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  My dad’s abrupt leaving without paying child support, my Mom’s catastrophic medical bills, a mortgage on a house we didn’t need, utilities, private school tuition, and little things like food and gas had depleted the paltry amount of money in my Mom’s savings account about a year ago. Without any parental consent I used up what was in my college fund to keep us going. When that disappeared, I just stopped paying the mortgage. The whole country had been in a recession. I thought I had time. The bank had sent a foreclosure notice last month.

  Dozing on the couch I heard a car door slam in my driveway. Not wanting to be in a horizontal position, I rolled myself upright before Tanner came inside.

  “I heard you got called in the principal’s office today. Have you been a bad girl?”

  The lame connotation irked me though he had no idea of what I’d experienced. “I’ve been something. Currently, I’ve been hungry. You want a sandwich?”

  “Sure.”

  He followed me into the kitchen and sat at our island counter. My mom had remodeled our kitchen a few years ago and put in this beautiful orangey red granite that set off the black cabinets. After her remission ended, my dad read an article about some granite exports emitting radon gases. We kept the countertop. Dad dismissed the chances of any lasting effects by saying that the emission levels were so low that they didn’t even register.

  Tanner looked at me as I pulled slices of white bread from the loaf. I wondered if he wanted the oat cluster kind his mom bought.

  I held up mayo slathered on one slice of bread. “Condiment advisory needed?” I pointed to a jar of banana peppers, a head of lettuce, mayo, and cheese - the last of my food supplies.

  He laughed. “Give me the works.” I slapped it on thick and piled a bunch of turkey on top. “So what did he want?”

  “No worries. Tune in and see.”

  He took a big bite. My stomach twisted and cramped diminishing my hunger. I tore off a slice of bread hoping to calm my belly. A doughy glob stuck to the roof of my overly dry mouth. I grabbed a paper towel, turned from Tanner and spat the food into it.

  He sighed. “Does your stomach hurt again?”

  I nodded gulping water from the tap.

  “What is it now?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell.”

  He laughed. Satan’s lair was what we referred to as the house of my dad and stepmom. “You want me to come with?”

  “Not this time.”

  He studied me tilting his head as if I was perplexing. Finishing his sandwich in three bites, he opened the fridge, made no comments about the lack of contents and took the one drink remaining, swigging down a Diet Coke without asking if he could have it.

  He hand dusted the crumbs into his palm and shook them into the trash. “Sooo?”

  My stomach clenched. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do tomorrow. Is it okay if you don’t spend the night?”

  “Sure.” He smiled.

  Walking him to the door, he opened it. Then he turned around and hugged me. A deep hug, like he used to give me...before we changed.

  Chapter 3

  Hanna

  My arms pulled in multiple directions, my feet keeping pace. Three canines trotted alongside me as I filled my job duties for the day.

  Five dogs….number one Poo Poo the Pom he only had to be let out to pee on days when his owner notified me via text. Always my first stop because his bladder was the size of a golf ball. His owner was a flight attendant who had no business owning a dog with her schedule. She had originally wanted me to walk him. Poo Poo, aptly named because he left Tootsie Roll size poop deposits around her house, dawdled on walks preferring to be carried. Poo Poo’s house was a stop where I let him out to pee on my other client visits. Number two Bowzer a hundred pound Rottweiler mix was a beach walk. I liked Bowzer. Nothing messed with Bowzer. Only I knew that he was a big softie. Number three and four, Romeo and Juliet, two Brittany spaniels that were crazy hyper. They accompanied me and their friend Bowzer on said beach walk. Number five Sox an old Golden Retriever. Sox got special time, alone full on attention.

  Bowzer strutted along deceiving people with a misplaced stereotype. Romeo and Juliet practically danced down the sidewalk.

