Finally I managed to coax him across the street, behind a parked car, just as Cassidy slipped out of her house.
She’d thrown on jeans and that green sweater she always wore. She looked so beautiful—so vulnerable—hugging her arms across her chest in the gray light of early morning as she padded down the front walk.
She was frowning, and then she caught sight of the snowman and laughed. It was the happiest I’d seen her in a long time.
“Ezra?” she called doubtfully.
“Yeah, hi,” I said sheepishly, joining her on the lawn.
Cooper rubbed his nose against her leg, and she yawned, scratching him behind the ears.
“Hello, gorgeous,” she cooed. “Did you make me this snowman?”
“He did,” I said. “All by himself. He dragged me here so I could call you to come see it.”
“It’s wonderful,” Cassidy said, and then she bit her lip, her expression serious. “Here, I’ll help you take it down.”
For a moment, I didn’t think I’d heard her correctly.
“You’ll help me take it down? I just spent all night making the freaking thing.”
Cassidy sighed. Stared at the grass. Pulled her sleeves over her hands.
“I didn’t ask you to,” she muttered.
“No, you didn’t,” I said angrily. “God, I’m trying to apologize for what I said, okay? I’m trying to give you something interesting and weird and wonderful so that maybe you’ll finally talk to me about your brother, and you want me to take it down?”
“I want you to take it down,” Cassidy said coolly, her eyes darting up to meet mine. “And I told you to let it go. I told you it was better not knowing.”
“Evidently I didn’t listen.”
“Yeah, evidently,” she said, mocking me. “Now if you’re not going to help get rid of this snowman, please, just—please leave.”
“Fine,” I said. “Come on, Cooper, we’re going. Cassidy doesn’t want to talk to us right now because she’s mad I figured out why we broke up.”
“You didn’t,” Cassidy called after me. “You just found the riddle.”
But I was sick of riddles, and I was sick of Cassidy’s unpredictable moods, and I was sick of never, ever being good enough for her.
I slammed open the gate to the park, and Cooper promptly sat down on the sidewalk, refusing to budge.
“This is the last thing I need,” I told him. “I can’t drag you. You have to walk.”
Cooper glared at me, like maybe he thought I should go back there and help Cassidy wreck another thing I’d mistakenly thought she’d wanted. Finally, he got up and followed me into the park.
The haze still hadn’t burned off, and it was almost impossible to make out the bright blue of the swing set, much less the other side of the park.
“Ezra!” Cassidy called, and I turned, squinting back at her across the park. She was at the gate. She hadn’t let me walk away after all.
“Ezra, run!” she screamed, her voice tinged with panic.
And then I saw the coyote.
It was enormous, five feet long at least, gliding soundlessly through the fog.
“Run!” she screamed again, but I couldn’t, and part of me knew that the coyote could sense it. I stood frozen in terror, watching that huge animal stalk toward me through the amorphous fog.
And then Cooper let out a ferocious bark and yanked his leash from my hand. He bounded toward the coyote, snarling and barking, his leash dragging behind him over the damp grass.
The two animals were scrabbling for purchase at each other’s necks, locked in fierce combat at the lip of the sandbox, while we both watched helplessly.
I limped toward them, Cassidy’s screams turning into choked sobs as she pressed her hands over her mouth. But what chance did Cooper have? A sixteen-year-old poodle against a wild coyote?
“Get out of here!” I screamed at the coyote, but there was already so much blood. The coyote’s jaws were locked around Cooper’s throat, and Cooper was bleating, making these horrible whining noises, and my heart was pounding, and all I could think was no, this isn’t possible, this can’t be real.
“Cooper, no!” Cassidy wailed. “Please, no.”
Cooper went limp, and the coyote, apparently satisfied, released its grip on his neck and trotted off, slipping through the fence and disappearing into the hiking trail.
I didn’t care that I was sitting in the middle of a park on a foggy Sunday morning. I didn’t care that it had started to drizzle. Cooper’s head was in my lap, and my hands were pressed over his wound, and his fur was already matted and wet with blood, and my hands were red and dripping.
“Oh God,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, boy. You’re going to be okay. Just hold on. You’re a hero, Coop. It’s going to be okay.”
I looked up at Cassidy, who had gone so white that I was worried she might faint.
“He needs help,” I said. “Your parents are doctors.”
“They’re on call.”
“We have to do something! We’ll take him to the animal hospital. I need you to get my car keys out of my pocket.”
I kept my hands pressed on Cooper’s wound, and Cassidy reached her hand into my pocket and somehow managed to extract my keys.
“What you need to do is run straight to my car and pull it around.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.
“I don’t drive,” Cassidy said, her voice quivering.
“Bullshit you don’t drive. Get the car.”
Cassidy nodded numbly, and took off across the grass, her hair streaming behind her like it was a flame and the fog was smoke.
Cooper let out a heartbreaking whine, and I pressed my hands harder against the gash in his neck, trying to keep it, and us, together.
Cassidy honked the horn at me when she pulled into the parking lot.
“I can’t lift him,” I yelled, my voice cracking shamefully.
Cassidy came and helped, and we managed to wrangle Cooper into the backseat. She climbed in after him, placing her hands over mine on his wound.
“You drive,” she insisted. “There’s too much fog.”
I turned on the low beams and drove, the car thick with silence, and the steering wheel slick with blood.
32
CASSIDY AND I sat staring straight ahead in the frigid air-conditioning of the animal hospital’s waiting room. It was like a bad dream, and I was slightly hazy on the details, but this much I knew: it was seven thirty in the morning, and Cooper was in trouble, and I was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to save him.
Cassidy shivered, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater. I shrugged out of my leather jacket and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, putting it on and curling her legs up under her, like she was trying to fit completely inside that jacket.
I was in shock, dazed by the vastness of what had just happened; we both were. The waiting room was empty. It was just us, and the animal scale that looked almost like a treadmill in the corner. The receptionist, whose presence I’d sort of forgotten about, cleared her throat and frowned in my direction.
“Excuse me, sir?” she called. “Why don’t you use our bathroom to clean up?”
Her smile didn’t quite match her eyes as she pointed out where she wanted me to go. Numbly, I drifted toward the bathroom and turned on the light.
A specter leered at me from the mirror. Gaunt cheeks, face too pale, button-down shirt streaked with blood. My hands were particularly gruesome. I thought bitterly that this was a far better Halloween costume than the one I’d attempted.
I hunched over the basin, watching the metallic orange water swirl down the drain, and even long after the water ran clear, I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the tap and go out there again.
I kept replaying it in my head: that coyote ghosting toward me through the fog, and the way my heart had lurched when Cassidy called my name and screamed for me to run. The way Cooper had fought the coyote even when the ground was coated with his blood, and how it was all my fault, because I’d known about the coyotes and hadn’t listened.
Eventually, there was a knock at the door.
“Ezra?” It was Cassidy, and she sounded concerned.
“Just a second.” I splashed some water on my face and opened the door.