I slow myself down because, God’s bones, I sound like Cynthia.
But I’m not nearly done. “All I really need, Philippe, is for you to help me get up on the roof. I just need a boost. And friends do things for each other.”
My eyes want to glare at him, but they don’t.
“That’s a two-way street, Rosie.” He wipes the wet curls off his neck, reaches for another Popsicle. “It’s not one-way, with everybody doing stuff for you all the time.”
“Yes,” says Cynthia. “I can’t believe you don’t know that yet, Rosie.”
“I know that, Cynthia,” I snap, pulling Augustus over and scratching all up and down his back the way he likes until he gets that grin on his face. “Doesn’t it sound like I already know that? Now, do you both want to help me or not?”
Harry says I snore like a donkey.
He says only Augustus snores louder than me.
Hornets whirl when my grandpa talks like this, I can tell you that. I toss the spatula I am using to flip our eggs and it lands on the floor.
Louse-head.
Harry’s brows march right across the table. “You both in that little room, sawing like old men, shaking the whole building—you’re worse than the train, for Pete’s sake. From now on, you’re sleeping in the shed.”
Augustus looks up from his spot under the kitchen table, wondering if you can make kids and their dogs sleep in toolsheds. I know that you can’t.
That’s when I see the crinkling around Harry’s eyes and a smile just starting. I snort and turn up the flame and let the eggs sizzle until they are hard in the middle, not gooey and running all over town the way Harry likes.
I wait for him to yell at me about when am I going to learn to fry a proper egg. But he doesn’t. Instead, he comes over and puts an arm around me.
Harry’s shirt scratches and his whiskers hurt. His hug isn’t the same as my papa’s (who knows all about children and their feelings), but it’s solid as cement.
My Gloaty Gus raises one ear and thumps his tail. There’s an upward curve on my grandpa’s face that points toward something hopeful, something new. Augustus and I can’t help but notice.
The train roars into town, clanging along the tracks, rattling our walls, sifting grit through the window screens.
I let the spatula stay on the floor and the eggs sizzle.
Harry’s hug smells just like Listerine.
I am sincerely grateful to my inspiring editor, Michelle Frey, and her team at Knopf Books for Young Readers: Kelly Delaney, Stephen Brown, and Marisa DiNovis; my encouraging agent, Elizabeth Harding; my writing friend (and former fifth-grade teacher) Laurie Smith Murphy; my parents; my husband, Steven, who reads all my manuscripts over and over again; our four children, Daniel, Matthew, Kate, and Laura; the donut shop in Milford, Massachusetts, where I worked to help put myself through college (and learned so much about life in the process); and the three dogs that we have loved, Norman, Sally, and now Harper—because, as Rosie knows, life is better when you love a dog.
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Chasing Augustus Page 17