Short Story: “A Dog’s Faith”

Note: This story is written, in a strictly limited way, from the point of view of a character who is being a bad friend to somebody in a sensitive situation (questioning one’s gender identity). Due to the writing style, the narration reflects this character’s viewpoints rather than my own. I feel the need to clarify this from the get-go because I know that there are people who find my own approach to issues of sexuality and gender validating or even inspiring, and I do not want to create a nasty surprise or the appearance of betrayal as these readers encounter Hayley Weingarten’s less-than-generous behavior around those topics.

1. 

Hayley Weingarten secretly liked to think of herself as a good person, secretly because she did not want to be thought of as the sort of person who self-identified as a good person. She was sixteen and had never done anything particularly wrong in her life, unlike some. She went to church and youth group, she did well in school, and her classmates liked her; one of the “popular crowd,” she was nevertheless spiritually and culturally out of step with the rest of that group. She never had to be told to take Buster for a walk; only seldom did she have to be told to sweep the kitchen before going to bed or to cook dinner with Dad every Tuesday and Friday.

            Her twin sister Bethany was in the Abstinence Club. Bethany was in fact abstinent as far as Hayley knew. There were those in the Abstinence Club who weren’t—Hayley could think of three pregnancies that she knew of, one for each year she had been in high school so far. The first girl had had an abortion because her parents told her she was “the exception that proved the rule”; the second girl had miscarried relatively early in the going but still told the school about it and damn the opprobrium (Hayley respected her for it); the third girl was going to have her baby any day now and had dealt with all sorts of horrifying social brutality ever since the beginning of the school year (Hayley loved her for it). She supposed this abysmal track record was less because the purity culture people were uniquely hypocritical and more because being in the club put a target on your back for school lotharios like Ryan Rappaport and Jacen Calvert. Hayley had herself kissed Ryan Rappaport at a party once, but nothing more had come of it and the next week she had stomped on his foot for reading her notes over her shoulder in math class.

            Hayley’s pastor, Pastor Dave, liked the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and brought it up at least once every couple of months since the congregation had voted to secede from the Disciples of Christ and thus from having to use the Revised Common Lectionary. Every time Pastor Dave brought up this parable, Hayley felt a thrill of uncertainty about her life. She liked feeling these thrills more than she liked the glib certainties of her time outside of church. This was part of the reason why she was so punctilious about getting to church every week.

            One time Hayley and her best friend, Charlotte Rice (whom some called “Charizard,” much to her delight), went to the Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom with Charlotte’s goth cousin from the city Amelia Greenberg. Amelia wore this bizarre bathing suit with strips zigzagging all up and down her sides. Hayley spent half the day being concerned about Amelia’s tan lines and the other half racking her brain trying to figure out why Amelia’s suit came across as lewder than her own even though it covered more. “Have some of the Living Water, Charizard,” Hayley said to Charlotte, splashing her in the lazy river. Amelia, whose mother was something called a baalat teshuva, ignored her.

            Another time one of Amelia’s goth friends, Gwendolyn Fisher, stayed over with Amelia at Charlotte’s house and invited Hayley over to watch something called Crimson Peak. Hayley kept wondering what Pastor Dave would think of the movie if he were here with them, but she enjoyed it anyway.

            And still another time, Hayley and her other best friend, Lara Fielding, who was a senior, went on a medium-to-long-distance car journey to an abandoned insane asylum (by this point Hayley had started to suspect that Amelia Greenberg was rubbing off on her). They had only just gotten there when an alarm on Hayley’s phone went off and reminded her that she had to hightail it back home so she could take Buster to the vet for his regular checkup. When she eventually got him to the vet, about five minutes late, the news was not to Buster’s advantage.

            “Buster has liver failure and he has three weeks to live,” said Dr. Chandler.

            “Liver failure isn’t necessarily fatal for dogs, though, is it?” asked Hayley, trying not to freak. “I’ve seen special dog food for such dogs as this at Wegman’s.”

            “I’m sorry that you have to be here to hear this news by yourself, Hayley, but, while it wouldn’t have been fatal if we’d caught it sooner, the timing here seems to have been incredibly bad. I wouldn’t be surprised if Buster’s problems had started within a week or two after his last checkup. If we’d rescheduled that one to be even slightly later, I probably would have been able to catch it in time. As it is…” Dr. Chandler drummed the table gently with her callused fingers. “All I can say is keep him comfortable. If you want to make another appointment to have him put to sleep in a couple of weeks, then, I mean, be my guest, but you don’t have to; if you don’t let him overextend himself he could be reasonably comfortable until close to the end.”

            “I’d rather he die at home, thank you,” said Hayley as politely as she could muster.

            When she got home, she went straight up to her room without telling Mom, Dad, or either of her siblings what was the matter. Her younger brother Josh found her up there when he went to check on her halfway through dinner, over two hours later. She had her fingers knotted in Buster’s tangled fur and her head resting on his big belly, listening to his breathing.

