by Jenn Bishop
“When we decided to all stay at the McLarens’ with the Lindens…we never thought—I mean, you’re only going into seventh grade. I knew we were getting close to the boy-crazy years, I just didn’t think they were already upon us. We left you and Avery unattended and…”
“Mom!”
“What, Maddie? There are real concerns here.”
“Did you listen to me? At all?” I can’t believe I have to explain it to my own mom. That she has completely missed the point. “Mom, he doesn’t like me! Nothing was going to happen. He likes Gabriella. Not me!”
Mom pulls the car into the McLarens’ driveway, cuts the engine, and rolls down the windows. She takes a deep breath. “I have been listening, Maddie. Sweetie, calm down.”
I unbuckle my seat belt. “No,” I say, opening my car door. The smell of the pizza in the trunk makes me want to gag. “You’re not listening at all. Not really. I knew I couldn’t talk to you about this.”
I slam the car door behind me.
When I get to my room, Cammie is in there, Legos spread out all over the floor and on both of our beds.
“Cammie, can you go downstairs?”
“I’m busy.” He bends the leg of his Lego spider contraption.
I raise my voice. “I don’t care if you’re busy. I’m older than you and I get to make the rules for our room and you need to go downstairs now.” I grab the Lego spider out of his hands. “Now!”
“Okay, okay.”
I hand him back the spider as he gets up and shut the door behind him. I brush the Legos aside, lie down on my bed, and close my eyes. There’s no one else in here this time except for me. No cats. No little brother. No friends, not that I even think I have any. No parents. No Hank. Not even the ghost of Hank. Just me.
Why did I think Mom would be able to help?
She doesn’t get it. She can’t remember how it feels to like someone and not have him like you back. And worse, to have the person that they do like be someone you know. Someone you have to see all the time, too. Whether you want to or not. Someone who’s going to weasel her way in between you and your best friend.
Mom can’t help me with this, at least not the same way she could help fix things that went wrong when I was little.
I grab my phone and start scanning through the pictures. Journeying back in time. Me and Kiersten and Gabby at the sleepover. The three of us getting fro-yo at the mall. Dressed up at the dance, before the tornado, before everything changed. The first time Gabby hung out with us at Kiersten’s house, that day we made burritos and Kiersten’s exploded all over her white T-shirt.
And back further. Me and Kiersten having the biggest snowball fight ever. Me and Kiersten at the Hitchcock Christmas-tree lighting. Me and Kiersten rocking Spirit Day in the fall.
Me, and Kiersten.
I listen to my breath. The in and out, in and out. The ticking of the clock.
And then I hear something else, a sound from the other side of the wall. A thump and then wheels rolling. Avery and his parents must’ve just gotten back.
You can’t build a house in a day. That’s what Dad explained to Cammie. But you can with a Lego house, Cammie had said. And of course, he was right.
You can’t build a real house in a day, Dad went on to say. And he explained how you need to start from the ground up. How, without a solid foundation, the whole thing can crumble so easily. A real house has to be sturdy and well built to weather the storms.
You start with a foundation.
I walk over to the mirror and stare back at myself. Cammie isn’t the only one who grew up this summer. I did, too. I’m taller. The shorts I got from Kiersten at the beginning of the summer are shorter on me now. Even shorter if I cuff them. I roll them up and look back in the mirror. Better. I fix my ponytail. Stare into the mirror again. Maybe by next summer, I’ll fill out the top of my bathing suit. I take another deep breath. Okay. It’s time to start again.
I knock on Avery’s door.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Maddie. Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
I open the door myself.
His normally super-organized room is in total disarray. Clothes in messy piles all over the bed. Suitcases opened up on the floor. He’s sitting at his desk with one of the summer-reading books I still haven’t looked at. Only Avery would still read the summer-reading books for a school he’s not going to.
“You’re packing already?”
Avery nods.
“When are you moving?”
“Not until Friday, but my mom keeps nagging me to start packing, so I figured I should.”
“Where are you moving to?”
“Palmer.”
“Oh, that’s not that far away.”
“It’s close to work for my dad. My parents are renting an apartment by the school so I can walk, which…I guess is nice? I don’t know. It seems weird not to be taking a bus.”
And not to be going to our school. But I don’t say that part aloud. I don’t want to rub it in.
“At least, you won’t have to listen to Mrs. Walter’s crazy seventies music every morning.” Our bus driver has the worst taste in music.
Avery laughs. “That’s true. I hadn’t thought of that.”
We’re both quiet for a moment.
“I don’t think I had the chance to tell you how sorry I am about Hank. I was really hoping I’d—I mean that he’d come back. There’s all those stories on the news about pets that get separated from their owners and then reunited after tons of time has passed.”
“That would’ve been really cool,” I say. But the grown-up part of me doesn’t believe in those fairy tales anymore. Avery places his book on the desk.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me…about you and Gabriella? I mean, you didn’t even mention it, and she didn’t, and…”
Avery chews on his thumb for a second. “I don’t know. I guess…”
“What?” I ask quietly.
“I didn’t think it mattered to you.”
