Leftovers (6 page)

Nah. I lay my paddle across the gunwales and take a deep breath. Besides, once I ditch him at the concert, Sullivan will know that I'm just using him. That I am not someone he should pursue even a basic, no-frills friendship with.

He deserves better than me.

Sullivan doesn't wait for an answer. “I called my dad today. He remembers you from school and agreed to come down to Gananoque that night and hang out with a guy he knows from his teachers' college days. He'll let me drive his car to the city and back.”

“And Victoria is okay with you going with me?”

“Sure, as long as I get the puzzle done first. That's our deal. She'll run us over to the mainland to hook up with Dad.
Then, as long as I call her every hour on the hour to let her know I'm still alive, we're cool.”

“I mean...she's okay with you going with
me
?” I ask. “One of the...”

“‘Volunteers'? Sure. She likes you, Sarah,” Sullivan says; then he laughs. “Your cuss fines are single-handedly funding this summer's supply of rawhide and tennis balls.”

“Very fucking funny. So why is she so overprotective?”

Chewing his lip, Sullivan points over my shoulder with his paddle. “Hey, watch out for that driftwood!”

I swivel back around to face front.

No driftwood.

“I don't see—”

“So...how about that pizza before the concert?” Sullivan persists.

Judy is leading the canoe by a good thirty feet. I speed up my stroke to close the gap, wondering about Sullivan's sudden evasiveness, relieved that he's not really the wide-open, brightly colored picturebook he always seems to be.

“Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“Pizza?”

“Uh...sure. Sounds...great.”

What choice do I have, anyway? I have to do whatever it takes to get into my father's restaurant this summer without my mother knowing. I should be glad that all Sullivan wants is help with his puzzle—and now pizza.

Except I am wrong. Sooo wrong. Because after canoeing around the island and putting away our paddles and life vests, Sullivan blindsides me.

He kisses me. Right there in the damp, musty-smelling darkness of the boathouse.

I am NOT cut out for teen romance. Kissing happens to other girls. Girls in novels with glossy pink covers. Girls with pretty clothes and bright smiles.

So why the hell am I kissing him back? Why is my heart pounding with excitement, not fear? Why does his mouth taste like warm cinnamon buns, not disgust?

It doesn't take much time for life to get back to normal. Meaning crappy.

Fifteen minutes later I've disentangled my tongue from Sullivan's, towel-dried Judy and settled her down in the barn. I am walking, a bit dazed, my lips still tingling, toward my cabin to change out of my splash-damp clothes before returning to the kitchen to slice up some banana bread for evening snack.

Brant yells up to me from the dock. He's sitting in his crappy tin can of a motorboat, about to leave for home. “Hey! Sarah-ha-ha! Get my cell phone? It's on my bunk.”

I hate—
hate
—him calling me Sarah-ha-ha. And I know that “please” would be too much to expect from Brant. But I mumble, “Yeah, sure,” since I'm going that way anyway.

Like everyone else here, Brant gets his own small cabin. Old Mr. Moose had originally built the five tiny sheds to house his summer guests and housekeeping staff. But unlike the other Camp Dog Gone Fun “volunteers,”
Brant only uses his private quarters to change clothes, blast music, lift weights between dog duties and—I suspect—pop steroids and admire his muscles in his tiny bathroom mirror.

I push open his cabin door (there are no locks at Camp DGF. Something to do with fostering trust, blah, blah, blah) and gasp at the mess. I'm no neat freak, but the crumpled chip bags, moldy crusts, Coke cans erupting with ants, wet towels, heaps of sour-smelling workout clothes...it's truly revolting.

It's only after I rifle through a pile of dog-eared
Sports Illustrated
magazines and cheesy-smelling socks on Brant's cot that I locate his cell phone, wedged under a crumpled beach towel thrown across his bare foam mattress. Brant's phone isn't the no-frills kind I have and rarely use (the only person who ever calls is my mother). His is an expensive model, one that texts, takes photos, records videos, plays Mp3s and would probably make you a grilled cheese sandwich if you asked it to.

