paper rings (l.h.)

57

I felt like nothing but dead weight as Tommy took the front of the boat, his skinny frame hunched over the hull to watch the submerged ground we passed. To gawk at the shallowness of the water, yet the devastation it caused. Just a few feet away, the owner of Main Street Antiques sat in her boat (everyone seemed to have one around here — I guess for this very reason) and sobbed. Her husband securing the front door and climbing in the boat himself, started the engine. He was silent and watched in awe as their entire life's work was floating three feet off the ground.

The three of us all watched her cry, and we felt her sorrow. Felt each wail as it left her body, and echoed throughout the rain and wind-blown trees. She was soaking wet, as was her husband, who moved to embrace her.

Olive was too scared to be anywhere besides my lap, hers paws resting on either shoulder as she panted hot air straight into my face. I couldn't be mad. I felt the sniff, and a few soft wet licks and I had to remind myself that Olive was mine for the time being, and not forever.

But with each shift of the pup's paw on my thigh, I bit my cheek to keep from crying out in pain. But she was not shaking half as much as she was before, and I gave her enough food earlier to fill her belly. Olive looked at the other two men, on high alert despite my hands holding either side of her.

Tommy, as it turns out, is Mr. Wright's grandson. Well... as Tommy put it, more like his Dad than his biological one was. His Mom lost custody of him and his sister— as Tommy explained — and the state would've given them to those bullshit foster homes (again — their words). So Mr. Wright legally adopted him, and his biological parents haven't been back since.

I somehow felt as if the world was spinning around me. Like I had just gotten off a carousel at the play ground and was waiting for the world to stop spinning once I stepped off. I fluttered my eyes open slowly, my body shivering beneath the jacket I had taken right before departing Patsy's.

I cursed myself for showing up there today, for getting the job altogether. I cursed the rain, the stupid hurricane that should not have been as catastrophic as it was. I wanted to cry, wanted to throw and kick and scream. But I didn't.

Instead, I just let the cold make me tremble, my exhaustion forcing me to stay on the milk crate I called a chair. Every inch toward salvation felt entirely too long.

"Is your Grandma home alone?" Mr. Wright asks, glancing over his shoulder at me and yelling over the water, the sound of the engine.

"Yes sir," I say through gritted teeth. The throbbing of my leg growing more painful the more I let it bleed. I couldn't see the full extent of it, probably because I didn't want to look. The pain was enough to tell me that I shouldn't, at least. So I ditched my jacket, and tied it around my leg, cursing at the sudden burst of cold that sent goosebumps raising on my arms.

Mr. Wright nods, looking down at the dog as it shifts on my lap — which causes something like a grunt to expel from between my lips. Mr. Wright glances down, sees the stain on my leg, growing through the jacket-turned-bandaid.

"I can't take you back with a wound like that. Not with a clean conscious. Who knows when you'll be able to leave town to see a Doctor," Mr. Wright scoffed. "I doubt you'll be able to bike yourself anywhere with a wound like that."

Indeed. It was worse than I wanted to believe. The proof was in the way that the world moved a bit slower than usual, in the way that my head, my body got heavier and harder to hold up straight. But I played it off well, straightening my back and sucking in the groans and moans of pain that would be falling out of me if I was alone. But I wasn't. And I felt both of their eyes on me, studying me, as if they were trying to find the best way to help.