Alpha Dog (26 page)

“Did you hear anything from Dr. Skyler?” he asked.

I shook my head gently. “No.”

“Well . . . no news is better than bad news.” His mouth curled into a half smile. “You want a ride to the vet’s?”

“I . . . um . . .” I glanced over his shoulder at Christine. She made a shooing motion with her hand. “Sure. I mean . . . are you sure? You really don’t have to.”

He lifted his shoulders slightly. “I want to.”

“Okay. Just give me some time to clean myself up and I’ll come over.”

“See you in a bit.”

As soon as he’d shut the door behind him, Christine flashed me a knowing grin. “You know what? That guy seems to care about you too.”

When we arrived at the hospital, a way-too-cheerful assistant informed us that there had been no change in Seamus’s condition, but that Dr. Skyler would be available to talk to us in a little while if we wanted to wait. She then presented me with a bill for services rendered thus far, totaling $1,162.54.

As I handed her Mom’s emergencies-only credit card, I realized I was setting off a self-destruct sequence. Mom would have a supernova freak-out when she saw the bill—especially considering I hadn’t actually told her about Seamus yet. But I couldn’t worry about that. My mind was too busy agonizing about my present situation to care about any future catastrophes. All I wanted was for Seamus to get better, no matter what it took.

The office looked different by day. It was brighter and busier. Jazz music was playing on an unseen sound system, and the perky assistant kept flitting about, opening drawers and answering the phone in a singsongy voice. A large birdcage sat on the counter. Inside, perched atop an orange rod, was a brightly colored parrot with a bandaged left wing.
“Here, kitty, kitty,
kitty,”
he kept saying in his shrill, nasal bird tone.
“Come
here, kitty, kitty.”
Again, I felt as if I’d fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole into a bizarre parallel universe.

“Here you go!” the assistant crooned merrily, handing me my receipt. “Please have a seat. Dr. Skyler will be out as soon as she can!”

I nodded mutely, focusing on the walls in back of her as if I could melt them away and see Seamus. Failing that, I trudged off to the waiting area, pinching the receipt in both hands.

“How’re you holding up?” Matt asked once I’d settled into the seat beside him.

“Okay,” I replied as I folded the paper into fourths and slipped it into the front pocket of my jeans. My voice sounded far away, even to myself.

Matt looked like he didn’t buy it. “You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s just weird being back here. It’s hard not doing anything.”

“I know,” he said. “When they were working on Jessie, I felt . . . I don’t know . . . useless. I knew I couldn’t exactly operate, but I still wanted to help in some way—just hold a scalpel or something.”

I nodded. That was exactly how I felt.

“Sorry,” he said as if suddenly embarrassed. “I guess I shouldn’t have brought up Jessie.”

“No, it’s okay. I’m glad . . .” I paused, unsure how to phrase it without sounding stupid.
Glad for your loss?
Glad your dog died and you can help me in case my dog
does?
“I’m glad you understand,” I said finally. “You’ve been really great to me. Thanks for . . . well . . . everything.” I smiled as wide as my puffy features would allow.

He smiled back, and a coziness oozed over me like warm syrup. I couldn’t believe how amazingly nice Matt had been to me. The guy had seen me at my absolute worst. Holding a bag of poop, yelling at him, crying until I was a snotty mess. Even now, I should be embarrassed as hell to have him see me like this: half-swollen with grief, hair in a greasy ponytail, wearing a T-shirt and jeans I’d dug out of a pile of dirty clothes (I hadn’t had a chance to do laundry). And yet for some strange reason, I wasn’t embarrassed. And for another, even stranger reason, he was still there.

“Um, hey. There’s something I should tell you,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “I didn’t exactly tell you the entire truth before. About Jessie.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s true that I was sort of avoiding Seamus for a while because I was still getting over her death. But . . . I was also avoiding you.”

“Me?”
I suddenly felt uneasy. “Why?”

Matt scowled into the distance. “About the time I lost Jessie, I also went through a bad breakup. She and I had been together for over a year, and even though I knew it was totally over, I was still sort of freaked. The last thing I wanted to see was a beautiful girl— especially one with a dog.”

