Starting From Here

by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

  “I didn’t ask you to play matchmaker,” I snarled. “Finding romance was your New Year’s resolution, but have you done a damn thing about your own life? Have you taken one single step to hunt down that ‘adorable’ kid from Gull Lake? No, you’re too busy controlling my life. ‘Get over Rachel.’ ‘Go out with Amelia.’ Why don’t you mind your own business for once?”

  “You’re the one asking me for algebra help,” Van said. “I’ll tell you this: good luck. Good luck getting out of your own mess for a change.”

  At least the algebra midterm was multiple choice. I had clear-cut options instead of infinite ways to go wrong. I randomly shaded the answer bubbles on my test sheet, and, at the end of the period, Mr. Yang zapped it through the scoring machine. Thirty-two percent. Unless Van decided to forgive me, and soon, I could count on algebra joining my already bursting-with-fun summer schedule.

  Oddly enough, what kept me going was the prospect of seeing Robyn on Friday night. We’d drink tea. We’d talk dog stuff. She’d listen. She’d care.

  At five fifteen Mo and I showed up on her doorstep with fresh—well, fresh as anything from a tin—English tea biscuits I’d picked up at Meijer. Lenny’s truck was parked outside, so I knew he’d be holed up in the bedroom, pretending to sleep or whatever he did when I was over. I hated the feeling that he was lurking just out of sight, watching the minutes tick by until I left.

  Robyn answered the door, sweat suited and smiling. If it weren’t for the cookies in one hand and the leash in the other, I might have thrown my arms around her, buried my face in her shoulder, and cried all my mistakes away. That was how desperate I felt.

  Instead, I just smiled back.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’ve already got the water on.”

  “What will we do when the weather gets warm?” I asked. “Too warm for tea, I mean?”

  Robyn shooed Oscar, Lorraine, and Fontine, and they pranced backward into the kitchen. “I like a tall glass of lemonade. Or there’s always iced tea,” she said.

  I pulled off my shoes and coat and unleashed Mo. The way he greeted the others, you’d think he hadn’t seen them in years instead of the two hours since day care. “My mother used to make sun tea, let it brew in the kitchen window,” I said. “I put so much sugar in mine, it might as well’ve been Kool-Aid.” I hadn’t thought of Mom’s sun tea in ages. The memory flared just for a second before sputtering out into reality.

  Robyn poured hot water into our teacups, and I picked out a cranberry tea bag. Plumes of red swirled as I dunked it.

  “How was your week?” Robyn asked.

  “Terrible. My algebra midterm bit me in the ass. I got an F.”

  “Oh, Colby. That’s a shame. How’d that happen?”

  I skipped the question. “On the bright side, I got an A in history.”

  “Can you get some tutoring, for the algebra? You’re a smart girl—”

  “It’s not like anyone uses algebra. When’s the last time you graphed a rational function?”

  “Colby, you can’t fail algebra. You owe it to yourself not to fail.”

  “I won’t fail it! I just had a bad week, okay? Amelia and I—”

  “Oh no.” Robyn looked like I’d told her the president got shot. “She seemed like such a nice girl, from everything you told me.”

  “I know,” I said. “You don’t have to rub it in. Van’s already done enough.”

  “You just seemed so happy.”

  The conversation was spiraling downward. Robyn was supposed to listen, nod, say it was too bad, and leave me alone. Not scold me. Not plan for the next time. Not ask me questions I didn’t want to answer.

  “You’re not my mother,” I muttered.

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I came here for help with Mo, not to get a lecture on grades or dating or the rest of my shitty life!” My voice rose. “I know you want a kid and can’t have one or whatever, but I’m not up for adoption, okay? I don’t need a new mother, so stop trying to be her!”

  The bedroom door creaked open, and Lenny’s footsteps thudded through the house. He loomed in the kitchen doorway. “You’ve got some nerve, talking to Robyn that way.”

  “Len, it’s okay,” Robyn said. “She’s just upset. She’s had a tough week.”

  Lenny shook his head. “After all you’ve done for her, you shouldn’t have to listen to this bullshit.” He glared at me. “Robyn operated on your dog for free. She’s given you free day care. Free obedience training. Free tea. And how do you repay her?”

