The Kiss Off (5 page)

I’m a total genius.

I looked back at him and stopped walking. Like I’d thought of something and maybe I wasn’t going to cross after all.

“Hey, you go to Mount Martha’s, don’t you?” I said. Instantly I cringed. Okay so on second thought it wasn’t the best opener. He was wearing the school uniform, complete with school crest on his blazer and navy and white striped tie. Duh, he goes to Mount Martha’s. I’m such a
loser!

Right before I started thinking ‘what does it matter? It’s not like I like the guy’, he raised one eyebrow at me and pulled an earphone from his ear.

I didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d made a tool of myself as my first impression but it hadn’t been long enough for me to obsess about what I should have said instead to sound cooler. And I didn’t have any better ideas yet. So I stood there, blinking at him with surprise and said “Uh…uh…I…”

Surprisingly, he seemed shocked by that. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open and, weirdly, his arms shot out toward me which is when I heard a dog bark and something heavy landed between my shoulder blades and I screamed as I sprawled face first into the grass, the wind knocked out of me.

“Urgh,” I wrinkled my nose as a god-awful stench invaded my nostrils, it was sharp and tangy and bitter and seriously as if something had died. Had someone thrown road kill at me? Who would even do that? Trying to lift myself up I discovered the thing that was stinking me out was still lying on top of me and
would
not
be moved. A wet tongue licked the side of my face and I tried to push it off me again but it wouldn’t budge, and then I felt some movement around my legs. I craned my neck up to see the guy from the bus staring in shock at me and the thing that was on top of me. Immobilized by the monstrosity of my situation. But then I felt…

“
What is it doing?!
” I screamed. “
Oh my God, get it off get it off!
”

The boy was laughing. He was bent over at the waist, laughing his stupid head off. But then I caught his eye and locked my stare with his and we could have held a funeral because his laughter died right there.

He sprang into action. Must have been my desperation that got him to move, to do something. Hovering over me somewhere, I could hear him shooing the dog and telling it to “get the hell off her!” but with no success. The heavy weight on my back shifted as the guy tried to push it off me, but then the dog righted itself and continued doing…its thing. I saw the guy’s feet near my face and he grabbed his school bag with the special crest on it, rummaging inside for something. He pulled out some red twine, made a loop and dashed back to me. Within seconds I felt him heaving the dog off me. I jumped to my feet and brushed down the back of my legs, checking for any traces of…something I didn’t want to think about. When I was positive I didn’t have any marks on me, I looked at the guy and the dog. He had the twine tied around its neck like a lead and the dog sat by his feet, panting happily as if this was like any other day.
This was not like any other day.
He was tan and grey with dirty, wiry hair, a long shaggy face and long limbs. The dog, I mean.

“Are you alright?”

“What?” My eyes shot to the boy. He was looking at me with a smirk which he tried to hide. He failed.

“Are you okay? You hurt or anything? Did he bite you?”

“No,” I said.

“Jeez, he really came out of nowhere, didn’t he?” he said. “I mean I saw you turn around and that was the first time I even noticed the stupid mutt was bolting at you.”

“Yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the dog again. He arched around behind himself and started sniffing his own butt.

“Doesn’t have a collar on him,” the guy continued. “Do you think he’s a stray?”

I shook my head with a shrug.

“I’m Ty, by the way,” he said.

I nodded. Well he had a name. I could tell Mads that. And Vanya. Mads had probably told Vanya all about the boy I was in like with and how I was making my move as they spoke. Some move. Anyway, I could tell them he was called Ty. And that he was the big hero type. If a hero points and laughs at you when you get mauled.

He stood there looking at me. What was he…oh. “Poppy,” I replied. “I’m Poppy.”

He nodded. “Cool.”

I motioned to the dog, which I was happily keeping my distance from. “So what do you think we should do with him?”

“He has to have come from somewhere,” Ty said, looking around. “Hey, did anyone lose a dog?”

Nobody answered. Nobody even peeked through their curtains. Nobody cared.

“We can’t just leave him here,” he said. “He could get run over or something.”

Or he could do the running over.

Ty continued. “One of us needs to take him to the pound or something. But I can’t take him, we’re renting,” he said. I didn’t know what that had to do with anything. “And my mom’s out until late tonight so I have no way of getting him to the pound. I borrow her car. My boy Archie has a car, but he’s working tonight.”

“Oh,” I said. He looked at me expectantly. Oh no. “Well I’m not taking him!” I pointed at the dog with an accusing finger. “Did you see what he was doing to my legs?”

We walked back to my place. Ty held the dog on the lead on one side of him and I walked beside them on the other, trying to match his stride. He had long legs so walked quite fast, and I trotted a little to keep up but then ended up a stride ahead of him so I slowed down and was behind him again. When I finally fell into step beside him, I completely forgot what to do with my arms as I walked. They felt so stupid swinging wildly back and forth. I was starting to come across like a soldier on parade. How come he just seemed to
know
what to do with his hands when he walked? I used to know. I gripped the straps of my backpack nice and casually, hoping he couldn’t tell my fingers were clenched around it like in a death grip. This was humiliating.

I could hear The Pest before I could even see him. When we neared the house I rubbed my eyes, assuming I was hallucinating because I saw Rory and his pervy mates in the street on skateboards and BMXs. Since when did they participate in activities that weren’t TV related? What was all this sunlight going to do to their pasty, Vitamin D-deprived skin? Actually they didn’t have pasty skin. In all honesty they all looked quite healthy and probably had a multitude of interests that didn’t include game controllers or a computer screen. Except for The Pest. He actually
was
pasty and Vitamin D-deprived and only cared about the next simulated blood spurt or car crash or whatever else he played. He was going to grow up to be an extraordinarily worrisome young man. Or a game designer. Or both.

