by Susan Wilson
Dawg should have gone with us. I fear that he will spend most of his time in the pen that they built, not a cage, exactly, certainly not a chain, but not a home. I worried myself into squeezing my head over the edge of the half-lowered car window, barking like some undisciplined cur, calling to Lucky to keep the faith. We’ll be back!
I had no reason to believe we wouldn’t come back to this place, although every time we left, I never knew if that was true. Hopefully, his boy—Mingo—would be back to take him on a walk, scratch his belly, let him sleep on the couch. That was what was most important, so when the edge of the window came up under my chin and I had to pull my head back, I cast Adam a sidelong glance. He reached over and squeezed the back of my neck, said something that I interpreted as a promise that we would be back.
* * *
The problem is, she needs to get home so that she can take Dawg out for a walk. It’s great that Skye has granted a reprieve of sorts by allowing Dawg to stay with them, but it’s not like she’s going to be the one walking him; she’s just letting him use the new dog run, but that’s not enough. One of the stipulations hammered out on Saturday was that Cody would be completely responsible for the dog’s well-being and care. That means feeding, walking, and, yuck, cleaning up after him in the dog run. When she agreed to meet Mosley after school, Cody hadn’t had Dawg’s presence in the mix. In between classes, when students are allowed to use their phones, Cody calls the AC, but no one is answering, and because no one ever takes responsibility for erasing old messages, the answering machine is coming up full. That was one of the things she’d heard Mr. March mention to Mosley and Kieran: that if they wanted to be accessible to potential donors, they had to straighten up their act. Not quite in those terms, but she understood what he was saying. Be less free-spirited and more businesslike.
The precious minutes of passing time tick by; the flood of students in the hallway thins out to a trickle. She’ll be late again, get written up yet again. She hits Mosley’s cell phone number. It rings, but he doesn’t answer; he probably can’t hear over the sound of Kieran’s blowtorch. Before she can tap in a text message, the bell rings. She’s officially late. Maybe she’ll get detention. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, a viable excuse for blowing Mosley off.
“You’re late.” Tyler, alone, blocks Cody’s path. “Waiting on someone? Your lesbo BFF?”
“You’re heinous. Why do you keep picking on me? What did I ever do to you?”
Tyler shrugs, flips a lock of hair. Cody realizes that, without an audience, a Greek chorus, Tyler has lost momentum. Without backup singers, she’s just a mean girl all out on her own. There’s nothing she can do. Tyler is a head taller, and with her lacrosse physique, at least fifteen pounds heavier, but Cody stretches to her maximum and steps close to Tyler. “Get out of my way.” The other girl allows herself a moment to make it look like she won’t, but then she steps away, giving Cody only just enough room to squeeze by.
Cody pushes past her, making sure that she doesn’t look like she’s running away, that she isn’t intimidated. She makes for her classroom, hoping that the hard beating of her heart isn’t audible. It might help if she knew why these jocks were so down on her, what she had ever done to make them turn on her. But in high school, as in life, sometimes things are just inexplicable. You just have to accept the circumstances and move on. When Mr. Ronkowsky in science class doesn’t ask for a pass, or send her to the office, she’s grateful.
Once, when they were driving up Interstate 91 near the Holyoke Mall, a car had crossed into their lane, nearly hitting them. Cody was just old enough to be sitting in the front seat at that time, and the nearness of that encounter made her cry. Skye had reached out and taken her hand. “It’s okay. It was a miss. That’s what counts.”
Cody’s face slowly loses the flush from the encounter with Tyler. Her heart rate lowers, and it finally occurs to her that she didn’t back down. That her near miss with Tyler was just that, a miss. She casually leans back in her chair, slips her phone out, and, one eye on Mr. Ronkowsky, making sure he’s still facing the whiteboard, types a quick text to Mosley—Sorry, can’t make it today—then slides the phone out of sight. Almost immediately, her phone vibrates.