  “Lenny,” Robyn said softly, putting a hand on his arm, “please. Let me handle this.”

  “You think your life is so tough,” Lenny said, brushing her away. “So, you don’t have a mother. Fine. You’ve still got a father, and from what I hear, he works his ass off to take care of you. You’ve got friends, a girlfriend. You have Robyn, who for whatever reason gives a damn about you. You have a house, a truck, school, a dog. But you act like it’s all nothing. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Lenny!” Robyn shouted. “That’s enough!”

  Lenny swung around and strode back to the bedroom. The whole house shook when he slammed the door, the wagging-dog clock on the wall knocked crooked.

  “I’m so sorry, Colby,” Robyn began. Her cheeks looked as pink and raw as canned salmon. “It’s being laid off. And his own childhood was pretty tough. He didn’t mean it.”

  I slid off my stool. I had to get out of there.

  Lenny was right. Robyn plied me with tea instead of dog biscuits, conversation instead of pats, but when all was said and done, she treated me more like a stray dog than a kid—like one of those half-dead worms in her shoe box hospital.

  I didn’t need that.

  I crammed my feet into my sneakers and threw my coat over my shoulder. I didn’t bother leashing up Mo, just yanked open the door and called him to me. “Thanks for everything,” I told Robyn, “but you can find some other sorry kid to take care of now.”

  When I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Dad called. “This morning I dropped off a load in Jefferson City. I couldn’t pass up the chance to check out that rig in St. Louis.”

  My throat tightened.

  “It looked great,” Dad continued. “Twelve years old, but well maintained. I’ll take it for an inspection before I lay down any money, of course, but as of now it’s looking like a go.”

  Words tried to wrestle free from my mouth but couldn’t.

  “It’s pink—bubble gum pink. Lady who’s selling it says it takes a real secure man to drive a pink rig.” Dad laughed. “I’ll try to remember that when the guys are giving me hell.”

  An “oh” escaped me like a sigh of wind. Mo pawed his way up on the couch beside me.

  “I’ve still got to work out the financing. I’ll visit the bank when I’m home next. And I’ve got to keep this whole O-O deal under wraps till the details are ironed out. The day I give SwifTrux my notice, we’re going out to dinner. Somewhere nice this time.”

  To celebrate Dad leaving me for good. I picked at the frayed edge of Mo’s collar, and he stared at me reproachfully. Why wasn’t I using that hand to pet him?

  “Bee? Is everything all right?”

  I coughed, and words sprang free at last. “No problem,” I croaked, as I’d said hundreds of times before. I blinked back tears. “No problem,” I repeated. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Why couldn’t Dad hear that I didn’t mean it?

  WHEN MOM DIED, the whole inside of my body had throbbed with the pain. Now I felt dried out. Empty. Like there was nothing left to feel.

  Sunday night when Mo got into some crud behind Mr. Harmon’s trailer (I didn’t want to think about what it might have been; all I knew was it was crunchy) and puked mightily two hours later, I silently cleaned it up and decided not to go to school the next day. It started as an excuse: I couldn’t leave Mo alone when he was sick, could I? What if he got worse? />
  But even in the morning when Mo was his normal self again, I didn’t go. School offered me nothing but six hours crammed in a desk, hoping my teachers wouldn’t call on me. Between classes, no hallway or bathroom was safe; I could always run into Amelia or Van or Rachel or Michael or somebody who reminded me how much things sucked. At the rate I was going, I’d be twenty before I graduated. I wouldn’t be going to college, no matter how much money Dad stuffed in my piggy bank.

  That afternoon Dad called and wanted to know why I hadn’t gone to school. The office had called him about my unexcused absence. I told him I’d been having “woman trouble,” which usually got him off my case and did this time, too.

  “You don’t look all that bad,” he said when he saw me the next morning as I made a great show of clutching my stomach and staggering to the bathroom first thing.

  “Well, I feel bad. I think it’s turning into the flu. Just let me take one more day off, please? So I’ll be good as new tomorrow.”