            “We’ll leave a pork chop in the fridge for you if you want to heat it up later,” Josh said gently.

            “Thanks.”

            “Do you want me to leave this light on or…?”

            “No. Turn it off, please. Thanks.”

            Josh turned out the light and left the room. He left the door open the tiniest crack. By eight-thirty Hayley was sound asleep.

            She woke up to seventeen text messages from Lara. The first said:

Lara YESTERDAY 8:55 PM: Hayley, I don’t mean to freak you out but I’ve been giving this some thought for a few months now and I think I might be trans.

Hayley couldn’t deal with this right now. She skimmed through the rest. Lara clearly need help and/or support, and she certainly did not want to leave such an important suspicion to the tender mercies of Pastor Dave, but dealing with Buster was going to be enough of an emotional lift for her for at least the next month or two.

            Never having been sure what exactly to make of “the trans issue” (Hayley thought of all controversial subjects as “the X issue” regardless of whom she knew personally whom they affected), she noted the time—a little before five—and sent Lara one text in response before going back to sleep.

Hayley TODAY 4:52 AM: Not that I don’t sympathize, but is there any particular reason you didn’t bring this up on the road trip?

The possibility that Lara had just started thinking about this since midafternoon yesterday did occur to Hayley, but she would rather not entertain the possibility because she didn’t like to think of Lara lying to her about something like this.

            About three hours after this, her parents came and woke her up. Buster by this point could tell that Hayley was upset, and had started intermittently licking her hand, warm comfort in the half-sleep of morning. She held on to him in a world where there was no Lara and no liver failure. It had been less than a day and already her collapse was almost entire. If she was lucky this meant that she would bounce back from it faster than usual too.

            “Hayley, honey, wake up,” Mom said, sympathetically but reproachfully. “It’s time for church. –and then maybe you can tell us what’s wrong?”

            “Yeah,” Hayley grunted. She got up and pulled off yesterday’s clothes as soon as Mom closed the door. She had not showered, nor had she changed into her nightclothes, nor had she brushed her teeth, nor had she had anything to eat since lunch yesterday. She hoped church would cheer her up at least a little, but she did not think so, and she felt bad for hoping so; that was not what church was for.

            Church did in fact cheer her up at least a little; the music was a little more ceremonious than usual, for one thing. Hayley had a private taste for the rote and ritualized that she could normally only feed on Sundays where she visited the black Baptist church two towns over with her friend Amanda Harwell, but today the music ministry had sprung for “When I survey the wondrous Cross” and “Rock of Ages, cleft for me,” so she could get some of it right here at home. The sermon was on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, which had always given Hayley a spine-tingling feeling, a feeling that she had only just recently started to like. She guessed Amelia Greenberg really was rubbing off on her.

            For the rest of the day she did in fact hang out with Lara. Lara, apparently, had taken Hayley on the road trip partially in order to talk about this with her; she had been hoping that Hayley would come up with some sort of Christian rationale for putting her concerns and questions to rest. When Hayley had had to hurry home, though, Lara had driven around for a while by herself and then, looking for some more information on her phone, had decided that there was more to this than she had thought or than she had wanted Hayley to tell her that there was. She had been alarmed, almost frightened, and had decided to tell Hayley before anybody else because she thought that, after the day that they had spent together and after Lara’s own ulterior motives for that day, Hayley deserved to know. She had texted Hayley at around the same time in the evening that she normally did, and had freaked out after not getting a response and kept texting her until she gave up for the evening.

            Such was Lara’s account. Hayley was inclined to take her word for it and apologized for not being there to help her through this. She told her about Buster, but Lara still seemed hurt.

            “Hasn’t Buster been having health problems for a while now?”
            “Yes, but you…when your pet gets a death sentence, you don’t just walk it off just because the pet was already sick or old.”

            Lara looked like she was about to shoot back some rejoinder but instead she let her hands fall to her sides and said “I know. I’m sorry.”

            “Anyway,” said Hayley, as businesslike as she could, “all I feel like I can say for right now is that if you think there’s something to this then it’s totally not my place to contradict you, but, like, I think you might want to wait a little while before making some sort of sudden move here. Because your thoughts here about this, about the likelihood of this, changed pretty radically during one day.”

            “I’d been thinking about it for a while, though. I thought I told you so.”

            “Yes, but had you been going back and forth on it?”

            “Not really. I was just going back and forth on it today.”

            Hayley racked her brains for something that she could say that would be of help. What she came out with was an unbearable cliché but she said it anyway. “‘I praise you,’” she said, “‘for I am wonderfully and fearfully made.’”

            “Thanks,” Lara said unironically after a few seconds of silence. “Can you maybe go ahead and think through how you feel about this a little more before we talk about it again?”

