Leftovers (12 page)

“I like it!” I exclaim. Anything that doesn't involve taking my photograph is fine with me.

Judy barks.

“Sarah, I'm so proud of you!” Dr. Fred interjects, reaching across the table to squeeze my arm.

He is proud of me. I can tell. And Dr. Fred's pride means way more to me than knowing my father would be proud. Because Dr. Fred's pride is so...uncomplicated.

Helen looks at her watch. “Yikes, it's getting late. My friends and I have to be pushing off. We're doing dinner in town this evening.” She grabs her purse off the back of her chair and rummages around inside. Extracting a business card and extending it to me, she says, “How about you spend the rest of the summer perfecting a set of recipes? Ten to fifteen should be plenty. We'll choose a few to start with.”

“Works for me.”

“I'll be back at my office in Toronto in two weeks. I'll draft a contract and have my assistant send it to your home address.” She locates a notepad in her purse, rips off a piece of paper and passes me a pen so I can write it down for her. “You'll want to have a parent look over the contract, maybe hire a lawyer to—”

“I...uh...already have a lawyer,” I mention, scribbling my Riverwood address on the paper and passing it back to Helen.

“That's...handy,” she muses, a grimace of concern flashing across her face for a nanosecond. Dr. Fred introduces all his community service teens as “volunteers,” so Helen may not know she just offered a contract to a juvenile offender.

I'm feeling a bit giddy, like Dr. Fred spiked my lemonade, though fat chance he did. “Just don't ask me to write any driving manuals,” I add, giggling.

“Yes. Well, then, Sarah,” Helen says, extending her hand once again. “I'll be in touch.”

Dr. Fred leaves to walk Helen back to the dock. When both are out of sight, I bound over to Judy and bury my face in her fur. Judy licks my ear. Dog drool seeps down my neck. “My recipes are going to be
famous
, Judy,” I whisper, ignoring the strands of dog hair poking their way into my mouth. Outside the kitchen window, through the loud buzz of the crowd, I can hear Sullivan laughing about something. “And I have a boyfriend, Judy. For a couple more weeks, anyway.”

Judy wiggles around happily, slurping my cheek.

I laugh. “And yes, you big hairball. I have you too.”

This is supposed to be my summer of punishment. What a joke.

Except the day's not over.

The day has been a huge success. Lots of sunshine. Lots of food. Oodles of Frisbee flying, good-natured barking and laughter. And the happy
ka-ching
of cash donations for the Camp Dog Gone Fun program. Dr. Fred is beaming.

By seven thirty, most of the dog-loving crowds have packed up and headed home. As I gear up to wash the final load of dirty serving bowls, I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Until the mayor of Gananoque, Dr. Fred's only no-show, decides to show up after all.

He pulls up to the dock in a cabin cruiser. Gawking out the open kitchen window, I see him pumping Dr. Fred's hand. As they cross the field to the lodge, the mayor, in a booming voice that carries across the island, apologizes for coming so late; he'd been tied up at a Girl Guide barbecue for the homeless.

“You think it was the Girl Guides or the homeless that tied him up?” Taylor whispers. She's standing on the porch with Brant and Nicholas and Johanna, divvying up
grounds-cleanup duties. I can hear them all clearly through the screen door.

“I wouldn't mind being tied up by a pack of Girl Guides.” Brant leers.

“You think the mayor brought any Girl Guide cookies with him?” Nicholas wonders.

“He's kind of cute,” Johanna says. I peek out the window and watch as she sashays down the porch steps and over to the mayor, swinging her hips in tight pink sweatpants with
HOT! HOT! HOT!
spelled out across the ass in glitter letters. She'd probably let the mayor tie
her
up if it would get her off Moose Island for the rest of the summer. She's had to do Poo Patrol the past eleven days in a row.

The mayor has come to Camp Dog Gone Fun with one of those oversized checks you see on telethons and lottery commercials. Enough cash for Dr. Fred to attack some much-needed renovations to the camp.

Mr. Mayor also has an entourage with him—a reporter and a photographer from the
St. Lawrence Livewire
, a regional gossip rag.