  Dad sighed and called the school with my excuse. I prayed they wouldn’t bring up my midterm grades. Dad was supposed to sign my progress report, but I figured I could put that off for at least another week; my guidance counselor knew Dad was away a lot.

  No mention was made of my algebra grade. I was safe.

  I didn’t go back to school on Wednesday, either. Dad’s voice, coming from south of Indianapolis after another call from the school office, was seriously pissed. “Colby Alicia Bingham, what the hell has gotten into you? I am this close to calling Aunt Sue.”

  It was an empty threat, and we both knew it. I had money, I had wheels, and I had no desire to sleep on Aunt Sue’s burnt-coffee-smelling couch. Dad was hundreds of miles away, driving farther every minute. There wasn’t a thing he could do, short of setting the police on me. And he wouldn’t do that as long as I kept answering my phone, proving I was alive and well.

  Staying home from school meant I didn’t have to worry about what to do with Mo all day now that Robyn was out of the picture. We slept late and spent the mornings lying on the couch watching the sports channel. When we went out, I’d catch Mr. Harmon spying on us from behind his curtains, no doubt convinced we were up to no good. Even the littler Van Der Beeks seemed suspicious that I wasn’t in school, especially when I told them that, no, I hadn’t actually skipped so I could have the pleasure of playing with them instead.

  After lunch we would hop in Scarlett and drive to the nature preserve near West Lake. We walked among the skeletal trees until Mo’s belly was caked with mud and burrs—not that he noticed. I tried to keep my brain as bare as the trees, but every now and again memories trickled through the cracks like melting snow. I saw my old soccer ball bouncing from my foot to Rachel’s and back, a conversation without words. Meals at our kitchen table with three places set, then two, then one. Amelia’s smile after I kissed her the first time and her tears when I dumped her. One of Robyn’s hands holding a teacup, the other stretching down with a dog biscuit. Van holding Teddy. Dad watching football. Mom fading away.

  Van called, at first just once a day, then many times. I ignored his calls. His messages alternated between irritated and concerned. He came by my place and pounded on the door, jiggling the knob until I thought it would come off in his hand. Mo jumped, wagging and woofing, wondering why I didn’t open up.

  “Colby, if you’re trying to hide, you should close the curtains! I can see you.”

  What made Van think I was trying to hide? Just the same, I stood and drew the curtains, blocking out his gaping face. I didn’t care if he saw me, but I didn’t want to see him.

  “I know you!” he shouted. “You can’t live like a hermit forever. That’s your dad’s thing, remember? You’re different. You need people. Besides, we need to talk. I’m really sor—”

  I dug my mp3 player out of my desk, put my ear buds in, and lay on my bed, the music pulsing so loudly it hurt. I let ten songs play before I turned it off and sat up. I’d half expected Van to break a window and let himself in, but he hadn’t. I stuck my head out the front door.

  Nobody.

  E-mails and texts piled up in my inboxes. Liliana offered to bring me chicken soup “or anything else you need ;-).” Rachel told me she could drop off my homework assignments. Zak sent me links to a dozen different videos featuring baby pandas, baby kittens, and baby humans, any of which would have made a normal person smile. Even Mr. Peabody e-mailed “just to check in.” I didn’t respond to any of it.

  Dad, on the other hand, had stopped calling. Maybe he’d accepted that I was through with school for good, and he’d called to let them know. Hey, I could dream.

  I was afraid Aunt Sue would eventually show up, but Dad must have kept my exploits to himself. If he admitted he couldn’t keep me in line, she’d hold it over his head forever.

  I felt a pang when five fifteen rolled around on Friday night, and Mo and I were home doing nothing. I knew Mo couldn’t tell one day from another, but when he paced restlessly through every room before slumping to the carpet, I couldn’t help wondering if he missed his date with Robyn, Oscar, Fontine, and Lorraine.

  Saturday, I bagged groceries for eight hours straight in full robot mode. I came home to find Mo had gotten into the garbage. So much time at home, out of my routine, had made me careless. I swept up the coffee grounds, apple cores, and shreds of tissue and lay on the couch, eyes fused shut. I was too tired even to watch TV.

