Arcadia's Gift Part 5

He patted my shoulder stiffly. "I'll be right here when you get out of cla.s.s."

"You don't need to walk me to all of my cla.s.ses," I said with a nervous chuckle.

"I know I don't have to, but my American history cla.s.s is just two doors down. No big deal."

Bryan lifted his hand in a wave and strutted off down the hall. I waited until he disappeared into his cla.s.sroom. As soon as he turned the corner out of sight, my fear came back. Roll call was over, and the princ.i.p.al's voice poured out of the intercom speakers for the morning announcements. I thought I might be able to slip into my seat before anyone noticed. I was wrong.

As I rounded the doorway to sneak down the aisle, I b.u.mped into the metal garbage can, knocking it over with a clunk on the hard tiles. Twenty-one heads looked up at once. Upon recognizing me, their collective eyes shot down to the tops of their desks. The tension in the room jumped up so sharply, my lungs constricted. Suddenly, my neck broke out in a cold sweat, and my cheeks flared. I leaned over to right the garbage can and my bag slid off my shoulder, breaking the strap with the weight of too many textbooks.

"Good morning, Cady," Mr. Steele said, picking up his attendance book to mark me present. "Cla.s.s, pay attention to the announcements."

The students turned back toward the front. I clutched the broken strap of my bag and slid into my third-row seat.

I remembered nothing of the teacher's lecture. Instead, I obsessed over my discomfort. It was hard to describe, but the room felt nervous...twitchy with my presence. It wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. Several times I felt eyes watching me, but when I glanced around, all I saw were kids bent over their papers, scribbling notes or doodling in the margins. Paranoid much?

I jumped when the shrill bell rang out, ending first period. I really needed to chill out. I shook my head at my idiocy and stepped into the river of teenagers flowing up and down the hallway.

Someone touched my arm just above the elbow. I looked up to see Bryan. He smiled and asked, "How was it?"

I glanced around and noticed people looking at me as they pa.s.sed by. "Awkward."

"Well, awkward is okay. You know you can do it now. With each cla.s.s, it'll get easier."

We merged into the traffic walking left. I wanted to stop at my locker to drop off the broken bag and the textbooks that I wouldn't need. The crowd of students felt more oppressive than it ever had before. Flickers of hot and cold brushed my body, causing a sheen of cold sweat to dampen my skin. I felt my forehead, but didn't detect a fever, just a dull ache forming between my eyes.

When we rounded the corner, I felt like someone socked me in the chest with a baseball bat. Before me was Lony's locker, looking as if Hallmark threw up all over it. Photos and cards were taped in over-lapping layers so no metal was exposed. What didn't make it on the locker itself leaned neatly along the base of the wall. A vase with wilting roses stood on the floor with a hand-made sign sticking out which read, "Gone to the angels." Teddy-bears and Beanie Babies with blank eyes and mocking smiles stared up at me from the floor.

"Oh, my G.o.d..." I whispered, my face draining to white. Kids pa.s.sing by between cla.s.ses stared at me, making my skin crawl.

Bryan clutched my arm and steered me into an empty cla.s.sroom. "I'm so sorry, Cady."

"What is that? A shrine?" I shouted, my voice breaking like a twelve-year-old boy. I started to hyperventilate, the air in my lungs heaving in and out, in and out.

Bryan pulled me into his arms, his hand patting my hair. My tears soaked into the cotton of his White Stripes t-s.h.i.+rt, leaving dark gray blotches.

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea that was there. I never come down this hallway."

I didn't wrap my arms around him; rather I drew them in tightly to my sides, my fists balled up clutching his s.h.i.+rt. I hadn't noticed how cold I was until I was snuggling against him, basking in his body heat. Maybe I should have been embarra.s.sed, but at that moment, all I could focus on was his calm warmth. He could have been anyone, I just needed to be held.

"It's okay, Cady," he whispered. "You stay here. I'll go get the janitor to take it all away."

As soon as he drew away, an irrational wave of anger rolled through me that even Bryan's calming influence couldn't touch.

"How could they? Don't they realize she was my sister? That my locker is right there, too? It's bad enough I have to live down the hall from her empty bedroom. Do they expect me to step around that -that altar between every cla.s.s?"

A small rational part of me knew I was being a b.i.t.c.h, that those students lost someone too, but my emotions were out of control with selfish need. I started pacing and Bryan just stepped back and watched.

