When Friendship Followed Me Home

by Paul Griffin

  “I’m sorry, Leo,” I said.

  “Really mad.” His eyes landed on Flip. “Stupid dog!” Then he kicked Flip—hard too. Very hard. Hard enough that Flip flew from where Leo kicked him, into the fence. Flip yelped and then staggered and sat and panted and whimpered. He was shivering when I picked him up.

  “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “Stupid little rat!”

  “He didn’t mean it,” I said.

  “You can’t train him not to be in the way all the time?”

  “He weighs like ten pounds,” I said. “You could have killed him.”

  “Stop with the drama, will ya? He’s fine. Look at him. Freakin’ dog.” He rotated his wrist. “Ah that kills. Yeah, I think it’s broken.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to move it around like that if it was,” I said.

  “Excuse me, what’d you say?”

  “Freaking idiot.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where do you get it into your head that you can speak to me that way? I open my house to you, and this is how you talk to me?”

  “I said I was sorry, okay?”

  “No, not okay. What’d you just call me?”

  “It slipped.”

  “Let it slip again. I need to hear it, just to be sure I heard what I think I heard. Hey, I’m talking to you!”

  Him being so mad, well, it got me even madder. I practically yelled it. “I said you’re an idiot.”

  And that’s when it happened. Leo swung out at me with a big, meaty, open hand, the one connected to his supposedly broken wrist. He slapped me across my face hard enough to make my head whip to the side. My cheek stung and then went numb. Everything got really still, really quiet. The only thing I heard was the birds. A crow, I think, across the street in the park, and then maybe a sparrow or whatever it was, tweeting high-pitched.

  I guess his wrist really wasn’t broken. He wasn’t rubbing it anymore. He ran his hands through his hair, pulling at it a little. He looked scared. Maybe as scared as I was. All I had to do was call the cops, and they’d pull me out of there fast. Yup, I’d be on my way to foster care. That was the problem: They didn’t let you bring pets into the foster homes. Flip would be taken to the dog pound. He buried his head in my armpit and trembled so bad I thought he was having a seizure.

  I scooped up the dog carrier backpack and went into the house, into my room, and got my money sock, which had nine dollars in it because I gave the rest to Aunt Jeanie to put in the bank for me. I grabbed the little picture of me and Mom from the beach that day. I was trying to stuff the bigger one of Laura into the backpack when Leo came in.

  “Champ,” he said.

  I grabbed Flip and the backpack and pushed past Leo and ran, but I had to go back to get my stupid inhaler. Leo was following me around, desperate. He kept saying, “Champ, please, we have to talk about this. Hang on just a minute now,” and you bet I didn’t. Flip and I were gone.

  36

  THE MOBILE MOTEL

  The texts started coming in from Aunt Jeanie. Please come back to the house. We’re waiting for you at the house. We’ll be in the house expecting your call. She never used the word home. I checked for a text from Halley. Nope. I disabled my location tracking. This hacker kid in one of the foster homes taught us how to do it. He was always running away, and he was good at staying hidden until he ran out of money or got sick. The cops were definitely going to try to trace me when Aunt Jeanie called them, which eventually she would have to. That’s when Leo would have to tell her he hit me. I didn’t want him to go to jail or anything, but no way was I going back there. No way. What a mess.

  The sun set, and the air up by the park got cold fast. Flip and I got on the bus, and I held him too close, even though he didn’t try to squirm away. I was shaking really bad, and that got him shaking worse. I tried to stop thinking about how I couldn’t do anything right, that maybe it was good Mom wasn’t around anymore. This way she wouldn’t see how bad I messed everything up—and everyone, Jeanie and Leo, Halley most of all.