“Miss Mitchell, can you tell me what is the periodic chart symbol for carbon?” Mr. Ronkowsky must have eyes in the back of his head. He’s nailing her for not paying attention. As if cued by some unseen director, the class laughs, as if none of them had ever been caught not paying attention.
The first chance she has to look at Mosley’s text is on the way to lunch. Lunch, the all-time worst part of her day, when her isolation is out there for all to see. This is a really small school, and there is only one lunch period, when every student in the high school congregates to eat in the “all purpose” room. They slide plastic trays along the rail, picking and choosing from the offerings—pizza slices, soggy salads, premade sandwiches—most of which will end up in the big garbage cans. Cody brings her own lunch, buys a milk. As she waits in line to pay for the milk, she checks the text. It’s a two word text: No excuses
There is an open seat in front of Black Molly, and two on either side of her, as well. She glances up from her lunch to look at Cody with an expression that is more command than invitation. Cody really doesn’t want to sit with her, but there actually isn’t any other choice. It’s not like anyone else will ever invite Cody to sit with them, and besides, just plain sitting down near an established group is nuts.
Cody has danced around Molly’s crazy drug-stealing idea, but she’s running out of excuses. If Cody thought that Black Molly would get tired of trying to talk her into stealing drugs, she’s wrong. The half-teasing insistence has lately become more like pressure. And along with it, really weird questions, nosy ones all about Randy. Cody wonders if she’s got some kind of sixth sense, some instinct about Cody’s Secret. In her worst moments, she wonders if on that day when Molly’s superb pot loosened her tongue, she actually did spill her Secret, said more than she remembers, confessed to being a witness.
“Cody, you want to have lunch with me?” It’s Mr. Farrow, the counselor. He’s got a tray loaded with salad, a water bottle, and two slices of the pizza that tastes like machine oil. “We can have a chat.”
For once, Cody doesn’t even try to come up with an excuse. “Uh, I guess.” This is one of those things that separates her from everyone else, this attention from the school counselor. Someone might as well stick a sign on her back, DWEEB, or DORK. Or, worse, mental case. Poor Mr. Farrow thinks that it helps, to have “individual attention.” Ha. He likes to try to get her to talk about her problems, so she accommodates him with stuff she makes up—stuff that has little to no bearing on what her life is really like. She doesn’t talk about being bullied. She’s not going to do that, because it’s one thing to be a target; it’s another to be a rat. Besides, who’s kidding whom? Tyler and Taylor and Ryan and all their ilk are the popular kids, the ones who may not be smart enough to be valedictorian but are athletic enough to be courted by colleges, thereby making this Podunk high school a blip on the radar of the NCAA. Her woeful tale of being called names wouldn’t be enough to cause Mrs. Zigler or Mr. Farrow to do anything about it. So she talks about how unfair curfews are, or how the homework is stressing her out. Sometimes he slips in a question about her mother. The first time he asked “How’s your mom?” she got kind of creeped out, but then she realized that what the counselor really wanted to know was how things were between them. Another question she dare not answer. It is becoming second nature now, to hold her mother at arm’s length. It’s the only way, the only way to keep the Secret.
Mr. Farrow keeps his door open as they sit at the little table he has in the center of his office. “So, Cody, how are things going?” He gives her that sincere look, like he really cares.
“Good.”
“What’s new?”
For once, she has something to offer. “We got a dog.”
“That’s great.”
The conversation circles around what kind of dog, where they got him. “We’re kind of watching him for a friend.”
“Dogs are great. I have two. Cairn terriers. They run my life.” Mr. Farrow’s face changes a little, and Cody can see that thinking about his dogs makes him happy. Makes him normal. “A pit bull, huh? Aren’t they kind of, I don’t know, aggressive?”
“Not this guy.” Cody feels a genuine smile erupt. “He’s like mush. We have a guy who stays with us, at the hotel. Mr. March. He’s got a pit bull, too, Chance, who’s his therapy dog.”
