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“I’m fine. But you’re...hurt.”
“How bad?”
“Bad. But it’s okay. You’re okay.” Tears dripped off her cheeks onto him.
“Am I gonna die?”
“No! Jeez, Connor! No!” But he could tell she didn’t know. She wadded up her sweatshirt and pushed it against his jaw, making him see black-and-white flashes of pain. His hand was shiny and slick with dark red blood. “Just take deep breaths,” she said, biting her lip.
It helped. The sky became blue again, and Colleen’s shirt was pink. And bloodstained. The town siren went off, such a good sound...but so far away, it seemed.
“They’re coming. Just hang on. Help is on the way,” Colleen said. She sounded way too adult. Tears were streaming down her face, and her lips were trembling.
There was a bang of a door, and Connor looked over. Jessica Dunn’s father had come outside. “What did you kids do to my son?” he asked, staggering a little, and Connor couldn’t help feeling bad for Jessica. Everyone knew her parents were drunks.
“Get that fucking dog inside!” Colleen shouted.
Yikes. He’d never heard her swear before. It made him think that his face was pretty much gone, and he might in fact be dying.
Jessica pushed her little brother aside, finally, then bent down and picked up the dog. It was heavy, Connor could tell. Connor knew.
“Chico!” her brother screamed. “Don’t take Chico away!” He ran after Jessica, punching her on the back with his fists, but she went into the trailer—the rattiest, dirtiest one—and closed the door behind her.
Then Levi Cooper’s mother came out, a toddler on her hip, and seeing Connor, ran over to him. “Oh, my God, what happened?” she said, and Connor realized he was shaking, but at least there was a nice grown-up here now.
“The Dunns’ dog attacked him.” Colleen said, her voice breaking. “It came out of nowhere.”
“God,” Mrs. Cooper said. “I’ve told them that dog is a menace. You just lie still, honey.” She patted Connor’s leg.
It was weird, lying there, Mrs. Cooper telling him not to move, Colleen’s sweatshirt pressed against his throbbing face, the Dunns standing in their yard. The father was loud and kept saying things like “That dog wouldn’t hurt a fly,” and “Why were those kids in my yard anyway?” and Colleen was holding his hand too hard.
When the ambulance did come, it was both embarrassing and such a relief he almost cried. There was fuss and questions, gauze and radio. “Minor child, age twelve, attacked by dog,” Mr. Stoakes said into the radio. Minor child. Cripes. Everyone was shooting dirty looks at the Dunns.
They put a neck brace on Connor and packed him onto a gurney. Mrs. Cooper said she’d called Connor’s mom, and she’d meet him at the hospital. Colleen rode in the front of the ambulance, sobbing.
In the ER, he was told he was very lucky, and that it could’ve been so much worse. He ended up with eleven stitches in his jaw, eight under his eye. “Don’t worry about the scar,” said the hip young doctor who was doing the job. “Chicks love scars.” Another sixteen stitches in his arm, but it was the bite on his face that was the big concern. A bump on his head, road rash on his back where his shirt had ridden up. He was a mess, in other words. Everything stung, throbbed or burned.
Mom was weepy all that night. Connor was woozy from the pain meds. Colleen made him a get-well card without any insults, which made Connor think he must look worse than he realized. “You saved me,” he told her, and she burst into tears.
“I didn’t,” she said. “I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“It ran away, though.”
“Jessica threw a rock at him. Got him right in the head.”
Huh. He was too bleary to think about it further. Good aim, though.
His father was icy with fury. “Those fucking white-trash scumbags,” he said, peering into Connor’s face, then got on the phone in his study and didn’t come out until Connor was in bed. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, putting his hand on Connor’s shoulder. Suddenly, the dog bite felt worth it. “You were very brave, I heard.”
“It was scary.”
Crap. Wrong answer. He should’ve said something about it not being a big deal. Sure enough, the hand was withdrawn. “It could’ve been worse, though,” Connor added quickly. “At least it wasn’t Colleen.”
Because if something happened to his sister, Connor would’ve killed the dog himself. The flash of rage and terror was unexpected.
“Tomorrow we’re going to see the Dunns,” Dad said.
