On The Run

Chapter Nine - "One Good Deed. Plus One"

Ricky was stuffing his face with a burger behind a desk piled with papers, and Fitch was nowhere to be seen. Since he was the one I was most familiar with, I’d have wanted him to help me out, but thinking it over, it seemed like that was his second job – helping me out; it could get a little much. I’d barely even seen Fitch in the whole week I’d been there, and I didn’t know whether to be disappointed, offended, or relieved; I mean, he was the only one of the four of them who knew me the most, in a way.

“Hi. I’m sorry, can you help me out?” I asked.

“Oh my God. What happened to you?” Ricky asked, wide-eyed.

“Huh?”

“You’re bleeding,” Trey said.

I looked down at myself, and sure enough, the bottom of my grey long-sleeved shirt was a deep red.

The sleeves of my top were covered in my blood as well, and I could see Trey and Ricky staring at me curiously. The previous cuts on my arms were wide open and bleeding. I guess they’d burst open as I’d climbed over the glass.

You know how sometimes you feel pain in a certain area, and then you decide to put pressure on it because you feel like it might make it all better? Well, you might not know, but that was my mentality. Cutting was supposed to be a means to make it all better, and for a while it worked, but it served as a visible reminder of my pain, for me and anyone else, so it became a problem.

I looked down at my sleeves again, hiding them behind me. It was the literal situation for ‘opening old wounds’.

“No. It’s not for me. It’s . . . can you, please?” I pled.

Trey gave me a confused look, and shrugged, “Sure.”

“Thanks. Come on,” I said, leading the way out.

“I’m coming too,” I heard Ricky say, as he traipsed after Trey.

We were back at the junkyard in no time; the sleeping guard had barely changed his position, so it was a pretty smooth entry. I have a photographic memory, but I wasn’t sure that applied to location, so it took us a while to find the Peugeot.

The dog was still there, with my sweatshirt wrapped around it, and I saw the excitement in its eyes, as it saw me. Or maybe I was just projecting. I was so far gone in my derelict, that even the supposed excitement of a dog trapped in a car couldn’t change my blank expression. I guess practice does make perfect.

“It’s a dog,” Trey said, staring through the windshield. I’d gotten a little accustomed to his characteristic of spewing out the most obvious statements.

“That’s an Anatolian Shepherd. How’d it get there?” Ricky asked, surprising me with his little tidbit of knowledge.

“I don’t know, but it’s trapped. Can you get it out?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.

Trey sighed, “Probably.”

“Okay. So, what do you need?” I asked.

“Ricky, go to the front and climb in, so you can try to pull the seat forward,” Trey ordered, “and I’ll just hold up the hood, because it might cave in completely.”

“And me?” I asked.

“You get the dog out,” Trey said, with a smile.

“Okay.”

It took approximately seven minutes – I counted – and before I knew it, the dog was wagging its tail next to me. I crouched down to run my hand down its back, and said, “Told you I’d get you out.”