“What kind of therapy?”
“Dunno. He wears a red vest and goes with Mr. March everywhere.”
They talk a little about the kinds of work therapy dogs can do, and before you know it, lunch is over and she has just enough time to drop off her tray and then call Mosley.
“Thanks, Mr. Farrow.”
“My pleasure, Cody. Pat that dog for me.”
Released from her informal chat with Mr. Farrow, Cody pulls her phone out of her back pocket and presses the contact for Mosley. She intends to tell him she can’t make it, tell him the truth. He’ll be okay with it. She just knows that he’s going to be fine about it.
“Mosley Finch.”
“Mosley, this is Cody.”
“Hey, what’s up? You aren’t going to bail on me, are you?”
“Ummm. Maybe?”
“Hey, sweetheart. A deal’s a deal.”
“Yeah, but…”
“If ifs and buts were cookies and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.” Mosley laughs and then coughs. “I’ve organized my day all around your being available. It wasn’t easy.”
Cody knows Mosley’s routine well enough that she is skeptical about that. “My mom needs me home right after school.”
“Does she also need to find out you’re filching joints from me? That would put an end to your time at the AC pretty quick, wouldn’t it?”
She has an art project that she’s been working on for several weeks at the AC, one that she’s really enjoyed doing, and one where Mosley has been unusually helpful by showing her how not to be afraid to use different media, how to make something out of nothing. It’s almost done, a collage of found objects like feathers and stones and one of those rubber bracelets identifying the wearer as a supporter of some popular disease. She’d hate to leave it behind. “Don’t say anything. I’ll figure it out.”
“You’re an accomplished liar; of course you can. I’ll be at the bus stop—well, a few feet away—by two-thirty.”
“Okay.” Cody taps the call dead. Pushes the message function and texts her mother: Got detention no big deal late for class home on the late bus. As an afterthought, she sends a second text—I’ll walk Dawg when I get home love—and fires it off before she can redact the word love.
An accomplished liar.
* * *
The bus ride is blissfully uneventful, as Tyler and her sidekick Taylor are at lacrosse practice and the younger brother—she still isn’t sure whom he belongs to—sits quietly, ignoring her. The bus empties out in drips of twos and threes, grinding to a stop at every crossroad. Finally it’s just Cody and the boy. They stand up at the same time; he’s ahead of her but then steps aside to let her get off the bus first. He gives her a slight smile, impossible not to notice and give him one of her own. She marches to where Mosley’s familiar car waits, pulled off like its driver is taking a phone call.
“Hey.” It’s the boy, jogging to catch up with her.
“Yeah?” Cody feels herself stiffen into readiness. If he’s going to pick on her, she’s going to paste him one. He’s at least six inches shorter, but stocky.
“Umm, don’t mind them. They’re bitches.”
“I know they are. And I don’t. I don’t let them get to me.” She won’t let anyone think that they do, ever.
“Good. They’re just going to be fat middle-aged housewives in a few years.”
Cody bursts out laughing. “Which one is your sister?”
“Taylor.” He says it like the name tastes bad.
An ally. Who’da thunk it? “What’s your name?”
“Devin.”
“Thank you, Devin.”
The boy slouches away, kicks at a stone in the road, then breaks into a trot. Cody watches him till he reaches his house and disappears.
The Subaru is backing up toward her. She waves him to a stop, pulls open the passenger door, throws her backpack into the backseat, and climbs in. The car smells of turpentine. Mosley smells of turpentine. The skin of his forearms glistens where he’s cleaned off paint.
“That your boyfriend?”
“No. He’s a year younger than me.” Cody pulls her seat belt into position.
“Wow, a whole year.” Without signaling, Mosley one-hands his car back into the roadway. “You’d be a cradle robber, wouldn’t you?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Cody pulls the too-tight belt away from herself. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Why not? Pretty girl like you? You should be beating them off with a stick.”
