Only

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All night the cats fight tight as a wrestle. They crash back and forth in the dark and they’re not playing cuz it’s 

……….cry

cry 

……….cry

all the way to morning and another watery wake up, another rain-gray sky, another here-we-go-again, only I open my eyes close them open them close click open the laptop and try not to look. I had to get rid of my phone because it was killing me. Also it stopped working cuz no one would pay the bill. I have to use the computer at Stoane’s if I want to know anything only I don’t. (I do.)

It’s just better not to. I don’t want to check email but my fingers get me there anyway and my eyes look to see what’s new, only it’s nothing. Old Navy. Urban Outfitters. They want me back. It’s true. We really miss you. Did you forget something?

11:30 a.m., so I gotta get the dogs, except I.

Except he. 

They need me, those dogs, plus it’s my job, only (Luc’s still).

I scan past the ads looking for a message from Luc’s dad saying never mind, saying forget that first email. The one he sent to like, everyone who’s not even around anymore cuz they’re all in college. Only he didn’t. Only I’m not. 

I would miss them, but you can meet people anywhere, and you can learn anywhere, too. Education doesn’t need a room, my dad’s girlfriend says. My mom says everyone fucks up but not everyone is a fuck up. Probably they’re both right. This Uber driver once told me it’s not about picking sides. I guess I’ve already picked Dad’s latest because Stoane understands when I don’t want to get out of bed or eat for a day or two or when Luc used to come over and he would get into bed just to stare at the ceiling with me or make shapes out of the shadows on the wall and we would just crack up. What’s so funny? Stoane would ask.  Nothing, nothing. Everything. Us.

He was like. Had these eyes that. Intense like ready, set, go.  Only days would pass and sometimes people you think of don’t think of you back. Only Facebook keeps everyone around these days. 

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I don’t want to check but my hands know the way and then there it is: his page, open and everyone’s stories spilling out saying all this and that, and I shouldn’t read this because I’m gonna be late for the dogs, only there’s this post from that girl Maya about that day in English when Luc dropped to his knees in the middle of class and started crying. They were doing some secret poet game where everyone had to pick a name and write a poem to the person they got. She picked Luc and wrote him some words but they were lame so she just printed out a poem from the internet. Only she rolled it up and put a bow on it and went to the corner store to get a bag of Hot Cheetos cuz she knew he would love that. She always saw him eating Hot Cheetos at break only what does it matter now that his guts are bloated, dead, head smashed through with a bullet maybe, or wrists slashed, blood like a river to drown in? No one on Facebook will say what really happened only—

Wait. Really? 

Twenty-six likes for Maya’s post. Jesus. Someone adds they must of been tears of happiness. That day in class. Dude, don’t feel bad, only, it’s have—must have. This is what I add to the thread. Then I see the post from this other kid Darius saying everyone’s gathering at his house at four, and I think I’ll go, I think. 

……….I’ll go. 

I’ll go.

Only I gotta get the dogs. So I do. Lola from Leimert and Clover from Lincoln and Daly on Waterhouse are waiting. They love me. I take them up the hill to the end of Bridgeview where the trail starts. I shouldn’t take them off their leashes but I mean, you would, too, to watch them run down into the ivy along Sausal Creek and peer up into redwoods and oaks, sniff into the ferns and knotted roots. It makes them so happy which makes me happy in a way I can’t explain to Stoane. She used to be a Susan before she changed her name. It’s just the two of us now since my dad moved out. It’s okay because I’m gonna pay her a little rent, only I don’t make enough right now.

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Lola, Clover, Daly. Today I swear they’re miserable. Whiny and wet. It’s more than the rain. Another Uber driver I had who lets dogs in her car told me animals pick up on energy better than people do. I had Lola with me that day, even though I’m supposed to just walk the dogs in the neighborhood and then take them straight home. Sometimes I keep them a little longer. We go down to the embarcadero by the construction or the Coast Guard or to the Berkeley Marina if I need the traffic to hold me up, hold me back. I can’t get anywhere so I can’t get anywhere, only that excuse doesn’t work on my dad.

The dogs like the water, not the rain. The trail is a muddy mess of shit and leaves and I don’t want the wet to set into my skin so I don’t let the dogs off their leashes so they pull and cry.

We walk a little way down the trail to the bridge and past the driving range and then turn around but I’m not ready to take them back. It’s two-thirty then three o’clock.

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From the bottom of Leimert you can look into everyone’s backyard gardens all the way to the top where the people with views live. I make the dogs walk all the way up. Clover is muddy by the time we get there and the sky is a smear of gray, so there’s nothing to see anyway. No Golden Gate. No skyline. No Mount Tam. No line between the blue above and the blue below. Just a light gray, a white gray only—

I’m not alone.

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All these yours? Some asshole asks, pointing at the dogs, panting and tangled in their leashes wrapped around my wrist, cutting off all the blood so I can’t feel any of the fingers on that hand. 

Yeah, I lie and ask if he has a phone, or better yet, a car, and he says he has both. 

Where do you need to go? He’s got shiny holes of blue for eyes and gloves on his hands so I can’t tell if they’re rough or smooth—what shape his nails are in.

He has a silver Subaru station wagon and I stick all the dogs in the back with his dog, a skinny, shivery thing. When we get there, I see Luc’s dad out front holding a beer and Luc’s little brother with his arms folded across his chest. Rocking a little back and forth. I have to get out only I don’t want to so I tell the guy to keep driving. 

You better get these dogs home, he says, and he’s right.

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Back at Stoane’s, I take off all my wet clothes and get in bed, open the old laptop. There’s my name in the subject field. Becca. Not Rebecca. And for a second my heart goes beat and my breath goes. Only, any stranger can write a name and this is just another ad. Don’t wait! 20% off today.

I used to like the way Luc wrote my name, all uppercase, like a kid still learning his letters. He held the pen tight enough to hear the scratch of each stroke.

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All night the cats fight. All day the gray rains. Days pass, and that’s just the way it goes. The dude in the Subaru called all the numbers on the dogs’ tags and got them home. I don’t walk them anymore. Sometimes Clover’s owner will text Stoane’s number last minute, and still I need the money so I’m walking Clover the day they’re gonna bury Luc. Day after my birthday. Nineteen, like him now, only—

Holy shit. Check out the police haul, someone wrote in a post under the link to the article on Luc’s arrest. And with it, pictures: a full table, one of those long rectangular ones covered in bags, so many pounds of whatever—weed, cocaine, I don’t know—but also the guns, all kinds, laid out like. What was he doing with all that? This kid who dropped to his needs (I mean knees) over a bag of Hot Cheetos and an internet poem? Was he crying, then? On the night he did this? That? That.

I had heard from someone his sentencing date was coming up. So, he did what he did, cut out early the way we cut ourselves out of fifth period art once in ninth grade. We had to make these collages from a box of musty magazines in the corner. Scissors, a little glue, only then it was easy to change the setting. To take one thing and put it somewhere else, only Luc finished his first, then leaned across the table to me. Come on, he whispered. I didn’t really know him then, but when Ms. Thompson turned, I followed him off campus and all the way to the estuary. 

The afternoon sun skimmed gold across the water and Luc stood silent but not still, counting ripples. Look, he said, certain real life lurked below: ghost shrimp, bat rays, leopard sharks. I swear I never saw anything, only there had to be so much more.

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