I sat completely frozen, holding my breath.
Beautiful?
Did he just call me beautiful?

“At first I thought I could just ignore you guys all summer—not in a mean way, just not as friendly as I wanted to be. But you were right next door and I sort of got pulled in a little . . . then a lot. Once I got to know you guys, I didn’t want to keep my distance anymore. I wanted to get to know you better. In fact, I still want to know you better—
a
lot
better.” He let out a sigh and raked his fingers through his floppy bangs. “You don’t have to say anything. I realize you’re with that guy Chuck, but I just . . . I wanted you to know how I felt.”

If I was stunned before, I was near comatose at that point. Matt wanted to be with me? For real? In my broken mental state, it was near impossible to process it all.

“You . . . ?” I began, my voice tapering off weakly. I wanted him to keep talking, to explain in no uncertain terms what he meant, but my systems seemed to be shutting down into some sort of primitive protective mode. I just couldn’t think about this right now. I couldn’t handle another big shock.

A shadow fell over us as someone entered the waiting area. I glanced up and saw Dr. Skyler standing in front of the sunny window, looking slightly haggard.

I rose to my feet. “Seamus?” I cried. “Is he— Is there any change?”

Matt stood up and placed his hand on my back, lending me his strength.

“We’ve been monitoring him closely all night,” Dr. Skyler said, “and it looks like he’s going to be all right.”

I let her statement slowly penetrate. Seamus . . . was . . . going . . . to . . . be . . . all right. He was going to live! “Oh my God! Oh, thank you!” I ran forward and threw my arms around her, tears of relief rolling down my cheeks. “Thank you so much!”

It was as if I’d burst out of a gloomy cocoon. Suddenly everything around me looked shiny and beautiful. The worn plastic chairs. The flecked vinyl floor. Dr. Skyler with her tired blue eyes and blond Peter Pan haircut. I was in a sparse and rather antiseptic paradise.

Dr. Skyler laughed and patted me on the back. “He’s awake now,” she said. “Would you like to see him?”

“Yes!”

We followed her down the corridor into a sort of pint-sized ICU. There were shelves of medical supplies and all sorts of fancy machinery. Kennels had been built into the far wall, with large stalls for the big animals and a row of smaller cages on top. Dr. Skyler lowered the door of one cubicle and gestured for us to approach. Seamus was lying on his side, still heavily bandaged. Only this time, his eyes were halfway open.

He’s alive!
I thought as I raced to his side.
Thank
God, he’s going to be okay!

“Don’t pick him up,” Dr. Skyler said. “And remember he’s still medicated. He can’t interact with you much.”

I stepped forward and began stroking the wiry, unruly fur on his ears and the top of his head. “Hey, fella,” I said softly. Seamus let out a low, happy-sounding moan and licked my wrist. He looked weak and kind of hungover, but it was Seamus. He was back.

“I’ll give you guys some time to visit.” Dr. Skyler gave me another warm smile and headed out the door.

I saw Matt start to follow. “Wait,” I called. “Please stay.”

“You sure?” he said, looking sort of hunched and uncomfortable. I thought about his earlier confession and how awkward he must have felt.

“Yes,” I replied. “I really want you to be here.”

He walked up beside me and grinned down at Seamus. “Hey, dude,” he said, rubbing him behind the ears. “Glad you’re going to be all right. You sure are a tough guy.”

Seamus beamed back at him, his tail thumping sluggishly.

“I’ll bring you home soon, buddy,” I said. “I promise.” I picked up his left leg and kissed the soft pad on the underside of his foot over and over. Then, without thinking, I slid my hand over on top of Matt’s, lifted it off of Seamus, and raised it to my lips.

He smiled faintly, his forehead puckered in confusion. Reaching up with both hands, I cupped his face and pulled him toward me. As he came closer, I could see streaks of green in his wide gray eyes and a soft line dividing his pillowy lower lip. I saw those same lips lift slightly, and then . . . they were on mine.

