out back?”

  “Yeah, I’ll go get him,” I say. “Want to show you something.”

  “All right,” he says, and walks over to look at the broken window.

  JR bumps his way in through the back door and trots into the room, but he stops cold when he sees Aaron.

  “For the record,” says Aaron, “I could tell you all thought he was gonna bite me the other day.”

  “No, no,” I say, heading to the kitchen. “We just thought he might.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” he says.

  I come back with two biscuits.

  “Watch this,” I say.

  I hold one up, and JR whips his head around toward it. Then I toss it to him. He jumps up and snatches it out of the air, as usual.

  “Nice!” says Aaron.

  “Yeah, it’s like his party trick,” I say. “Here, you try.”

  “Cool,” he says, taking the other biscuit. “What, just …” he says, making a tossing motion.

  “Yeah, throw it high. Anywhere in the general vicinity will do.”

  The toss is so high, it almost hits the ceiling, but it’s really accurate. JR gathers his legs underneath him like a toothy kangaroo, then launches himself straight up and terminates the biscuit in midair.

  “He’s like a missile defense system,” says Aaron.

  “Seriously.”

  Neither of us says anything for a few moments. We just watch as JR finishes chewing and licks his lips.

  “Thanks, man,” I say, finally.

  Aaron shrugs, but I can’t let it go at that.

  “This is huge. I really … I didn’t think … I mean, you called me clueless.”

  “Yeah.” He lets out a little laugh and I don’t even mind. “You were kind of all over the place. Sorry about that.”

  “No, it’s true, but I mean …” I mean, why?

  He takes one last look at JR. “I’ll tell you something,” he says.

  “OK.”

  “Remember I told you I had a dog?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s a little more to it. His name was Woolly, really Woolly Bear, but we called him Woolly. He was just a puppy when I named him, and I don’t think I realized his fur wasn’t always going to be that soft. Anyway, he got sick. Nothing too major, but the treatment was gonna be a couple hundred bucks. I remember that seemed like so much money to me then. I was nine, you know? So, yeah, I was nine, he was three,
and he got sick.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “Nah, that’s not it. My dad didn’t want to pay.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t want to pay for the treatment, so he had him put to sleep. I guess it cost less, and he’d been out of work for a while. That’s why we moved to Stanton. He got a good job here. Anyway, my dog goes to the vet to get some medicine and he just never comes back. If I’d known, I never would’ve let him go.”

  “Damn, man. That’s just … crazy.”

  “So after you guys left, I was thinking about that. I was thinking, if I had Woolly back and they tried to take him from me again. I’m bigger than my dad now, you know?”

  “I know, but …”

  “But that’s the thing. I’m not getting my dog back. It doesn’t work that way. But you’ve still got yours. And Mars is my friend — the first friend I made when I came here — but I’ll be damned, you know? I’ll be damned if I’ll let that happen again.”

  I don’t really know what to say. JR is still standing there, looking at Aaron, but it seems like he’s looking at him differently now. Part of that is probably because Aaron gave him a biscuit, but I think most of it is because JR has that radar for when people are upset.

  “Thanks, man,” I say.

  “De nada,” he says. We had Spanish together last year.

  “Sorry about Mars.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t give him enough credit, you know? He’s had it worse than any of us, by a mile.”

  “I know,” I say, though I guess I’d never really thought of it that way before.

  “I know you, JD. You think your life’s so hard. But you should try sitting through a dinner at his place. And he’s still up for anything at any time, and always joking around.”

  “OK,” I say.

  “And you might not want to believe this, but I don’t think he really wanted to do any of this.”

  “I kind of do want to believe that,” I say. “But he didn’t have to tell everyone about …”

  Aaron shrugs again. “And you don’t have to look down on him so much. He hates that hillbilly stuff. And anyway, who cares? You won. And you’re not going to lose any friends over that other stuff unless you want to. All right?”

  “Yeah, OK,” I say. I think he might be right.

  “Good, because I expect you and Rude Boy back in action on Monday.”

  “What, at lunch and stuff?”

  “Just in general.”

  “Yeah, no problem, man. But, uh …”

  I point to his phone.

  “I’ll send you the audio files. Then you do whatever you have to.”

  “I’ll send ’em to our good-for-nothing lawyer,” I say. “Even he can’t screw that up.”

  “Whatever,” says Aaron. “Let me know if you need me to do anything else. See you Monday, JD. Later, Rotten.”

  And then he’s gone, and I’m standing in my living room, barefoot and dumbstruck.

  “Damn, boy,” I say to my dog. “That was a sad story.”

  Which doesn’t explain why I’m smiling.

  And Greg doesn’t screw it up. I know I’ve said a lot of stuff about him, pretty much all of it negative, but I’ll say this for him: He answers his e-mail right away, and he knows what to do with hard evidence. He loads those files up like he’s sliding a bullet into a gun, says Aaron is willing to testify to all of it, and kills the case dead. He even asks us if we want to countersue.

  “We just want to be left alone,” says Mom.

  “Well, I can guarantee that,” he says. “And you raise that fence out back another foot and put the muzzle on if you take him downtown, at least for now, and we won’t have to have this conversation again.”

  And what kind of fool would say no to a deal like that?

