Buster Read online

  He tried to snap at my ear. “She’ll understand when I come back with cash!”

  I snorted. “No, I think she’d understand even less if you did that.” I looked him in the eyes. “Let’s take this back, okay? We can talk about it more later.”

  “….….….……”

  “Okay??”

  “….….….….….….…… Fine. I’ll take it back.” He relaxed under my legs.

  I wagged my tail. “Good. Let’s go.” I lifted my weight off him and stretched as I stood up.

  “Gotcha, GRAMPS!” Mozart scooped up the necklace with his mouth and, before I could grab him, bolted to the edge of the building and jumped down, winking as he did. “Later, lose—”

  “Gotcha, Mozart! Finally.” Mia’s voice came from below. I ran to the edge of the roof and looked down—she’d caught him, and he was wiggling uselessly as she pried the necklace away. “Now I have to go apologize to Louis. What has gotten into you?”

  I was glad she found him, but something was missing. I couldn’t quite put my claw on it, but something wasn’t right. There she was, and there he was, and there the necklace was … but there was something I was supposed to be doing, right? What was it again?

  My tail fell between my legs. Tonio! I was supposed to be watching him, and I’d just run off! Where was he? I jumped off the roof onto another dumpster with a loud CLANG, then ran past Mia and around the corner as fast as I could.

  “Tonio?” I barked, even though I knew he couldn’t understand me.

  He was leaning against the side of the building, breathing heavy by the Video Garden window display that said Grow into a New Movie Today! As soon as he saw me, he burst into tears.

  “Oh no, Tonio, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whined, and licked at his face. Why was he crying? I was only gone for a second. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone, I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he blubbered. “Everything happened so fast, and then Mia from school was here, yelling at me to help, and you were gone, and I didn’t know if you’d run away for good, or into the street, or something—”

  Whoa whoa whoa. All of that happened in his head just while I was gone?

  “—and Mia kept talking to me, but I couldn’t say anything, and so she was like, ‘I guess I’ll do it myself!’ ”

  I tried to lick his face again, but he pushed me away and frowned.

  “Bad dog. Bad.”

  You know how it feels to hear that. I lost all my energy to fight. As Tonio picked up my leash and started back toward the dog park in silence, I tried to think of anything that would make him feel better.

  He made a little groany, growly noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you, anyway. You don’t understand what I’m saying.”

  I couldn’t tell him that I was trying to help. I couldn’t explain why I hadn’t done my job right. And if he knew I was trying to catch Mozart for Mia, I’d be a Bad Dog, anyway, because I’d look smart. In the end, I was just a service dog who hadn’t done his job. I’d left my human behind.

  So, yes, I was taking my duty to Dog Court seriously. I could have found a way to tell him then, and probably would have made him feel better.

  But I didn’t.

  The Lin Family Dog Shelter also functions as Bellville’s only public dog park. People in Bellville are encouraged to bring their pets to the grounds of the shelter, which allows their dogs to roam around the farm as much as they want. This provides a service to the town (which is too small to afford a nice dog park on its own) and the increased activity and socializing means the Lins don’t have to spend all day playing with the shelter dogs themselves.

  Or, at least, that’s how the humans see it. For us, it means Bellville is one of the most social dog communities in the country!

  The farm itself was split into four main areas: the human area, which had the shelter’s office building (a repurposed barn), a big toolshed, and the Lin family’s house; the living area, where dogs slept and ate in an old stable; the “forest,” a light clumping of pecan trees with a little creek flowing around them; and what used to be crop fields, which was now a wide spread of dust, mud, and weeds for dogs to run around and get dirty in.

  An unpaved road led from the entrance to Mia’s house and the shelter’s main building, so we started by walking along the edge of that. Tonio seemed to know his way around—I wondered when he’d been here before—and he steered us away from the buildings and onto the trails leading toward the forest. I looked around for Mia and Mozart, but couldn’t spot them anywhere.