It was not like kissing Chuck at all. With Chuck I’d always felt awkward and hyperconscious. Worried about my breath and hair. Confused about where to put my hands. But with Matt everything was more . . . well,
more.
More exciting. More right. There was no hesitation and I instinctively seemed to know what to do. Our bodies shifted, effortlessly settling into each other’s contours. And our mouths just seemed to find each other, zooming together like magnets.

And there was something else. As we kissed I realized that I was happy. Not just ho-hum, can’t complain, everything’s-hunky-dory-type happy, but really, truly
happy.
The kind of happiness that makes the sunlight sparkle brighter and the air smell sweeter and your chest flutter as if your heart is sprouting rainbows and roses inside your chest. Seamus was going to be okay and Matt was kissing me. Things hadn’t felt this right in a long time. Maybe never.

Gradually we broke off. Matt leaned back and gazed into my eyes, his mouth curled into a sheepish and very adorable grin.

“What about your boyfriend?” he murmured.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said, pushing his bangs off his forehead.

“Really?” His grin widened. “Would you like one?”

I smiled and we kissed for an unfathomable amount of time. It would have been longer, but a strange thwacking sound made us pull apart. We turned toward the noise and saw Seamus, grinning a broad doggie grin, his tail whapping against the cage as fast as my own heart was beating.

15

“D
udes! Check this out!”

Christine and I came out of the kitchen where we’d been making quesadillas for dinner. Robot, Lyle, Kinky and Matt were sitting in the living room, all of them huddled around something.

“Yo. Come watch this,” Kinky said, gesturing Christine and me closer with a bob of his bushy head.

We exchanged tiny shrugs and ventured toward the guys. As we came up behind them, I noticed MTV had been muted. Seamus was sitting in front of the coffee table, his little chest puffed up with pride.

“Okay. What’s the big thing?” Christine asked, resting her hands on the belt loops of her ripped, low-riding jeans.

“Kinky taught Seamus a new trick,” Matt said, sounding slightly incredulous.

“No way!” I exclaimed. “We’ve only been out of the room fifteen minutes.”

“Believe it,” Robot said, nodding. “The little bugger is right smart.”

“And Kinky’s sort of like an animal,” Lyle added.

Christine took another step forward and crossed her arms over her chest. “All right. Let’s see it.”

Kinky smiled proudly and hunkered down in front of Seamus. “Yo! Seamus, dude! Give me five!” He held his big palm out toward Seamus.

Seamus wobbled a little, lifted his right leg, and swiped his paw against Kinky’s outstretched hand.

Everyone whooped and clapped. “Good boy!” I shouted. Seamus panted happily.

“Man, I want to teach him how to drum!” Lyle exclaimed.

I headed over to the gold armchair where Matt was sitting and perched on the armrest. “Did you witness this little miracle?” I asked. “Did he really teach him that?”

“He really did,” he said, slipping his arm around my waist. In a quick movement he pulled me onto his lap and started kissing me. I laughed and put up some perfunctory resistance before blissfully giving in.

“Aw, man! There they go again!” Lyle whined.

Kinky shielded his eyes dramatically. “Dudes, get a corner or something.”

“Right,” Robot said, rising to his feet. “I’m off to get a pack of smokes and some brew. Any of you blokes want to come?”

“I’m there,” said Lyle, bouncing off the couch.

“Me too,” Kinky chimed in, loping after Robot.

“Hey, could you guys get Seamus some doggie snacks?” I asked, struggling to stand so I could grab my purse.

Matt pulled me back down. “I’ll do it,” he murmured in my ear, sending little shivers down my back.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Besides, I’ll know what to get,” he added in a whisper. “Those guys would probably get Seamus a can of beer and some Twinkies.”

“You’re right,” I said, laughing.

Matt slid out from under me and headed toward the door, Seamus limping after him. “Hey, guys, hold up,” he called. “I need to grab some stuff too.”

“You mean something besides Katie?” I heard Lyle ask before the door shut.

Seamus looked back at me sadly, as if he had wanted to tag along too.

“Come on, buddy.” I picked him up, mindful of his bandages, and carried him over to the patio. “Go see your pal.” Sure enough, as I pushed back the blinds, there was Mrs. B waiting on the balcony. Seamus’s tail started wagging rapidly.