            “Of course I can,” said Hayley, and squeezed Lara’s hand, feeling for a split second firmer and more stable than she was.

2.

Hayley’s first line of attack was talking to her biology teacher, Mrs. Ryder. Mrs. Ryder was about thirty, and Hayley guessed that she counted as “a Millennial,” but she had her life much more together than the media kept bloviating that people that age did or were supposed to. Until late last school year she had been Miss McCarthy; her then-boyfriend and now husband was somebody named Charles who was an accountant in one of the small cities to the north. She had long, pin-straight brown hair and her faculty bio page listed “split ends” as one of her dislikes.

            “I don’t think I’m the best person to be discussing this with,” Mrs. Ryder said, leaning back in her chair and fidgeting with a pencil as Hayley stood supplicant before her desk. “With a lot of these ‘identity things,’ as you call them, there isn’t a whole lot of reliable research being done on biological etiologies because the subjects are so politicized. That’s what makes them identity things.”

            “There are biological, uh, etiologies for homosexuality though, aren’t there?” asked Hayley.

            “There are more firmly established correlations with certain traits that are known to be biological, yes,” said Mrs. Ryder. “It’s possible that these things are epigenetic rather than genetic, or possibly a combination of biological and environmental factors. I don’t think there are comparable studies that have been done on transgender subjects, mostly for ethical reasons; it’s hard to find control groups if all the people you’re studying are undergoing some sort of hormone treatment.”

            Mrs. Ryder seemed to be implying here that she thought that there were people who went through transition who really should not, and that seemed reasonable to Hayley; hadn’t she heard rumors that the Stantons recently considered putting their son on puberty blockers after he said he had a crush on a boy? But April Hooper had been kicked out of the GSA for trying to start a discussion about incident, and April was unpleasant and bigoted enough on a whole host of issues that Hayley could believe that she had had it coming. She hardly thought that Mrs. Ryder was comparable.

            “All right,” said Hayley. “Thanks for listening.”

            “Before you go,” said Mrs. Ryder as Hayley turned to leave, “we need to discuss one of the marginalia that you wrote on your evolutionary development quiz.” Hayley made a little questioning sound in her throat. “You wrote ‘but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to believe this’ next to your answer on question thirteen. I gave you full credit, but I just wanted to check in with you about this—you do know that there’s no ‘supposed’ about believing things, don’t you?”

            “Oh, but there is,” said Hayley.

            Hayley’s next order of business was to get Buster some of the special dog food to see if she could prolong his life or at least prolong his comfort for any longer than Dr. Chandler had said. He enjoyed the car ride over to Hannaford with her (she didn’t have time to make a trip to Wegman’s on a school night). She did not know if he would enjoy a similar car ride again. For several minutes after getting the dog food and before driving home she just sat there with her hands knotted in his fur again, gently kissing him over and over again on his upturned head as he gave long slow laps underneath her chin. Then she drove home, playing one of her old indie rock CDs at what she would normally consider a too-low volume and nursing the holes in her heart and mind with one of the prayers that her youth minister, Dan, had taught her. “Lord, please pour out Your goodness and mercy on my head as You anointed King David’s head with oil…

            “Oh fuck you,” Hayley blurted out as somebody cut her off pulling into her neighborhood. She honked her horn hard, and a girl she recognized from the halls and from the one meeting of the Abstinence Club that she had attended last year glanced at her apologetically across the intersection.

            The next day this girl approached her between second and third period. “You’re Hayley Weingarten, right?”

            “Yeah. Didn’t you cut me off at Hemlock and Hawthorn last night?”

            “I did, yeah, sorry.” The girl proffered her hand. A purity ring flashed on her next-to-last finger. Weren’t those things supposed to go on the left hand? “Teresa Russo. Nice to formally meet you.” Hayley noted with some envy, another sin to pile on top of last night’s swearing, that Teresa was wearing a t-shirt for some mid-2000s anime that, paired with the rest of her outfit, she somehow managed to make look chic.

            “Is there anything in particular that you want?” Hayley asked as politely as she could under the circumstances.

            “Just to apologize and to tell you that your friend Lara Fielding seems pissed at you for some reason. I overheard her crap-talking you to Jacen Calvert. I dunno why.”

            “Jacen ‘CE’ Calvert? Seriously?”

            “On the other hand I think she might have some angle,” Teresa mused. She ran a hand through her obnoxiously thick, fine hair. “She’s probably trying to take herself off Jacen’s hit list or something.”

            “Oh. Well, in that case I can’t say I blame her.” Hayley doubted that this was actually true but it also did not seem like Teresa was misleading her on purpose or trying to spare her feelings. This girl was too good-natured for the Abstinence Club. She was also probably too good-natured to be a teen driver. The reason why Lara might actually be mad at her, of course, did not really bear thinking about, at least not yet. Hayley still had research and prayer to do.