“Hey, cool!” The Pest yelled, slowing his skateboard to a stop. “Whose dog?”

“We don’t know, he’s lost.” I said. The dog stood happily next to Ty, wagging his shaggy tail and panting gently. The dog looked around at everyone as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Urgh, he stinks!” Rory said. “Do you think we can keep him?”

“No!”

Ty laughed. “I guess this is your place then?”

“Unfortunately,” I muttered.

“Hi Poppy.” Dorkus waved at me from his bike. I grimaced.

“You’re a good boy,” Rory was on his knees, patting the dog roughly on his head. The dog lay down and rolled onto his back, kicking his long legs with ecstasy as Rory rubbed his belly.

“I better go,” Ty said, and held the twine out to me. I looked at it. I sure as hell wasn’t taking it.

“Why do you have twine in your bag, anyway?” I said.

He shrugged, took my hand and placed the twine in my palm. His hand was big and warm, and a little rough. His fingers were callused. He closed my hand over the twine and said: “Always good to be prepared.”

His pocket played a guitar solo and he fished out his cell phone. “Hello? Yeah. You’re there already?”

I wondered if it was his girlfriend.

“I’m coming. Dude, chill. I’m nearly there.”

Probably wasn’t.

“Yeah, alright. Bye.” He gave the dog a pat on his belly. “Is this okay?” Ty said to me. “Leaving the dog, I mean. I know you don’t want him.”

“We can have him!” Rory said.

I ignored him. “Are you sure you can’t take him? I mean he attacked me once already.”

“I know,” Ty said, backing away as if he was in a hurry. Or retreating before I convinced him to take the dog. Chicken. “I know, sorry I can’t help.”

“Don’t worry about it – we’ll look after him!”

“Rory, shut up,” I said.

“I’m really sorry. I’ve gotta go. Nice meeting you!”

“Hey – no – wait!”

And just like that he jogged away. Crossing my arms, I eyed off the dog as the boys lavished it with attention, unaware of its more unseemly tendencies. I didn’t want to keep it here. But what was I supposed to do, shoo it away and let it get hit by a car? Get rabies and eat someone’s toddler?

“Come on, dog,” I said, picking up the twine and giving it a pull. “We’re going inside.”

***

Chapter Five

To put an end to the flood of texts, I was just setting up a conference call with Mads and Van in my room to relive the whole messy event when I heard the front door open downstairs. I stiffened. I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. Not since Dad got home and listened to my story and looked at the dog and said “hmm” and then “wait until your mother gets home” before heading into the kitchen to start dinner. Not long after that I prised the dog’s tongue off Bex’s face and told her not to play with it, then got it a bowl of water and left Rory and his pervy pals in charge of entertainment. He seemed pretty harmless, really. Aside from the leg-humping and the slobber all over the five-year-old’s face, he’d walked on a lead pretty well and sat on his tail on the kitchen floor, panting at me. He was actually kind of cute.

But when a set of keys jingled and I heard the front door open, all hell broke loose. I was most definitely not the only one to hear the door open.

There was a guttural bark, then the sound of claws scrabbling on the floorboards. There was a bump, a crash, another bark, and then a scream. It was my mom who screamed. Couldn’t really blame her. Something heavy hit the ground. I had an idea of what
that
was about.

“Um, guys – I gotta go,” I said.

“What?” Mads shrieked. “But you haven’t told us anything!”

I disconnected and threw the phone on my bed before bolting out the door and down the stairs. Mads was going to kill me later, but I suspected she was going to have to get in line.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs it was…yep. Just as I expected.

Rory was standing over Mom who was twisted in a pathetic heap on the floor. Guess that was what I’d looked like. Rory’s friends stood in a pack in the living room doorway, gaping, their faces alternating between horror and delight, like they couldn’t decide which emotion to go with. Rory tried to pull the dog off Mom but he wouldn’t budge. I stepped around the cracked photo frame that was lying on the floor from the dog’s exuberant and unsteady gallop down the corridor, picked up the vase from the side table and pulled out the daisies and weeds Bex had picked as a present for Mom a couple of days ago, before dumping the water on the dog and my mom. The dog
on
my mom. He got off her and scurried down the hallway, as far from me and my torture device of uncomfortable wetness as he could get, running straight past Dad who strolled out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron with an amused expression on his face.

Mom didn’t even bother counting to ten. “What the hell is that thing doing here? Whose is it? Where did it come from?
Why is there a dog in my house
?”

An hour later we sat around the dinner table in silence. Silence except for the dog in the backyard that was alternating between barking and howling because it had been locked outside, alone. Mom was in a filthy mood he’d disappeared into the study and I could hear she’d unfolded the treadmill and was giving it a good workout, but not even after a long run and hot shower did she seem any happier.

“Right after work tomorrow, I’m taking that thing to the pound,” Mom said. Rory’s shoulders slumped.

“But Mo-om!”

Mom looked pointedly at Rory. “No buts. He’s not our dog. He’s probably lost and I bet his owners are worried sick about him.”

“He doesn’t have a collar or anything, I bet he doesn’t have a family,” Rory said.

“He does seem like a stray, Mom,” I said. “I mean I tried to get him to stop and wait, and lie down, he couldn’t even sit. He has like,
no
training,”

“Well we’ll find that out when we take him to the pound tomorrow,” Mom said. Dad walked in with a steaming bowl of vegetables in his oven mitted hands.

“No buts, Rory!”

“We could be his family,” Bex said.