Taming the Mad Dog

"You want it?

Take it." Rhys flicked his wrist like he was shaking something dirty off his fingers, and the watch I'd saved eleven months of lunch money for landed in his buddy's lap. "Pawn it and you'd get, what, a couple hours of game time?" The buddy laughed.

Loud. So the whole hallway heard. Rhys turned his head. Caught me looking. I was seventeen, and I thought I would die of it.

Years later, at a class reunion, someone told me Rhys had been looking for me. For eight years.

Chapter 1 His buddy held the watch out to me, rubbing the back of his neck. "Here— you want it back?" The strap was scuffed already.

There was a scratch dragged across the face, the kind a thing gets when it's handled by someone who's never once had to be careful with anything. It wasn't an expensive watch.

Under a hundred dollars. Eleven months of lunch money, counted out a dollar at a time. I looked at Rhys's wrist. He had a watch on today too. I couldn't have told you the brand.

I could have told you it cost more than everything I owned. I took mine back. I met his eyes. "It's fine," I said. "I'll deal with it myself." He dropped his gaze.

Pressed his lips together. Didn't say anything. I walked out. There was a trash can by the school gate. I stopped in front of it. I looked back at him. Once.

He lifted his eyes, slow, that lazy halfsmile sitting on his mouth like the whole thing had been staged for his entertainment. So I dropped the watch in the trash myself.

That was my first crush. Three years of it, gone in the trash by the gate. That look on his face. I'd carry it into eight years of bad nights.

I got home to find my dad sitting in the doorway, a cheap cigarette burning down to his knuckles, his whole face folded in on itself. Mom wasn't there.

He held out a sheet of paper without looking at me. I read the top of it twice before the word landed. Cancer.

He took a long pull on the cigarette. "Treatment runs a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand. Maybe more." His voice didn't shake.

That was the part that scared me. "Your mom and I talked it through. We're not going to chase it." He stared at the floor. "She said she wants my braised ribs.

Go get what I need for it. I'll go bring her home in a bit." I didn't believe him. I turned the paper over. Read it again.

Read it again, like the words might agree to rearrange themselves. "Is it confirmed? These come back wrong all the time. I'll take her tomorrow, get a second opinion.

It's a mistake—" I held his eyes. Stubborn. Waiting for him to fold and agree with me. His eyes were red. He just looked back. He didn't say a word.

That was when it started, and it didn't stop. My face was wet and I couldn't make it quit. "I'll quit school," I said. "Please. Let's just treat her." He bowed his head.

I knew his hurt wasn't smaller than mine. His right leg had been ruined for years.

Back then, my mom was the only one who'd have him, who never once looked at him like he was less than a whole man. We were poor.

The two of them loved each other in a way I'd spent my whole life trying to earn my way toward. When I was a kid I asked him once what he lived for.

He didn't really get the question, so I tried to explain it. He rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed, and said: your mom. She's the whole of it. After that, I had my own answer.

I wanted to grow up and make money and take the two of them to see the world. Now the thing my dad lived for was coming apart in his hands. So was mine.

I held onto his hand and talked over him, fast, like saying it quick enough could make it real. "I'm not going back. I'll get work.

We'll take her somewhere they can actually treat this. Boston. Wherever the good hospitals are." He smoked. He didn't answer. But I'd already decided. We were going to the city.

I'd find the money. I'd sell anything I had. And I had exactly one thing left worth selling. I sent him to bring Mom home, to start packing. Then I went back to the school.

Chapter 2 Halfway back, it started to rain. People hurried past with their heads down, trying to beat the worst of it. The rain gave me cover. It was the only time I let myself cry.

Rainwater, tears. Out there, nobody could tell which was which. The school was nearly empty by the time I reached it. I put my hand into the trash can by the gate.

The smell rose up, sour and rotten. I dug through it. Dug through it again. The watch wasn't there. I bit down hard on my lip.

I wanted to slap the girl from an hour ago, the one who'd thrown it away. Pawned, it was worth a few hundred dollars. A few hundred dollars was treatment.

A few hundred dollars was another day my mom might get to have. I went through every piece of garbage in that can. For hours. Nothing. I walked home emptyhanded.

The streets had cleared out. The rain was hard enough to sting now, cold little needles driving through my shirt. Dad still wasn't back. Our house had always been warm.

That night it was just cold, and I stood inside it and waited. I waited. What came instead was a neighbor, breathless, pounding on the door. My mother had passed.

The illness moved faster than anyone thought it could, and with no treatment behind it, there'd been nothing to slow it down.

When the news reached my father, his heart simply gave out. The bad leg, the long years of it, the grief, all of it landing at once.

By the time anyone got to me, I had neither of them left. I was eighteen. A senior in high school. And I wasn't anyone's daughter anymore.

Eight years, and I still couldn't set that night down. I sat up in bed and woke my phone with my thumb. Four in the morning.

I said it to the empty room, quiet, the way a little kid says it. "Mom. Dad." Same as every other time. Nothing answered. I let my head drop.

