The Dog Who Remembered Me

I've been dead for three years. My dog still doesn't know.

Right now, in a college town on the other side of everything, he's limping down a sidewalk with a stolen pumpkin spice latte clamped in his teeth, trying to get it to my grave before it goes cold. The first one of the season. He always remembered I loved the first one.

Three guys are chasing him.

"That's him! That mangy thing keeps stealing our food"

He won't drop the cup. He takes the kick and keeps the cup.

"Sorry sorry" The sound he makes is small and fast, the way a little kid says it. "Baby didn't mean to. Baby just wanted Mom to have the first sweet thing of fall"

Down here, packages kept coming for me. Pilled sweaters. Cold, cheap takeout. Split hot dogs with the skin peeled back.

For a while I thought my ex had lost his money. Or his mind.

It was never my ex.

It was him. My dog. Bringing it all down to me, one piece at a time, in his mouth. So his mom wouldn't go hungry underground.

Chapter 1

The line at the afterlife pickup depot took an hour, the way it always does.

I got to the window and took my package.

Around me, the other girls were already showing off.

"Look what my mom sent me. A whole mansion. Designer bags. The newest phone."

"My dad wired me ten billion in spirit money," another one crowed. "I can retire down here."

"Aw, Briar." One of them nodded at the bundle in my arms. "Your man send you something again?"

"Please don't tell me it's another dollar-menu delivery."

I held the sweater tighter. Pink. Pilled. Cheap.

"He used to send me nice things," I said quietly.

And he had. Those first years, Weston sent something down every holiday, every anniversary. Money. Warm clothes, the good kind. And I'd save up my own coins to slip into his dreams, just to see his face for a minute.

This year it came almost daily. Secondhand rags. Cold takeout. Sometimes a few split hot dogs, the skin peeled back.

He'd stopped thinking about me. That's how a ghost knows she's already been forgotten. The dreams just close.

Something cold turned over in my chest.

"Vanessa. You don't think he's gone broke, do you?"

Vanessa had been dead ten years, longer than anyone on our block. She'd been rich up top, and down here she still wore it like a coat. She also knew things the rest of us didn't. She'd figured out how this place really worked a long time ago.

She looked at the sweater once, and her lip curled.

"Honey, that's a young girl's sweater. Some other woman wore that." She said it the way you'd tell someone their car got towed. "Your man's got a new one. He's sending you her leftovers to make a point."

"No." It came out too fast. "He's not like that."

Weston and I were each other's first. Three years together. We saved for a little place, we raised a dog. On the day of our wedding shoot, a boulder came loose above us and I shoved him out from under it without thinking. He lived. I didn't. I died in the best year we ever had.

He got to keep living. That's a good thing. I've always told myself that's a good thing.

But he wouldn't send another woman's old clothes just to hurt me. He wouldn't.

Vanessa laughed, not unkindly.

"My guy loved me to death too, once. Burned offerings for a year, then never came back." She shrugged. "Now it's just my mom and dad who still remember me down here."

"She's right," another ghost said. "Even broke, you'd wash the thing first, wouldn't you? Look. There's dog hair all over it."

I looked down.

One pale strand, caught in the wool. White. From the tip of a tail.

My throat closed.

"That's my baby's fur," I whispered.

Three years. Was he okay. Was my dog okay.

"Come here." Vanessa's voice went into that exasperated thing that's almost love. "Your man and your dog belong to some other woman now. It's been three years. Everyone moved on but you. Toss the rags. Come work at my place."

I couldn't. I couldn't let it go.

Was Weston really with someone new?

Then where was our dog?

Weston worked so much. Did he remember to feed him. His flea meds, his walks. Would the new girl even like him.

My hand closed into a fist.

"I want to go up there," I said. "To the living world."

The girls stared at me.

"A day pass costs a billion. How long would you have to work for that?"

"I'll just look," I said. "One look, and I'll come right back."

Chapter 2

I worked four jobs. A month straight, no days off. My sisters down here chipped in the rest, and finally I had my billion. One day pass, stamped and approved.

I drifted up from my grave to the apartment we'd bought together.

I lifted my hand to knock before I remembered.

Ghosts don't knock. Doors don't stop us, and the living don't see us.

I went through it.

Three little rooms, still decorated the way we'd left them. Same throw blanket. Same warm light. Three years, and the home we built hadn't changed.