            Hayley did not think about Lara for the rest of the school day, but when she got home she started researching Christian perspectives on this other than the Stantons’, which was self-evidently (at least assuming April Hooper wasn’t full of it) appalling, and Pastor Dave’s, which she was going to leave in reserve as a last resort. She had a taste for greater systematization than the usual Evangelical internet bickering provided, so first of all she looked up what the Catholic Church had to say about this. The first thing that she found was an infuriated headline from a couple of years ago that read: “POPE FRANCIS COMPARES TRANSGENDER PEOPLE TO ATOMIC BOMBS.” She was next to dead positive that this was excessive hyperbole on the headline’s part, and if not, it certainly was on Pope Francis’s; she opened the article in a new tab, bookmarked it, closed it, and moved on. The second thing that she found was that something called the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” which Benedict XVI had apparently led before becoming pope, had decided a while back that a specific transgender man in Spain, and possibly transgender people in general, were not suitable candidates to be godparents. (Hayley thought about her own godparents and had to confess that she had no idea what the problem was.) The third thing that she found was that Pope Francis had said—more recently than the atomic bombs thing—that trans people should be fully welcomed in the Catholic Church. But she knew enough about Pope Francis to know that when he said that about a person or a class of people it did not necessarily mean that he approved of them.

Hayley TODAY at 5:45 PM: Hey, are any of your Ab Club friends Catholic?

Bethany TODAY at 5:47 PM: i think terri russo is? idk, sorry, i’m not as into the ab club as i used to be

Hayley TODAY at 5:48 PM: good, they’re haters and losers (as our ~esteemed president~ would say).

Hayley TODAY at 5:48 PM: Terri seems okay, though; I ran into her in the hall today and we chatted for a few minutes. Thanks!

Bethany TODAY at 5:49 PM: np

Bethany TODAY at 5:54 PM: why do u ask?

Hayley TODAY at 5:57 PM: It’s nothing, I just had a question about Catholicism and wanted to ask somebody we know instead of just going to the Church of the Transverberation and asking a stranger

Bethany TODAY at 5:58 PM: makes sense

Bethany TODAY at 6:00 PM: ill text u her #

Hayley TODAY at 6:02 PM: Thanks!

Bethany TODAY at 6:08 PM: np

Hayley spent about an hour and a half doing homework and the rest of the evening after that trying to figure out how to ask Teresa (or “Terri,” evidently) about this without outing Lara. Was it “outing” if the person being outed didn’t know for sure? Either way, it was still a dick move. Eventually she decided to pull the old “asking for a friend move,” let Terri suspect what she may, and explain in person if Terri questioned her.

            She sent a text right before she went to bed, and woke up to Terri’s reply (how early did this girl get up in the morning?! About quarter of six, apparently).

Hayley YESTERDAY at 11:14 PM: Hey, it’s Hayley Weingarten. I got your number from my sister Bethany. I wanted to know if you know anything about the Catholic Church’s positions on transgender issues; I have a friend who’s, I guess the term would be questioning.

Terri TODAY at 5:51 AM: I’m not really an expert on that, I hoope your friend is okay though! Want me to pray for them?

Terri TODAY at 5:51 AM: *hope

Hayley texted Terri to yes, please pray for Lara, then went down to breakfast.

            “I know I don’t have any chores this week ‘cause of the situation with Buster,” she said over breakfast, “but Dad, I was thinking I could help you with dinner tonight anyway?”

            “Actually,” said Mr. Weingarten, “your mother’s cooking tonight. I have to work late.”

            “I’d be happy to have your help, Hayley, as long as you’re okay with pork chops again,” Mrs. Weingarten said.

            Hayley shrugged. “Sure,” she said. At this point Buster came downstairs and started begging. Hayley didn’t have the heart to withhold just a little bit of egg white from him.

            The rest of Hayley’s week, which was the last week before spring break, was mostly centered on Buster. Terri accosted her on Thursday to let her know that she was praying for Lara (Terri did not know it was Lara, so she was just praying for “Hayley’s friend”), and Lara told her later the same day that her feelings were still veering rapidly back and forth and that she had not told anybody else yet. Hayley wondered what that might have to do with the strange incident with Jacen. Jacen himself had started to look at her with an odd glint in his eye, less predatory than judgmental, as if Jacen had any room to judge anyone.

