Chapter 4: Old Pros
Crisis and hope
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In Chapter 3, Ava’s BFF Maggie dished about new guy Greyson’s background during cross country practice.
Greyson
A week passes. Ava ignores me. I ignore her. The first cross country meet is next Saturday, the only home meet of the season, according to Coach Sweatman, and there’s a thousand things that go into an event like that and of course, as usual, my parents sign up for at least three actions each. All my foreseeable weekends will be taken up with cross country meets, so I’m not thrilled when Mom casually informs me that there’s going to be a neighborhood barbeque this Saturday—at Ava Barratt’s house.
“The whole street will be there,” she gushes while rattling the sauté pan for the chicken stir-fry. “It’ll be a fabulous chance to meet our new neighbors. Julia Barratt’s so friendly. She mentioned that her daughter is a junior, too? On the cross country team?” Mom’s interrogations are the opposite of subtle.
I keep my gaze on my own sauté pan sizzling with veggies and seasoned tofu. “Yeah. I’ve met the daughter.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Is she cute?”
Cute? Drop dead gorgeous is more like it. The way her curls bounce when she’s laughing, the smile when she encourages the middle school girls on the team, the way she bites her bottom lip in concentration when she’s working through the AP bio homework: Ava’s beautiful. “Uh, she’s okay, I guess,” I mumble. My tofu is crispy, the veggies smell like heaven, and I dump it all on top of rice in a bowl.
“Just okay?”
“She volunteers at the animal shelter,” I say. “Seems nice enough. She’s usually a hot mess when I see her.” I backtrack, “I mean, everybody’s a little gross at practice. Sweaty.”
Mom has a knowing gleam in her gaze as she and Dad exchange a look. “Of course,” she says and mercifully the dogs charge into the kitchen, providing a distraction.
My phone pings. It’s LeNora from the Animal Shelter.
Need all the volunteers to meet tomorrow morning at 9.
My heart thumps. Please, please, don’t let it be another dog dying. Not Ozzy.
Saturday morning, LeNora gathers all the volunteers at the animal shelter. Ava and Larry and a bunch of other people crowd into her small office. I’m jammed between Ava and a filing cabinet. The drawer knob presses into my back.
“Hi, Ava,” I say.
“Hi.”
All the other volunteers chatter around us, except Larry, who stands in a corner and barely looks at anyone, typical for him. Some have known each other for years, though, and there’s an undercurrent of unease, like we all wonder why on earth we’re here.
“How are classes going?” As if I don’t take all the same classes she does.
“Fine.”
Man, she’s taking that anger over the plastic gloves joke too far. What does everyone see in her? I’ll corner her in the parking lot and demand that she at least listen to my apology—though really, it’s her that should be apologizing—and rip off that façade of hers. Who are you, Ava Barratt? Deep down, who are you? I want to tell her, just be yourself, stop performing and stop being fake and stop trying to charm everyone in the universe except me.
LeNora raps on the desk for attention.
“Thanks for coming out, everyone. I thought all of you should hear this in person.”
A zap of discomfort buzzes through us.
“As a lot of you already know, our rent’s gone up recently. It looks like we might not be able to meet our financial goals for this year.” She sighs, squares her shoulders, and continues. “If we can’t, the landlord will foreclose on us.”
Another zap of discomfort, this one harder, like touching a light bulb socket, and I clench my fists. LeNora’s still talking about the budget, talking the specifics of prices, and our target for donations each month, how far behind we’ve fallen, but I breathe hard. Beside me, Ava’s stiff, expressionless. Her shoulders slump ever-so-slightly.
Suddenly Larry speaks. “Can’t we ask the landlord for more time?”
There’s a pause, because I’m not sure if anyone has ever heard Larry use a voice above a gruff whisper.
“We already have,” LeNora says. “I’ve asked him to lower it, too. We’ve sent out pleas for more donations on our social sites and website. A little has trickled in, but it’s not nearly enough, not to cover everything.”
“How much are we behind?” another woman asks.
“Ten thousand.”