Phone in hand, I turn to hightail it back out into the evening breeze, and my peripheral vision catches sight of an open magazine poking out from under Brant's cot. I nudge the magazine a few inches farther with my toe and gape down at the naked woman with fake boobs and fake hair and a fake smile sprawled on a white wicker beach chair.

I know that magazines like this one exist. And that guys like Brant read them—though “reading” is absolutely the wrong verb. And I know that if a grown woman wants to
take her clothes off for money, or the sick thrill of having guys like Brant jerk off to her naked image, it's not illegal.

But that doesn't stop me from clamping my hand over my mouth to avoid adding a layer of post-dinner puke to Brant's already filthy floor.

Shaky-legged and gulping oxygen, I finally make it back to the dock and toss Brant his phone.

“Took you long enough,” he says, catching it in one hand. He revs his boat's engine and takes off across the river before I can gather enough breath to tell him to go to hell.

My father might like the company.

At breakfast a few days later, Dr. Fred drops two books into my lap:
Loving Your Large-Breed Puppy
and
Dog Training for Dummies
.

I peer up from my blueberry pancakes. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

Dr. Fred's eyes sparkle with benevolence. “Thought they might help. With Judy.”

Oh, come on. No one will ever write a book to help Judy. Think about it; even the title would be overwhelming.
That Crazy Bitch: Coping with the Oversize, Overactive, Overaffectionate and Underachieving She-pup from Hell.

But Dr. Fred looks so enthusiastic and...hopeful.

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

Before it's time to start slicing and dicing veggies for the lunch salad, I take Judy down to the beach for her
morning aerobics. A solid hour of stick fetching in the river is the only activity that exhausts her. It frees me up to cook lunch while she curls up under the kitchen table like a hibernating black bear.

Judy and I have developed a stick-throwing routine: As soon as we get to the beach, Judy bounds off along the shore to find a stick of appropriate width and length. Then she drops it at my feet. I pick it up, take random aim and whip it as far as I can out into the St. Lawrence. I don't worry much about the current; it's not all that strong this close to the mainland, plus I'm pretty sure Judy could swim up Niagara Falls if she ever got the opportunity.

Judy dashes out into the river after the stick, like a lifeguard after a drowning victim. She fetches the stick, bounds back out of the water, drops it at my feet and shakes, spraying water and sand and green river slime all over me.

If I'm not quick enough to begin the routine again, Judy nudges me into action. Nudges me the way a speeding snowplow would “nudge” Frosty. Resistance is futile.

Today, during the short periods when Judy is out in the water retrieving, I plunk down on one of the granite boulders littering the shoreline and flip through Dr. Fred's books. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something. I just hope that Dr. Fred won't mind a few water-warped, sand-gritty pages when I return them.

The basic premise of both books, I find out right away, is that to deal with the “difficult” dog, the human has to accept that he or she is not the dog's playmate. So when it comes to Judy, I must promote myself to head honcho.
Alpha dog.
I
have to be the one to initiate the stick game, not Judy.
I
have to enter or exit the kitchen ahead of Judy—not hold the door open for her, letting her charge in first.
I
have to exercise leadership and take more responsibility for Judy's behavior.

The theory makes sense, but I don't know if I'm up for it. My whole life I've been told what to do. Turn to page sixteen, do problems six through eleven, the school told me. So I did. Take off those panties or the dog dies, my father told me. So I did. After my father died, I wondered if it was safe to start standing up for myself. Taking the initiative. Say cheese, Tanner told me. I told him to piss off, and then I stole his car.

What did my efforts get me? Community service.

But like it or lump it, Judy's success or failure this summer rests with me. And seriously, how hard can it really be to teach Judy to follow some basic commands like
Sit
,
Down
and
Stay
? If Rocky, the eight-week-old blind Pomeranian, can learn to do it, and if Henry, the fifteen-year-old three-legged German shepherd, can do it, and if Delia, the deaf, sock-eating Dalmatian, can do it, why can't Judy do it?

