Misty
by Rachel Mattingly
Misty is undoubtedly splattered somewhere outside the IHOP a few blocks down. Gives a whole new meaning to the house of pancakes. And yet my mother is insisting on putting up posters around the neighborhood. She asked me to help make them yesterday, the third day of Misty’s absence. That meant, You’re the only one in this house who really knows how to use the computer, so you better do it if you want to keep eating my food. It’s her go-to threat. That she’ll stop putting food on the table if we step out of line. I know it won’t happen, but she’ll make dinners uncomfortable enough for me to lose my appetite for days and starve anyway out of spite. So I made the stupid fucking posters.
I spent yesterday scouring my mom’s hard drive for any pictures of Misty at all. She hardly even liked Misty. The dog shat in the kitchen, ate it, and then threw it up on the couch on a biweekly basis. Mom kicked her more than once, although I’m sure she never let Lottie see that. Lottie is only eight. I think the poster is mainly for her benefit. She’s been whining nonstop since Misty went missing.
Finally, late last night I found an old picture of me and Misty from a few years ago. Mom must have taken it with the digital camera that now lies discarded next to her dresser with all the other broken things she hasn’t gotten around to fixing. Things she doesn’t know how to fix and will never fix, but will also never ask for help with. That particular item broke when she dropped it in a pool, trying to get a picture of one of my cousins in their swim floaties. I don’t remember the cousin’s name, but I know that we haven’t been back there since. I’m sure Mom blames them for the whole incident.
In the picture I look a little frightened. We had just gotten Misty at that point, and I was scared of dogs. Our neighborhood was papered with angry red signs detailing the violence these beasts could inflict on you. The owners got a kick out of it. And Misty was from the pound. All bony and gristly and nervous. She was a rescue greyhound and she looked at you like she wanted to eat you. Always drooling a little with her mouth open. But then if you walked towards her she’d scamper back into the corner. Misty is looking at me like that in the picture, all gaping maw and sharp teeth. Now it just seems like a smile. But back then all I could see was her teeth. The picture’s framed like a Western standoff and I wish there was time to find something else, but Mom told me to finish it by today.
So now me and Lottie are at the library, spending seven dollars on color copies to put up around town. Like anyone walks anywhere. There’s no sidewalk outside our house. The short gravel driveway just bleeds directly into the road.
“We can leave them on people’s doorsteps. And outside the school. Misty likes kids so she might go there,” Lottie is saying. I’m making her stand behind me because if she fucks up the copies I’m gonna lose my shit and then she’ll start sobbing. She’s a pretty weepy little thing. At least she seems like it. I’ve never actually seen her cry.
“You’ve only known that dog a year, you know,” I mutter as the printer shudders out the last sheet of paper. Like a goosebump. The posters would certainly give me the creeps if I came across them on the street. Misty looked dead even when she was alive. Because she’s not anymore.
“How can you not care? Aunt Rita said you used to walk her all the time.” She sing-songs it, like she’s caught me in a lie. God, I hate little kids.
“Yeah, well what Aunt Rita didn’t tell you is that she said she’d take Misty out back and shoot her if I didn’t.” I shuffle the papers and press my teeth together. Why did I say that? I glance at Lottie out of the corner of my eye to see if I’ve done lifelong damage. But she just looks a little tired. Her eyes are sort of glassy and empty.
“Come on, let’s go hang these up.” I take her hand and lead her out of the library.
“I’m not a baby,” she whines.
“Yeah, well my mom said I have to hold your hand until we can be sure you’re not the kind of kid to run out in traffic,” I say, looking both ways before crossing.
“I’ve been here since November. Wouldn’t I have died by now if I were that stupid?” Not with my luck, I think. It rattles me. Like a foul stench wafting by. Why do I think things like that? Lottie isn’t that bad. I guess. She’s more of a pest, but I guess little kids are always pests. If I still had a little sister I guess she’d be like this. Although Lottie is a bit strange.
She has to cut all her food into perfect squares before she can eat it. One of the first nights she was here Mom made peas and there was a screaming match. Lottie won and we haven’t had peas since. Or at least Lottie hasn’t. Mom discovered that she doesn’t mind the taste of anything as long as it can be a square. Once I think she might have even given her some moldy cheese because there wasn’t anything else in the house. And Lottie ate it. No complaints.
She also made my mom promise to always leave her bedroom door open. I thought it was going to be another screaming match, but my mom agreed. You can walk past and peer right in. See all her clothes on the floor and the unmade bed and the open bag of pretzels she keeps by her pillow. Better yet you can see all the broken things of mine. In their little cardboard box.