I carefully set him outside and watched through the glass as the two of them started sniffing each other all over. After a while, I headed back into the kitchen, where Christine had returned to her cheese grating.

“Stop it,” she said when I rounded the corner.

“What?”

“Wipe that silly-ass smile off your face before I slap it off.”

“Really? I’m smiling?” I said, patting my cheeks and mouth. I hadn’t even realized it.

Christine groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’ve had one all week long—ever since you and Matt got together. You guys are so cute you make me want to puke.”

“Come on!” I cried. “What about you and Robot?” I launched into a horrible, off-key rendition of “Fancy You.”

I’d just reached the chorus when the phone started ringing.

“Thank God!” Christine exclaimed. She set down the grater, scurried into the living room and snatched up the phone. “Hello?” she said, turning her back on me and my singing. Suddenly she spun back around, staring at me with wide eyes. “Oh, hello there, Mrs. McAllister!”

I trotted up beside her, chewing four fingernails at once. This could be bad. I hadn’t spoken to Mom in over a week—since before Seamus got hurt. It wasn’t as if I’d been purposefully avoiding her; I’d just been so busy with school and nursing Seamus back to health. In the meantime she’d left one message after another, still yelling at me about staying out late and never calling Aaron.

“Uh-huh,” Christine kept saying into the receiver while shooting me round-eyed looks of sympathy. “Yes, well . . . actually, Mrs. McAllister, I really don’t feel comfortable with this arrangement anymore. I think you should probably get information from Katie directly. In fact, she’s right here.” She held the phone out toward me.

I shook my head no. While I appreciated her gesture of resigning as official go-between and informant, I was also a little miffed that Christine was putting me on the spot. Talking to Mom was like storming an enemy beach. You had to be mentally prepared and equipped with several carefully rehearsed responses.

Christine mouthed the word
yes
and pressed the phone against me, stabbing my sternum with the antenna. Then she set it on the table and walked off toward the kitchen.
No!
I thought, glaring down at the receiver. Its antenna pointed toward me, wagging back and forth as if scolding me.

Oh, what the hell. I have to face her sometime.
I picked up the phone and raised it to my ear. “Hi, Mom.”

“Katie, what on earth is going on? Why have you been avoiding me? Do you realize if I hadn’t gotten hold of you today I would have contacted the authorities?” Mom’s voice rose with each rapid-fire question. “I’ve been ready to call the police for three days now but your father made me wait. What’s gotten into you, young lady? Why haven’t you been returning my calls?”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’ve just been really swamped.”

“That was very thoughtless of you! Do you realize I’ve barely slept for days?”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Are you hiding something? Why have you been ignoring me?”

“I haven’t. Really. It’s just that school’s been getting tougher and I keep forgetting to juice up the cell phone and I’ve had tons of errands to run this week.”

“I see.” Mom’s voice was strangely subdued. “Would any of these errands include spending twelve hundred dollars at the North Austin Animal Hospital?”

My face instantly grew hot, smarting all over as if severely sunburned. “Uh . . . yeah, that,” I said lamely. I’d thought I had more time. I had no idea she would get the bill so quickly. “That was for Seamus.”

“Seamus? Who is Seamus?” she cried.

I took a deep breath. It was time to rat myself out. “He’s my dog,” I said, pushing the words out of me. “I have a dog.” And there it was—just a simple declarative sentence. I’d expected to go all meek and trembly, but I didn’t. If anything, I felt relieved.

“You have a . . .
what
?”

“A dog, Mom. I adopted him the first week I got here.”

There came a long pause, and I could almost hear a bomb ticking in the background. Finally Mom let out a long, staticky sigh. “Oh, no. You do
not
need a dog, Katherine Anne!”

I heard a slight rustling noise and her voice grew muffled. “Shane, I told you I should have driven up there! Do you know what she’s done? She’s gotten herself a dog!”

“Really?” Dad sounded somewhat interested. “What kind of dog?”

Mom let out an irritated grunt and came back on the line. “Really, Katie. Why would you even do such a thing?”

“Because the shelter was going to kill him,” I explained. “I wanted to save him.”

“It’s the same as always. You are just too selfish and irresponsible to be left on your own!”

