Stay with Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  THE FIRST DAY . . . - (Friday, June 12, just before the dinner shift)

  THE SECOND DAY . . . - (Saturday, June 13, morning)

  THE THIRD DAY . . . - (Sunday, June 14, an hour before dawn)

  THE NINTH DAY . . . - (Saturday, June 20, morning)

  THE TENTH DAY . . . - (Sunday, June 21, morning)

  THE SIXTEENTH DAY . . . - (Saturday, June 27, just before dinner shift)

  THE TWENTY-THIRD DAY . . . - (Saturday, July 4, afternoon)

  THE THIRTY-EIGHTH DAY . . . - (Sunday, July 19, late morning)

  THE THIRTY-NINTH DAY . . . - (Monday, July 20, morning)

  THE FORTIETH DAY . . . - (Tuesday, July 21, morning)

  THE FORTY-SEVENTH DAY . . . - (Tuesday, July 28, morning)

  THE FIFTY-SIXTH DAY . . . - (Thursday, August 6, morning)

  THE SIXTY-FIRST DAY . . . - (Tuesday, August 11, morning)

  THE SIXTY-FOURTH DAY . . . - (Friday, August 14, afternoon)

  THE SIXTY-FIFTH DAY . . . - (Saturday, August 15, after midnight)

  THE SIXTY-SIXTH DAY . . . - (Sunday, August 16, just after midnight)

  THE SEVENTY-FIRST DAY . . . - (Friday, August 21, just after lunch shift)

  THE EIGHTY-FIRST DAY . . . - (Monday, August 31, morning)

  THE NINETIETH DAY . . . - (Wednesday, September 9, after dinner shift)

  THE NINETY-FIRST DAY . . . - (Thursday, September 10, morning)

  THE NINETY-EIGHTH DAY . . . - (Thursday, September 17, afternoon)

  THE HUNDRED & SECOND DAY . . . - (Monday, September 21, a clear morning)

  LATE MORNING OF THE LAST DAY...

  THE LAST NIGHT . . .

  Acknowledgements

  PAUL’S PACK

  DIAL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2011 by Paul Griffin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Griffin, Paul, date.

  Stay with me / by Paul Griffin.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fifteen-year-olds Mack, a high school drop-out but a genius with dogs,

  and Céce, who hopes to use her intelligence to avoid a life like her mother’s,

  meet and fall in love at the restaurant where they both work, but when Mack

  lands in prison he pushes Céce away and only a one-eared pit bull can keep them together.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-52943-0

  [1. Love—Fiction. 2. Restaurants—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction.

  4. Pit bull terriers—Fiction. 5. Dogs—Fiction. 6. Ability—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.G8813594St 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2011001287

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my editor and friend, Kate Harrison,

  and for Juan G., who dreams of happy endings

  A HUNDRED AND TWO DAYS.

  That’s probably about average, but it didn’t seem close to that long, especially in the beginning, that first month or so. It was just getting to that sweet spot, where everything is perfect for a while. A short while. Before it starts to fade—little by little, usually. Not for them, though. For them, it was ripped away in the middle of an ordinary summer afternoon, in a little less than a minute and a half.

  It happened in a city you may or may not have heard of, but you probably know them—people like them. You have a friend like her, and maybe you’ve worked with somebody like him. At minimum, you’ve seen them around, in restaurants, on the street, walking a dog or two. People said, Hey, what’s the big deal? It happens all the time. And it does. Until it happens to you. Then it’s something different all right, especially when you’re left to wander the wreckage.

  It started in an unremarkable way, the same way it starts for lots of people: A hint was dropped, an introduction was made. When you’re set up like that, you think it’ll never work out. But it can, and sometimes it does.

  It does.

  And then somebody does something stupid. Not stupid. Somebody loses control. And then . . .

  A hundred and two days. And then it was over.

  THE FIRST DAY . . .

  (Friday, June 12, just before the dinner shift)

  MACK:

  “Bad news,” Vic says.

  “There’s another kind?”

  “I lost the restaurant.”

  “Another tough night at the online poker table?”

  “Catastrophic.” The old man saddles a flipped milk crate and clobbers garlic cloves with his hand. Says it makes him feel one with the earth, except there’s not a lot of earth up here in the city. Baked concrete, now, that we got. Back in Texas, there you had land. “I’m bringing you and Tony over to my other place,” Vic says. “Didn’t I send you there once, to fill in for Freddy maybe, Valentine’s Day?”

  “No sir.” I only started working here three months ago.

  “It isn’t far from here. You’ll still be able to walk to work. You’ll like it there. Nice family atmosphere. Tony’s mom works there. His sister too.”

  “He told me.” He also said his sister would like me, but I don’t think so. I’m no good at looking folks in the eye. I guess I’m taller than average, but I grew up small, didn’t hit my growth spurt till later. I don’t know. I steer clear of people as much as I can. Vic and Tony. They’re the only folks I feel a little comfortable with. I don’t mind it so much, being alone. You can’t do anything about it. You’ve got to keep going. What else are you going to do? “What’re you gonna do about the name of the other restaurant, Mister Vic?” He has Vic’s and Vic’s Too—or he did until he lost Vic’s.