Judy brings her stick to me again, drops it at my feet and nudges me so hard that I tumble sideways off the boulder. She gallops back over to the shoreline in anticipation of my next toss and barks four times.

Judy telling me what to do. As usual.

“Forget it, Judy,” I mumble, picking myself up off the beach and brushing dirt and pebbles off my arms and legs. “Today
I'm
in charge.”

Ignoring the stick at my feet, I set the books on the boulder and take ten steps backward, away from Judy.

“Judy, come,” I say.

Judy just stands at the water's edge, tongue lolling, entire rear end wagging, waiting for the stick.

“Judy! Come!” I command, more firmly this time.

Judy cocks her head. Her bushy right eyebrow shoots up questioningly.

“JUDY! COME!”

A group of gulls lands on a boulder a hundred feet down the shore. Judy forgets all about the stick and me and charges off after the big white birds, barking as if a
UFO
has just landed on the beach.

“You stupid mutt,” I grumble, watching Judy pick up speed as the gulls, screeching, take off over the river. Shaking my head in disgust—at Judy or my own incompetence, I'm not sure which—I plunk back down on the boulder and keep reading.

Use treats to reward positive behavior
, the book says.

That I can manage.

“Judy!” I bellow down the beach after her. “COOKIE!”

Aha! Judy stops in her tracks and whips her head toward me. At least the stupid mutt isn't deaf. I feel a surge of success. But then Judy notices that all I'm holding up is a mini-Milkbone, just like all the mini-Milkbones I've been feeding her all morning, one for each time she sticks her soggy nose into my shorts pocket. She turns her attention back to the birds.

I slam the book shut and let my shoulders sag in defeat.
I've failed at dog training, or Judy training in any case. “It's not rocket science, for shit's sake!” I can imagine my mother chastising me. And she'd be right, because I remember, back when I was six or seven, getting Brownie to sit for Cheerios, carrot slices, little bone-shaped kibbles— he wasn't picky. But Brownie was a smart dog. A calm dog. A good dog.

Not a maniac like Judy.

I know that Dr. Fred expects more of me. I know that if I go to him and tell him I can't do it, he'll just grin and give me a pep talk about not giving up on Judy—and myself— so soon.

And it's not like I have the actual option of throwing in the towel anyway. I'm stuck at Camp Dog Gone Fun for the rest of the summer. Judy is my punishment, my community service. My work here isn't necessarily supposed to be easy—or fun. That's what Victoria would say. So I guess I'll just have to up the ante with Judy, start from scratch.

Wait a minute.
From scratch.

A lightbulb—an
oven
light—pops on in my head.

I wedge the last of the crusty lunch dishes into the rattly dishwasher, slam the door shut and push the ON button. I've tied Judy to the shady side porch and tossed her a rawhide loop to chew on. It's the size of a mountain-bike tire; it should keep her busy for at least an hour.

Time to get to work. Hi-ho, hi-ho, as Nicholas goes around camp singing.

Into a big mixing bowl, I scoop a few cups of whole-wheat flour, a cup of cornmeal and a big bowl of leftover oatmeal from breakfast. I crack three eggs into the mix, pour in a monster can of mixed vegetables and add just enough salt-free chicken broth to make a nice pliable dough.

Victoria rushes past me on her way outside for her midafternoon jog. She's got a trail worn around the perimeter of the island. Victoria does fifteen laps of this trail every single day—heat wave, downpour, impending hurricane, nothing stops her. Sullivan told me that during the winter months, when his mother and Dr. Fred live
on the mainland, Victoria runs along Highway 2 every morning, dodging the transport trucks and potholes and roadkill. I'm sure some people would call it dedication and stamina. Probably the same people who gave Victoria all those framed
Counselor of the Year
awards she's hung around the lodge as a reminder that she's “here for us.”