Anything For You

It helped. The sky became blue again, and Colleen’s shirt was pink. And bloodstained. The town siren went off, such a good sound...but so far away, it seemed.

“They’re coming. Just hang on. Help is on the way,” Colleen said. She sounded way too adult. Tears were streaming down her face, and her lips were trembling.

There was a bang of a door, and Connor looked over. Jessica Dunn’s father had come outside. “What did you kids do to my son?” he asked, staggering a little, and Connor couldn’t help feeling bad for Jessica. Everyone knew her parents were drunks.

“Get that fucking dog inside!” Colleen shouted.

Yikes. He’d never heard her swear before. It made him think that his face was pretty much gone, and he might in fact be dying.

Jessica pushed her little brother aside, finally, then bent down and picked up the dog. It was heavy, Connor could tell. Connor knew.

“Chico!” her brother screamed. “Don’t take Chico away!” He ran after Jessica, punching her on the back with his fists, but she went into the trailer—the rattiest, dirtiest one—and closed the door behind her.

Then Levi Cooper’s mother came out, a toddler on her hip, and seeing Connor, ran over to him. “Oh, my God, what happened?” she said, and Connor realized he was shaking, but at least there was a nice grown-up here now.

“The Dunns’ dog attacked him.” Colleen said, her voice breaking. “It came out of nowhere.”

“God,” Mrs. Cooper said. “I’ve told them that dog is a menace. You just lie still, honey.” She patted Connor’s leg.

It was weird, lying there, Mrs. Cooper telling him not to move, Colleen’s sweatshirt pressed against his throbbing face, the Dunns standing in their yard. The father was loud and kept saying things like “That dog wouldn’t hurt a fly,” and “Why were those kids in my yard anyway?” and Colleen was holding his hand too hard.

When the ambulance did come, it was both embarrassing and such a relief he almost cried. There was fuss and questions, gauze and radio. “Minor child, age twelve, attacked by dog,” Mr. Stoakes said into the radio. Minor child. Cripes. Everyone was shooting dirty looks at the Dunns.

They put a neck brace on Connor and packed him onto a gurney. Mrs. Cooper said she’d called Connor’s mom, and she’d meet him at the hospital. Colleen rode in the front of the ambulance, sobbing.

In the ER, he was told he was very lucky, and that it could’ve been so much worse. He ended up with eleven stitches in his jaw, eight under his eye. “Don’t worry about the scar,” said the hip young doctor who was doing the job. “Chicks love scars.” Another sixteen stitches in his arm, but it was the bite on his face that was the big concern. A bump on his head, road rash on his back where his shirt had ridden up. He was a mess, in other words. Everything stung, throbbed or burned.

Mom was weepy all that night. Connor was woozy from the pain meds. Colleen made him a get-well card without any insults, which made Connor think he must look worse than he realized. “You saved me,” he told her, and she burst into tears.

“I didn’t,” she said. “I tried, but I couldn’t.”

“It ran away, though.”

“Jessica threw a rock at him. Got him right in the head.”

Huh. He was too bleary to think about it further. Good aim, though.

His father was icy with fury. “Those fucking white-trash scumbags,” he said, peering into Connor’s face, then got on the phone in his study and didn’t come out until Connor was in bed. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, putting his hand on Connor’s shoulder. Suddenly, the dog bite felt worth it. “You were very brave, I heard.”

“It was scary.”

Crap. Wrong answer. He should’ve said something about it not being a big deal. Sure enough, the hand was withdrawn. “It could’ve been worse, though,” Connor added quickly. “At least it wasn’t Colleen.”

Because if something happened to his sister, Connor would’ve killed the dog himself. The flash of rage and terror was unexpected.

“Tomorrow we’re going to see the Dunns,” Dad said.

“Oh, Dad, no.” The memory of Jess lugging the dog into the house... There was something wrong with that image, but Connor couldn’t say what it was.

“You have to man up in situations like this,” his father said. “I’ll be with you. Don’t worry. They owe you an apology.”