If I broke something when I was younger she always demanded to see it. She would peer at it with one eye to make me laugh and then promise to return it as good as new. I thought she was a magician. And she never let me in her room so I never saw what a baldfaced lie it all was. Yo-yos with snapped strings, squirt guns with gummed up triggers, warped slinkies, water-logged comic books. Now I can see it all. I was really excited the first time I walked past her open door. I went inside and rifled through the box, the tattered remnants of childhood reviving in my hands. I finally got her. She’s no saint. But then I saw all the family photos that she also keeps in the box and I decided to let it go.
It’s hot out today. It’s the end of June, and though the library is air-conditioned, the great concrete outdoors is melting away under the oppressive sun. Our hands feel like pieces of wet dough, sticky and blending together.
“If you promise not to run away, you don’t have to hold my hand. But stay right next to me.” She doesn’t respond and walks a few steps ahead of me all the way to the school. I have to keep from shouting at her or flicking her forehead. It’s what Mom always did to me when I was being annoying. I haven’t seen her do it to Lottie yet.
When we get to the school the playground is teeming. They’re all Lottie’s age and they look like ants. Or cockroaches. And they sound like cicadas. But they don’t crunch when you hit them. Through the chain link fence I can see the summer camp counselors standing against the wall in matching neon yellow t-shirts, freshly stiff from the Gildan factory. They’re all about my age. Mom suggested I do something like that a few years ago, but I got a job at the grocery store instead. Now I have to watch Lottie. I hand her the roll of tape we brought and let her put the posters up against the fence. One of the kids not on his phone looks up at me and frowns. He glances at the other counselors, but none of them notice us. He can’t tell whether he should ask us to stop or not, and after a few moments he leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. Lottie has already stuck half of our posters on the fence and I grab the tape.
“Hey!” She cries.
“We gotta spread ‘em around or else only a couple of people will see them.” I grab the stack of posters from her too and pretend like I’m not watching her reaction. Most little kids would start crying at this point, but she just stares at me, frowning, with her lip stuck out.
“You’re a real jerk.”
“Yeah, I’m a real Mussolini,” I mutter, and start walking away from the school with her trailing behind me. I’m surprised she doesn’t ask me who that is. We left at eight to get the posters done, but already it’s too hot to be outside. Sweat is dripping down my back and stomach. I have to keep wiping it off my upper lip. I wish I was at the grocery store. They have AC. I had to quit a month ago when school let out because Mom couldn’t afford the day camps for Lottie. She’s such a nuisance. Why can’t people just take care of their own kids?
I don’t really know a lot about why Lottie had to come stay with us. Just bits and pieces of what Mom will tell me when she’s feeling generous enough to let me in on everything that impacts and destroys my life. I kick a rock into the gutter. The sound echoes a few moments later when Lottie does it.
“You shouldn’t kick things. It messes up the street. The neighbours get mad.” I call back.
“But you just—” she starts.
“Just do as I say, not as I do.” I smile. Her glare is focused and inert. Not as trembling as mine was at that age. I used to hate it when Mom said stuff like that to me. I’m the adult, so you have to do what I say. My house, my rules. Who said life was fair?
“You’re the worst,” she grumbles.
“Yep.”
We tape some more posters up on scraggly trees and some gates and fences that people have around their houses. There’s almost no one outside. The street is blurring into the air. Lottie keeps pointing out how sweaty I’m getting and I want to hit her. Mom says the heat makes people violent and that’s why so many people own guns here. Because they’re so angry all the time. I don’t know if I completely buy that. I think people own guns in our neighbourhood for the same reason Mom won’t throw away anything that breaks. A belief in control.
Before long we don’t have any posters left and are somehow two miles away from our house. I groan, wishing I’d thought to walk in a circle. Like Misty would make it all the way out here anyways. She’s such a dumb dog, she probably got taken in by some other family and didn’t even blink. She has a collar, but she might not have been wearing it. Mom sometimes takes it off because Misty whines. Mom says it reminds her of the muzzles they force the greyhounds to wear when they’re racing. I think Misty just knows she can get anything out of us if she makes enough of a fuss.
But it’s not like where she is matters anyway, because she’s dead. She’s not anywhere.
“Hungry eyes, I look at you and I can’t disguise those . . . ba dum bah . . .” Lottie is singing behind me. How does she even know that song? “Aunt Rita and I watched Dirty Dancing the other night when you were out. She thought it might make me feel better about Misty. It kind of just made me sadder. Have you ever seen it?” I open my mouth to answer, but she interrupts. “Where even were you the other night?” I grind my teeth.
“None of your beeswax,” I say. She keeps humming as we walk home. I don’t know how it keeps getting hotter. People talk about cold getting in your bones, but it’s so much worse when there’s heat inside of you. Nerves melting into bits, brain frying, blood boiling into a roux, skin wilting, your insides becoming a sloppy congealed mess, everything sloshing together like a big pot of stew.