  After traversing the boardwalk we stopped to smell - me the salty, wet air of the ocean, them the stench of the overflowing trash receptacles and occasional dead fish, cormorants and sea turtles. I trailed the pack, reflective heat of the sun was beaming into my scalp, my long dark brown hair saturating the rays, my skin absorbing the warmth. I half jogged, half loped down the beach. Different leg heights didn’t allow for a true run.

  We reached a hulking piece of driftwood. Once it had been an impressive tree, now only the trunk remained thick and leached in a muted shade of gray from the elements. The dogs sniffed excitedly, stopping only to lavish me with kisses but when I didn’t join in on their explorations, they grew bored and scratched the hot surface sand away to lie in the cool damp beneath.

  The walk back was slower, the pink shell sand a soft struggle for my feet. The dogs all knew that their fun time was over for the day. Romeo and Juliet had elderly owners who couldn’t do more than let them out the back door for “potty time” as they called it. Bowzer belonged to Clay, a young bar manager who worked twelve hour shifts. I dropped off all of them at their houses and went to Sox.

  Letting myself in my old friend did no more than wag his tail and lift his head from where the evening sun glinted inside his domain.

  “How was your day?” I stroked his ears and with mopey old eyes, he replied that his day was uneventful except for the Amazon package the UPS delivery man left out front. Lifting Sox’s hind legs, I eased his arthritic hips up and led him to the back door. Sliding down to sit leaning against the back stucco of the house I obliterated myself behind a giant Azalea bush.

  One quality I loved about Sox was he no longer cared about marking his territory. He hiked a hind quarter on the side of the deck, or shakily squatted and deposited behind a prickly Sago Palm. Then he gently returned to where he sat dutifully beside me, behind my flower bush. We cuddled and Sox absorbed my sadness.

  Movers were loading my remaining possessions based on my instructions. They were meeting me at a storage facility, one on the other side of the city. The monthly rent was cheaper there and the chances of anyone I knew spotting me slim.

  Gator was staring them down, waiting me out. If Gator could have talked, he would have explained to these guys why they were only moving a bed with a mattress, couch and bric-a-brac out of a near empty house. He would have told them that I had hocked almost anything of value at a local pawn shop and sold the rest in an “everything must go” yard sale last year.

  One of the moving crew reached down to pat the dog’s head. Gator didn’t even wag his tail. The AKC website listed aloofness as a tendency in the breed. I felt lineage did not make personality, circumstances did. The dog was ecstatic around me, he just didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

  I lifted the urn holding my mother’s remains, thought about the funeral.

  I hadn’t had to make any of the arrangements. My mom had pre-arranged. She had told Tanner she was so he would be able to guide me. Catatonically I had gone through the day. Only Tanner and I saw her deteriorated shell before the funeral. She hadn’t wanted anyone to see her in that state and had arranged closed casket with a cremation later. The cremation may have been to save money. Urns are cheaper than cemetery plots.

  Friends and family paid their respects and offered me their condolences. People from school I had never spoken to showed up at my mom’s funeral in droves. I hugged bodies I didn’t even realize were in my classes. I wanted solitude. Instead, people descended upon me like a swarm of locusts, leaving behind devastation in the form of lunchmeat, cheese trays, and casseroles in coolers on my doorstep, and unwanted advice in my head.

  Tanner was like my shadow accepting classmate’s sympathy cards, flowers, and deflecting e-mails. He was the perfect boyfriend.


  Whenever I saw or heard my dad he was a giant echo, repeating that exhausting idiom, “It was for the best.”

  Agonizing hours further in the day, I was coming out of the bathroom when I overheard a whispered conversation between my father, stepmother and some relative. In life, everything is about timing. Their timing was wrong. My dad was telling this blood related stranger that he had kept up with the premiums on a life insurance policy for my mom. When I heard he had provided money to gamble on the length of her time remaining on earth knowing that he had dropped my mom from his healthcare policy so she had to go on Medicaid because she had quit her own position to get better I felt whatever composure I had crumble.

  My dad said my mom poisoned my mind against him. His actions were the real arsenic.