The next day, sure enough, Dad made him get into the Porsche and go back to West’s Trailer Park. His face was swollen and sore under the bandages, and his arm ached. The last place he wanted to be was here.

Dad knocked on the door, hard. Jessica answered, her eyes flickering over Connor’s face. She didn’t say anything. A TV blared in the background, one of those court shows with a lot of yelling.

“Are 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 backpack, not like the one Colleen and her friends had, cheery plaid backpacks with their initials sewn on, extra padding on the shoulder straps.

Then she turned around. “What do you want?” she said. Her eyes were cold.

“I...I just wanted to see how your brother was doing.”

She didn’t answer. The wind gusted off Keuka, smelling of rain.

“I guess he’s still pretty sad,” Connor said.

“Uh...yeah,” she said, like he was the stupidest person on earth. He did feel that way. “He loved that dog.”

“I could tell.”

“And Chico never bit anyone before.”

Connor had no answer for that.

Jessica stared at a spot past Connor’s left ear. “My father said that in most cases, Chico would get another chance, but since Pete O’Rourke told the mayor what to do, our dog is dead now.” She cut her eyes to his. “Davey hasn’t stopped crying. He’s too upset to go to school, and he’s wet the bed every night this week. So that’s how he’s doing, Connor.”

She made his name sound like a curse word.

“I’m really sorry,” he whispered.

“Who cares what you think, O’Rourke?” She turned and trudged away, her footsteps scratching in the gravel, the sole of her shoe flopping.

He should let her go. Instead, he ran up and put his hand on her shoulder. “Jessica. I’m—”

She whirled around, her eyes filled with tears, fist raised to hit him. Jess got into fights all the time, usually with the oafs on the football team, and she could hold her own. But she paused, and in that second, he saw the past week written on her face, the sadness and anger and fear and helplessness. The...the shame. He saw that she was tired. That there was a spot of dirt behind her left ear.

“You can hit me,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“I’ll pop your stitches.”

“Punch me in the stomach, then,” he said.

Her fist dropped. “Leave me alone, Connor. Don’t talk to me ever again.”

Then she turned and walked off, her head bent, her blond hair fluttering in the breeze, and it felt like someone was ramming a broom handle through the middle of Connor’s chest.

She was so beautiful.

A lot of girls were pretty—Faith Holland and her red hair, Theresa DeFilio and her big brown eyes, Miss Cummings in the library, who didn’t seem old enough to be a grown-up. Even Colleen was pretty, sort of, when she wasn’t annoying him.

But Jessica Dunn was beautiful.

Connor felt as though he’d just stepped on a bluebird, crushing its fragile, hollow bones.

CHAPTER THREE

Eleven years before the proposal...

WHEN JESS WAS very little, before Davey, her parents had taken her camping once. Real camping, in a tent patched with duct tape, blankets making a nest on the ground. She had loved it, the coziness of the tent, the smell of nylon and smoke, her parents drinking beers and cooking over the fire. Had it been Vermont? Michigan, maybe? It didn’t matter. There’d been a path down to a lake, and the stars were a heavy swipe of glitter across the inky sky. She got seventeen mosquito bites, but she didn’t even care.

That was it for vacations.

When the senior class trip to Philadelphia was announced, everyone had gone wild with excitement. They’d be staying overnight, seeing the sights, then given four precious hours of freedom to wander. Jeremy Lyon, the newest, hottest addition to their class, had an uncle who wanted to take Jer and all of his friends out for dinner. There was talk of going to the Reading Terminal Market, which was filled with places to eat. The Museum of Art, so everyone could run the stairs like Rocky. Everyone wanted to get a cheesesteak sandwich.

The trip cost $229.

Jessica had been to New York City on the sixth-grade class trip, but it was just for the day. She was pretty sure her teacher had paid her fee so Jess could go.

But in Philly, they’d be staying in the city, and the thought of it made her heart bounce like a rubber ball. Based on those five hours in Manhattan, she was pretty sure she loved cities.