Mr. Small, the computer arts teacher, poked his head in to see what all the shouting was about.

"Oh, Miss Day! Is everything alright?" He s.n.a.t.c.hed a box of tissues from the window sill and held them out to me as if he didn't want to come too close.

"It's fine," Bryan a.s.sured him, "She just wasn't prepared to see that memorial at her sister's locker."

"Oh, well... I guess I can call the custodian and have it removed."

"Forget it!" I said. "I'll do it myself."

Before they could stop me, I went out into the hallway and plucked a poem off of the metal. It was some sappy thing that struggled to rhyme. I ripped it and let the pieces float to my feet. I could feel the eyes of the crowd on my back, boring into my skull. A cold cloud of grief wafted around me. Without realizing it, my fingers started ripping the pictures and notes stuck to the locker with Scotch tape. My pinky ran along the edge of a Post-It which read "I'll miss you," slicing a tiny, painful cut in my skin. As I was shaking my hand, my foot knocked over the vase of flowers, spilling gunky water and soaking the largest of the teddy-bears.

Around me, kids stopped and stared, ignoring Mr. Small's pleas for them to keep moving. Murmurs wrapped around me, "Whoa! Cady's losing it." "Think we should try to help?" "I miss Lony too, but what a drama queen!" Their anger blended with mine until I s.h.i.+vered and all I could see was red. I tore at a photo of Lony standing in her cheerleader uniform, her pom-poms in the air as she stood on the shoulders of her teammates. When it was shredded beyond recognition, I moved on to a group shot of Lony and Cane with a bunch of their friends piled on top of each other on a couch in some anonymous bas.e.m.e.nt rec room. The confetti of Kodak paper fluttered to the floor like a ticker-tape parade.

Bryan placed a tentative hand on my shoulder. His touch poked a hole in my anger, letting it diffuse, slowly, until it was gone altogether. My fingers stopped frozen in mid-rip. I looked down at the mess around my feet. My jaw dropped and my wild eyes latched onto his in shame. Just as my knees gave out, Bryan caught me and lowered me to the floor in a heap of limbs. He pulled me onto his lap and turned my sobbing face into the crook of his neck to s.h.i.+eld me from our nosey cla.s.smates staring and whispering excitedly. The disdain they felt for me was tangible. The bell rang for second period, and a few more teachers arrived to usher everyone along to their cla.s.ses.

I couldn't look at the mess. My body curled up and huddled into Bryan's as if I could make myself small enough to disappear. He stroked my hair and rocked me gently.

A janitor in a denim uniform showed up with a push broom and a large, rubber garbage can. He waited off to the side quietly, unable to clear the mess away with us sitting in the middle of it.

Once the hall was mostly empty of students, Mr. Small crouched down and whispered something to Bryan.

I felt his head bob in a nod. "I'll take her home now." Bryan bent his mouth to my ear. "Let's get you out of here."

As Bryan helped me to my feet, I caught a pair of green eyes, blazing with molten hatred staring right at me, causing my body to jerk in shock. Cane Matthews stood across the hall. It was the first time I'd seen him since the funeral. His face appeared to have aged, gray smudges spread beneath his eyes and his jaw clenched tightly. He bent down and picked up a torn photograph of Lony that had been taken over the summer at cheerleading camp. His gaze softened slightly on the photo, but when he looked at me again, I felt a stab in my gut. The icy pain rolled off Cane so thickly the air felt like water, making my lungs heave for breath. I s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably.

Bryan relieved me of the broken backpack without a word, took my hand. "Ignore him. Come on." He steered me toward the doors.

I felt Cane's glare on my back the whole way down the hall and out the front doors.

Bryan offered to stay with me, but I made him go back to school. I spent the rest of the day in my pj's huddled in bed with the covers over my head.

The doorbell rang around 3:00, but neither my mother nor I made a move to answer it. Just after dark, I woke from a nap to someone knocking on my bedroom door.

"Can I come in?" Aaron's guff voice called from the hall outside.

I yanked the covers down from the tent I had made with my pillows to block out the harsh afternoon sunlight.

"Yeah," I croaked. "Come in."

Aaron stepped into the room and glanced around. It had been a long time since he had been in my bedroom. My brother and I have never been very close. He was only fourteen months older, but he'd always held himself apart from us. I'm not sure if that was because we were girls or because he felt excluded by our twin-ness.

He didn't turn on the light, just wandered over and sat down by my feet.

"I heard what happened this morning."

