WATTYS LONG LIST. He's got three polyamorous, pole dancing moms and his world is the stuff of which teen boy fantasies are made. But when he falls for a feisty cancer patient who is about to die, he truly learns how to live.
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Did you ever go to the local dog pound? Not the Humane Society, the run-down county thing with the "death row" dogs.
Ellen came out looking like a dog somebody'd asked to spend some time with, like they do when you see one you think you like. She had that cringy look some of them have. The ones that belonged to a family for a long time and then got abandoned somewhere. Left to take care of themselves after years of being taken care of by humans.
The street dogs have scared the shit out of them. They've lost hope. And they don't believe you're going to want them—you can see it in their eyes. That's how she looked coming down that hallway. All bent over and shuffling like she couldn't even walk right anymore.
Kendall whimpered, "Mom..." before Ellen even got to the double doors we were watching her through. The little glass windows, we'd gone to look through, while Thurston went to get her.
He couldn't let us go back where they'd kept her. And I didn't want to go. The lobby area and Pamela's office had looked fairly hospitable. But once we got to the part where the patients were, it started to look, feel and smell more like jail. Or kind of worse than jail.
People in jail, a lot of them, put up a fight. There's a lot of turmoil and tension. It's scary but it's electric. You're watching your back. You're more awake, if you're smart, than you've ever been before.
La Paloma didn't feel like that. The people there, they were turned inward, I think. I didn't get that "collective anger" thing. They were fighting their own personal dragons, not the system. So the energy was scattered and not directed at the trap they were snared in.
Ellen perked up a little when she saw us. But then she ducked her head and sort of stutter stepped like she might turn and run or something. Like she remembered how she got there, suddenly, and didn't want to face us.
But as he brought her in, I said, "C'mon and sit with us! Come over here."
And I pulled out a chair at one of the tables in the room. It was some kind of craft room where the patients got to make clay pots and paintings and quilts and whatnot at all these tables.
Thurston said nobody'd be using it that day. I had a feeling they never used it. It was too neat and clean. So I think he was trying to keep anyone from seeing us with her. Though he seemed like he could handle anything that came up.
He was a big, muscular guy. Definitely the man you'd call to wrestle with somebody who'd totally snapped or something. Kinda cool, guy, too. With those little Bantu knot things all over his head and a sort of hipster beard.
I got the feeling he was the "fixer" there. The person who made the unofficial rules that got around the official ones. What he'd done for us was probably the easiest thing he'd done all day. That's what his smile felt like. Like he almost wanted us to come up with something tougher, so he could really show off.
