“I’ll say she’s a service dog,” Henry said to her unasked question. “Not that I think they’ll care, to be honest.”
“But she doesn’t have a harness.”
“Doesn’t need one. Federal law,” he added at her expression.
“You’re kidding.” She put down the overpriced block of Muenster cheese she’d been examining.
“I’m not. I work at a library. Anyone brings in an animal, you can only ask them two questions: Is it a service or therapy animal, and what service or therapy does it provide?”
“But what if they lie?” Catherine asked, casting a glance at Molly, who was eyeing the discarded cheese with abject disappointment.
“Then they lie.”
Catherine frowned at this, then said, “I didn’t know you worked at a library.”
“At Falls College. Yes, I do go to college, Cath.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to.”
She broke off. “Falls College isn’t bad.”
“People call it Fails College.”
She said nothing.
Toward the end of her senior year of high school, the yearbook staff put together a list of the graduating students and what colleges they’d chosen. It was common knowledge that a lot of people going to the local community college would put “undecided” instead. She distinctly remembered calling it Fails College a few times with her girlfriends. Now it gave her a sick, swooping feeling in her stomach, like a sudden nausea.
Henry was watching her and Molly was whining at the cheese and the guy in the apron was stacking black containers, and without warning her head was full of the sound of a cup falling to a dorm room floor, rolling away with a grinding sound.
She didn’t know who gave her that cup of water. She’d stumbled out too quickly, still half drunk, too stupid to look at the room number as she ducked down the hall, head bowed, stumbling into someone who asked if she was okay—and she was so not okay that she got halfway across campus before she remembered her dress was on backward, the tag still scratching thinly at her throat, and her arms and legs bare.
But she knew how the cup sounded when it fell, how his breath smelled like beer and toothpaste when he told her to go, remembered with perfect clarity the weight of her dress as she wrenched it off under the water.
“Catherine?”
She turned her head, the hard lights of the grocery store coming slowly back into focus. She realized she’d gone quiet again. “Falls College,” she said after a moment, brain working frantically to recall the conversation.
“Yes, I like to call it that, too. Instead of Fails College.”
“Which is mean,” she said, getting her feet under her now. They were walking again.
Henry shrugged. “But sort of true. I mean, I get it. It’s not a four-year school.”
“Yeah, well. Do you like it at least?”
Another shrug. “It’s something. A stepping-stone, my parents call it.”
Catherine felt a ghost of a grin on her face and clung to it. Normalcy. Parental vocabulary, as though they’d all read the same handbook. “What did you get them for Christmas?” she asked as they turned down the baking aisle and she scanned the shelves, bare in spots from the pre-Christmas rush. It looked like the pumpkin puree was sold out, but there was still sugar on the bottom shelves. She picked up a bag and straightened up, realizing Henry hadn’t answered her question. “Your parents,” she repeated, then caught sight of his face.
He was staring past her, down the aisle, his features a mixture of surprise and…fear? Catherine spun around. A few yards away, by the frosting and cake mixes, was a slight girl about her own age with long blond hair, her face gray-white with shock. She was staring back at Henry, her hand still in the air, clutching something small, and then she wasn’t.
Catherine watched it fall slowly, a small glass canister of what looked like Christmas sprinkles. It shattered when it hit the floor, the green and red pieces bursting like an explosion across the aisle.
Molly barked. The girl fled, her blond hair whipping around the corner. One larger piece of glass spun slowly in Catherine’s direction, coming to rest a foot from her. It winked in the overhead lights, jagged and lethal.
She stepped back. Henry did too, pulling Molly away just as a clerk came up behind them. He didn’t seem much older than they were, but his face was lined with exhaustion. When he saw the mess of glass shards and sprinkles, he swore, then glanced down at Molly.
“Service animal,” Catherine said promptly.
“She didn’t spill them,” Henry added.
The clerk muttered something about a broom and stalked off. Henry and Catherine exchanged a look.
“Who was that?” Catherine asked.
“No clue. What do you still need?”
“Henry, you can’t, the glass—”
But he was handing her Molly’s leash. “Here, hold her.” He took the basket from Catherine’s arm and began walking carefully down the aisle. “You got the sugar, right? What else?”
Catherine took hold of Molly with a sigh, calling out the items. By the time the clerk was back with an entire wheeled assortment of cleaning materials, Henry had gotten everything on her list except the actual jars. They hurried away from the clerk, grabbed the few things on Henry’s list from the next aisle over, then found the jars in a fancier section opposite the self-service tills of specialty nuts and candy. The shelves here were filled with things like mini-cheesecake tins for twenty dollars and gleaming Le Creuset pots for ten times that amount. There weren’t that many jars, though, and the ones large enough to hold all the necessary ingredients were seven dollars each.
“Shit,” she muttered, glancing at the price tags.
“What?”
“I only brought a twenty,” she said. “This’ll put me over.”
“Don’t you have a card?”
She shook her head. “I…lost it. At college.” He raised his eyebrows, and she amended, “Sort of. My license, too. Don’t tell my parents.”
“How’d you drive back home without a license?”
“Slowly.”
She’d tried driving the morning after it happened, but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Fine. Students had to be out of the dorms by ten a.m. tomorrow, the twenty-first. And she needed that extra day. She FaceTimed her mom to say that she was staying to help with an after-finals campus cleanup, and after a long conversation, her mother finally acquiesced. Amber gave Catherine a bleary-eyed look of surprise at this news, but she, like most of the dorm, was gone by that afternoon. Catherine spent that day entirely inside, staring at nothing, flinching every time her phone chirped with another one of her mother’s text messages. She did not sleep, and as soon as the sun rose, she left.