Leftovers Page 14

  He goes back around his desk and sits down, looking a little puzzled.

  “It’s not the thunder,” I say. “Or even the lightning. Not really. It’s the flash.”

  Dr. Fred scratches his chin.

  “The flash reminds Judy of the camera. You know that night at the Dog Daze Festival? The photographer was taking flash pictures.”

  Dr. Fred picks up my train of thought. “I think you’re on to something, Sarah.”

  I can’t answer. I can’t even nod. I just sniff again, biting my lip, trying not to bawl, to draw even more attention to myself.

  Just the way Taylor and I had recognized each other for what we are, Judy had me pegged from that first day, when she charged through the kitchen and nailed me to the floor with those big slurpy kisses.

  Judy has leftovers too.

  Only in her case, they’d be called a doggy bag.

  Dr. Fred looks frantically around his office. He runs over to a shelf and returns to my side with a box of Kleenex. “Sarah, Sarah, what’s wrong?” he asks. “Judy will be fine, especially with you here to help her. Sarah? Should I call Victoria? Would you like a drink of water?”

  “I’m okay,” I croak. “Can I go now?”

  Dr. Fred rubs the bridge of his nose as I rise and make a beeline for the office door. “Well, if you’re sure. I don’t want...” He reaches back into his desk drawer. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some candy?”

  “I’m fine. I...I should be starting lunch,” I explain, backing out the office doorway before Dr. Fred can change his mind.

  Two steps out the door, I stop in my tracks. I step back into the office. “Dr. Fred?”

  “Yes, Sarah.”

  “Judy’s coming home with me at the end of the summer. I’ll adopt her. I know Mom won’t mind.” I don’t know anything of the sort, but she owes me.

  Dr. Fred grins. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  THIRTY - TWO

  Grrrrr. September.

  Composting leftovers isn’t an overnight fix. I haven’t suddenly moved to la-la land. But it’s fair to say that things are moving forward.

  School starts on a hot and rainy Tuesday. I’ve had my hair cut and it feels frizzy. My jeans are stuck to my legs with sweat. I’ve just walked into my first class to discover I’ve landed Doris the Demented for grade twelve home-room and that the school computer has scheduled me for chemistry, physics, algebra and bio, all in the first semester, boom, boom, boom, boom.

  Nothing has changed in the seat behind me: Jeff Grenville is still drumming Pink Floyd and Def Leppard anthems on his desktop with his thumbs.

  Sullivan is two seats up on the right, bent over his class schedule, while Doris the Demented copies down the seating plan. He has art, gym, medieval history and drama this semester.

  “You big suck,” I said to him earlier, when we were assigned our lockers.

  “Big and tall suck,” he laughed, puffing out his chest.

  It’s true: Sullivan is starting to look too big for his desk, the way the other seventeen-year-old guys in class do. He went to the doctor last week for his annual checkup and found out that a) he’s still cancer-free and b) he’s grown three inches over the summer. This was confirmed a few days ago when we ran into Brant at Riverwood Plaza. He was in town visiting a relative.

  “Hey!” Brant bounded across the restaurant to Sullivan and me. “It’s Chef Boyar-Dog Biscuit and her boyfriend.” He sized Sullivan up. “I think you’ve grown, Stretch. You’re almost tall enough now to sniff my pits.”

  Anyhow, Victoria thinks Sullivan’s first growth spurt in four years is a fluke—or a miracle.

  Please. It’s my cooking.

  Back in Doris the Demented’s class, Sullivan swivels in his desk every few minutes and grins at me in a way that makes me want to melt into the floor and laugh out loud at the same time. But when I see him scrawl his name on the attendance sheet that’s being passed around, my jaw drops onto my desk. Then again, I should have known.

  “Hey! Sullivan!” I whisper up to him.

  “Hi!” He turns and waves.

  “You’re left-handed!” It’s amazing the things I’ve been noticing now that Sullivan’s crazy shoes, and my own scared and scheming reflection in his eyes, are no longer distracting me from who he really is.

  “Cool, man! So was Jimi Hendrix,” Jeff pipes up from behind me, giving Sullivan an impressed nod over my shoulder.