  Over the course of our walk, his stress from the square gave way to embarrassment. When we reached the picnic tables between the pecan trees, he seemed to have forgiven me. He unclipped my leash and looked me in the face.

  “Let’s practice, okay? Stay.” He stood up and left me by the bench, then walked a few feet away. “Now, come here, Buster!”

  I ran over to him and sat down. He nodded seriously. “Good boy. Okay, stay.” This time he went behind a tree, where I couldn’t see him directly. “Come here, Buster!”

  Easy as pie—and even okay for a regular pet! I ran around the tree and wagged my tail for a treat, which he gave me.

  “I know you don’t understand me, but I’m going to sit here and draw in my sketchbook. You can go play, but you have to come back when I call for you. Okay?”

  I couldn’t answer him, so I just wagged my tail at his voice. He knelt down and pushed his forehead into mine. “I’m sorry I got mad at you. I should have held on to your leash better.”

  My tail drooped. No, Tonio, it was my fault.

  He pulled a little sketchbook out of one of the many pockets in his shorts and sat down to draw the creek bubbling beside him. I sniffed around slowly at first, to show I was hesitant to leave him alone, but I think he really did want a moment to himself. So I wandered over to the nearest dogs—a group of runners just finished with a race, cooling off in the water and the shade—and asked them not to bother him. Dogs who love exercise are usually pretty chill, and this group just nodded and splashed some water around.

  Something interesting had to be going on, somewhere in the park! I planted my feet, closed my eyes, and tuned my ears toward different crowds to listen in on their conversations.

  A referee made tough calls over an impromptu wrestling tournament in the dirt field: “Illegal mouth grab! Yellow card! Watch yourself, Leila!”

  A book club discussed their latest pick over by the stable’s water fountain:

  “I’m sorry, I just didn’t like it. Is that okay? Is it okay that I didn’t like it?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean, you’re wrong, but it’s okay.”

  The sound of lightning-fast typing from … somewhere? “You’re good, WagCorp. But I’m better.” The clacking of that keyboard reminded me that Mozart had said he had a way to sell the necklace. Which meant, probably, someone in the shelter was helping him. My best guess was Jpeg—and she was also the only dog I knew who could type so fast. I decided to follow the clacking to its source, deeper into the forest.

  I found her pretty quickly, hiding behind a big tree with a computer she’d built herself stuck in a hole. From far away, it would just look like she was digging.

  “All right, bonewrangler2016,” she mumbled at the computer, “let’s see if you’re serious.” Then Jpeg, a Shiba Inu with a dark brown coat and a face stuck constantly smirking, tilted her head toward me, her paws still slamming down quickly on her keyboard (which only had two big buttons). “Oh, hey, Buster. Welcome back, ya big nerd.”

  “Hey, Jpeg! What’s up?”

  She spun a sphere on the side of the computer with her nose to send the cursor flying across the screen, then clacked the keys some more. “Some rare bones showed up on the Bark Web. I’m trying to win the auction, ’cause I know a buyer who’ll want them.”

  That gave me an idea. “Hey, if I, uh … if I wanted to sell something, would I talk to you about
it?”

  She gave me a sharp look. “Depends. What are you trying to sell?”

  “Oh, I dunno.” I sat down in front of her and tilted my head, flopping my ears in a way I hoped looked innocent. “Just normal stuff. Like maybe … diamonds? Would you sell those?”

  She gave me an even sharper look, closed her computer, and switched to Underspeak—a sign that we were talking about something she didn’t want anyone to hear. She twisted her paw, flapped her ear, and posed her tail in a series of directions that meant I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  I’m not talking about anything! I posed back. Just asking a question!

  Jpeg bared her teeth to show she disagreed. You’re talking about whether I would sell the diamonds that Mozart tried to steal from a store in town, and I don’t know anything about that or what you’re talking about.

  I rolled my shoulders and twitched my ears with my tail posed for extra exclamation points. You obviously do know!!! You just said all the details!!!!

