Precious and Fragile Things Read online

  “The guy loved that dog, even though the dog never loved him back, and never thanked him for all the nice things he did for it. Then one night, when the guy went out to feed the dog and pat him on the head, the little fucker didn’t bother growling. This time, he took a big chunk right out of the guy’s hand.”

  Her throat had gone dry during the telling of his tale. “What happened then?”

  Todd smiled, an empty expression that bared his teeth and did not reach his eyes. “The guy went inside his house and got his shotgun, and he blew that little fucker’s head right off.”

  There was no mistaking the meaning of his story, but Gilly wasn’t afraid of it. “Which one of us is the dog?”

  “I don’t know, Gilly,” Todd said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  21

  She got out of bed on her own the next morning. Washed and dressed. Sat across the table from him and ate her breakfast. She did not speak.

  Todd didn’t seem to mind. He ate as heartily as he ever did, and after breakfast lit up a cigarette as if it was dessert. Gilly waved away the smoke hanging in front of her face and coughed deliberately, but Todd either didn’t notice or did not care.

  “You giving me the silent treatment?” he asked her finally, when she got up to put her dishes away.

  Gilly paused before answering. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “How about good morning?”

  She repeated the words without enthusiasm. Todd got up from the table and touched her shoulder to turn her to face him. Gilly moved without resistance, her gaze on the ground.

  “Gilly. Look at me.”

  She did so grudgingly.

  “We got to go through this again?”

  She shook her head and tried to turn her face away. “No.”

  He lifted her chin so she had to continue looking at him and asked her the question he’d asked her once before. “You afraid of me?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not a good liar,” Todd said, and let her go. He followed her to the living room. “Will you just stop for a minute?”

  She whirled to face him. “Can’t you just let it go? What do you want from me?”

  “Just thought we were going to try and be friends, that’s all. Seems better than not being friends.” Todd shrugged. The tip of his cigarette glowed red as he drew the smoke deep into his lungs.

  “I never said I was going to be your friend.” Lip curling on the word, Gilly crossed her arms in front of her.

  “You just gonna keep being that growling dog, ain’t you?” Todd grinned. “Okay. I’ll just keep patting you on the head….”

  “And maybe one day I’ll bite you,” Gilly retorted.

  “Maybe one day you will,” Todd conceded. “Or maybe, one day, you’ll just stop that growling.”

  “I don’t think so.” She went to the front window, watching the snow outside. A rabbit hopped along the white drifts, leaving behind its footprints. Then it was gone.

  “Ah, Gilly, why not?” He sounded so sincerely curious, she turned to face him.

  “The idea is ridiculous.”

  “How come?”

  He wanted to know, so she told him. “We have nothing in common. There’s nothing about our lives that would ever have brought us together.”

  “Not true. We did get brought together.”

  “Not by my choice!”

  Todd made a thoughtful face. “Not by mine, either, but it happened. What, you can only be friends with someone you met on purpose? The fuck kind of fun is that? You must not have many friends if that’s how you go about it.”

  “You have a lot of friends?” she asked, sounding snide, expecting the answer to be negative.

  Todd shrugged. “Depends on what you consider a friend. I know a lot of people. And most of them I didn’t meet on purpose. But yeah, some of them are friends. Some are douche bags who run off with my money and turn me to a life of crime.”

  He was making another joke. She saw it in his eyes and the slight tilt of his lips, though his voice was dead serious. Gilly realized suddenly she envied Todd his sense of humor, even amongst all of this. His ability to somehow laugh at what was going on. She’d had a great sense of humor, once upon a time, but she hadn’t been able to find the humor in lots of things for a long time. Certainly not this, now.

  “We would never be friends under any circumstances, and this situation is certainly not conducive to friendship,” she said stiffly.

  “Huh. You like big words just like Uncle Bill.” Todd shrugged. “This situation is all we got. How fortuitous for both of us to have made each other’s acquaintance. See? I know some big words, too.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Todd,” Gilly said tiredly.

  “Now who won’t let it go?” Todd drew in another deep lungful of smoke, watching her with narrowed eyes. Thinking. “You sure are stubborn.”

  Gilly lifted her chin. “I’ve been called worse.”

  “I bet.” Todd shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s up to me, then.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “What’s up to you?”

  “Guess I got to prove to you I really am a nice guy.” Todd smiled. “Prove we can be friends. You and me, besties. It’ll be great. Maybe we can even braid each other’s hair.”

  His eyes glinted with humor even in the face of Gilly’s answering glower. In fact, he laughed out loud, right into her face. Gilly crossed her arms.

  “Keep dreaming,” she said.

  “Ah, c’mon. Not even if I make you a friendship bracelet?” Todd fluttered his eyelashes at her.

  He looked so utterly harmless and innocent Gilly almost laughed out loud, but she cut it off, tight. Locked it up. “No. Forget it. Not happening.”

  “You could at least think about it.”

  “No. I can’t.” She watched the light of his humor fade. “Really, Todd. You should understand that.”

  He nodded, just barely, after a long minute of looking at her. “Yeah. Sure, sure. I get it.”

  Why now did she feel that she was the one in the wrong again? She held her apology, a pearl on her tongue created from the sand of their argument. “We’ll never be friends, Todd.”

  “We’ll see,” Todd said. “Maybe we’ll be something else.”

  22

  Danica is Gilly’s best friend until their junior year of high school, when Danica’s braces come off and she replaces her glasses with contact lenses. A perm, a tan, a few pounds lost and an inch in height had transformed her over the summer from a band geek into a hottie, and the boys have noticed. That would be fine, but Danica notices, too.

  They’ve shared most everything over the years. Secrets, dreams. They’d practiced kissing their pillows during sleepovers at Danica’s house, and she’s the only person Gilly’s ever told about her crush on their gym teacher, Mr. Grover, in seventh grade. Danica has a lot of brothers and sisters, but Gilly has none. Danica’s her sister. Her best friend.

  At first, Danica’s new popularity with the opposite sex is sort of a boon to Gilly, who’s had her share of giggling crushes and notes passed to her in study halls but never really had a boy like her. Not like her, like her, not the way she liked him. Now, walking the halls of school before the bell rang for homeroom, Gilly follows Danica and the boys follow them both. Surely one or two of them will look Gilly’s way when they see her friend is busy with the others.

  And sure enough, one does.

  Not the one Gilly likes. That’s Bennett Longenecker, who looks like he just stepped out of one of those teen movies. Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect smile. He likes Danica, of course, but he’s nice enough to Gilly because he also has a perfect personality. Gilly swoons inside whenever he looks her way, which is just often enough to keep her pleasantly tingly all throughout the school day and sometimes even into the evening.

  The boy who likes her has the unfortunate name of Reginald Gampey. He was named for his dad and his grandfather, and he goes by Reg…b