Ten thousand. Pocket change, if you’re a multimillionaire. Which none of us are. “What happens to the dogs if we close down?” I ask.
LeNora closes her eyes and suddenly, I don’t want to hear what she says. I want to go run an ultra-marathon, drain my agitation until I can function. I push my way out of the crowd but stop at Ava’s voice.
“What if we can do a fundraiser?” Ava blurts out. “A big event, one we could keep doing every year, one that people want to participate in.”
My brain whirls.
“Ava,” LeNora says, “I don’t have the time and energy to run a fundraiser—”
“Greyson and I would run it.” As coolly as if the matter is already settled. As if we already discussed this and agreed to some time-consuming, huge task that might fail. She turns and meets my gaze full on for the first time since we met. “We’d do the work, LeNora. You wouldn’t have to worry about it. We’re old pros at this sort of thing.”
Old pros. Suddenly, I see where Ava’s going with this. “A race?”
She smiles sweetly. “We’re old pros, right?” She sweeps a wisp of hair from her face. “I’ve run a marathon, and we’re both run cross-country all throughout high school. And the athletes always have to help run these things.”
She must have looked at the national website that lists all high school running athletes and their individual stats. Nice. She’s the type to gather information about people and use it to her advantage. She has nerve, volun-telling me like this, and while she doesn’t seem the type to shove off all the work onto me, it makes me want to shake some sense into her. Cross country, AP classes, everything else. Organizing and running a race is a huge thing to undertake. How are we supposed to do all of it? She has no business volunteering me like this.
Yet something stops me.
Hope.
Everyone fastens their attention on Ava, who’s animated and prettier than ever, and the craving for hope pulses in the room.
My pulse pounds in my ears. “Yeah, sure, it’ll be easy.”
“We can get the team to help run it. I’m thinking a nice 5K.”
“And a fun run,” I say, not to be outwitted by this girl. “Families like to run in those.”
“And door prizes,” she chirps. “We’ll have sponsoring businesses and charge the going rate for this.”
Doubt clouds LeNora’s face. “Would we really make enough money to save the shelter?”
“We could,” Ava says with more confidence than she really ought to feel. “Don’t you think so, Greyson?”
There are a thousand ways this can fail. “Sure.”
“Good.” Ava gives a decisive little nod. “What do you say, LeNora?”
The manager presses her lips together, as if she’s trying to think through the logistics. She must have looked like this when she was in the military, making tough decisions over in Afghanistan. “I know you’re both busy with school.”
“My parents would approve,” Ava says confidently. “Wouldn’t yours, Greyson?”
I nod.
“Fine,” LeNora says at last. “But get their approval. Are you sure that you can run this?”
“I’m positive that we can.”
We. Nice work. Now I’m on the hook.
LeNora relents. “Then okay. I’ll let the landlord know that we just need a little more time. I’ll be in touch, people.”
As everyone chatters away—except Larry, of course—I push my way out of the room and head straight to the kennels. The dogs greet me with enthusiasm and a dozen snouts emerge from behind the bars, and I pet every one. Greet them by name. Memorize their furry faces because if or when this place goes under, so will these dogs’ chances for a new life.
And they deserve that chance, every single last one of them.
And I’m going to make sure they get that chance, no matter what I have to do.
Even if it means working with Ava Barratt.
Ozzy’s last. I reach inside his kennel to stroke him. “Hey, old boy,” I whisper. “I’ll save you. I promise.”
He licks my fingers. In his soulful gaze, he holds the weight of a thousand broken promises, a thousand hopes dashed, starting with the owners who abused him, to the ones who dumped him by the side of the road, to the driver who hit him and left him to die. Even the people who walked past his kennel every day, looking for a dog to adopt. And didn’t choose him.
“I keep my promises,” I whispered.
“What are you saying?” Ava says.
I bump my head on the kennel door.
Ava stands beside Chica’s cage, fastening a dog leash on her.
“Oh, uh, hey. Just talking to Ozzy.” I give him another quick pat on the snout, and close his cage. “I’ll come back and play with you, okay?” I whisper. To Ava, I say, “You taking Chica for a run?”