“Oh, Dad, no.” The memory of Jess lugging the dog into the house... There was something wrong with that image, but Connor couldn’t say what it was.
“You have to man up in situations like this,” his father said. “I’ll be with you. Don’t worry. They owe you an apology.”
The next day, sure enough, Dad made him get into the Porsche and go back to West’s Trailer Park. His face was swollen and sore under the bandages, and his arm ached. The last place he wanted to be was here.
Dad knocked on the door, hard. Jessica answered, her eyes flickering over Connor’s face. She didn’t say anything. A TV blared in the background, one of those court shows with a lot of yelling.
“Are your parents home?” Dad asked, not bothering with politeness.
“Hi, Jess,” Connor said. Dad cut him a look.
She slipped away. A second later, Mrs. Dunn was at the door. “What do you want?” she said sullenly. Connor was abruptly grateful for his own mother, who always smelled nice and, well, wore a bra and clean shirts.
“Your dog attacked my son,” Dad said, his voice hard. “I’m here to inform you that Animal Control will be here this afternoon to have him put down.”
“You don’t get to say what happens to my dog,” she said, and Connor could smell her boozy breath from the steps.
“What’s put down?” asked a little voice.
Connor flinched. Davey Dunn was peeking out from behind his mother’s legs. He was five or six, and had the longest eyelashes Connor had ever seen. Everyone knew he had something wrong with him, that skinny head and eyes so far apart, but Connor wasn’t sure what it was. The kids on the bus had a word for it, but Connor hated thinking it. Davey just wasn’t quite...normal. Cute, though. Jessica reappeared next to her brother, her hand on his head, staring at Connor, her face expressionless.
He and Jess were in the same class. He couldn’t say she was nice, exactly; they didn’t have the same friends, but she hung out with Levi Cooper, and everyone liked Levi.
And Jessica Dunn was beautiful. Connor had always known that.
“What’s going on here?” Mr. Dunn appeared in the doorway, rumpled and skinny. And suddenly, the dog was there, its big brown head, and Connor jumped back, he couldn’t help it. Dad grabbed the animal by the collar, roughly. “Put down,” he said to Davey, “means your dog has to go somewhere and never come back, because he was very bad.”
“Chico’s not bad,” Davey said, putting his thumb in his mouth. “He’s good.”
“Look at my son’s face,” Dad snapped. “That’s what your dog did. So he’s going to doggy heaven now.”
Silence fell. Davey pulled his thumb out of his mouth and blinked.
Dad could be such a dick sometimes.
“He’s gonna die?” Davey asked.
“Yes. And you’re lucky he hasn’t torn your throat out, son.”
“Don’t talk to my boy,” Mr. Dunn said belatedly.
“No!” Davey wailed. “No! No!”
“Here they are now,” Dad said, and sure enough, a van was pulling into the trailer park.
“Chico! Come on! We have to hide!” Davey sobbed, but Dad still had the dog by the collar.
“Dad,” Connor said, “maybe the dog could just be... I don’t know. Chained up or something?”
“Have you seen your face?” his father snapped. “This dog will be dead by tomorrow. It would be insane to let it live.”
“No!” Davey screamed.
There were three animal control people there, and a police car, too, now. “We need to take the dog, ma’am,” one of them said, but you could hardly hear anything, because Davey was screaming, and the dog... The dog was licking Davey’s face, its tail wagging.
“Dad, please,” Connor said. “Don’t do this.”
“You don’t understand,” his father said, not looking at Connor.
“Screw you all,” Mrs. Dunn said, tears leaking out of her eyes. “God damn you!”
It was Jessica who picked Davey up, even though he flailed and punched. She forced his head against her shoulder and went deeper into the gloomy little trailer.
Mr. Dunn watched, his mouth twisted in rage. “You rich people always get your way, don’t you? Nice, killing a retarded boy’s pet.”
There was the word Connor wouldn’t let himself think, from the kid’s dad, even.
“Your pet almost killed my son,” Dad snarled. “You can apologize anytime.”
“Fuck you.”
“Dad, let’s go,” Connor said. His eyes were burning. Davey could still be heard, screaming the dog’s name.