Eight years, and they'd never once come to see me. Not even in a dream I'd have wanted to keep. The only one who ever shows up is Rhys. That smile on his mouth.

That mockery in his eyes, asking me the same thing he always asks. Where's your pride, Nora? Every time I shout back that I have plenty, the dream cracks open and I'm awake.

No falling back asleep after that. So I got up and started to pack. Back then I'd buried them on autopilot and left that town for good. A new city.

Working and studying at the same time, in a way I still don't have words for. But I didn't dare hold still. The moment I stopped moving, I wanted to cry.

A doctor told me once it was depression. Moderate. That what I needed was someone to walk me back out of that night, one step at a time. There was never anyone like that.

Eight years gone, and lately the wanting had crept back in. To go home. To stand at their graves and ask them out loud why they'd left me like that.

To say goodbye to the rest of it too. The town. The girl I used to be. The boy I'd thrown a watch away over. I was tired of carrying it. I wanted to go back and finally put it down.

So when the class president asked who was in for the reunion, I was the first to say yes. I hadn't said a word in that group chat in eight years.

I'd scrubbed every classmate from my phone. Rhys included. I bought a seat on the earliest train.

Eight years I'd kept my back to that town, and turning to face it had loosened a knot I'd stopped noticing I carried. I watched the country slide past the window.

I even smiled, making small talk with the young couple beside me. The girl was lit up from the inside. "You have no idea what it took to land him.

He had girls lined up around the block.

I held on for two years, and now I'm finally taking him home to meet my parents." She beamed at me. "Are you this happy because you're going home too?

I swear the wind goes sweet on the way to see your mom and dad." I was quiet a moment. Then I found a smile somewhere and put it on. "Yeah.

I'm going home too." To see my mom and dad. I said the last part too low for anyone but me to hear. Chapter 3 The girl's words stayed with me the whole way in.

I caught myself humming under my breath without meaning to. Then I got off the train and went straight to the place the class president had booked.

Most of them were already there when I walked in. The room went quiet the second the door opened. I took the seat closest to the door and let the smile slide off my face.

The class president pushed his glasses up and broke the silence. "Nora. You came." I nodded. Vanessa, a girl who'd never liked me, made a small disgusted sound. "Well.

If it isn't our impossibletobook honor student. I lose a whole meal's appetite just looking at that face.

Somebody should warn Rhys to sit tonight out." Nobody had ever found out why I left school. But everyone knew I'd liked Rhys. Everyone knew about the gift.

The girl beside Vanessa tugged at her sleeve. The class president frowned. "Ease up. Rhys spent eight years looking for Nora.

He'd be glad to hear she's here." Vanessa snorted. "Rhys is a sweetheart.

Who knew you had to go around apologizing for not liking someone." A little laugh, pitched for the table. "Eight years just to hunt Nora down and say sorry." "Is it a crime not to like a girl?

We all know she transferred out because he embarrassed her. The way you tell it, you'd think he was the one pining." "Doesn't Rhys already have someone?

I heard she's gorgeous, old money, the whole package. So what's the draw here, exactly? The pretty face? The crippled dad?

The empty house they couldn't afford to keep food in?" "Please." She kept going. Around the table, people had started to wince. I stood up.

There was nothing angry on my face. "I'm not staying to eat, Vanessa, so you don't have to worry about losing your appetite over me. I came to see everyone. I've done that now.

So I'll go." I pulled the door open and walked out. The class president came after me. He caught my hand, his face serious. "He really did spend eight years looking for you.

You won't wait for him?" Rhys surfaced in my head. The good face. The good eyes.

And how those eyes held nothing at all when they landed on me, that thin thread of mockery always sitting at the corner of his mouth.

I shook my head and made myself smile. "I'm in a hurry. When you see him, tell him I'm sorry. Really. So sorry." He stood there, frozen. After that, I bought flowers.

Armfuls of them. I left them at my parents' graves until there were enough to outlast a hundred years. Then I went back to the house. Dust on everything. I didn't clean it.

I didn't move a single thing. I stood in the doorway a long while. By the time I made myself leave, it had gone full dark. No streetlights out in the country. I woke my phone.

Almost eleven. I took a cab out to the river. It was calm that late, the water flat and black, the bridge empty but for the odd delivery bike buzzing past.

I stopped on the bridge with my suitcase beside me, and I didn't move. Nobody looked twice. A tired woman with a suitcase, catching her breath. That was all anyone saw.

The bikes thinned out, then stopped altogether.

The town went quiet around me until it was just me and the dark, and I had never once in my whole life felt so far from another living person.

Eight years of holding still so I wouldn't come apart, and all of it had finally caught up with me, here, on a bridge, at midnight.

Then, from behind me, where there should have been no one left in the entire world, someone said my name. A voice I'd deleted from my phone eight years ago.

A voice that, if the reunion hadn't been lying to me, had spent eight years looking for me. Rhys.

Chapter 4 His hand closed around my arm before I even registered another person there