            Buster got worse, but still seemed in good spirits, although it might just be that Hayley wanted desperately to believe that he was. Hayley tried not to think too much about Lara or Terri or Jacen or anybody else when she was with him; she was taking him for two walks a day now, one before school and one after. She knew that it would by no means avail him as she wished it would, but she believed that he deserved at least this much time for joy squeezed into his life before the end. Still he sensed her upset; he kissed her to sleep every night, and woke her up by nuzzling her in the morning. His eyes, deep brown, got deeper and darker, as if he was passing out past the breakers of some shallow twilit sea; when he looked at her, she felt, uncomfortably, as if one eye saw her and the other eye saw the hereafter. Once or twice each day he would whimper piteously for a few minutes and then fall silent, but other than that he was his usual gamboling woofing self, which arrested Hayley’s grief and made it harder for her to accept what she knew intellectually was bound to happen soon. By the time the last bell rang on Saturday, confusion had set in; she knew that she was ignoring Lara, and not only Lara but Charlotte and her other friends too, but she figured they knew, from her or from one another, what was going on, and in any event Lara had asked her to give her some more time on her own before bringing to her what she called her “findings.”

            Finally spring break came and Hayley could devote her whole day to Buster. After service on Sunday she asked Pastor Dave to meet about Buster at some point during the week; he asked her if she wanted advice or comfort, and she told him that she was getting all the practical advice she needed from Dr. Chandler and from her family. “Mostly at this point I just wanna be told that things’ll be all right,” she said.

            “All right,” said Pastor Dave, clapping his hands down on his bejeaned knees as he sat, in a posture oddly close to being prim, across his office from Hayley. “That I can do.”

            “Thank you,” said Hayley, and scheduled a meeting with Pastor Dave on Wednesday afternoon, before the youth group’s Bible study that she sometimes went to. She would have to figure out how to avoid the youth group after the meeting because she really did not feel like getting dragged into fellowshipping with them right now. Maybe in a month or two she would be more inclined towards that sort of enforced joviality again.

            She went for four walks with Buster on Monday and three on Tuesday. She worried that she was tiring him out too much, and Dr. Chandler was noncommittal when she called to ask her whether that might be the case, but she figured that Buster was enjoying himself and would not get to enjoy himself for very much longer, so it was, to her at least, worth their while. She kept cycling back around to that over and over again, that simple brute and brutish fact of the impending absence of Buster. She had been away from Buster for a week or two before—a family vacation to Ireland when she was eleven, a school trip to the nation’s capital over spring break last year. Both of those times somebody had been there to watch Buster and call or email her to give updates on how he was feeling and tell him anything cute or funny that he had done that day. The voyage on which Buster was now embarking would never return to port and he would need to go alone. Hayley had had Buster since he was newly whelped and she was newly four; there had been life before him, but she remembered it only in minuscule snatches, like still snapshots, playing blocks with Bethany or pouring sand on Charlotte’s head in the daycare playground. One of her earliest elaborated memories was of watching Buster eating, sitting there in a row with the rest of John Conway’s Rottweiler mix’s litter, and pointing a stubby little four-year-old finger to him and saying “That one.”

            “He doesn’t have an immortal soul,” she asked Pastor Dave on Wednesday afternoon, “does he?” The question tasted flat and fake in her mouth.

            “Hayley,” said Pastor Dave, “have you ever read Lewis’s The Great Divorce?”

            “I can’t say I have,” said Hayley. “I’ve read some Lewis, but not that one.”

            “It’s a tour of heaven and hell. It’s like The Divine Comedy except instead of Virgil there’s a Victorian writer named George MacDonald. Anyway, in The Great Divorce there’s a character who comes from heaven to try to talk to her husband in hell. Her name is Sarah Smith and she has this whole train of animals following after her, because the love that she had for them, so to speak, hallowed them and brought them up to heaven with her in the form of the feelings that she had towards them. So even though Buster doesn’t have an immortal soul in the same way that you and I do, your love for him might mean that he’s with you in heaven in some way when you get there—according to Lewis, anyway. Does that help at all?”

            “To an extent. You’ve told me in the past that in heaven nobody would want to see anything but God. I’d interpret that to mean that I shouldn’t care.”

            “Well, don’t interpret it that way. I mean, you’re going to want to see your human loved ones in heaven, right? Even if you’re all focusing on God together, I’m sure you’ll be glad that they’re there. I don’t see any reason why God wouldn’t show you Buster again if you wanted to see him too.”

            “Okay. That does help. Thank you.”

            Hayley went from Pastor Dave’s office to the church library to look for The Great Divorce. She found it wedged in between The Weight of Glory and something called Letters to Malcolm, and checked it out for two weeks. She bumped into Dan in the parking lot, started to make some excuses but then decided to be honest with him about the situation and about why she wouldn’t be at youth group for a while, then went home and started reading. When she eventually got to “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them,” she gently shut the book and opened Code Name Verity, which Ms. O’Hare was having them read for their historical fiction unit in English. The book was by any imaginable objective metric way more depressing than The Great Divorce, but she realized as she was reading it that she was using it as a perverse form of escape from the Buster situation, itself almost a welcome distraction from the Lara situation. She felt unkind towards herself for thinking of her dog’s impending demise as a welcome distraction from anything. Her head and heart hurt too much to stay awake, and she lay down to drift off through the dusk.