It was a long walk back to the car. The Porsche, for crying out loud. A car that probably cost more than the Dunns’ entire house.
Connor didn’t say anything all the way home. His throat was too tight.
“Connor, that dog was a menace. And those parents can’t be trusted to chain a dog or fence in their yard. You saw them. They’re both drunks. I feel bad for the boy, but his parents should’ve trained the dog so it didn’t attack innocent children.”
Connor stared straight ahead.
“Well, I give up,” his father said with a sigh. “You want to worry about that dog coming for you? You want to take the chance that it would go for Colleen next time? Huh? Do you?”
Of course not.
But he didn’t want to break a little kid’s heart, either.
By Monday, most of the swelling had gone down in his face, and his arm was stiff, rather than sore. But he still looked pretty grim. Colleen was over the trauma, already calling him Frankenstein and telling him he was uglier than ever. The doctor had said he’d have a scar on the underside of his jaw, where the dog had taken a chunk, and one on his cheek, near his eye. “It’ll make you look tough,” Connor’s father said, examining the stitches Sunday night. He sounded almost pleased.
Connor’s stomach hurt as he went into school.
Everyone had already heard. In a town this small, of course they had. “Oh, my gosh, Connor, were you so scared? Did it hurt? What happened? I heard it went for Colleen first, and you saved her!” Everyone was sympathetic and fascinated. He got a lot of attention, which made him fidget.
Jessica didn’t come to school that day. Not the next day, or the day after that. It was Thursday before she made it. Granted, she was absent a lot, and everyone knew why—her parents, her brother. But Connor couldn’t help feeling like this time it was because of him. The bandage on his face came off the night before; the swelling had gone down, though there was still a good bit of bruising.
Jessica played it cool. She didn’t talk much; she never did, except to Levi and Tiffy Ames, her best friends, and she managed to spend all day without making eye contact with him, despite the fact that their school was so small.
Finally, after school when he was supposed to go to Chess Club, he saw her walking down the school driveway. He bolted down the hall and out the door. Her pants were just a little too short—highwaters, the snotty girls had said at lunch—and the sole of one of her cheap canvas shoes flopped, half-off. “Jess! Hey, Jess.”
She stopped. He noticed that her backpack was too small, and grubby, and pink. A little girl’s backpack, not like the one Colleen and her friends had, cheery plaid backpacks with their initials sewn on, extra padding on the shoulder straps.
Then she turned around. “What do you want?” she said. Her eyes were cold.
“I...I just wanted to see how your brother was doing.”
She didn’t answer. The wind gusted off Keuka, smelling of rain.
“I guess he’s still pretty sad,” Connor said.
“Uh...yeah,” she said, like he was the stupidest person on earth. He did feel that way. “He loved that dog.”
“I could tell.”
“And Chico never bit anyone before.”
Connor had no answer for that.
Jessica stared at a spot past Connor’s left ear. “My father said that in most cases, Chico would get another chance, but since Pete O’Rourke told the mayor what to do, our dog is dead now.” She cut her eyes to his. “Davey hasn’t stopped crying. He’s too upset to go to school, and he’s wet the bed every night this week. So that’s how he’s doing, Connor.”
She made his name sound like a curse word.
“I’m really sorry,” he whispered.
“Who cares what you think, O’Rourke?” She turned and trudged away, her footsteps scratching in the gravel, the sole of her shoe flopping.
He should let her go. Instead, he ran up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Jessica. I’m—”
She whirled around, her eyes filled with tears, fist raised to hit him. Jess got into fights all the time, usually with the oafs on the football team, and she could hold her own. But she paused, and in that second, he saw the past week written on her face, the sadness and anger and fear and helplessness. The...the shame. He saw that she was tired. That there was a spot of dirt behind her left ear.
“You can hit me,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“I’ll pop your stitches.”
“Punch me in the stomach, then,” he said.
Her fist dropped. “Leave me alone, Connor. Don’t talk to me ever again.”
Then she turned and walked off, her head bent, her blond hair fluttering in the breeze, and it felt like someone was ramming a broom handle through the middle of Connor’s chest.
She was so beautiful.