“I’m not. Pretty. Or beating anyone off with anything.” She blushes at the double entendre. She prays that Mosley doesn’t laugh.
Mosley’s right hand grasps the back of her neck, gives her a little squeeze, and then he gently slides the hair off her cheek and behind her ear. “I’m an artist; I know beauty when I see it. Sometimes it’s just there, under the skin, waiting to emerge.”
His fingers continue to stroke back her hair. It is an oddly comforting and equally disturbing gesture. She can’t tell if she likes it or if it’s going to make her cry.
“Sometimes you have to get close to your subject to see what lies beneath.”
Cody nods. Notices that they have already passed the Artists Collaborative. Mosley takes his hand away from her neck, signals for a left-hand turn, and takes the car up an incline that winds through woods to a parking lot and a state park building. It’s the little park, site of some old quarrying business long defunct, famous for its marble bridge and the rushing stream water. If Cody had lived in the area when she was in elementary school, she would have been brought here by her teachers. By the time the local kids got to high school, that field trip was old news.
The parking lot is empty, the park—seasonal from Memorial Day to Columbus Day—is technically closed, but that doesn’t stop Mosley from stopping. “Hop out.”
“Why are we here?”
“You’ve heard of plein air?”
“I think so.”
“It’s a fancy way of saying painting outdoors, in the natural light. I want to paint you here.”
The light is indeed beautiful as the sun arcs overhead, making its slow springtime descent into the west, limning the sweet new leaves on the trees, shadowing the flow of the river down into the glacial sculpture of the marble walls below. Mosley hands her a box of paints, and expects her to follow him, past the historical signage explaining the history of the place, along the groomed trail, over the little river, to a small open grassy area, marshy underfoot. Mosley sets up his easel, opens the box of paints, all of which look brand-new. He plucks a sheaf of brushes, all sizes. He points at the waterfall throwing itself over the marble dam. “Over there. The sun is perfect.”
Cody feels awkward, unsure of what to do. Stand? Sit?
Mosley sets the brushes down, walks over. “Like this.” He presses her down until she’s flat on her back, then takes her limbs and positions them carefully, as if she’s a mannequin, a doll. One hand is angled back beneath her head, the other reaching away from the waterfall. Instinctively, she pulls her knees up, knocking them together, but Mosley isn’t happy with that and instead fixes the angle so that her bony hip is perpendicular to the wall. Finally, he tilts her head so that the sun is in her eyes, making her squint. He pulls off her glasses, folds them, and puts them in his breast pocket.
“Think elf. Think water sprite.”
“I think this position i
s pretty uncomfortable. This stone is hard.”
“Okay. Let’s try something else.”
It takes several attempts, refinements on her recumbent pose, but finally Mosley is satisfied. With the sun in her eyes, she can’t see his face, and he says nothing as he works. She could almost fall asleep, but the stone is digging into her hip and it hurts where her hand cradles her head against the rock. Mosley abruptly stops and, releasing her from the pose, calls her over. “We need another location.” He hands her back her glasses.
They walk down the steep steps built into the walls, going from view stand to view stand, up and down along the ravine pocked with spectacular kettle holes, curvaceous marble walls molded by water and by man’s use. The air is alive with the wind generated from the plunging water, and Cody’s hair flutters in the breeze. She feels Mosley hold it back as she leans over the fence to admire the spectacle. He puts an arm on either side of her, fingers gripping the fence, his body behind her, not touching. She feels his breath against her ear as he whispers into it against the roar of the water and the acoustic boom off the walls. “Let’s try right here.”
Is it her imagination or does he linger a bit, holding her pinioned against the fence, like an adult version of London Bridge Is Falling Down. The air down here is cooler than in the parking lot, and a chill scurries down the length of her back. She looks from the height into the roiling water and shudders back a desire to drop into it. “I should be getting home. The late bus gets to my house by four. If I don’t show up, Mom will have a fit.”