  The car pulls into the driveway so quietly that only JR hears it. He trots past me and props himself on the kitchen door so that he can see out the window. I get up from the table and stand behind him. He recognizes Janie’s hybrid as it bumps to a stop, so he doesn’t bark. But she’s become one of his favorite people and he has to do something, so he lets out this weird little noise from the back of his throat, basically a bunch of Es with some consonants thrown in. It is only by a supreme act of willpower that I don’t do the same.

  Instead, I fix my hair.

  “How do I look, boy?” I ask.

  Still propped up on the door, he turns his head and gives me a deeply unimpressed look, like: My hair is better.

  She’s making her way across the yard now, and I check the present in my hand. It’s not wrapped, exactly, but it’s in a gift bag and I stuck a red bow left over from last Christmas on top. It looks a little makeshift, to tell the truth, and it’s just a dinky little present, but that’s OK. I don’t want to overdo it. This is supposed to be our first date. We’re starting over completely. It was her idea, but I liked it immediately. The truth is, not telling her where I was this summer, or why, well, that wasn’t my first mistake with her. The truth is, at least, I hope it is, I really can do better.

  “Get down, boy,” I say, tugging him away from the door by his collar. “Give the lady some space.”

  He makes a raspy huff that I now recognize as the Rottweiler equivalent of “Oh, all right,” and drops down to the floor. Not really having a tail, he’s wagging his whole rear end.

  “Hey, guys,” says Janie as she pushes the door open and steps inside.

  “Hey,” I say. “Hi.”

  She goes straight to JR and starts scratching his fur with her fingernails. He rolls over on the kitchen floor like the big ham he is.

  “I got you something,” I say, possibly trying to steal some of my dog’s thunder. He looks up to see why the belly scratching has stopped.

  “Oh yeah?” Janie says, standing up.

  She takes a few steps toward me. JR is still on his back, following her with his eyes: But why has the belly scratching stopped? I hand her the bag.

  “Nice,” she says. “You wrap this yourself?”

  I look down at the Christmas bow. The year-old adhesive is already starting to peel away from the bag. “Santa helped me,” I say.

  She reaches into the bag and pulls out a small stuffed gorilla. She likes gorillas.

  “Aw,” she says. “He’s cute.”

  “Reminds me of your dad,” I say. “Not the cute part, I just mean all the hair.”

  She makes a sour expression: “Sometimes, you know, it’s better not to say anything.”

  “OK,” I say.

  She turns the little gorilla around in her hands to get a better look at it.

  “It’s nice,” she says. “Wait, you did pay for this, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling, “but I stole the tiny bottle of perfume it’s wearing.”

  “Well, it’s nice,” she says. “Thank you.”

  She goes to put it down on the kitchen table.

  “Don’t,” I say. “He might eat it.”

  JR is on his feet now, staring at this thing, which looks a little like a tiny squirrel.

  My mom pops her head into the kitchen to say hi to Janie, but she has the good sense to keep it quick.

  “Well, I’ll leave you alone,” she says, holding up a book. “I’m in the middle of a mystery.”

  “You know,” I say, once Mom’s gone, “if you let me drive, it counts as practice toward my license.”

  “I’m not letting you drive on our first date,” she says. “Lord knows where you’d take us!”

  “All right then,” I say. “Where are we going?”

  “The mall,” she says.

  “Classy,” I say, but they actually have some nice restaurants there. “I’m ready. Got my good boots on.”

  Janie looks down at them and rolls her eyes. It gives me the opportunity to really look at her for the first time tonight. She’s wearing good jeans and a nice white top that I’ve never seen before.
/>   “You look …” I say. She looks beautiful.

  “I know,” she says.

  She puts her hand on the doorknob, and JR makes one final, valiant attempt to keep her there: He flops back down onto his back like he’s been shot.

  “Bye, Johnny,” she says, and heads out the door.

  He gets up. Now he wants to come with us.

  “Not this time, boy,” I say. “Go help Mom with her mystery.”

  It’s a cool night out, the first hint of fall creeping into the air. We listen to her music the whole trip over to the far side of Brantley, and I don’t complain once. Once we get to the mall, I let her pick the restaurant. And I know you’re thinking: Oh, you’re being way nicer than you would on a real first date. But this is exactly how nice I’d be, because I’d still be under the delusion that it might lead to something tonight. In any case, she chooses Olive Garden. There’s a little music store on the way.

  “Let’s just take a look,” I say.

  She doesn’t exactly disagree, so we head in. The place has a few sad racks of dusty CDs and some boxes of “vintage vinyl,” but it’s mostly full of T-shirts, posters, iPod covers, and things like that.

  Just past the lame hip-hop section is a small corner devoted to punk and metal, forced together like two unpopular kids at a party. I head straight there and Janie follows along, just to humor me. There are two head-and-neck mannequin tops that weren’t here last time. They probably got them from a jewelry store that went out of business.

  The male one has a black Misfits beanie on its head and a red skull-pattern bandanna wrapped around its pale plastic neck. It’s sporting fake safety pins that clip on instead of through its ears and are pretty much the least punk thing I’ve ever seen. The female one is dressed about the same, but it does have one cool thing.

  “What do you think?” I say to Janie, pointing to the collar around its neck. It’s made of black leather and ringed with dull metal spikes.

  “I would never wear something like that,” she says.