"I don't know why I freaked out like that," I groaned.

Aaron nodded in sympathy. In the light emanating from the hallway, I could see dark smudges under his lower lashes and hollowness in his cheeks. All at once I felt guilty for not being there more for him. I hadn't given much thought to the fact that he also lost a sister. My hand snaked out from beneath my peppermint-colored comforter and squeezed his. After a moment, he squeezed back.

"I would have warned you about the locker if I'd known you were going to go to school this morning. I couldn't look at it either."

"I shouldn't have flipped out like that. Lony had tons of friends. They have a right to mourn her the way they need to."

Aaron just bobbed his head and mashed his lips together.

"How are you, Aaron? Do you want to talk about it?"

He let out a whoosh of air. "Oh, I don't know, Cady. I imagine I'm feeling about like you are right now; sadness, anger -mostly at myself for not spending more time with her -with you both. And then this house... I've been kind of thinking about going to stay with Dad for a while."

"Have you told Mom yet?"

"Are you kidding?" He said with a raised eye brow, the metal bar through it glinting in the low light. "She's so doped up there's no talking to her. I don't think she's taken a shower since the funeral. Besides, she probably wouldn't even notice if I left."

I didn't know what to say. In the s.p.a.ce of only a few weeks, our family as we knew it changed into something from a bad after-school special.

"I'd like to go see Dad tomorrow," I said. "Think you want to come with me?"

"Sure," he replied.

We lapsed into silence, nothing more to say. He clung to me with one hand and picked at the cuticle of his thumb with the other. Eventually, he stood up and shuffled toward the door.

Just before entering the hallway, Aaron turned back to me, his face framed in the backlight. "Think you want to try school again tomorrow?"

I shook my head. "I don't think I'm ready yet."

He nodded once in agreement. "Okay. I'll pick you up when I'm done and we can go to Dad's. Want the door closed?"

"Yeah."

Aaron left, pulling the door shut behind him. I flopped back onto my mattress. My down pillow had grown flat over the two weeks of near constant use. I yanked it out from beneath me to fluff it up. The phone started ringing. I checked the caller ID before answering. It was Bryan.

"So..." he hedged, "I've been sitting here for an hour debating with myself over whether I should call or not. If you don't want to talk, that's cool, but I at least need to know you are not sitting in the dark listening to Leonard Cohen music and contemplating banis.h.i.+ng yourself to a European boarding school."

I grinned for the first time all day. It felt good.

"In the dark yes, but no Cohen."

"And you're not going to runaway to Switzerland, because right now, you are like the only friend I have here. Selfish, I know, but I am a teenager after all."

"No Switzerland, I promise. It gets really cold there, and I don't ski."

We talked for a while about nothing. He never mentioned how my flip-out was talked about at school, but I'm sure even a boy with no friends would have heard the gossip bantered around. Before we hung up, I'd decided to work from home for the rest of the week and I'd start back to school fresh on Monday.

Chapter 10.

The next morning, I woke early to the sound of tweeting cardinals. I peered through the binoculars and watched them flit from branch to branch around their nests. I kind of felt sorry for the females who appeared dull and brown compared to the royal red of their mates. I guess I knew what it was like to live in someone else's glow. Emo, much?

I tossed the binoculars down on my window seat and stretched my arms up tall. I had to get out of the house. The sun was s.h.i.+ning outside, and the constant throb of depression in my house was threatening to pull me under again. I showered, dressed and went out to the Honda Civic that I had shared with Lony. My Fallulah CD blared from the stereo, and I sung along off-key. I swung through a McDonald's drive through for a yogurt parfait before heading out to Dubuque County Animal Sanctuary, located on the north edge of town.

Dr. Kristy Fineman's face lit up when she saw me walk in the door. Bronwyn and I started volunteering at the shelter the summer after eighth grade. Last year, Dr. Kristy put us on the payroll. It was only ten hours a week at minimum wage, but I loved animals so much that I would've continued working for nothing.

"Cady!" The thin woman in a white doctor's coat rounded the corner of the reception desk to draw me into a big hug. Dr. Kristy and her husband, Mark, were both at the funeral, but I hadn't seen them since. "It's so good to see you!"

"Don't squish my breakfast," I said s.n.a.t.c.hing the paper bag out from between us. "Well, I think I can handle dogs better than my cla.s.smates today, so thought I'd come in for a few hours."