  “It’ll still be Vic’s Too,” he says. “Brand recognition. Very important.”

  “I see.” No, I don’t. How do you have a Too when the first one is gone? “My spot at the new place, dishwashing?”

  “Freddy keeps smoking pot on the job, you’re in,” Vic says. “Till then, you’re on delivery. You look disappointed.”

  “I like to clean stuff.”

  “I know,” Vic says. “You’re very good at it. The grease on those plates. You’re uncompromising.”

  “Thought you just said I was good.”

  “I suspect Freddy won’t last,” Vic says. “I gave him half a dozen chances to straighten up, and he left me chapfallen every time. Six or seven more times, I’ll have to let him go.”

  “I hear you. Yeah. I’m betting chapfallen means nothing near what I think it means.”

  “Are you seeing a picture of a fancy British guy falling off a horse?”

  “I am.”

  “Yeah,”
Vic says, “then you would be wrong. It means he douched me.” Vic looks about as smart as a thrown stone, but he’s the king of the crosswords. “Very potent word, chapfallen . Remember it.” Vic says potent a lot too.

  “Why would I use chapfallen when I can say douched instead?”

  “Because you might not want to say douched in front of a woman.”

  “I do see your point.”

  “You up for some Wiffle ball?” the old man says.

  “I got a bunch more prep work to do.”

  “Ey, look at me.”

  “Yessir?” I look him in the eye, but a second later I’m back to looking at my sneaker laces. One’s busted, but I have string in my pocket.

  “You’re fifteen, not fifty,” Vic says. “I don’t tell somebody to do something unless I’m sure I’m right about it. I know what I know. Right here, right now, for you, this is the right thing, this Wiffle ball. You need to do this.”

  “I need to do Wiffle ball?”

  He studies the ball in his hand. “Kid, no matter how much money you make, you’ll spend more than you have. You miss a chance at fun, you never get it back. Now go on out and tell Tony I said knock it off with the clams. You work too hard, the two of you.” Vic grabs the Wiffle bat from where we keep it with the long breads and chucks it to me. “I gotta call this guy, then I’ll be out.”

  Out back, Tony’s shucking cherrystones. It’s hot for early June, and I’m sweating, but Tony doesn’t sweat. He’s the coolest dude, eighteen but with old-man wisdom. I can’t look him in the eye either.

  The restaurant backs up onto an old house on the one side. The neighbor’s dog hops the fence to hang with us. Dog jumps all over Tony. Tony’s laughing and telling the dog all nice to sit, but the dog has Tony on his pay no mind list.

  I make my hand a claw and poke the dog’s flank, like his mom would do. Dog spins and looks at me. I have no problem looking him in the eye while real quiet I grunt “Wait.” Dog rolls belly up for me to scratch him. His tail beats dust from the concrete.

  “I’m telling you, Mack, you gotta do it.” Tony is always after me to start my own dog training business. “You’d make serious coin.”

  “I don’t have the money for the school.”

  “You don’t need the school,” Tony says.

  “You need the license from the school, or people don’t think you’re any good.”

  Tony claps my back to make me look him in the eye. “How much is it?”

  “The school? Got no idea.” I got the exact idea.

  “What, like four or five grand?”

  “Four. How’d you know?”

  “Four is nothing,” he says. “We’ll put it on my credit card.”

  “Nah, I don’t like owing folks. What if I can’t pay you back?”

  “So?” he says.

  That right there is Tony in a minute. He’s the line cook, and he doesn’t make a whole bunch more than me. I tell him he was right in the first place, the school’s a waste of money, but now he won’t let up on he wants me to go to the school.

  My mother showed me the way of dogs. She was from hill country, a migrant picker’s daughter. Knew all kinds of towns and the dogs who ran their streets. She could rehabilitate some tough dogs, tell you what. We were out shopping for milk and such once. Mom eyed a dog, said, “Mack, see that straggly mutt gnashing his teeth at me? I’m-a have him rolling over for a belly scratch before you can say boo.” I said that was a good name for the dog, Boo. She laughed. She had that dog eating apple bits from her hand. That’s pretty much my favorite thing I remember about my mom. The old man forever complained at her, like “Get that dog out the house,” and “That is a stupid opinion,” and “Why can’t you ever be satisfied? You think you gonna get better than motel cleaning work? You? ” Face like he sucked a bag of lemons.

  I woke up a rainy morning some years back to find him reading the note. My mother was watching an old movie a few nights before and imagined herself in it. It came to her that God called her to be an actress, and she had to go north to New York. Me and my father followed her there, but we never did find her. We tried Philly too, then Los Angeles. To ditch the old man she changed her name to Miranda something, and I would have done the exact same thing.

  My father couldn’t find steady work, so we shuffled back to Texas a few times before we struck out north again. We been here in the city almost four years now, and I don’t think we’re going anywhere, now that the old man has a regular job.