  Chapter 4

  Hanna

  Tanner just stared at me stunned. There were a multitude of hurts coursing through my nerves, but any pain he inflicted upon me just didn’t register. For some reason he never saw that.

  “Why did you take the fall for me?” Tanner feebly asked.

  “Because I was the one who reaped the profits from the pills. In addition, I have nothing to lose. You do.”

  “I convinced you to do it.”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “How can you say that?”

  I ignored his question. “You know what the irony of it is? I used the money you made off those pills to pay for school. How stupid was that? Tuition should have been the first bill I stopped paying.”

  “The first bill?” He gulped.

  He had no clue what it had taken me to survive this long. “Besides the cash from dog walking there was no other money coming in Tanner. Mom’s savings was depleted. What little money I had saved was used up fast. Dad didn’t provide a penny. Since she died, I’ve written cold checks and lived off a dead woman’s credit cards. I’m just happy I’m not going to jail. The least of my concerns is that some uptight school administrator thinks I was pushing.”

  He gestured. “What about all this?”

  I shrugged. “You mean the house? I haven’t paid the mortgage in months. Plus, as of today the utilities have been cut off.” I sighed. “I guess it was for the best.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “No it wasn’t.” He grasped at solutions. “You can move in with me. We’ve got room. I don’t want you to go.”

  “It’s only twenty miles. I’ll still be doing the dog business. You’ll still see me.”

  “Not if your car is repossessed.”

  “Maybe… but with the money I make from dog walking and all other financial obligations removed I might be able to keep it. I’m going to call the bank holding the lien on the car. See if we can work something out, I’m only behind two payments.”

  “Hanna, I….” Tanner’s voice faltered as he rubbed his hands over his face. He walked over to his bed, pulled out a sock stuffed to the max from the back of his nightstand. He reached inside and extracted a huge, crumpled wad of cash. “This is a grand. Put it toward the car.”

  An apology would never come. The money was as close as he’d get. I pushed it away. “No, you keep that.” I refused to take the money though it was mine. Tanner didn’t know that. He also didn’t know I knew how he got it.

  Tanner

  Hanna was slipping away. My partying was catching up to me. Girls I didn’t remember hooking up with were leaving notes in my locker making offers of more.

  I was miserable. Why did I let Hanna take the fall for the drugs? I contemplated marching my ass into the principal’s office and setting him straight. I could excuse my behavior by saying it was an attempt to get back at my own parents for sending my brother to a group home. Draw the attention from Hanna. I couldn’t let her drift away, at least not without me as her anchor.

  Hanna

  Three days in, public school was a little scary. My stepsister practically owned the place. Driving separately, never speaking, no one knew we were linked by marriage. Walking between trailers that were being used as classrooms, I noticed people noticing me, the new girl.

  I wasn’t completely alone. My old friend Della had moved across town after elementary school. She noticed me immediately on the first day. Her familiar face and bright blue eyes took me in the minute I appeared in her homeroom. We exchanged nods, a few words of acknowledgement. I didn’t want her to ask about our old friends, the ones who’d attended private school with me.

  Somehow, I had managed to get placed in the same morning classes on her schedule. She made the first move to rekindle our friendship beyond the ‘How ya been?’ stage.

  “Where do you hang at lunch?” she asked as we were departing our fourth period.

  “I’ve been sitting in my car.”

  “Are you lighting up?” She looked at me skeptically.

  “No.” I didn’t know if she meant smoking pot or cigarettes. I wasn’t doing either.

  “You want to sit with me?”

  I watched Della unwrap a pita that oozed Hummus from its fold. A cute guy with dreadlocks walked by with his group, a bunch of flannelled, Birkenstock wearing, stale smelling seniors. He nodded.

  Della noticed. “You know him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Friends?” she asked.

  “No.” I looked across the table as she wiped dripping Hummus from her chin.

  “I’d get with that. He’s hot.”

  I scrunched my face, thinking if only she knew.