Her parents didn’t have $229 for field trips, though they might have it for booze. Asking them didn’t even cross her mind; she had her own money saved, squirreled away in a hole in the wall behind her bed, secured in a little tin box she’d found by the creek that ran behind the trailer park. At eighteen, Jess wasn’t naive; she knew her mom was a helpless alcoholic. Powerless was the word used at Al-Anon. Her father was less extreme, but he was cunning and sneaky. Either parent would use her money for themselves, no matter how you cut it.

So she hid her savings. She’d wait until the house was empty then sneak her tip money and pay into the red tin. Her parents generally didn’t go into her room, and they sure didn’t move the bed away from the wall to clean or anything.

She’d go on the trip. She’d room with Tiffy and Angela Mitchum, maybe sneak out with Levi...maybe for a walk, maybe for sex, though she often felt like that was habit more than anything for the both of them.

Growing up in the trailer park with Tiffy and Levi and Asswipe Jones—born Ashwick, and really, did his mother hate children?—it bonded people. They were the have-nots, some having less than others. You recognized each other, knew the strategies of eating a big lunch at school, because school lunches were free if you were poor enough. You knew how to glue the soles of your shoes when they started to come off, how to keep an eye on the Salvation Army thrift shop. You might even know how to shoplift.

Things like ski trips or island vacations, dinners out and hotel stays...that was foreign territory for the Dunns. Bad enough that Jess’s father couldn’t keep a job, and Mom had four prescriptions for Vicodin from four different doctors. Add to basic poverty Davey’s special programs and doctor’s appointments and new meds that might help with his outbursts but were never covered by Medicaid...there was always less than nothing.

But Jess had almost a thousand dollars saved. Her job at Hugo’s earned her more than her father made, and when Davey needed a helmet so he wouldn’t hurt himself during a head-banging rage, she was the one who’d paid for it. The private summer program that gave him something to do—away from their parents—ditto. His clothes, bought new, also funded by her, because while she’d been able to handle the middle school mean kids who’d make fun of her wearing Faith Holland’s hand-me-downs, Davey deserved better. He already had a big strike against him; he wasn’t going to wear used clothes, too. She bought groceries and special vitamins that one doctor thought might help raise his IQ. She paid the gas bill last March when the cold just wouldn’t let go and they had no heat, and she’d paid for the repair on the crappy old Toyota that got her to and from work.

Even so, she’d managed to stash $987.45 in the three years she’d been working at Hugo’s and, for once, she was going to spend some of it on herself. She was a senior, and college was out of the question. For one, she couldn’t leave Davey, and for two, well, she had neither the money nor the grades for a scholarship. She’d try to take a class at Wickham Community College, but her plans for the future were pretty much her plans for today. Work. Take care of Davey. Keep her parents from getting into too much trouble, and when that failed, bailing them out or paying their fines.

But this trip...something in her rose up at the thought of it, something bright and clean. She could see another part of the country. Picture a future, magical version of herself, working in the city, living in a townhouse, holding down a great job. No parents, just her and Davey. The Mid-Atlantic. It sounded exotic, so much cooler than western New York.

Whatever the case, she ran all the way home from the bus stop, fueled by excitement and...well, happiness.

“Hey, honey-boy,” she said as she came into the kitchen, bending to smooch Davey’s head, then frowned. “Did you cut your own hair again?” It was practically shaved in spots, making it look like he had a disease.

“No,” he said. “I let Sam do it.”

“Honey, don’t. I’m the only one who cuts your hair, okay?” That little shit Sam would be getting a talk from her, and if he peed his pants in terror, that’d be fine. The boys were eleven, for God’s sake. This wasn’t innocent “let’s play barbershop” stuff. This was bullying, and it wasn’t the first time Sam had decided to pretend to be friends with Davey so he could humiliate him.

“What’s for supper?” Davey asked.

“I don’t know. Where’s Mom?”

“I don’t know.” He bent over his coloring book. Still loved Pokémon.