Lottie doesn’t seem to mind it though. She spontaneously bursts into song and then starts humming again.
“If you’re gonna sing, then sing. If you’re gonna hum, then hum. Otherwise, please shut up.” She stops. Just the sound of our footsteps plodding the route home. We’re walking past some of the posters we already put up. Retracing our steps past the rusting and chipped fences. I just want to get home. What a useless mission.
“You know, Aunt Rita says you have to be nice to me because I come from a ‘broken home,’” she says. She talks to her feet because she doesn’t want to make me angry. That phrase is so clunky in her mouth.
“Yeah, well name me one person you know who doesn’t come from a broken home.”
“Your home isn’t broken,” she says more quietly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Your mom cooks dinner every night, and you guys get along. She doesn’t really yell.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t yell at you,” I snap. Why am I arguing with an eight year old?
“She doesn’t yell at you either.” She says it exactly like me. I’m never gonna have kids. “She loves you. Even though you’re stupid.” Lottie says this like it’s a fact.
“How am I stupid exactly? And who are you to know who’s smart and who’s not?” I almost ask her what her seven times table is, but I fucking can’t remember what seven times eight is. Sweat is soaking the waistband of my jeans. How much further till our house?
“I know stupid when I see it, Jeremy. And you, my friend, are stupid.” I start walking faster. It sounds like a line she heard in a TV show. Why is this bugging me? “You still think Misty is alive. We all know she got hit by a car,” she says. I stop and turn around. A mosquito buzzes near my ear and I flinch.
“What makes you think Misty is dead?” I ask. She’s frowning at me and has her arms crossed. Like I’m a child who’s fucking up her afternoon. Like she has work she could be doing.
“We live right next to a highway, genius. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out she’s not coming back.” The heat is getting a lot louder. I can hear my blood, but maybe that’s the sun. I guess I wouldn’t be able to tell. Red and yellow are such similar colors. They’re hard to distinguish when they’re inside of you. I once had an ear infection and mustard-yellow pus came pouring out of my ear like it was a cement truck. It felt like blood. Everything warm feels like blood. I ball my hands into fists and take a deep breath.
“Come on. Let’s go home.” We walk home in silence. I look at her occasionally to see if she’s sweating as much as I am, but she looks dry and haughty. Freaking Queen of England.
When I open the door she goes in first. It’s hotter inside than out and I would burst into tears if Lottie wasn’t standing there looking at me like I was a yo-yo with a snapped string.
“What are you looking at?” I ask, fuming.
“Nothing.” She sighs and her face goes blank again. “You just look sad, that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you really thought Misty might still be alive.”
“Well—” I stop because my voice is a bit gravelly. I must be getting a summer cold. I can still hear my blood in my ears. “I know we’re not gonna find her. You think I don’t know where we live? When people leave they don’t try very hard to find their way back. I mean, do you think your mom is ever gonna grace our doorstep again? She’s gone. And I mean, gone. Even if Misty’s splattered across Route 4, I’ve got a better chance of—” I stop because Lottie is beginning to do something I’ve never seen her do. Or at least I think she is. Her face is getting splotchy, and her eyes look wet. Fuck.
“Oh, geez, Lottie. Sorry, I didn’t—” She hiccups. Once. And then the color drains back out of her face and her jaw muscles pop out.
“Shut up, Jeremy. I never asked for you to be my brother.” She storms into her room before I can say I never asked for her to be my sister.
I get a glass of ice water from the kitchen. For a moment I consider bringing Lottie one, but I’m too angry with her. I’m the older one here. I’m the one who put up posters for her benefit. Where does she get off? No way she didn’t think Misty would come back. She’s a smart dog. A little loopy sometimes, but smart. Lottie doesn’t know that. When I was ten I buried an 8-ball that Mom gave me in the backyard. I didn’t want anyone to steal it. But a few weeks later I wanted to play with it and I spent hours digging all over the little patch of grass and I couldn’t find it. Misty came out to lick the tears off my face and I followed her back inside. The next day my 8-ball was sitting on my bedside table. Mom told me Misty found it in the backyard in no time. She said “that dog really loves you.” I never told her that it had lost its charm after that.
Lottie doesn’t know any of that. She can’t. She’s only eight. Eight-year-olds don’t know how to do math or fix things or even how to cross the damn road. I swallow an ice cube whole and almost choke.
I guess I’ll just wait for Mom to get home. She usually gets home after dark in the summer. I sometimes wonder if she’ll ever pass our house and just keep driving. Lots of places she could go out on the open road. And lots of things get lost out there. Not everything can be replaced.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Rachel Mattingly (she/her) is an undergraduate student at McGill University, studying English Literature and Chemistry. She is currently working on multiple short stories and the first draft of a novel. She is from Booklyn, NY.