Cha-Ching! Read Online Free

down. It didn’t matter; by this point Theo was too embarrassed to say, “Oh, actually I’m not taking the dog.” Instead she just kept nodding and saying, “Of course.”
    â€œThis whole visit is on the house,” Dr. West said, “and here’s a bag of dog food to start.”
    Theo stared at the drugged dog.
    â€œWhat will you name her?”
    Theo’s eyes settled on the thick scar across the dog’s head.
    â€œWhat do you think about Cary Grant?” Theo said. “Doesn’t this scar kind of look like Cary Grant’s hair?”
    Dr. West laughed, petting the dog’s back haunches.
    â€œCall me here if you have any questions at all,” Dr. West said.
    Theo took her card and the dog and the bag of dog food out to the truck, and each time the dog took a step its cast made a tiny click on the sidewalk.
    â€œWant to go to New York?” Theo asked, setting the dog down on the bloody T-shirt that was now her blanket.
    By the time she put her key into the ignition, Cary Grant was already asleep.

two
    Theo wasn’t taking a meandering road trip across America trying to determine her fate through the text of quirky road signs. She’d already taken that trip. Many times. She just wanted to hurry up and get to New York so she could be a new person. Her lungs hurt from chain-smoking, but she needed the cigarettes to keep her awake while she was driving and also, Jesus Christ—she’d already quit drinking, what more was expected of a person in one lifetime?
    Cary Grant spent most of the first day curled up sleeping, her pink cast hanging over the edge of the passenger seat. The rest of the time the dog stared straight ahead, sadly, at nothing. Theo took off the lampshade, but it didn’t help. At rest stops, Theo put on her Butch Bathroom Wig and tried to get the dog to pee or eat or drink something. She was sure they both looked down on their luck to passersby— Cary Grant with her cast and stitches and Theo with her wig askew and her busted lip. She noticed people at the rest stops going out of their way to avoid her, the same way she’d kept a wary distance from the boys on the corner in her old neighborhood. At one rest stop, when Theo leaned over to fill the dog’s water dish, her wig slid off and landed on the sidewalk.
    â€œOh my God!” she heard a woman who was standing near the vending machines gasp.
    Theo picked up her wig with one hand and antagonistically waved hello with the other. When the woman didn’t wave back, she became enraged.
    â€œI fucking have cancer,” she yelled, jamming the wig back onto her head.
    The adrenaline that comes with telling a flagrant lie rushed through her veins as she led Cary Grant back to the truck. Theo loved lying to strangers and often felt justified, telling herself they probably hated gay people. But she’d also been raised with just enough Catholicism to feel guilty—what if that woman had cancer herself? Now Theo’s punishment would be to get cancer.
    A few summers ago Theo had gotten a second job to save some money. She worked at the baseball stadium selling cotton candy. The majority of her coworkers were sixteen-year-old boys who’d been given the jobs in an effort to keep them out of gangs. It was some of the hardest work she’d ever done, climbing up and down the stadium stairs holding a plywood board with fifty cones of cotton candy stuck into it. After her shift, she practically crawled to the bus stop, her legs and feet hurt so badly. One day walking to the bus stop her coworker asked her if she had a boyfriend.
    Theo looked at him incredulously and said, “A boyfriend?”
    â€œYeah,” he said.
    â€œNo. I’m gaaaayyyyy,” she told him. She said the word gay very slowly and clearly, like it was a special flower the class was learning about.
    â€œOh,” her coworker said. “I didn’t know. I just thought you had