  No idea what you’re talking about, she underspoke emphatically. I don’t know what a diamond is, and I definitely wouldn’t have sold any if Mozart brought them to me, no matter if it was for a good cause or not.

  That was interesting. What cause?

  I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Jpeg opened her computer back up and resumed typing. Apparently our conversation was over. I wandered toward the fields to watch the wrestling tournament and think.

  “Buster Pulaski?” a voice growled real close to my ear.

  I jumped. A medium-sized dog with a dark brown coat and beige splotches had somehow kind of snuck up beside me. She looked me over with a serious expression. “I’m Officer Sergeant, your new pawrole officer. And this is my partner, Officer Grizzle. Care to see our credentials?”

  A tiny gray dog with a long body like a dachshund but a much fluffier coat had come up on my other side. He bared his teeth up at me, as if daring me to cross him. Just to be safe, I sniffed their butts. They were legit. “ ‘Officer Sergeant’?” I repeated.

  The splotchy dog looked embarrassed. “I know. A human named me Sergeant. And then when I started working for Dog Court …” She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “The two of us keep an eye on Bellville, so we wanted to introduce ourselves.” She fixed me with an unwavering stare. “There will be no more funny business like the stunts you pulled in the city. Is that clear?”

  “Clear as a glass door, Officers. I could walk right into it.”

  Officer Sergeant, surprised by my joke, barked out a small laugh. I tried to wag my tail to keep up the energy, but she dropped back to a stony expression. “We’re here to keep an eye on you, but we’re also here to help. If you need anything, or you see anything suspicious, just let us know. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “BUSTER!” I turned to see Tonio walking out of the trees, hands cupped around his mouth. When I turned around, the officers were gone.

  I trotted over to Tonio’s feet and licked his hands while he clipped on my leash. I was still trying to figure out what was going on with Mia and Mozart. And I was also trying to figure out how to help Tonio get out of the house more. Then I realized the answer to both problems might be the same answer. Friends get you out of the house! And if Tonio was going to make a new friend, why couldn’t it just happen to be Mia?

  The top of Tonio’s sketchbook was poking out of the loose pocket of his shorts as we walked along the road. I waited for a few dogs to run past us, chasing one another, and while Tonio was distracted by the short burst of chaos, I grabbed the sketchbook between my teeth and dropped it on the ground, in clear sight of Mia’s house.

  He didn’t notice, and my tail wagged the whole way home even though my stomach was flipping with nerves.

  Tonio woke up buzzing. That’s the best way I can describe it—I wasn’t feeling an actual, solid vibration or seeing him bounce or anything, but the way he was acting from the second his eyes opened just felt like buzzing. He was tense, his breathing sounded shallow and difficult, and he wouldn’t stop moving.

  He’d describe this feeling later like something in his stomach had grabbed his throat and was shaking it, just enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Or like he was full of helium so the spot just under his chest was trying to escape his body. The feeling kept him from calming down, so he was awake before either of his parents and emptied the fridge to make a huge breakfast for everybody.

  I didn’t mind the sausage, of course, but his buzzing was infectious. I kept trying to figure out what was wrong, but eventually, I realized nothing was. Nothing outside of Tonio, anyway; his anxiety was using his body to say something’s wrong, fix it, something’s wrong, fix it over and over. But there wasn’t anything to fix, so he was doing whatever he could think of to get the energy out.

  His parents woke up, grabbed some coffee, pancakes, and eggs, and groggily thanked their son before disappearing back to work. Mr. Pulaski ran downstairs to open the grocery, and Mrs. Pulaski handed Tonio a ten-dollar bill and said something about allowance before disappearing into her office. Loud music with lots of electric guitar blasted behind the door seconds later.

  I was stunned! My life before this hadn’t encountered a lot of eleven-year-olds, but I was pretty sure it was unusual for a kid to just get up and do that for his family.

  Tonio cleaned the dishes until they shined, but still his body buzzed. He took a shower, put on the same kind of T-shirt and shorts he always wore, and guided me into my service dog vest. I shook my body out, a big dramatic wiggle, like I had the first time we met.

