The Bottom Drawer didn’t press charges. That’s what Nora emailed to tell me, anyway, and what now did she have to gain by lying? Did they even have email in juvie? I didn’t think so, but what did I know? We need to make another plan, she wrote. And then? I will say I’ve got some killer new skivvies. I ignored this when I wrote her back. We totally do! I wrote, regarding the plan. Smiley face heart kiss pink elephant yellow flower.
But I knew we wouldn’t. Maybe we were just camp friends. The gum tree. The moldy old cabins. The flashlights shaking through the woods. Kid stuff. Summer things. Maybe it’s not turning off the light. Maybe it’s just letting the seasons change.
I couldn’t help but think that about Connor too, our season. The hospital—not camp—but this eerie alt place. Maybe the real world was not for us. We were all about parallel universes.
I didn’t write him back. I didn’t try to call him or email or find a way to talk to him. His voice was the same, but still he felt like a stranger.
I will try to reach you. Remember me? I remember you.
As sad as I was, I could feel myself getting stronger, everything healing, the scar sealing things in securely, like a change purse. I never liked it, that would be insane, but I had gotten used to changing the bag, all the ointments and contraptions I needed to make sure it didn’t get too irritated or worse, come undone.
I was transforming from werewolf back to human. And from human it was like I could spin three times and there were my bulletproof bracelets, my lasso. My superhuman Wonder Woman speed and strength. I felt like that sometimes, like I was some girl superhero now. My dark, sad alter ego, felled by kryptonite, was the girl sick in bed in the dark, waiting for a nurse to take her blood, a girl I hope never to meet again. I wasn’t much for meeting the girl I was before I got sick either. She didn’t know anything. She was ashamed of everything.
I knew a lot by then. I was smaller but I was bigger. What was my special power? I didn’t know. But I did know that Dee and Lydia were off on a different path. Mabel and Greta were my sidekicks now.
That’s when I decided it was time to take my sidekicks in for proper training.
We went to Petiquette because, I mean, it was called Petiquette. Also it was the closest dog training place to us. We’d missed a class, but I didn’t want to wait until the next session, so I drove Greta and Mabel and me to our first class, my mother in the passenger seat.
I looked in the rearview at Mabel and Greta, scratching and scrambling.
“Do not get distracted, Liz.” My mother turned around in her seat. “Girls!” she said to the dogs. “Oh my God!” my mother said. “Center lane, please!”
Just then a text came in with a delicate ping!
“You’re driving!” My mother was borderline hysterical.
I gripped the wheel. “Mother. I’m not looking at it!”
My stomach clenched and I felt my bag. I really never didn’t feel it, but sometimes it was more . . . pronounced than others. My mother gripped the door handle like she was in a movie. My mother was always acting like she was in a goddamn movie. Or maybe I just made her act that way. Whatever the case, we managed to arrive at Petiquette, and early too, and we signed up and I headed into the Good Citizen training, ready to go.
I checked my phone. The text was from Michael L: One more try? I really did miss you. How about the movies with Dee and K on Fri? Wink wink clapping hands smiley face.
K. He’s going by Kenickie now. I don’t even remember his actual name anymore.
K, I wrote back, but I think the irony might have been lost. Why the hell not, I thought. What’s to lose here?
Think better of it was just one of the things I learned that night. The others? Greta and Mabel could not be in the same class. They were barely even the same species. And Greta could not go into hospitals and nursing homes, both places that don’t have a lot of use for dogs that jump up and bark and get down on front legs to play and then whimper when they are dragged away. The trainer, a tall woman named Esther who had long hair with so many split ends it looked like she’d been plugged into a socket and who introduced herself by saying if she were a dog she’d be a whippet, gave me some serious stink eye and told me this was a class for dogs who have already had training.
Oh. So this was the AP class.
I went to get my mother.
“That dog is way too young for hospitals,” the trainer said. “Think about it. How will she be soothing? How could her visit possibly be a comfort to someone?”
I didn’t say how it totally would be, but I did think that was what we were here for, to train the dogs to be a comfort. Maybe it’s not the Petiquette we need to be working on, I thought as I handed Greta over to my mom, who was reading in the waiting area, where she thought she’d be the whole hour we “trained.” She took Greta into the novice class. Like so, so novice.
As soon as my mother walked out with Greta, Mabel got on her doggie smile and sat perfectly and gave me her paw and generally was her best Mabel self. I imagined bald kids smiling when she walked into their hospital rooms. I imagined old ladies motioning to her with their gnarled old-lady hands.
That was the night I met Stella B.
Stella and her pit bull, Samantha. Stella with her Clash T-shirt and her bicycle chain bracelets and her blue suede creepers, her dark black eyeliner. Her hair—kind of like a mullet—stuck out in all directions. She had three safety pins in each ear. She waved at me and she smiled, not angry like her clothes or, like Connor, all dark and menacing, a killer, beneath his beachy face. Me with my bag, scarred up, no one knew what was there. Once my weakness but now, maybe my secret armor. My Superman S—that scar—beneath my regular clothes. None of us are what we seem. Stella Sammy Mabel and me. Twice a week at Petiquette. Mom and Greta trailing, tangled, behind.
Who knew I had been waiting for someone like Stella?
Finally, my own girl band.