3. 

To say that Hayley had a long day on the first Monday after spring break would be to say that cutting one’s own head off is awkward. Apparently over break Lara had come to the decision to start telling people about her musings and questionings. Hayley spent half the day trying to get the Ryans and Jacens of the school (Jacen having turned on Lara again) to lay off of her and half the day remonstrating with Lara to keep thinking things through carefully before spreading this like wildfire. “You’re going to get a lot of unthinking attacks and a lot of uncritical support,” she said. “I don’t think either of those things are what you need right now.”

            But Lara seemed to want the unthinking attacks and uncritical support. She had always been comfortable in extremes. In seventh grade she had written a piece of expository writing for history class that seemed to excuse Stalin; when she was told to edit the piece to be more morally responsible, she had said that Stalin was worse than Hitler and there had been no good reason to ally with him at all. In freshman year she had gone from thinking Taylor Swift was a maggot breeding in the body cavities of the dead to thinking she was the best female act ever, and last year she had gone back. She had gone from thinking people who liked exploring abandoned insane asylums were overly-gothic lurid creeps to dragging Hayley to one the other weekend, even if she had had an ulterior motive for so doing. So she would, apparently, rather deal with Ryan and Jacen, or with Rick Neville and Autumn Baker-Noel, than with Hayley. Hayley tried not to find this too offensive or too personally hurtful.

            Over the first half of that week Buster’s health kept declining, but it was a managed decline. He was only in the mood for one walk a day, on which Hayley took him punctiliously every day first thing after school. She called Dr. Chandler and she said that probably his other systems were starting to fail. On Wednesday she squeezed in a short appointment in which Dr. Chandler gave Buster a twice-over and gave him about a week.

            “That’s…what, four days more than your last estimate?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Is it okay if I count those extra four days as a victory?”

            “It’s more than okay. Honestly, I’m not sure that Buster’s physically in any better shape than I thought he was; what’s been keeping him going this long appears to be his love for you.” Hayley wondered how that fit in with what Pastor Dave and C.S. Lewis had said about how Buster might or might not fare in the world to come. She did not see any use in bringing that question up with Dr. Chandler, who she was pretty sure was an agnostic, possibly an atheist. “You know, if it helps,” Dr. Chandler said, “I do believe that people and animals that we love can outlive themselves, so to speak, in the form of the love that we have for them.” She got up and looked out the window over the parking lot; probably she was trying to be mildly, but perhaps only mildly, dramatic. “I would say the same thing to a farm family with a beloved cow,” she said, “or a marine biologist who was very much attached to a whale.”

            Oh. Perhaps there wasn’t so much daylight between Dr. Chandler and Pastor Dave after all. Hayley nuzzled Buster, and smiled a secret smile into his fur.

            On Thursday she ran into Terri Russo again. Some of the same people who were attacking Lara were attacking Terri, apparently.

            “Why?”                                                                                       

            “Just bog-standard racist abuse about my Mexican mom.” Terri shrugged. “I’m used to it by now.”

            “I didn’t realize you were Latina,” said Hayley. She did not want to say so directly, but Terri looked pretty white to her.

            “It’s okay,” said Terri. “I look pretty white to most people. My mom is one of those high-status Mexicans whose ancestry is mostly European anyway. She met my dad when he was studying abroad in Monterrey in college.”

            “What’d your dad go to college for?”

            “Well, Spanish.” Terri laughed a silvery laugh. “I’m thinking of doing pre-med. I had pretty bad tonsillitis when I was a kid and had to be in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for a while, so I kinda wanna be an ear, nose, and throat doctor.”

            “Did you live in Philadelphia?”

            “Until I was ten, yeah. There’s some things I miss but I actually like parts of small-town living better so I don’t mind it up here.” Hayley wasn’t actually sure if she would consider where they lived “small-town” or “the suburbs.” It was an interesting question. “What about you? Do you have any ideas for college?”

            “Don’t tell anyone I said this…”

            “Of course not…”

            “…but I’m not sure college is right for me. I’m sure I’ll end up doing it, just because it’s the only way you can really get ahead comfortably in this country anymore, but if I didn’t feel the need to do it then I’m not convinced I would think to do it on my own.”

            “That’s fair. Would you want to get married straight out of high school if that were still a thing?”

            “I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t really wanna come across as one of those self-absorbed ‘travel the world’ types but…I think there might be a part of me that I don’t really feed or pay much attention to that actually is one of those self-absorbed ‘travel the world’ types.” Hayley laughed a little. “Don’t hold it against me?”

            “I won’t. Don’t worry.” Terri leaned against her locker with a similar sort of restrained drama to her posture that Hayley yesterday had seen in Dr. Chandler. “By the way, your friend wants to talk to you. I’m not sure why but it seemed urgent.”