Then I saw the wall.

A wedding photo. Weston, in a suit I didn't buy him. A girl in white I'd never met.

The air went out of the room.

So he really did it. He got married.

I breathed in through my nose and made myself say it. Good. He's happy. If he's happy, I can rest.

The bedroom door opened.

A young woman came out with a toy poodle in her arms, her other hand hooked through Weston's.

"Babe. Let's take Cocoa down for a walk."

Weston looked at the little dog and his whole face went soft.

"Sure."

He rubbed its head. It squirmed against him, thrilled.

"Nobody's cuter than our Cocoa," the woman cooed. Then something crossed her face and her mouth pinched. "Not like that filthy mutt. Mean, ugly thing. Good riddance. I'm glad you finally ran it off."

Weston slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in.

"Hey. Don't get worked up. It was ages ago."

Ages ago.

I stood there and something drove straight through me.

"Weston. Where's Baby?"

"Where's our dog?"

"You threw him out you threw Baby out"

I was screaming it. Screaming until my voice cracked.

He didn't turn. He didn't hear a thing.

He walked out the door with another woman on his arm and another dog on a leash, the two of them laughing about something small.

I trailed after them like a sleepwalker.

He told me once he'd only ever love me. That he'd only ever keep one dog. Our Baby.

Three years of forever, and it played back like a joke.

Where was he? Where was my baby?

First he lost his mom. Now he'd lost his dad too.

It was getting cold out.

Was he hungry somewhere right now. Was he cold.

Chapter 3

The packages flashed through my mind all at once.

Dog hair on a pilled sweater. Split hot dogs. Cheap cold takeout.

And it landed on me like a dropped weight.

None of it came from Weston.

It came from Baby.

The takeout. Every delivery label, the same address. The college district near our old place.

I flew there.

The streets were packed, and I drifted through them a long time and couldn't find him. Where are you. Where's my baby.

I was crying and searching at the same time when a shout tore across the crowd.

"Filthy mutt! Run and I'll beat you to death"

I turned.

Three college guys, chasing a skinny yellow dog. A pumpkin spice latte clamped in its teeth. Limping.

Everything in me went tight.

That was him. That was my dog.

He was skin and bone now, but I'd have known him anywhere. The custom collar was still around his neck, my phone number etched into the tag. The tip of his tail was still white, the tail that used to stand straight up and wag itself stupid. Tucked between his legs now, while he ran.

"Don't don't hurt my dog"

"Baby! Baby, Mom's right here!"

"Baby"

No matter how loud I screamed it, he couldn't see me. Couldn't hear me.

His bad leg slowed him. One of them caught up and drove a kick into his side.

He went down. The guy grabbed for the cup in his mouth.

Baby clamped down and wouldn't let go.

The sound coming out of him was small and broken. "Sorry sorry Baby just wanted Mom to have the first pumpkin spice latte of fall"

I don't know why I could understand him. I only know my eyes blurred and my whole chest went to needles.

They hit him and he still wouldn't open his mouth.

"Come on, man." One of them hung back. "Thing's pathetic. Just leave it"

"Pathetic things are pathetic for a reason. It's been stealing food off this whole campus for weeks. Dog like that should be put down."

"Steals food every day and it's still this skinny? The hell?"

"That was my girlfriend's drink, you little" The last one's face twisted. He lifted his foot and brought it down on the cup.

It burst across the pavement.

Baby watched the latte spread over the concrete and a whimper cracked out of him. "No no sorry, Mom, sorry. Baby's no good. Baby couldn't bring you your drink"

I couldn't hold it in anymore. I dropped down beside him and wrapped myself around him and sobbed until I couldn't breathe.

"Baby. Baby, Mom doesn't need the drink. Mom just needs you to stay alive"

My arms closed on nothing.

Chapter 4

He got up on his bad leg and limped around to the dumpsters behind the campus.

He dug through the garbage, talking to himself the whole time.

"Mom doesn't have any family down there. It's getting cold. She won't have anything warm to wear."

A few strays trotted over.

"Hey, Yellow. What're you digging for now?"

He lifted his head. "Guys, help me find a thick coat. I have to bring it down to my mom."

Then he added, careful about it, "And I'm not Yellow. My name is Baby. My mom gave me that name."

The strays cracked up.

"That's such a girly name."