  I was so freaked, I started to wheeze. I had to take three shots off my inhaler. It was hard to hold the medicine in my lungs, like you’re supposed to for a few seconds, before you breathe it out, because I was crying, like the kind of crying where you’re so panicked that your heart is beating faster than when you’re sprinting. Except you’re not sprinting. You’re just sitting there, realizing, seeing your life for what it really is, a mistake. It had to be, feeling so bad like this. That’s when it all started to hit me, that Mom was dead. I mean, I knew she was gone, but now I really knew. She was in fact totally and absolutely nowhere, Tess Coffin. Because if she was somewhere, she wouldn’t let me and Flip be in such a bad way. Somewhere like an intersecting dimension, where maybe she could whisper the right words into my mind and tell me what to do. I’d felt lost at some of the foster homes I was in, but never like this. Now I had zero protection, and worse than that, how the heck was I supposed to keep Flip safe? I just didn’t know where to go.

  I clicked up a video of Mom. She was in the supermarket, trying all the cheese samples, acting all fancy with a fake British accent. “Now this one has a weighty flavor. Do try one, luvvy.” And she got that sad old lady in the hairnet to crack half a smile. Then I clicked through pictures of Halley and me, selfies she took and texted to me, and our foreheads are touching, and Flip’s in every one of them. And then I stopped looking. I shut my eyelids so tight they hurt. I tucked Flip inside my hoodie, and pretty quickly he stopped shivering and poked his head out from the hood and licked my neck.

  • • •

  Somebody shook my shoulder. The bus driver. The bus was pulled over and empty. “It’s midnight,” she said. She was holding Flip. “He had to pee. I took him out.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Lucky it was me and not somebody else. They would have taken him out and kept right on going with him. He know any tricks?”

  “Flip, surf.”

  He surfed her lap and kissed her. “I want you to sit up close, by me,” she said. “It’s very late. I’m supposed to call the police, but I won’t.”

  “I’m—”

  “I know,” she said. “I know.” She gave me half of a foot-long hero from Subway. I shared the turkey with Flip. She had a bottle of water for me too, and Flip lapped it up from my palm. She put her hand on my forehead and said, “I know,” and then she got back to driving. The city passed by the windows. All the lights. The people in the windows of the apartment buildings just doing normal stuff, watching TV, cooking. The people in cars. They all seemed to be leaning forward a little too much. Time slowed down until I thought it just might stop for real. If I didn’t have Flip to take care of, I wouldn’t have cared if I lived or died, and I was sure nobody else would have either, not really, not anymore.

  • • •

  At one a.m. another driver came on board. The nice driver talked softly to him. She pointed to the left side of her face, the same side where Leo slapped me. The other driver kept shaking his head. He took out his phone, and that’s when I got off the bus, and Flip and I ran. When we were clear of the bus I stopped to look at my face in a car window. It wasn’t that bad. My lip was a little puffy, and you could see red where his hand went across my cheek—nothing too crazy. In a day or so it’d all be gone. Except it would never be gone, not for Leo either probably.

  We went to the Long Island Rail Road waiting room. It was big and I remembered from the times when me and Mom took the train back to Brooklyn from the mall that lots of people slept there. I figured Flip and I would be safe enough until I could figure out what to do, but I couldn’t and we weren’t. Some creep sat next to me. “You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “I see. Sure. Then maybe you need a place to stay tonight?”

  “No.” I looked for a co
p, and then I remembered I couldn’t let one see me.

  The creep smiled and nodded. “I like your dog. May I pet it?”

  I tucked Flip under my arm and got out of there, and the guy followed and kept saying, “Wait. Hey, wait,” and I ran. Yup, Mom was dead for sure.

  37

  FLIP’S EYES AND THE LAST GOOD-BYE

  I went up the Molds’ porch steps and sat on the top one and put Flip in my lap so we could see into each other’s eyes. I saw my reflection in his, and I was all warped. “You’ll be safe here, boy. That’s all I want, even if I can’t be with you. You’ll be happy.” It was cold and he was trembling so bad now. I hugged him one last time and tied him to the door. He cocked his head, and I know he was waiting for me to say it. The thing I said every time I dropped him off at the Molds’. That I was coming back. That I promised. I turned away fast, and he barked, and I ran to the corner and called Chucky.