            “Thanks,” said Hayley. “Which friend?” She was pretty sure this was Lara, but she wanted to make sure.

            “Charizard Rice,” said Terri.

            “Crap,” said Hayley. “I’ll see you later.” She skittered off to talk to Charlotte before the next period started.

            She found Charlotte sitting with her arms folded in the woodshop, her back to the jigsaw. There was a sour expression on her face and Hayley was reminded immediately, without Charlotte having to say anything, of her many and various blowings-off of Charlotte over the past couple of weeks.

            “I’m sorry,” she said before Charlotte could say anything.

            “I accept your apology,” said Charlotte thickly, “but could you not at least have told me that all this stuff was going on for you? Like, the thing with Lara is one thing”—Hayley took as neutral a mental note as she could of the fact that Charlotte was still calling her Lara, as opposed to using her last name like some people had started to—“but could you not at least have told me about Buster being sick?”

            “Buster is dying, not sick,” said Hayley.

            “I know that. I had to hear it from Bethany of all people.” Charlotte leaned forward on her stool. “Hayley, I accept your apology, but I have to say I’m pretty damn pissed. We were going to go grab dinner together at Red Papaya at some point over break, remember? And then ice cream at Carlton’s. You could have at least explained to me what was going on. I know you’ve been blowing off youth group too and that’s fine, I get that, and I’m pretty sure Dan gets it, even. But for crying out loud, Hayley, we’ve been best friends since kindergarten.”

            “I know. I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

            “Give me a few weeks and I’m pretty sure I can,” said Charlotte. “We’ve had these fights before.”

            And they had. In fourth grade Charlotte had copied off Hayley’s pop math quiz and they had both gotten detention even though Charlotte had been looking over Hayley’s shoulder without Hayley’s knowledge. They had not spoken for about two weeks after detention ended. In the summer before seventh grade Hayley had yoinked one of Charlotte’s CDs because she was envious that Charlotte got to play it over and over again while Hayley had to wait until her birthday, which was in about three weeks, to get it. That time they had been on the outs until Hayley’s birthday party, at which she had given it back with a tearful apology. (That time, Pastor Dave had actually consented to hear a confession of sin to make Hayley feel better, even though only God could take away her sin.) This was not new, and they were more mature now. Hayley had the utmost trust in Charlotte and in their friendship as they left that room.

            On Friday and over the weekend she realized that the same could not be said of her friendship with Lara or with any of her other friends. Lara started telling people that Hayley was holding up her process by not having gotten back to her yet. On Monday Hayley found a note in her locker that Lara had apparently left there last Wednesday and that Hayley had for whatever reason not seen until now; it had fallen through the grate on her locker down, somehow, towards the back of it, behind her schoolbooks and where she kept her thermos.

Hey, I’m ready to talk about things with you. What have you been finding out? What are your own feelings? –Fielding

Things came to a head on Tuesday of the second week after spring break. Hayley made some time to take a walk around the school tennis courts with Lara during their lunch hour. The tennis courts were not yet in frequent use because the delayed and rainy spring, and there were only a few brave people out practicing their serves. They spoke in low, hushed voices.

            “I still don’t really know what to make of things,” said Hayley. “I’ve been so preoccupied with this thing with Buster, you know.” Lara nodded understandingly. “To be honest, I do still think of you as Lara. I don’t have to anymore if you don’t want me to, but it’ll take some time for me to stop. And I’ll need to figure out how I should think of you on my own. It’d have to be something we’re both comfortable with.”

            “I understand.”

            “I might need to talk to Pastor Dave or at least Dan about it. Although I’ve been trying to avoid discussing it with them because I don’t wanna rock the boat.”

            “It seems to me like you’ve been trying to avoid discussing it period,” said Lara waspishly.

            “I mean,” said Hayley, “I guess I have. And I’m sorry for that, I know this is important to you. But like I told you last week I really think you should give this a little more time yourself. You can’t make these decisions rashly.”

            “Isn’t that just for your own comfort, though?” asked Lara. “I mean, I’m comfortable with this.”

            “You were going back and forth on this as recently as spring break! Look, I’ve got two more days or so with my dog, and then I really want to discuss this a little more with you before either of us comes to any conclusions. I want to discuss it a little more with you, and I do want to discuss it with Pastor Dave or Dan, and I’m sorry about that but I can’t just switch a flip—sorry, I mean I can’t just flip a switch in my brain that—that—”

Lara stared at her for a few seconds, then muttered “Give me a break” in a bizarrely apologetic tone of voice and started walking away. She walked right onto one of the tennis courts and started talking to a girl whom Hayley recognized as Autumn Baker-Noel—one of the popular group to whom she had been closer last semester.