Dr. Kristy drew back and checked me over thoughtfully as if I were one of her patients. Faint crow's feet lined the corners of her eyes; giving the impression her face was a perpetual smile.

"Well, I know Murphy will be glad to see you."

Murphy was a goofy Labrador with large floppy feet and one ear that stuck up in the air. Dr. Kristy's brother owned him, but he traveled a lot for work, so he kennels Murphy here at the shelter frequently.

"I just want to eat my breakfast, and then I can take a group out for a walk."

"No problem," Dr. Kristy replied, patting my arm. "I have a few appointments this morning, and then Gina is going to a.s.sist me on a couple neuters. Sarah will be here soon to watch the desk."

I carried my breakfast into the break room where I poured myself a cup of Columbian brew from the pot on the counter and ate. When I finished, I set out on my rounds of checking the cat cages. I filled food and water dishes, scooped the litter boxes and wiped down the interiors. The kitties wound themselves around my ankles rubbing their faces on my pant legs. I scratched each set of ears before depositing them back into their cages.

When I finished giving the cats some love, I walked out back to the dog kennels. A cacophony of excited barks and whines greeted my arrival. There were two long rows of high-fenced enclosures with metal roofs that rumbled like rocket engines when it rained. The shelter also had indoor kennels for overnights and two large paddocks where dogs could run and play in groups. I walked up and down the row greeting and petting the dogs I recognized and introducing myself to the new arrivals by letting them sniff my fist. Murphy spotted me approaching the enclosure where he lounged with a gray bulldog named Tank and Dr. Kristy's terrier mutt called Lucy, who came to work with the doc every day. The happy lab leaped to his feet and stood on his hind legs, paws on the fence and tongue dangling happily from his mouth.

"Hey, Murph! How's my boy?" I said as I unlocked the gate and entered the enclosure. The three dogs swarmed around my legs yipping and doing the puppy two-step for attention. I petted each of them in turn, before fastening their leashes and leading them out to the trails behind the shelter.

Dr. Kristy and Mark had inherited the three hundred acre farm a few years back from some relative. Uninterested in farming, they leveled the dilapidated farm buildings, constructed the shelter and clinic, and created walking trails which twisted through the woods and over-grown pasture land.

The three dogs and I strolled along the dirt path, the noise of the forest humming around us. Tank strained at his leash, wanting to chase squirrels, and then pouted when I wouldn't let him loose. As we approached a rocky incline, I scooped up Lucy to carry her. It was then that I discovered something odd.

Running my hand along Lucy's velvet belly, I felt a buzzing coldness radiating out from her compact body. It made my palm p.r.i.c.k and tingle. Something tickled in the back of my mind, something bad.

I set the dog down. She stared up at me with her pointed nose. She didn't appear different than she did any other day. Quickly wrapping Murphy's and Tank's leashes around the branches of a low bush, I knelt down next to Lucy. My fingers trailed the markings of her brindled fur. Just under the ribcage on her right side I felt the hum vibrating strongest. Cold floated up from the spot, so that even with my hand six inches above it, my fingers quivered. Some instinct inside me was telling me the dog was in pain, which made no sense at all. Lucy appeared completely normal. When I touched the cold spot on her side there was something distinctly foreign about whatever was inside of her. That thought nagged at the base of my skull, and I grew anxious.

Cupping Lucy's muzzle, I stared deep into her golden-brown eyes. They were as clear and bright as any other day, but I was convinced something was gravely wrong. I scooped Lucy up in my arms, yanked the other two leashes free from the bush and rushed the pack back to the clinic.

My chest was huffing and sweat dampened my body by the time I made it to the yard. I'd run most of the way, only slowing enough to accommodate Tank's short stride.

My fingers fumbled with the kennel keys, but the lock clicked open easily. I rushed Tank and Murphy inside, not stopping to remove the leashes from their collars. With Lucy still in my arms, I hurried to find Dr. Kristy.

The doctor had changed into her surgery scrubs and stood in her office going over charts with her a.s.sistant, Gina. Their faces shot up in surprise when I bounded into the room holding Lucy out toward them.

"What is it, Cady?" Dr. Kristy asked, her brow heightened in surprise. "Is something wrong?"

I nodded and set Lucy down on her desk. "Feel...her..." I huffed, trying to catch my breath. "Here." I took the doctor's cool hand and placed it on the vibrating spot on the dog's chest. "Do you feel it?"

"Feel what?" she asked. Both doctor and dog stared at me like I was nuts.