  I saw her once on a commercial, Mom. One of them pills that make you crap. Late night. She was in the background. The old man pointed her out before he smashed the TV with a jug wine bottle.

  Vic limps out back with his hands up for me to throw him the ball. He pitches pretty good, but the Tone has a world-class arm on him. He could strike me out easy, but he lays it right in there so I can crack it. We put electric tape over the ball to make it go far. The other side of the restaurant butts up on a tenement alley. The echoes are cool when the bat gets a good hold of the ball.

  Vic huffs and puffs from chasing down the ball, and him and Tony are laughing because the dog won’t leave my side even when I’m batting.

  The Tone wanted me to pair up with him for this big brother after-school thing, but in order to do an after-school, you have to go to school, and to hell with that. Everybody calling you faggot and snapping at your ears? And even after you get tall, they still push the books out from under your arm and put pennies in your milk when you aren’t looking, to choke you. Smacking the back of your head because you missed a belt loop, or telling you your fly is down when it’s fine? In the classes, I couldn’t stay awake. Making me look at all those boring books. Reading is just lame, I don’t care what folks say. I’m a working man, saving up to get a little land somewhere, set it up good for me and a pack of pit bulls and maybe a nice lady, if one gets retarded all of a sudden and starts to like me even though I could never look her in the eye. I don’t mean to say anything about retards. I like retards a ton—I’m no racist.

  It’s not like I never been with a girl before, but she didn’t like me. She was sixteen or something. A few months back, I had a job delivering store circulars to the tenements. I saw her twice or so in the halls, and she never spent a look on me. But this one day, she does a double take and says, “Hot cocoa?” And I said, “What?” And she rolled her eyes and said real slow, like I was a moron, “Do, you, want, some, hot cocoa?” The slush kept getting in through the rip in my sneaker, so I was like, “Yeah, cocoa’d be real nice, thank you.” We went into her apartment and next thing you know she was pulling me into her room and pulling down my pants and we smacked it up real quick. She hurried me out right after, said her folks were coming home soon, and I didn’t get any hot cocoa either. I brought her daisies the next day and she told me to git. I found out she was using me for practice, because she liked this older dude, and apparently he was real experienced, and he didn’t want the responsibility of making a girl not a virgin anymore. So I don’t know if there’s a girl out there for me, but you got to have hope. Doesn’t cost you anything, hope. At least nothing I can see.

  Word gets out Vic lost the restaurant to this online poker queen who calls herself Hammerhead, and Vic’s selling the food cheap to clean everything out before he has to turn over the keys to the shark. I like it busy. I’m scrubbing pots and driving plates through the washer, making sure they’re perfect. The bustle keeps me from hearing the hissing. It’s not really hissing, this noise inside my head, but that’s what I call it. Like when you roll the radio to static and dial up the volume? Like that. It reminds me of stuff I can’t let myself think about anymore. I have to move on. Anyways, staying busy blocks it out, most times. I don’t know. Just have to stay busy, I guess.

  Come end of shift, Vic pays me cash. I missed the last few check-ins with my parole officer, and they scan the tax databases for AWOL parolees. Vic knows I’ve got a record. Burglary when my old man was out of town for a few weeks, lookin
g for work, and I was damn near starving. I had this house staked out, knew when the folks were at work. A neighbor caught me sneaking out with three frozen pizzas and a pocket’s worth of jewelry, which ended up being fake. Then this other time these kids got at me, shoved me into a trash can and rolled me down the school steps, which is another reason you shouldn’t go to school. The radio static got real loud on that one. To stop it I got back at one of them boys with my knife. What else can you do? And anyways, he wasn’t hurt that bad. Crying over a few stitches in front of that judge. Ten stitches in your thigh? I got more sliding into a gravelly third base once. Man up. You don’t want to get cut, don’t say bad stuff about my mother when you’re rolling me down the school steps.

  Me and the Tone leave work together. Like every girl we pass on the main street knows him. Tony says to one of them, “How’d your father make out with the operation, Jessica babe?” And I swear he remembers all their sisters’ and uncles’ names and their families’ doings and “How’s Marisol’s baby? She’s got to be two by now, right?” And don’t you know the baby just turned two? Tony introduces me, and I can’t look at them. I kind of mumble hey and keep my head down. Tony says we have to go, and the girls are all like “Aw, Tony, hang out. Please? ”

  We get to Tony’s street, and he says, “Hang a left, come on up my way.”

  “I better get on home,” I say.

  “I’m just down the block there. I want you to drop a hi on my sister.”

  I get all red and I’m like “Nah.”

  “You’re gonna be working together anyway now at the Too. She’s cool, I swear.”

  “Nah, man.”

  “C’mon in and say hi to my mother,” Tony says. “She’s always baking something and she’ll let you sip a half a cup of beer.”

  “Baking in summer?”

  “I know.”

  “I’m up early tomorrow.” My other job is I walk dogs.