            For the rest of the day Autumn Baker-Noel and the other popular people, with whom Hayley had never exactly been as thick as thieves but among whose number she was aware that much of the rest of the school for whatever reason saw her, avoided her and in some cases glared at her. Given Autumn’s political views and the clout that she held with the rest of them and that Lara had recently begun to hold with her, Hayley was not surprised. And yet it felt odd to have something like a decisive break with these people to whom she had given so little thought anyway over the past month or two. It was as if, upon finding out that she had unexpectedly inherited a small fortune, she had immediately had to spend it all on a sudden health crisis.

            “Sorry to see what’s going on with your friend Fielding,” said Terri to her at the end of the day. The fact that Terri was calling Lara, Fielding, somehow felt like a criticism of and a vindication of Hayley at the same time.

            Hayley shrugged. “It’s going to take a while to sink in. Besides, these are my last days with my dog. I’d do well to take more of my cues from him than from anyone else.”

            “I haven’t met your dog,” said Terri, which seemed like a statement of the obvious to Hayley. “Would you like to introduce us before it’s too late?”

            “Sure. I’m cooking with my dad tonight so it’d be good to have someone over to appreciate it. Do you have any dietary needs?”

            “Not any needs, but I don’t really like seafood besides white fish, and I’m not really crazy about spicy food. Heresy for someone with a Mexican mom, I know.”

            “You’re in luck; we’re cooking up some trout and throwing it in a stew with vegetables and pasta.”

            “Sounds great.” They had to part ways soon, Terri to the school bus and Hayley to her car. “Oh, by the way! You and Charizard Rice are besties, right?”

            “Not at the moment, but I have hope that we will be again. Why?”

            “Nothing, it’s just, my priest knows her cousin Amelia’s mom through this Catholic-Jewish dialogue group they’re in, so I could get in touch with Amelia if you’d like to spend more time with her sometime. I think I once overheard something about you going to Great Escape together?”

            “Sounds great,” threw back Hayley. “I’ll text you my address right now. Do you have a bike or something so you can come over in, say, two and a half hours?”

            “Yep, I have a three-speed bike. See you then.”

            Terri got on the bus and Hayley drove home to spend one of her last nights with Buster.

4. 

Buster started moaning and howling at all hours around midnight on Wednesday night. When Hayley wrapped him in a towel and started giving him some water with an eye dropper, he started feeling a little better. He lingered through Thursday and gave up the ghost in the wee hours of Friday morning, just as Hayley had made up her mind to skip school tomorrow and make an emergency appointment to have Dr. Chandler put him to sleep.

            They buried Buster in the back yard on Saturday. Other than Mom, Dad, Bethany, and Josh, Terri showed up, as did Charlotte, willing to make an overture towards Hayley but now unsure about restoring their old closeness after having heard a possibly exaggerated version of the conversation with Lara (or Fielding) from someone in Autumn’s circle. Terri had loved the dinner on Tuesday and asked if they could make it a weekly thing. Hayley was too inarticulate from tears to say yes right away—homework and other things might get in the way—but she made it clear that she thought it was a nice idea.

            “You’re welcome to sit in on Mass at Transverb sometime,” Terri said to her quietly. “Although I understand that you probably shouldn’t take communion.”

            “And you’re welcome at my Oak Lawn youth group when I start going again,” Hayley managed to say back, “although you might not like it if you’re not up for arguing over whether Stranger Things is ‘more Christian’ than Westworld.”

            “Oh, you bet I have my opinions on that,” said Terri.

            “Great,” said Hayley. “See you there.”

            She did feel badly about Lara (or Fielding). She would be following things assiduously. She would need, moreover, to cling harder to the Gospel now. She was not sure how to feel about that.

Fielding TODAY at 4:44 PM: Hayley Weingarten and Terri Russo are friends now

Autumn TODAY at 4:45 PM: yeah I know

Autumn TODAY at 4:45 PM: what about it?

Fielding TODAY at 4:48 PM: nothing, I’m just glad H. has someone drama-free to be friends with now

Rick TODAY at 4:52 PM: Is it really “drama-free” though? Terri’s in Ab Club, isn’t she? I thought Hayley hated those people.

Autumn TODAY at 4:54 PM: she does but I don’t think terri’s crazy aobu thtem either

Autumn TODAY at 4:54 PM: *abut them

Autumn TODAY at 4:54 PM: *ABOUT them, sry

Autumn TODAY at 4:55 PM: anyway I guess I’m happy for them?

Fielding TODAY at 4:57 PM: yeah, things have worked out pretty conveniently for Hayley from the looks of it

Fielding TODAY at 4:58 PM: even though I don’t think anybody else really likes her very much now (which is reasonable tbh)

Fielding TODAY at 4:59 PM: it kind of pisses me off honestly that the timing here was so bad. What with her dog I mean

Autumn TODAY at 5:00 PM: don’t let it get to you. these things happen.

Fielding TODAY at 5:00 PM: thx