“Yeah.” She doesn’t bother to smile. Chica’s description online includes the words: high energy, lively, and boisterous. Translated: the dog’s hyperactive. Now she tugs at the leash, almost pulling Ava forward.
My mouth works quicker than my mind, because without thinking, I say, “Mind if I join you? I’m running with Lucky.”
Ava casts a glance around, as if hoping someone will rescue her. But none of her million friends are here and considering she threw me under the bus a few minutes ago, it’s amusing, watching her squirm. “Um, sure…”
I have Lucky on a leash in no time, the dogs tug us forward, and we’re out the door in less time than it takes to double knot my shoelaces before a race.
Clouds cover the sky, cooling the air by a smidgen, and with two boisterous dogs tugging us along, we both break into an easy paced run. I slow my pace to match hers. From her times on the running app, she’s the top female runner, so it’s not that slow for me, actually.
We’re silent for a while. This road is on the outskirts of town, midway between the city and the suburbs, in areas where the city and county blend together and it’s a crazy mix of fancy a
Apartments across from acres of pasture or old mom-and-pop shops, a little worn down. The land’s valuable, though the road should’ve been expanded from a two lane to four lanes (at least) about a decade ago. Now the dogs’ noses are busy exploring every delightful smell from freshly-killed skunk to cow dung to gasoline and frying oil from McDonald’s a few mailboxes down.
“This sucks,” she said suddenly.
“What does?”
“The shelter closing.”
I glance over. Though she stares straight ahead, she brushes her hair from her face.
I start to speak, but she keeps going. “I mean, I should be able to change this. Make him change his mind. But he’s so stubborn that he won’t even listen to me. He’s got a thousand and one reasons why this is better.” She’s gesturing with her free hand, the one not clutching Chica’s leash.
I feel like I’m half a stride behind her words, sprinting to catch up. “What are you talking about, Ava?”
“My grandfather is the landlord.”
As I absorb this information, we stride in silence and pass a mailbox, then another. Then Ava huffs. “I went and talked to him last week. But would he listen to me? No. Totally shut me down. Acted like I was a little girl who didn’t understand business and he’s never, ever treated me like that before.”
“You’re not a little girl,” I say.
“I know, right? I’m totally, completely, not a child and he won’t listen to reason. He doesn’t care about the dogs. He’ll only say that it’s ‘unfortunate’ that they don’t have homes when it’s not unfortunate— It’s a tragedy!”
Her anger stirs my own. “You knew this was happening before now?”
“Only in the past week. I talked to him last Tuesday morning.”
Then it clicks. “Before the grocery store?”
“Yeah.” She fell silent. We pass another mailbox and turn around in a church parking lot.
“I guess the bananas got the brunt of your anger, huh?”
“And you.”
We run silently. As we near the animal shelter, we pass a cow munching grass behind a fence and the dogs bark at it. They sniff, delighted at the new smells, forcing Ava and I to stop, too. The cow keeps chewing its cud. The dogs’ tails wag and they’d jump over that fence or dig under it if Ava and I weren’t holding the leashes so tightly. She hasn’t apologized, either for her bad behavior at the grocery store or ignoring me at school or volunteering me to organize a race, so she obviously doesn’t care about me, only what I can do for her.
I open my mouth to smart off to her, chew her out, but Ozzy’s pleading eyes stick with me: my life is in your hands, Greyson.
Crud. Thanks, Ozzy. My temper cools a few degrees. And because I’m absolutely brilliant with words, I say, “Grass is delicious. I tried it once, when I was a little kid.”
Ava makes a cute grossed out face. “Are you kidding me?”
“Nope.”
“Were you the kid who ate their paste, too?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And their buggers?”
“Naw. I have standards. Are you going to the barbeque tonight?”
“I kind of have to, since it’s at my house,” she says. She tugs Chica away from the cow. “I’ve got to get home. We can talk about the race later.” Then she sprints off toward the shelter like she can’t wait to get away from me.
Fabulous start to our partnership.
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