  I swear Sullivan will grow another inch by tomorrow just from having the most hard-core dude in our school call him “man.”

  At lunch, he and I walk the few blocks to my house to feed Judy—and ourselves—and to toss a Frisbee around in the backyard. My mother doesn’t leave for work until after 2:00PM, so there will be no making out.

  Not that Sullivan and I will ever become one of those school couples who spend every spare second between classes grabbing each other’s asses and sucking each other’s tongues. Because, face it, I’ll never be an exhibitionist. Starting next week, Sullivan has volleyball practice and musical auditions and the multicultural festival and God-knows-what-else to work on at lunch and after school.

  Just so I don’t end up sitting alone in the library, reading paperbacks, while Sullivan is out scratching a dozen items off his life’s to-do list every hour (as long as he doesn’t start adding other girls’ names to that to-do list, I’m fine with it), I let myself be coerced by Sullivan’s father—advisor to all non-sporting, non-arts extracurriculars—to lead this year’s cooking club.

  “I hear you’re a wonderful cook, Sarah.” Mr. Vickerson corners me outside the bio lab before period four.

  “Uh...I mostly bake dog biscuits these days.”

  “That’s too bad. The cooking club cooks for charity. Bake sales, pizzas, stuff like that.”

  “Which charity?”

  “You get to decide.”

  “Camp Dog Gone Fun?” I blurt out before remembering that Dr. Fred is the reason Mr. Vickerson is divorced.

  He shrugs. “Fine by me.”

  My brain flashes to a poster tacked onto a bathroom wall in the city the night Sullivan and I went to the Ratgut concert.

  “Or how about using some of the money to raise awareness around school about the Kids Help Phone?” I suggest. Because, face it, not every kid’s “Uncle Joe” dies like mine did. Most kids need more than a stroke of luck to make the abuse stop.

  “Wonderful idea!” Mr. Vickerson says, tapping a pen against his clipboard. “So I can mark you down?”

  “Sure, but no yearbook photos, okay?”

  I’m not sure how much he knows about me, but it’s enough for him to say, “Not if you don’t want one.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  Don’t hold your breath. Then again, now that my father’s despicable Polaroids are gone, my life seems more open-ended. The possibility of me changing my mind about photography isn’t necessarily a given, but it is an option.

  “Maybe,” I say as I take a step toward class. All I need on Day One is a detention for being late.

  “Oh, Sarah?” Mr. Vickerson is rooting around in the canvas briefcase he carries between classes. He extracts a small paper bag. “Pass this on to Sullivan when you see him.”

  “Will do,” I choke, stuffing the paper bag into my backpack and running into bio while Mr. Vickerson stands there chuckling.

  I’m pretty sure it’s condoms in the bag. Mr. Vickerson has given Sullivan eleven boxes since he arrived home from Moose Island and broke the news to his father that I am his girlfriend. Sullivan hasn’t bothered telling his dad that we aren’t actually having sex yet—he still has all the condoms Brant gave him too—because he’s hoping that we will be sooner rather than later.

  Sullivan laughed last night when I was over at his house while Mr. Vickerson attended a school board meeting. “Sarah, don’t you know what a tragedy it will be if I survive cancer only to die of sexual frustration?”

  Doesn
’t he get what a big step it is for me just to slide into third base by candlelight?

  Sullivan does get it. Mostly. A typical pre–make-out conversation goes like this:

  “One candle, Sullivan. Not fifteen!”

  “Ten?”

  “Two.”

  “Seven?”

  “Two. Final answer.”

  A few days ago, with a written recommendation from Dr. Fred in my hand, I walked across town with Judy to offer my services at the local veterinary clinic. I want to volunteer behind the scenes: taking the boarded dogs for walks, playing with kittens, talking to parrots. I want to get a feel for the everyday workings of an animal hospital, to see if I’ve really got the guts to work with animals for a living.