"It is not," Baby muttered, ruffled.

One of them was showing off to the rest. "Get this. A college kid fed me a whole can of food today. Straight-up gourmet."

Baby sniffed and kept digging. "Big deal, a can. I used to eat those every single day."

"Sure you did, Yellow."

"My mom loves me. She used to give me the cans, and freeze-dried treats, and chews for my teeth. She took me sledding once." His eyes went bright when he said it.

My nose burned. I couldn't stop the tears.

I was an orphan. Baby was a stray.

My first winter out of school, they froze me out of my job until I quit. I was walking home in the dead of January when I found him. A tiny thing, shaking, digging through a trash can for something to eat.

I picked him up. A man passing by warned me that a dog with a white-tipped tail brings its owner bad luck. Keep it, he said, and you'll be cursed.

When I was little, my own father used to say the same thing about me. Bad luck. That I'd wrecked his life the day I was born.

Was that our fault. Either of us.

I carried him home to my rented room, and after that it was the two of us. He went everywhere I went. He slept wherever I slept.

Later I got promoted. I made money. I bought him a plush bed and every treat on the shelf. My coworkers couldn't understand spending like that on a scruffy little mutt. Just give it scraps, they said. It'll live.

But he wasn't just my dog. He was my baby. Every time I fell apart, he was the one who put me back together.

Dogs don't get as long as people do. I used to lie awake afraid that one day, down in the afterlife, he'd sit with the other dogs and hear about foods he never got to try, and it would break his little heart.

I never thought I'd be the one to go first.

He was still bragging when one of the strays cut him off.

"Yellow, we all heard it. That number on your collar? Somebody called it. Nobody ever picks up. The line's dead."

The others piled on, sing-song. "Your mom doesn't want you. Your mom doesn't want you."

Baby's fur bristled. "That's a lie. My mom didn't leave me. She's just asleep underground!"

"Asleep? So. Dead."

He scrambled to explain, fierce about it. "She's going to wake up! Snow White woke up. Superheroes die and come back all the time. My mom will too!"

"That's all pretend." An older dog, gentler than the rest. "When a person dies, they don't come back. Not ever."

His ears dropped flat. Something wild and scared came into his eyes.

Another dog tilted its head at him.

"People say a white-tipped tail curses its owner. Is that what you did? Did you jinx your mom dead?"

Baby went still.

He started to shake.

"I "

"Did I really jinx my mom to death?"

Chapter 5

He finally dragged a torn, moth-eaten coat out of the dumpster.

He took it in his teeth and ran for my grave.

He curled up against my headstone, eyes wet.

"Mom, it's cold now. You have to wear more layers."

"Mom, is it true? Did I really jinx you dead? Baby didn't want you to die"

"Mom, are you really never waking up?"

He cried, rubbing his thin body against the stone.

"Mom, will you wake up and hold me? Just once?"

"You're gone, and everybody picks on Baby now."

I sank down into the dirt and came apart.

I reached to hold him and my arms passed through him like air.

I watched him cry himself out at my grave, then limp off again, back to the spot where the campus deliveries got dropped.

A delivery guy was on his phone. "Cody? Left your food by the door. Come grab it."

Baby waited in the corner until the man was gone. Then he crept out, checking the whole street, scared and careful.

"Cody. You're the one who picks on the girls in your class. So I steal from you."

"Mom, I know stealing's wrong. But Baby wants you to eat till you're full."

"Am I a bad dog now? Are you gonna stop loving Baby?"

He muttered it while he lifted the bag so gently in his teeth.

He'd just turned to run when a heavyset guy came out of nowhere and roared at him.

"Mangy mutt! Stealing food around here again? I'll kill you!"

He scooped a rock off the ground and threw it into the dog's ribs.

"Filthy stray. You wait. One of these days I'll finish you."

Baby keened, low and hurt. I threw myself in front of him and couldn't stop a single thing.

"Baby, Mom doesn't need the food"

"You're not a bad dog. You're my baby. You're the best dog in the whole world"

My body passed through his and I watched them open him up, bloody.

How much must that hurt.

Why him. Why my baby.

I'd take every ounce of it a thousand times over, if they'd only let me. But a ghost can't take anything. I couldn't hold him. I couldn't shield him. I couldn't even let him know his mom had come.

Was this really it? Was standing here, watching, all I would ever get?

My body was already going transparent