My Pet Sold Me novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Take a Number

The waiting room was so full that Dane had to turn sideways to get through the door.

Every chair was taken, and the floor was taken, and the line went out past the fish tank.

There were foxes by the window and wolves along the wall, two bears wedged into one bench, and a pair of hawk-folk perched on the magazine rack.

Each of them held a leash, or a carrier, or a bird cage.

Penny stood on the front desk in her purple scrubs, with her phone in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

"There she is!" she shouted. "Everybody, that's her!"

The whole room turned and looked at me.

I knew the feeling.

I had worn it at the boxing gym, with twenty strangers and nothing in my hands.

This time the people looking at me were holding cats.

"Penny," I said. "Get off the desk."

"I'm reading the post."

"You've read the post."

"Not out loud. Not to the room."

She cleared her throat and held up her phone.

The beagle in the cone looked up from its owner's lap.

"I posted a photo of my keeper," Penny read, in her best news-anchor voice, "and asked who wanted her.

"I was wrong about everything, and I was wrong in public, so I'm fixing it in public.

"She is not for sale. She never was.

"She put her own life down for me for seven years, and I sold her for money I never saw.

"I got nothing for it, and I deserved nothing.

"If you want to know her, ask her.

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