  Mo and I drove down to West Lake again Sunday morning, while the rest of town was either asleep or at church. We walked along the barren beach, not far from the spot where I’d spent my last night with Rachel. It was the first time I’d brought Mo to the water’s edge, and he didn’t seem sure what to make of it. He hopscotched back and forth along the snaking line where the water lapped the sand, his nose going wild. Whenever the breeze gave the water an extra shove up the shore, Mo leapt backward as if the lake were lava. Then he edged closer again, too intrigued to stay away. Wherever he’d come from, pre-Harrington Road, it clearly hadn’t been near water.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked him. “Were you a city dog or a country dog?”

  I didn’t think about Mo’s previous life very often. He was such a friendly dog; people must have shown him some kindness. But there was the way he’d ended up, lost and gaunt, even before his close encounter of the four-wheeled kind. The way he flinched whenever I picked up the broom. They say a dog always knows how to find its way home, so why was Mo running in the opposite direction?

  Unless he wasn’t. Unless I’d gotten it all wrong, and he’d been running toward home after all, and I’d merely been a distraction—a distraction that caused an accident, an amputation, and a sorry new life with a sorry new owner.

  Maybe Mo belonged to a family down south, a mom and a dad and two little boys. And they’d been camping in the Upper Peninsula, and there was a big thunderstorm up in the hills—and Mo hid, the way he always did at loud noises—only afterward he got disoriented and trotted off in the wrong direction. After hours of searching, the family had to get back on the road home. Mo hit the road, too, because it was the only chance he had of seeing them again. Along the way he met other people, some kind, some cruel. But the whole time there was only one thing on his mind: getting home to that mom and dad and two little boys. And I’d stopped him.

  The more I thought about it, the more real the story became. The little boys had names: Jonathan and Toby. Their parents were Miranda and Sam. They lived in a split-level down in Elkhart, Indiana, and they still had a food dish with Mo’s name on it—except his name wasn’t Mo, it was Sparky—that they left on the back porch in case he showed up. At night the boys knelt by their beds—bunk beds, of course—and said their prayers, adding, “Please, God, help Sparky find his way home.” Miranda kissed their tears away as she tucked them in.

  It was ridiculous. It would have made the sappiest Sunday night movie ever. But I still had to drag a knuckle across my eyes as the lake and
trees dissolved in a blur. What made me think Mo was better off now than he’d been before? What if the only thing that kept him with me was the leash clipped to his collar—the leash I never let go? I’d always believed the leash kept him safe. But maybe I was just as terrified he’d leave me as soon as he had the opportunity.

  Sure, Mo looked happy, stalking along the beach, snuffling the sand. But what if he was simply making the best of a bad situation? Didn’t he deserve the chance to do better than me?

  “Mo,” I said, but it was barely a whisper. I stopped walking. “Mo! Over here!”

  Mo turned his head. When I squatted on the sand, he picked his way back toward me, leash drooping to the ground between us.

  “You’re a good dog,” I said, and reached into the plush at his neck to unclip the leash from his collar.

  He sat there, tail swishing up sand devils, head cocked to one side, tongue out. He was waiting for an explanation. He thought it was a game.

  “Go on,” I told him. “You’re free. You can leave if you want. I won’t stop you.”

  He still didn’t get the hint, so I stood up, shoving the leash into my coat pocket. He got to his feet, too. Then a rustle in the trees—a bird, a squirrel?—made his ears go up, and he whirled around and barreled down the beach away from me. He disappeared into the trees with a crash.

  I stood watching the spot where he’d disappeared, straining my ears for the sound of snapping twigs, waiting for him to return.

  But he didn’t. Mo wasn’t coming back.

  I felt worse when I stopped thinking about myself for a minute and thought about Mo. What if he ended up on another dangerous road, lost another leg? What if he didn’t make it this time? What if he starved to death before he got wherever he was going, or got mistaken for a coyote and shot? What if someone beat him and forced him into a cage, then threw him into the ring with a snarling pit bull?

  Maybe I couldn’t give him a perfect life, the life he dreamed about when he was asleep and his feet started twitching and his tail thumped against the carpet and he gave excited little yips. But it was better than a lot of the alternatives. And I had let him loose. I was so stupid!