  “Coffin, what the freak? You know what time it is?”

  “Chucky, you hear Flip, right? He’s downstairs. Let him in. Bye.”

  “Ben, wait—”

  I did wait too, until he came down and picked up my dog. He looked around the street, but I was hidden pretty good between the cars. Flip saw me, though. His eyes were on me and he was barking like crazy as Mold brought him in.

  I went around the corner and puked and sank down against the side of a building behind a stupid dumpster again. My head ached. I just needed to close my eyes for a minute and catch my breath, except I fell asleep.

  38

  THE WORST TIME TO GET THE FLU

  It was hot when I woke up, way too hot for fall. It was like in the middle of summer. The street stank from all the garbage bags out at the curb. The sun wasn’t too high yet, but the air was like it got late in the afternoon, no breeze. The sunlight was way too bright. Everything glowed mean. I pushed myself up from behind the dumpster and went to the corner. I peeked around it to see the Mold house. The curtains were pulled back, but nothing was happening in the windows. The avenue was busy with school buses and delivery trucks rushing around—the traffic was loud, lots of horns and sirens.

  I waited until Mrs. Mold came out with one of the girls. She put her on the bus. Flip came out and slumped down on the porch. Mrs. Mold limped up the porch steps and sat and pet Flip. His tail flicked a little. He’d be okay in a few days, I was pretty sure. That made me feel good, and good and lonely too. Mrs. Mold scooped him up and kissed him and took him in.

  My stomach twisted up again. I didn’t puke this time. I had to eat. I went up the avenue to Dunkin’ Donuts and got a sandwich and iced tea, and after that I only had four dollars left. The lady at the counter was looking at me weird. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  She gave me a hot tea with lemon and a bunch of napkins. “Clean yourself up. Your nose is running.”

  How could I have a cold on such a hot day? But she was right. My nose was a mess. I was shivering a little too, and the air conditioner made it worse. I went out to the street and looked for a quiet place to eat. It must have been a hundred degrees out there. I caught sight of myself in a store window. I looked rough, like I’d slept outside, which of course I did. My hair was greasy and plastered to my head, and my clothes were grimy and wrinkled and soaked with sweat. One of my eyes was pink and puffy the way it can get when you have a fever. It would pass. I didn’t get sick often, and if I did, it was never that bad, or this bad. I stopped to take a bite of sandwich but, even though I was starving, the thought of eating made me want to hurl. I walked for a while, and I kept bumping into people. I was having a hard time keeping my head up. I made my way to the boardwalk, to our spot—mine and Halley’s and Flip’s—except it wasn’t our spot anymore. An old man was sleeping on the bench. Luna Park was stock-still, empty. The beach was empty too, with everybody at work and school, I figured.

  I went down to the sand and sat in the shade under the boardwalk. Boy, I was really shivering now. I couldn’t even get myself to nibble the sandwich crust. The smell of it made me retch. Yup, I was sick for sure—the kind of sick you can’t cure on your own. The kind you need to go to a doctor for. I fed the sandwich to the seagulls, and then I curled into myself and hoped nobody found me before I died, because then they would call the cops, and they would take me to the hospital and I’d get better, and then what would I do? Where would I go? I didn’t want to be anywhere anymore. Not without Flip. Without Halley.

  Except suddenly I wasn’t without Halley. She was shaking my shoulder. “Get up, Coffin.” She looked awesome, like she did the first time I met her, way back nine months ago, over winter break. Her wig this morning looked like her real hair, long and loopy, light brown. She was kind of tanned too. She held my hand and her fingers were nice and warm.

  “How’d you find me?” I said.

  “I’m always keeping an eye out for you. Hey? You can’t give up. We have to finish our novella.”

  “We’re friends again?”