  Tanner

  Guzzling my bottle of G2 I choked and sputtered when someone sent me a text.

  Did Hanna get snt 2 juvie?

  I answered to anyone within earshot of my position on the workout bench, “Hanna is living with her dad now. She’s still my girlfriend so you asswipes can quit spreading these rumors.”

  “Are you really still together after what she did?” Didge whispered.

  I arched my eyebrow at the overly worked out defensive end on my left. Nicknamed Didge because he was always starting a question with Didja instead of Did you. “She didn’t do anything. It’s all a mistake.” I lowered and benched two hundred.

  I caught his smirk before he returned to add weight to his leg press. Everyone remaining at school was shit. Gossip had escalated from one tiny shred of truth. Someone visiting the office at the time of Hanna had overhead the word drugs. From there it escalated to Hanna was pushing, to she was hooked, to she was so deep in drug use she’d been giving blow jobs to feed her addiction. It all showed how stupid these kids really were. Did they not think twice about the “candy bowl” at my parties where they could pick a pill for a small cover fee.

  I closed my eyes wanting the burn in my arms to deaden my guilt. All I could see was Hanna. Beautiful, amazing, so cool...she was my everything. Was may have been the operative word.

  As kids, we were just Hanna and Tanner, two inseparable friends. When we started seventh grade, we stopped doing sleepovers, she stopped running through sprinklers in just a t-shirt. Adolescence hit. She grew her kiddy bangs out and brushed the tangles, stopped binding her long dark hair in a ponytail. Suddenly, curves replaced flat planes on her body. I found myself having to focus on glints of gold in her hazel eyes instead of her chest.

  She began drawing the attention of older boys. They tried to get in through me since I was her best friend. I always told them she wasn’t interested without consulting her.

  We made it to fifteen without me having to share her with any of the guys who openly admired her. I was scrawny, barely bigger than her 5’6” but I was shooting up seemed like an inch every month. We spent endless hours on the beach. We were tanned poster children for the necessity of sunscreen.

  Her mom got sick again that first year of high school. Things that mattered to other girls her age didn’t matter to Hanna. She was a good girl. She did as her parents told her. She studied hard and did well in school. I know that she could have had any guy she wanted, but she stayed loyal to me. She didn’t bat an eye when I told
everyone we were a couple long before we were.

  Fast forward to junior year, I was now 6’2” and athletic. Role reversal…girls noticed me. They didn’t matter. Hanna was the one I wanted. I loved her, needed her...was consumed by her. Yeah, I know a lot of young couples say that crap. But for me it was true.

  When she was at her most desperate, she came up with this plan. She wanted to have a baby. Us. Together. Use the umbilical cord stem cells to treat her mom.

  No fucking way did I want a kid but I said, “yeah, sure” and not because I wanted more sex. If we had conceived, I would have stepped up to the plate. I did it because I knew if it became a choice to save us or her mom I’d lose. She would have found some other guy and just not told him what she was doing. The thought of another guy’s hands on her made me want to die. I wanted her mom to live. I loved the woman more than my own mother. I knew short of a miracle Hanna’s mom wouldn’t be around in another 40 weeks, the time it would take to bring a baby to term.

  After months of not getting pregnant, Hanna began blaming herself. She was convinced she was the one teenage girl in the world who couldn’t get knocked up. The thing was it was me.

  When my mom started considering a group home for Trevor, she got all worried because she was concerned the counselors were lax and sex would be rampant between residents. She took Trev to an Urologist to have a vasectomy because she had a huge fear he would get some girl pregnant and she’d have to raise the child.

  The doctor informed my mother that most Down Syndrome men are sterile. Trev was not the exception. I freaked thinking even though mentally nothing was wrong with me the chromosome arrangement from Down’s was passed down to me too. I did the whole sperm test kit available at your local Walgreens. The results showed my sperm count was low. The package listed a website. From there, the answer to our baby making dilemma became apparent.