“Why?”
“Well, don’t you like Gregg?”
I clap my hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing. “What?”
“Not that you heard this from me, but Gregg likes you, and you were the one who asked him to dance.”
“But that was only because—”
“Because what?”
“N-n-nothing,” I stammer. “Because he was there and I needed to dance with someone. Because everyone was dancing with someone.”
“It was so weird, right? I didn’t think they were going to play any slow songs, and then they did and I—I panicked.”
So choosing to dance with Gabriella was panicking? Then what was kissing her? I wonder.
“Anyway, it’s not like she’s my girlfriend or anything. Can we talk about something else now? Anything?”
“Um, okay.” Everything Avery just said has created about five thousand more questions in my head, but they’re ones better discussed with Kiersten, once we’re talking again. “How are the Red Sox doing?” It’s the first thing that pops into my head.
“Let me check.” Avery grabs his laptop, and I pull up another chair to sit next to him. He opens up the web browser, but it doesn’t fill the entire screen. There are a few documents on the side that I can see. Most look like school assignments, except for one of them. The one called “Hank.”
I point to it. “What’s that?”
“Oh, um.” Avery seems flustered. “This is probably going to seem a little weird.”
Weirder than how I’ve been acting toward him all summer? I doubt it.
He clicks to open the document. It’s a spreadsheet of all the addresses in our neighborhood, with X’s next to some and notes next to others.
“What is this?”
“I was trying to be scientific,” Avery says. “About finding Hank.”
“You were trying to find Hank? Wait�
�how? And when?”
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” he says. “I pulled up our neighborhood on Google Maps and started with a one-mile radius from your house. And I put all those houses on the spreadsheet and called them to ask if they had seen Hank or found anything from him. And then, when I finished that, I added the next mile out.”
“You called them? All these people?”
There are dozens of addresses on this list, most of them marked with the date Avery spoke to someone. It’s all organized and scientific. Just like Avery.
“I biked to some of them. But yeah.”
“How come you never said anything about it?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t want you to be more sad than you already were. What if it seemed like there was a lead and then it turned out to be a dead end? Or what if someone found him and he was…” He can’t even say the word.
“I was pretty sad when my mom found his collar,” I say. “I don’t know how it came off. It never came off before. But it must’ve snagged on a tree or something.”
“Where did she find it?”
“At the top of the hill. By the Lewises’ old house.”
Avery scrolls down the spreadsheet. “Did she stop in and talk to anyone there?”
“I don’t think so. She just picked it up and drove over to get me from the pool.”
Avery clicks on the entry for the Lewises’ address on the spreadsheet. In the notes field are all these dates and phrases: left voice mail, out of service, voice mail not set up yet, try again?
“You never talked to anyone there?”
Avery shakes his head. “Your mom really found the collar by the Lewises’ old house?”
“Yeah. Cammie was in the car with her.”
“Do you want to bike over there tomorrow morning?”
Does he think I could say anything besides yes?
“Of course I do.”
My heart is beating so loudly I wonder if Avery can hear it. He closes the spreadsheet. I can hear every breath coming out of his nose.
I can’t believe he did this for me. On top of everything else he was dealing with—losing his house, having to move—he’d spent his free time on this. For me.
That’s what you do for a friend, though. Anything. Everything. Avery being so nice to me even though he was kissing Gabriella, it wasn’t to be mean. Or to lead me on. It was because he was—is—my friend. A good friend.
And that’s when I realize what I need to do. How to fix things with Kiersten, with Gabriella. The foundation was cracked. My jealousy ruined it. But now I know what I need to do to rebuild. Or at least try to.
If I don’t leave Avery’s room real fast, I’m going to start to cry.
“I think I hear my mom calling,” I say. “I should probably go see what she wants.”
“Sure.” Avery turns off the sound as Red Sox highlights start to play. “What time do you want to go tomorrow?”
“Knock on my door when you’re awake,” I say, standing in his doorway. “I’ll be ready.”
As Avery and I wait on the steps at the Lewises’ old house, we hear noises from inside. The sounds of a baby—or babies—crying and a TV blaring. I hope they can hear us knocking.
I’d ring the doorbell, but there’s a small sign written in marker taped right above it: Baby sleeping. You wake him, he’s yours. Neither Avery nor I want a baby right now.
Last night, I could hardly sleep, I was so excited at the idea of seeing Hank again. But when I woke up this morning, I remembered that kind of thing happens only in fairy tales or the movies. Could I really be lucky enough to find Hank this way?
“Should we knock again?” I ask.
Avery leans his ear against the door. “I’m not sure they can even hear the doorbell in there anyway.”
I chew on my lip. We’re this close. They’ve got to answer the door.
“What if we try calling them again?”
Avery pulls out his cell phone. “I think I still have their number in here.” He holds the phone to his ear. “It’s ringing.”
I cross my fingers.
“Hello? Hi, uh, I’m at your front door right now. I knocked a few times, but nobody answered and—”
Just then the door opens. Standing in the doorframe is a guy with messy blond hair. He has a crying baby in one arm and another little guy clinging to his leg.
