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