  He tilted his head at me, then shook his hair back at me, little droplets from his shower spraying around. I wagged my tail and shook again, back at him. He laughed.

  “You’re so weird. Does seeing me wet make you think you’re wet? That’s goofy.” I heard his pulse lower a little bit, though. Even a tiny distraction helped—good to know.

  His energy redirected into his own room, where he threw the buzzing at anything that could even barely be considered “mess.” Laundry: folded. Desk: organized. He collected a few freshly drawn cards from his desk and opened his box. It took him a few seconds to find exactly where the new ones were supposed to go.

  Tonio’s finger ran along the top of the cards, lightly pushing them into a gentle flipping motion. He stopped on Om, the Martian Dragon, which looked like a powerful card. He’d worked very hard on the scales and wings but apparently given up on the face, because it was left blank.

  I nudged his hand when he froze, staring at the card. I didn’t know what was going on with it, but if it was something bad, I needed to distract him. He looked at me, then back at the card, then nodded to himself—apparently making a decision—and tucked the card in the big, buttoned pocket on the front of his shorts.

  I followed him back downstairs, and then outside into town. A few adults waved at Tonio as we passed, and I wondered for the first time why we weren’t seeing any kids around. Shouldn’t a town like Bellville be full of bored kids over the summer?

  He was leading me to a store I hadn’t seen before. Its name, Roll the Ice, was displayed in big letters next to a cone with three different dice in it (like three scoops of ice cream). The whole thing was supposed to light up, I realized, which is why I hadn’t recognized it—almost none of the lights were working, so from Tonio’s window at night it just said h I.

  Waves of cold air rushed over me when Tonio pushed the door open, a welcome break from the South Carolina heat. “Ring, ring, little dude!” An older teenager with big, stylish glasses and a pastel-blue apron smiled and waved from behind an ice-cream scooping freezer. “Hey, the dog isn’t—” She saw my service dog vest and smiled at Tonio. “Never mind. My name’s Skyler, and I’m in charge here today. Ice or dice?”

  Tonio looked surprised by the question. He stared at her longer than humans are usually comfortable with.

  The teenager grinned and tried again, slower. “Do you need help with ice, as in cream,
or dice, like game stuff?”

  I felt Tonio heat up with embarrassment. I could practically hear him talking to himself, telling himself he was stupid for not getting it.

  Luckily, Skyler had noticed Tonio’s reaction, too, and wanted to make it better. “That’s a cute dog. What’s his name?”

  This was something Tonio could handle. “Buster.”

  “That’s a good name! Are you training him?”

  “No. My parents got him for me.” He swallowed and looked away from her uncomfortably. “Because I have anxiety.”

  Skyler nodded seriously. “That’s cool. Me too.”

  “You … have a dog?”

  “I have anxiety, too. Sometimes.”

  His eyes widened in surprise at this. Had no one else ever told him that before? She let him consider for a moment, until he mumbled, “I don’t have it sometimes.”

  “That sounds tough.” Before Tonio could say anything else, she continued. “But Roll the Ice is a stress-free space, so nothing to worry about here. What did you come in for again?” She made a face and said it in a way like he must have told her, and it was totally her fault for forgetting. I realized this was on purpose to make it easier for Tonio to answer, and was very impressed by how smooth it was.

  “I want to look at Beamblade cards.”

  “You got it.” Skyler took a long sideways step to the right. The glass display wall continued, unbroken, but instead of looking down into a freezer, it looked down onto individual cards laid out in sleeves. “You’re the second kid to come in for Beamblade today! I thought everybody your age was off at Sticks and Bugs.”

  Discomfort flashed on Tonio’s face. He didn’t know what to say, so he just shrugged. Skyler didn’t seem to mind. “The singles are in here, and if you want booster packs or deck boxes or whatever, they’re behind you by the Spell of Togetherness stuff. And hey, let me get you a single scoop. On the house.”

  “You don’t have to—”