  Turns out that one of the hospital’s weekend receptionists left last week to go back to university. Pre-vet at Guelph. Given my experience at Camp Dog Gone Fun and my glowing reference from Dr. Fred, they hired me on the spot to replace her. And I get paid! Not much, but it’ll be nice to give up my shifts at Doughy Donuts and still have some cash on hand to go out with Sullivan and buy ingredients for my dog biscuit experiments. (My mother made me put the promised payment from Helen at Tricks for Treats, Inc., straight into my university fund. Boring, but necessary, since my father’s restaurant is finally on the market, but so far no takers. Bad karma, you think?)

  I make a huge spaghetti dinner for my mother and Tanner to celebrate Tanner’s popping of the big question last weekend. Mom said yes.

  Thank God or Matthew McConaughey, because planning her wedding takes her mind off me. After I came home from Camp Dog Gone Fun, I’d hear her roaming the house late at night, mumbling to herself, asking the furniture and the walls if I will ever forgive her for not seeing through my father, oblivious to the fact I already have forgiven her. (At least that’s what I tell her. And myself.) She also worries out loud about Sullivan and me. About whether one of us will get hurt when it’s time to leave for university. About whether she should do something about us spending so much time up in my room after dark. About whether she should be grateful that I’m not like those girls she saw on Dr. Phil a few weeks back, out walking the streets in fishnets, spreading their legs for crack.

  “Sarah?” Mom says, wiping her mouth on a napkin.

  “Yeah.”

  “This sauce is even better than...well, let’s just say it’s the best sauce I’ve ever eaten.”

  Yay, Mom. There will be no leftovers tonight.

  Tanner seconds the motion, pushes back his chair and carries his empty plate to the dishwasher. His days of eating Hungry Man dinners are so over.

  “You ready?” he asks me.

  Tanner, of all people, is teaching me to drive. He takes me to the Canadian Tire parking lot after hours to practice. Judy comes along on these test drives—somehow her hot breath in my ear as she hangs her big hairy head over the back of the driver’s seat is reassuring, not distracting. Tanner doesn’t complain about the doggy smell or hairs in the backseat of his new car. As far as I can tell, his only problem with Judy is her insistence on licking his face every time she sees him.

  Tanner never asks when I’m going for my license. He knows it’s not about the driving for me. It’s about the photo ID. But it’s nice to know that he’s making sure I’ll pass when and if the time is ever right. (Or, at the very least, if I’m ever tempted to steal his car again, I won’t crash it.)

  He says if I ever change my mind about working at the clinic or writing cookbooks, I can come work for him at Canadian Tire.

  “You think I have an aptitude for selling gardening tools and plumbing supplies?” I ask.

  “I think you have an aptitude for whatever you set your mind to, Sarah.”

  Tomorrow is picture day, I remember as I reach over Judy’s bulk to switch off my bedside lamp. (Our sleepovers are nightly now. I need a bigger bed.)

  Mom says that I don’t have to show up to school in the morning. That I don’t have to sit for a picture just to prove to her or Sullivan or anyone else that I’m okay now.

  Because chances are I’m not okay. Not yet. Maybe I’ll never be able to “Say cheese!” Maybe it will have to be enough that I make a fantastic three-cheese omelet.

  But I’m going to show up to school and try it anyway, and just hope that I don’t upend any tripods. I’m going to wear my unofficial Camp Dog Gone Fun sweatshirt, the one that Judy and the other dogs walked over with paint-covered paws on everyone’s last day on Moose Island. It’s not really classy. The Riverwood High School fashion police will be on high alert.

  But I’m thinking it will boost my courage. I never had the courage to tell anyone about my father and the Polaroids, but I’ll do whatever it takes to find the courage to move forward with my life.

  I know I shouldn’t recommend unlawful behavior as a way to get ahead, but, well...it worked for me. Moose Island is where I got what we at Camp Dog Gone Fun call a new leash on life.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Sarah Harvey and the rest of the wonderful team at Orca, whose expertise brought this book to life.

  Heather Waldorf was born in Ottawa and raised in small-town eastern Ontario. She now lives in Toronto with Moose, a twelve-year-old golden retriever. Heather is addicted to green tea, jigsaw puzzles, mystery novels and the TV show Bones. Also a lover of the great outdoors, she’s never written a novel that doesn’t, at some point, put the main character in a canoe. Her previous novels for teens include Fighting the Current, Grist andTripping.