Jess glanced in the living room, where her father was in the recliner, watching TV. He seemed to be asleep.

Good. She went into the bedroom she shared with Davey and closed the door quietly. Pulled the bed back from the wall, bent down and stuck her fingers in the hole.

No tin.

It must’ve fallen back, even if that had never happened before. She stuck her whole hand in, groped to the left, then the right.

It wasn’t there.

Her heart felt sticky, its ventricles and valves clogged with dread.

On the wobbly plastic table next to his bed, Davey had a keychain with an LED light on it, in case he got scared in the middle of the night. Jess grabbed it and pointed it at the hole.

No tin. Not to the left, not to the right. It wasn’t below, and it wasn’t above. It was just gone.

She went back into the kitchen. “Davey, honey, did you find a metal box in our room? In a little hole behind the bed?”

“There’s a hole? What’s in it?” he asked. “Is there mice in it?”

“No. I had a little metal box in there.”

“What color?”

“Red and silver. And there was some money inside.”

He chose a blue crayon, its paper soft and furred from use. “I don’t know where it is.” Davey didn’t know how to lie. “Will you make me supper tonight?”

“I have to work.”

“But Mom’s not home!”

Jess took a deep breath. “Okay.” She glanced at the sink; the dishes from breakfast and lunch were still there, waiting to be washed. Seven empty beer cans, too.

So she wouldn’t be going on the class trip. She’d just say she had to work. Or that Davey had a thing and she couldn’t go. No, she couldn’t blame Davey, even if he always did have an appointment and a fear of being left alone. She’d just say the trip wasn’t her thing.

Except it was.

Well. She probably didn’t deserve it, anyway. Selfish, to be thinking about leaving her brother for the weekend.

She put on some water to make spaghetti and opened a can of tomato sauce. Not much nutrition, but that was about all they had. She’d have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Then, glancing at the clock, she did the dishes as fast as she could. She had to go to work soon.

Dad had probably taken it. Mom was a little more decent that way. Every once in a while, Jess’s grandmother would send Jolene some cash, and Mom would take Jess and Davey out for ice cream...then head for the Black Cat and drink the rest away. If she’d known about Jessica’s stash...well, it was hard to believe that she would’ve taken it all, in one fell swoop. It’d be more Mom’s style to filch it bit by bit, just enough to buy a few vodka nips and get her through the day.

So it wasn’t Mom.

That left Dad, and he wouldn’t admit it with a gun to the back of his head. The money might still be around, but he was too smart for Jessica to ever find it. And he’d never give her an honest answer if she asked, just feign ignorance and blink his big blue eyes...and then go out and buy a hundred lottery tickets or go to the casino. If he ever won something, he always managed to find a way to blow that, too.

She’d bet her life he wasn’t sleeping, even though he just lay there, eyes closed.

Sometimes, she wished he’d just die. Without him being a bad influence, such a casual drunk, maybe Mom could get sober. Without him, Davey wouldn’t have such a shitty role model. Without him, there’d be one less mouth to feed.

A few days later, Jeremy Lyon gave her a ride home in his expensive little convertible. It was raining, so the top was up, and it was so cozy and clean and pretty in that little car that Jess wanted to live there.

With Jeremy. She loved him. Everyone did.

But boys like Jeremy didn’t go for Jessica Does—as in Jessica Does Anyone—class slut, poor white trash. Sure enough, Jeremy had fallen hard for Faith Holland, otherwise known as Princess Super-Cute, one of the rich girls—a little dim, it seemed to Jess, and someone who never wanted for anything.

“So I heard you’re not going on the trip,” Jeremy said.

“Oh, right,” Jessica answered, pretending it had slipped her mind. “I have something going on that weekend.”

“Well, here’s the thing,” he said. “You know how I am. Incapable of having fun if my friends aren’t all with me. Curse of the only child or something. So I was thinking, if cost was the issue, please let me cover you, Jess. You’d be doing me a favor, because it won’t be any fun without you, and I’ll be miserable and lonely the whole time.”