And they don't just want a photo of Dr. Fred grinning with gratitude beside a few of the old dogs wagging their tails with glee as the mayor presents his check. No, they want a big group shot. They want Dr. Fred and Victoria and Sullivan and all of the Camp Dog Gone Fun “volunteers” and all twenty-three dogs huddled together like a hockey team after winning the Stanley Cup.

I toss Judy a worried glance and wonder if the two of us have time to make a run for it. Maybe we could dash
upstairs and hide under Sullivan's bed until the mayor leaves the island. No, Judy won't fit. Maybe we could—

“Sarah! Come on out!” Sullivan yells through the screen door at me. “The mayor wants a picture. We'll be on the front page of the paper tomorrow!”

I wave a soapy yellow rubber glove at him. “Sorry. Busy.”

Sullivan opens the screen door and pokes his head in. “We can wait a few minutes.” He spies a plate of leftover brownies, grabs one and stuffs it into his mouth.

“No. Seriously, Sullivan. Go ahead without me,” I insist, nudging him back toward the door. Stealing a glance out the screen door, I see the photographer attach an elaborate flash to his camera and screw the whole works onto a tripod.

Sullivan swallows. “Come on, Sarah,” he chides, brushing brownie crumbs off his shorts.

“Can't.” I gesture to Judy sprawled on the kitchen floor like a bear rug, one sleepy eye closed after an afternoon of taste testing and trying to stay out of trouble, the other eye wide open, still keen to what's going on around her. “She's...resting.”

Sullivan wipes brownie crumbs off his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “So leave her where she is.”

I take off the yellow gloves and set them by the sink. I feel ridiculous arguing with them on, like I'm starring in a dish-liquid commercial. “She'll break the table if I leave her. It's not very sturdy. And she'll eat all the leftover cinnamon rolls. They're for breakfast tomorrow.”

“So lock her in the bathroom upstairs.”

“Sarah! Sullivan!” Victoria shouts from the porch. “Come on out. Everyone's waiting.”

“Let's go,” Sullivan says, stuffing another brownie in his mouth. (Ick. To think I let that mouth kiss me yesterday.)

“You go alone, Sullivan. I'm serious. I don't look good.”

This is absolutely true. I have flour and cornmeal in my hair, and god-only-knows-what dripped and splashed all over my shirt like a Jackson Pollock painting.

While a million imaginary red ants crawl around my rib cage, biting into my flesh, Sullivan chews his brownie and scrutinizes the multicolored blobs on my shirt. He laughs. “You look...scrumptious. Now, come on.” He holds his hand out for me.

I whack it away. “No! I'm not going out there.”

But it's no use. Sullivan's eyes twinkle like he just came up with a spectacular idea.

Oh no.

NONONONONONONO! I scream in my head. Except that Judy must have understood me, because she leaps to her feet, whimpering.

“Sullivan, I mean it!” I plead. “I—”

Sullivan lunges at me, laughing demonically. He grabs me around the waist, hoists me over his shoulder like a fifty-kilo bag of kibble and carries me kicking and screaming out the kitchen door, down the porch steps and out onto the field where everyone is assembled. They're all laughing as if they think Sullivan and I are having a gas, starring in some orchestrated stunt for everyone's amusement.

What happens next is all over in ten seconds, but it will play over and over in my nightmares for decades, I'm sure.

Maybe forever.

Somehow my thrashing legs knock over the photographer's tripod. He catches it mere seconds before his expensive camera crashes to the ground.

I puke down Sullivan's back, all the way to his redand-white-striped high-tops. Picture it. I'd recently eaten my fill of leftover potato salad and sliced watermelon.

Sullivan drops me.

“I'm so-ho-ho-ho-ho so-ho-ho-ho sorry,” he whispers, kneeling down to where I'm sprawled on the grass. Except he's not. He's laughing so hard he can barely talk.

“Fuck you, Sullivan!” I intend to scream, but only a garbled gasp escapes my mouth, punctuated by a final dribble of puke that slides off my chin onto the ground.

Around me, people are still laughing. The photographer has reassembled his camera and tripod. A powerful flash lights up the dusky field like a nuclear blast.

“Are you okay?” Sullivan asks. Suddenly, he's not laughing anymore.