  “Like we ever weren’t? I have to make sure you get to see what’s inside the magic box, right? The Greatest Treasure. You’re so close to figuring it out, Ben. You just have to keep going. It’s right around the corner. We have to get you all better. The Read to Rufus kids are depending on us. We can’t leave Brian hanging. Right, Mom?”

  “You’ll break his heart, Ben,” Mrs. Lorentz said, hurrying up to us. “Mine too. You poor baby. Come here, sweetheart. Let me check your temperature.” She brushed back my hair and kissed my forehead and said, “You’re burning up. Here, let me hold you.” She hugged me and held me the way she did at Rosh Hashanah, when she didn’t let go. She rocked me a little and hummed some lullaby or other, the way Mom did that one time when I got sick last winter. Halley joined in too, hugging and humming. There we were, the three of us, in the shadow of the boardwalk, holding each other really tight, and we were safe. The vibrations from their humming went into me, and I felt buzzy and better, and I would have smiled if I didn’t feel so bad about Flip. “He’ll be mad I gave him up,” I said.

  “Oh, he could never be mad at you, Ben,” Mrs. Lorentz said. “He loves you no matter what. Look.”

  Flip was pawing at my leg, begging me to scoop him up. “I’ve never seen his tail wag so fast,” I said. “I don’t even think that’s humanly possible, right? Not humanly. You know what I mean.”

  But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Halley and Mrs. Lorentz were gone. The waves were frozen still. There wasn’t any movement anywhere—the seagulls hung midair, and their wings weren’t flapping. They weren’t squawking. There was no sound. Nothing. Everything was fading away, the heat, the light, and I was alone, and it was cold and dark and silent, except for one thing, Flip’s whimpering. And it wasn’t fading either. It was getting louder. So loud I could have sworn that little mutt was crying right in my ear.

  • • •

  I woke up where I’d passed out, behind the dumpster. Flip crawled into my armpit, and he was licking my face like I was ice cream. I opened my eyes wide, and it was still night. My phone was buzzing with half a dozen texts from Chucky.

  CM: Flip got out. Get back here and help me find him.

  I looked around the corner. Flip had dug through that cardboard Dr Pepper box taped to the hole in the peekaboo window that ran alongside the Molds’ front door.

  I texted Chucky not to worry, that Flip was here with me, and he was. He really was.

  39

  COUPONS, MOVIES AND PROMISES

  Flip and I went to the all-night McDonald’s and split a burger. Then I bought a toothbrush and some water from the all-night drugstore. The people who were out at this hour all looked like me and Flip. They looked suspicious, like they were expecting something bad to happen any old minute now.

  I went to where I picked up my coupons and brushed my teeth in the alley. The sun started to come up and Flip and I huddled and waited. My boss showed up in hi
s van. “Earlier than usual today, Coffin. You don’t look so good.”

  “Thanks boss.”

  “You all right?”

  “Could I borrow ten dollars?”

  We delivered the coupons, and Flip was his old self, trotting right alongside me, head high. Every time I looked at him, he did a little spin and nipped at my sneaker. Then it was more McDonald’s until the movie theater opened. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” the guy at the ticket window said.

  “I homeschool.”

  “They let you watch Planet of the Apes for class these days, huh? You have it pretty good.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I said. School. It was the last thing on my mind. The bullying, eating lunch under the stairs, Angelina’s stupid tricks, gum in the water fountain, Ronda’s shoves—they all seemed so nothing now, so far away, as far away as the idea of going to college with Halley or going to school at all anymore. I was becoming one of them, the kids who disappeared.

  Once I settled into the back of the theater and the lights went down I snuck Flip out of the backpack and he slept inside my hoodie. I set my phone to buzz me awake a little before the movie ended, and then I snuck into another movie and did the same thing, and then another after that, until three o’clock, and then we had to go. Even if Halley wasn’t into being friends with me anymore, I wasn’t about to let down Mrs. Lorentz. I was going to keep my promise.