The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [49]
“Two of them, in ski masks,” Sam’s pop said as I neared the front door.
“They pointed a gun at me!” his granny cried. “And they took all of our pills!”
I reached out and touched Sam’s back, but he flinched. “Didn’t anyone call the cops?” he said, and when they shrugged at him, still obviously in shock, Sam took off for the pay phone as if I wasn’t standing there.
And then I realized that if Junior had been to Sam’s place, then he’d have been to ours, too, and I worried about my parents. I walked (as fast as I could in two-inch heels) to our trailer and scanned a hundred mental images—Mom and Dad shot, sliced, hung, burnt, and beaten—but when I got through the door, I found them alert and watching The Late Show.
“Was Junior here tonight?”
My father stared at David Letterman. My mother said, “No.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked around the room, trying to see the gaps Junior would usually leave. The toaster was there. The heater was there. The microwave.
“I’ve been here all night and I didn’t see him,” my mother said.
“Well, he robbed #20 tonight,” I said. “And he stole Sam’s grandfather’s wheelchair.”
My mother looked at me sideways. “How was your prom? Isn’t it still early?”
“Mom! I just told you that Junior stole an old, handicapped man’s wheelchair! Don’t you care?” I stormed into my room to take the stupid dress off and get myself into a pair of jeans as fast as I could.
“How do you know he did it?” she asked. “I mean, it could be anyone, right?”
I walked into the bathroom to wipe off the stupid prom face I’d painted on, and then I saw it. The cigarette butt in the toilet.
“Did you hear me?” she yelled, aggressively. “Anyone could have done it!”
I poked my head around the faux wood accordion bathroom door. “Yeah. Sure. And so this is anyone’s cigarette butt in the bathroom, then, is it?”
I heard some cars arrive and went outside. Two cop cruisers were parked outside #20 with their lights on. When I got there, Sam was sitting on the steps talking to himself. When he saw me, he scowled.
“Are they okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked.
“Who would steal a wheelchair from two poor old people?”
I shook my head.
That’s the thing with drug addicts. They steal wheelchairs and hearing aids and walkers and canes and seeing-eye dogs, and I’m sure if Junior needed a fix that he would reach right into every one of those trailer-park old people and grab their pacemakers. Sam didn’t understand this, so he just looked at me and repeated the question.
“I mean, who would steal a wheelchair?”
The police never found out it was Junior who stole Pop’s chair on prom night, even though I found his cigarette butts outside three other robbed trailers and it was about the simplest puzzle there ever was.
After that night, Sam stopped dropping by to see me, which was a relief. The last thing I needed in my life was an overly possessive pseudo-boyfriend who couldn’t take a hint. I was less than a month from high school graduation and the fulfillment of a lifelong plan. I started taking double shifts at McDonald’s as the warmer nights approached. I had plenty to do without having to worry about a twentieth-century boy’s fragile feelings. Ugh. The mere thought of it made me want to gouge my own eye out.
As the school year wound down, I tried to get myself in the mood for what lay ahead. I did my final senior research paper for AP English on King Philip’s emerald—and concluded by blaming historians for misleading us into the belief that its whereabouts were a mystery. In the high times of privateering and piracy, we all knew where the emerald ended up. Well, at least I did, anyway.
I got my passport in the mail the same day I got my last report card. I’d aced finals and, as expected, I was crowned class valedictorian. I think my mother showed her pride by blinking