I have no time to answer, because there's a loud crash in the kitchen, followed by Judy bursting through the screen door, one table leg dragging behind her. She races down the porch stairs, meeting the tripod and camera like a line-backer. The photographic equipment and the photographer go flying into the air. Judy gallops past the crowd at full
speed down to the dock. Without a moment's hesitation or a backward glance, even when the table leg snags on a rock and the leash breaks, she bounds off the wharf and splashes into the St. Lawrence River.

I jump up and run after Judy, wiping hot tears of humiliation away with my hands so I can see where I'm going. Already Judy is more than fifty feet from shore; at this speed she'll be shaking herself off on the mainland in less than twenty minutes. I race to the boathouse and toss a paddle and a life vest into the canoe.

“Sarah! Wait!” Sullivan is at my heels. “Let's take the motorboat.”

I jump into the canoe and push off, picking up the paddle, only barely resisting the urge to smash Sullivan over the head with it.

“Sarah. Please.” Sullivan kicks off his high-tops and takes off his shirt, using it to hastily wipe puke off the back of his shorts and legs.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Sullivan dashes into the boathouse for a second paddle and life vest. With a running start, ignoring Victoria's shouts to stop right there, he jumps off the wharf and
into the bow of the canoe before I can work up enough momentum to drown him in my wake.

“Sarah, I'm sorry!” Sullivan calls to me over his shoulder. “Don't be mad! I'll make it up to you! I'll—”

“Just shut the hell up and paddle!” I yell at his bony back.

“I shouldn't have picked you up right after you'd eaten!”

“You shouldn't have picked me up at all!”

“Oh, come on! I was just having a bit of fun,” he laughs. “I bet you didn't think a scrawny guy like me could carry you, did you?”

“I told you I didn't want to get my picture taken!”

“Nobody likes to get their picture taken—except maybe Johanna. But Dr. Fred needs publicity if he wants donations. And he needs donations to keep this place operating.”

“I don't care!” Except that, as pissed off as I am, I do care. And now I've wrecked everything for Dr. Fred, after he was so nice to me today.

“Every time you go into a store or use a bank machine you're being photographed,” Sullivan says.

“Don't remind me!”

“And someday you'll have your own cooking show on
TV
.”

“THE HELL I WILL!”

Judy whips her head over her shoulder, sees the canoe gaining on her and figures out that she's being chased. Good. My arms are getting tired. Maybe she'll just lead us back to shore the way she does after her usual evening swim.

But instead she bolts ahead, hanging a left and starting upriver, toward Kingston and the Great Lakes. At this pace, she'll be docking in Chicago sometime next week.

Sullivan and I put our shouting match on hold for a moment to focus on our paddling, and we manage to maneuver around Judy. The goal is to get her turned back toward Moose Island. But Judy shoots to the right again.

“JUDY!” I call, reaching into the front pocket of my shorts for one of the several lint-covered dog biscuits I keep there, the canine equivalent of spare change. I hold the biscuit out over the side of the canoe as Sullivan tries to steer us up and around to block Judy's progress.

“Judy, come!” I repeat.

But Judy does not come. Judy shoots me another look, one of fear now, and tries to bolt again, but she doesn't seem to know where to go.

“JUDY!” I scream. “COME!”

But Judy just whimpers and starts to thrash around.

Then, oh my god, she begins to sink, her gigantic black head slipping farther below the dark river with each small wave. In seconds, her eyes go wild with fear. Then they close. They open again a second later, full of resignation. Her head slips under the water and stays under. She bobs there, motionless, just under the water.

Without a moment's hesitation, my heart pounding, my breath coming in a series of gasps, I kick off my sneakers, pull off the long T-shirt and denim shorts that will weigh me down, and dive out of the canoe into the river.

“Throw me a life jacket!” I yell up at Sullivan when I surface.

“Uh...Sarah, should you be—”

“NOW!”

Summoning every ounce of my upper-body strength, I push the jacket down under the water and pull Judy's front paws through the armholes. I am relieved to see the foam neck rest lift her head out of the water. I blow hard on her face, and the big dog rears back and coughs out what seems like a bucket of water. She begins thrashing again. A paw hits my face. Her nails scratch my cheek.

“Toss me the other jacket too!” I yell at Sullivan.

I push the second life jacket down under Judy's rear end until her hind legs are poking through the armholes and her butt is floating.