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“I’ve got my yoga bag in the car,” I say. “I’ll bring it in, tell Rhonda your clothes are all wet. You can clean yourself up in the bathroom.”
Alex gives me a quick once-over and I know what she’s thinking. Her legs are probably as long as my whole body.
“Wear high-waters or have a wet ass all day. Your choice,” I say.
Alex considers this for a second. “I’ll wear your clothes. But first, would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Sneak me a tranquilizer for him. If he’s unreasonable when the vet gets here, it won’t go well.”
It wouldn’t be hard. The key to the meds hangs on the wall right next to the cabinet, a silent testimony to how much Rhonda trusts her volunteers.
Hard? No.
Totally legal? Er . . . I’m not clear on that.
But the exhausted sound that escapes the dump as he settles onto his cot, followed by the pathetic scraping of his tongue over his paw in an attempt to get to a hurt he can’t understand, undoes me.
“Be right back,” I say.
It’s quick and easy. I sneak the pill to Alex wrapped in a slice of ham I pilfered out of my own lunch. When I hand it to her through the wire, our fingers touch briefly, slippery with grease, and I think: This is how you become friends with Alex Craft.
“Dogs are really good at taking the treat and spitting out the pill,” I say, watching through the fence as the dump chows down. “Make sure he gets the whole thing.”
“She,” Alex says.
“What?”
“It’s a girl,” she says, reaching a tentative hand out to the dump, who growls again, low and threatening.
“Either way, it has teeth,” I say. “Watch it.”
“It’s okay, girl,” Alex says, her voice entirely different than when she speaks to me or Rhonda. It’s melodious and gentle, with an undercurrent of emotion I wouldn’t have dreamed her capable of. “I won’t hurt you,” she says, and the dog hesitantly sniffs the ham. It disappears in a few seconds, hunger outweighing caution.
The dump bows her head, watching Alex’s hand come nearer until it rests on her crown and they both relax, the tension slipping out of the cage until the only thing I can hear is them breathing, in unison.
10. JACK
It has been two weeks since I talked to Alex, two weeks since she dropped my best friend to the ground at my feet. Two weeks that I’ve wished every girl I saw, talked to, or touched was her. But my dad likes to say that you can shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one gets full first. And he’s totally right.
I’ve told myself to forget Alex, which shouldn’t be all that hard since we’ve only shared a few sentences, only held gazes for as long as a lightning bug can hold a burn. And I’ve been doing okay at taking my own advice, with a little bit of Branley’s help one weekend when her parents were out of town and Adam wasn’t answering his phone. I definitely did not have Alex on my mind when Adam realized he’d missed her calls and I had to run out the back, sweat sticking my T-shirt to my shoulder blades, Branley trying to finger-comb the sex-bump out of her hair before she answered the door.
So I’ve done a good job of clearing my mind of this girl that I’ve got no business thinking about anyway when she appears out of the rain. I’m coming around the bend of the sharpest curve in the whole county when I see someone walking, shoulders hunched, and I remember passing a car that had slid off the road a ways back.
I slow down so I don’t hit them, but I stop because I see that the person is unmistakably female. I would stop anyway—just to be clear—but there’s more of an incentive when the rain has plastered her already tight clothing to a very fit body. I swing alongside, roll down the passenger window, and say, “Need some help?”
I don’t realize it’s Alex until she raises her head, dark hair hanging in wet sheets on either side of her face. She looks at me carefully, as if she’s trying to remember who I am (it hurts more than I want to admit), and then there’s the phantom of a smile.
“Jack?”
She says it quietly, as if she’s either unsure that’s my name, or like she’s been waiting for a chance to talk to me and can’t quite comprehend that I’m actually in front of her. I hope like hell it’s the second option, because that’s exactly how I feel.
“Yeah,” I say. “You okay?”
I realize the second they’re out of my mouth those words are both the last thing I said to her two weeks ago, and the single most asinine thing I can say to anyone who is drenched and walking away from a broken-down vehicle. I reach across my passenger seat and pop the door. “Want a ride home?”
Alex chews her bottom lip for a second, and it kills me because I know she’s wondering if she can get in the car with me and not end up in a hole in the woods like her sister. I don’t say anything. It’s her call.