“What?” I yelled. “How can you call me selfish for wanting to save him? You’re the one who’s always going on about how I should take a stand and be a good citizen. So I did. I took in a dog that needed a home.”

“Without consulting me first!” she snapped. “And you know perfectly well that that credit card was for emergencies only.”

“It
was
an emergency! He got hit by a car! If I hadn’t tried to help him, I would have never forgiven myself.” I closed my eyes and recovered my breath. “I’m sorry I had to use the credit card. I just had no choice.”

“I see. So you adopt a dog and then let him run in the street? Katie, that is about the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard of! I should have never trusted you to be out on your own. I’m considering bringing you right home this instant!”

“No!”
I shouted so loud that Christine peeked around the corner from the kitchen. “I
wasn’t
being irresponsible and you
can
trust me! The accident was just an accident. I’m doing a great job with Seamus. I’m training him and taking good care of him and still keeping up with classes. I’m doing good, Mom. You should be proud of me.”

“I will
not
be made the bad guy in this matter!” she cried, raising her volume to my decibel level. “I’ve tried to be nice. I’ve tried to set you on the right path, but of course you won’t listen. As usual you had to do things your own way, no matter what. Do you think your father made it as far as he has by doing his own thing? Do you think
I
got to do whatever I felt like growing up?”

Mom’s tone took on a reedy quality. She sounded almost resentful or jealous. Like maybe she would have liked to step out of her perfect facade once in a while and mingle among us mortals.

“Why do you always have to make things so hard?” she went on. “Is it so difficult just to do what I ask? To do the right thing?”

I braced myself for the usual torrent of guilt, the standard amount of whining and groveling on my part and the eventual shaky truce. But as I listened to Mom’s tirade, I realized . . . I was done. The guilt just wasn’t there. I couldn’t feel useless and irresponsible, because now I knew I wasn’t those things.

“Sorry you don’t trust me, Mom,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s my problem. I’ve been doing my best for years and you’re never satisfied.”

“How dare you talk to me that way!” Mom was shrieking like a hawk. I’d never heard her so upset before. “When I was your age I would have never talked back to my mother that way!”

When I was your age . . .
There it was, her usual catchphrase. I’d heard it thousands of times before, but this time it was different. As soon as she said it, a smoldering anger came spouting to the surface. “Maybe I don’t want to be you at my age!” I yelled. “Maybe I want to be
me
!”

That did it. For a moment all I could hear was the white noise of her huffy breathing and a few disjointed vowel sounds as she started to reply and then stopped herself. It was unbelievable. For the second time in my life, my mom was speechless. Only this time, instead of letting a hunky Irish stranger do it, I was sticking up for myself.

Listening to the silence emanating from the other end, I felt like I was somehow growing, doubling in strength and size.

“I can handle it, Mom,” I said loud and clear, as if issuing a proclamation. “You don’t need to look out for me anymore.”

“Shane, you won’t believe what our daughter is saying to me!” Mom’s voice grew distant again. “She suddenly thinks because she’s lived away for a while she can make her own decisions about everything.”

“Well, land’s sake, Laura,” I heard my dad say. “She is seventeen.”

I could hear Mom sputter and gulp for a moment, and then her voice came back on the line. “Forget it. I can see the both of you are determined to act impossible,” she said shakily. Then she hung up.

I replaced the receiver on its base and stood there, staring at it.

“Katie? Are you okay?” Christine said, rounding the corner of the kitchen nook. “That was awesome. I can’t believe you stood up to her like that.”

“Neither can I,” I said truthfully.

She slowly shook her head. “Girl, you are my hero. I mean, I’m always totally ragging on my dad and sneaking stuff behind his back, but I’ve never just told it like it was. How’d you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, breaking into a smile.

Strange. When I first met Christine, I assumed she was so together. I thought if I studied her hard enough, I could figure out how to get a grip on my own life. Now she was calling me
her
hero?

But maybe that was it. Somehow I’d stopped worrying so much about what other people thought about me. Instead of looking to others for strength, I found it inside me, where it had been all along, puny and neglected like a stray pup.

Somehow I’d become my own Alpha Dog.