“Sorry about that,” he says. “This place can be kind of a zoo sometimes.” He laughs. “On our good days. How can I help you kids? You selling something for school?”
I clear my throat. “Actually, no. Not today. It’s about my dog, Hank. He went missing during the tornado, and my mom found his collar on the side of the road by your house. We were wondering if maybe you’d seen him.”
“Your dog, huh?” He scratches at his head and passes the baby off to his wife, who waves at us before heading up the stairs. “You’re from the neighborhood?”
“We live further down Hollow Road,” I say. “I’m Maddie Evans.”
“And I’m Avery.” He reaches out his hand.
“Nice to meet you two. I’m Isaac, and my little guy, that’s Cooper. We just moved in here a few weeks ago. Came out from Illinois—you know, where the tornadoes are supposed to happen. I still can’t believe one crossed this street! That’s just—it’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” Avery says. “Pretty unbelievable.”
“So, back to your dog…you say he went missing during the storm?”
I tell him about how I was supposed to feed Hank his supper but couldn’t find him. And how Mom and Dad didn’t see him again after that. How it was like he vanished, except, well, he couldn’t. He was a real dog. His body had to go somewhere.
“Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up, not just yet. But when Emma, my wife, and I moved in here, she was sneezing up a storm. We don’t have any pets—trust me, the kids are enough—and she’s always been allergic to dogs. But the weird thing is, the folks we bought the house from, they said not a problem, their tenants weren’t allowed to have pets. You know, so we took them at face value—we bought this place sight unseen.”
“So, you think they did have a dog?” Avery asks.
“Well, based on how sick Emma was when we moved in here…it seems awfully likely.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out his phone. “You know, I have their number from when we were trying to coordinate utility switchovers. Let me give them a ring. You guys want to come in for a minute?”
I glance over at Avery, who nods. “Sure.”
We find our way over to the couch, pushing a few board books out of the way. From upstairs, we can hear Emma singing a song to the baby. Cooper finally lets go of his dad’s leg and plays with a puzzle on the floor.
Isaac turns down the TV and paces with the phone to his ear. “Hey, yeah, sorry to bother you. I’ve got this kid here from down the street. Said she lost her dog around the time of the tornado. You folks didn’t happen to— Whoa, no way! Okay. Yeah. Uh-huh.” Isaac flashes me a thumbs-up.
I grab Avery’s shoulder, not even thinking. “Oh my God! They have him!”
Isaac gestures for me to get on the phone, and I leap off the couch. My foot crunches on some stray Cheerios, and I grab the phone from him.
“Hello?” My voice shakes, but in the best way possible.
A woman’s voice is on the other end. “I’m so sorry—his fur was all matted and he didn’t have a tag. I thought for sure he was a stray. We were a few days away from moving to Springfield and everything was all mixed up. We thought we were rescuing him.”
“But he’s okay? He’s not hurt? Are you sure it’s him?”
“Your dog’s a sweetheart, honey. Just as sweet as can be.”
“His name’s Hank,” I say.
“Hey, Hank!” she shouts, and then lowers her voice back to a normal volume. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when I called him that. He never did like being called Oliver.”
I laugh and wipe a tear off my cheek. I don’t even care
if Avery sees me crying.
“Now for the important question: When do you think you and your mom or dad can come by to pick him up? Hank sure looks like he’s ready to go home.”
Mom insists that Avery join us for the drive out to Springfield later that afternoon, since he’s the reason we’re getting Hank back in the first place.
Cammie sits in his booster seat in between me and Avery. “I knew he was still out there somewhere,” he says. “I just knew it.”
“How did you know?” Avery asks.
“Because I never saw his ghost.” Cammie keeps kicking his leg against the cup holders. “If Hank was really dead, his ghost would have slept on my bed every night.”
“Makes sense,” Avery says.
The drive to Springfield feels like it takes ten hours, even though it’s more like half an hour. Mom can’t settle on a radio station and Cammie has a billion questions about everything today: if Hank will still remember us (of course), who are the slowest and fastest base runners for the Red Sox, where boogers come from, etc. His mind doesn’t want to quiet down. At least Avery is willing to treat his questions like real questions.
The whole way there, I keep thinking about what must have gone through Hank’s mind the day of the tornado. He’d run home, right? To his very first home.
Maybe he knew his house—where he lived with us—was in peril. Maybe he could feel it. Animals can sense things like that, right?
And so he ran and ran. All the way back to the first place he’d ever called home. Except the right people weren’t there. It’s been years since the Lewises lived there. And his mama—his dog mama—she wasn’t there anymore either.
Did he feel like he didn’t have a home? Did he give up then?
And how did he lose his collar? Will we ever know what truly happened that day?
Mom exits the highway and takes us into a busy neighborhood. The houses are smooshed right on top of each other and there are hardly any trees. Just little patches of grass in front of all the houses. Not nearly as much yard as Hank was used to.
“What if they change their mind and don’t give him back?” Cammie asks as Mom parallel-parks in front of a small white house.