Notes from the Dog Read Free

for the next three months involved reading as many books as I could right here on my front steps and avoiding people.
    After an entire school year of eight classes a day, with thirty other students in each period, I figured I’d come into contact with two hundred and forty people each and every school day. And that’s not even counting people on the bus, in the hallways and in the cafeteria. For a guy like me, that was sensory overload, and I needed to turtle up for a while.
    I planned, in fact, to speak to fewer than a dozen people over the entire summer.
    I’d figured that idea would work if I only went places with Matthew or my dad or grandpa and left the talking to them. I’d wear my iPod and a pair of sunglasses if I had to go anywhere alone, and act like I couldn’t hear or see anyone.
    Just meeting Johanna the day before, I’d already used up a third of my summer communications quota. And it was only the first week of summer vacation.
    I doubted my dad and my grandpa would notice that I’d decided to limit my speaking, and Matthew had said he understood my plan.
    What he actually said was “You’ve got the personality of a mushroom and that freaky idea of not talking to anyone creeps me out.”
    But I knew he had my back. I could count on him to run interference for me, at least for a little while. He’s good like that. Even if he disagrees with you, he’ll always help you out.
    I realized Johanna was asking me a question.
    “Would you like to work for me?”
    No, not in a million years, I said to myself.
    “Uh, what do you do?”
    “I’m in graduate school.”
    Great, I thought, another one.
    “Master of Library and Information Science. And I work at Anderson’s Bookshop part-time. How would you like to plant a garden for me?”
    No, not in a million, bazillion years. I cleared my throat and tried to think of a way to say no.
    But somehow I didn’t have the heart to come right out and tell her that digging in the wormy dirt and pulling weeds in the sun all summer long was not anything I’d ever want to do even if I knew the first thing about plants and flowers. Which I didn’t.
    “I thought you said you weren’t supposed to do anything to your yard.”
    “Not my yard. Your yard.”
    “You want to hire me to plant a garden for you in my own yard?”
    “I most certainly do. This house needs a garden, you need a job and I …” She trailed off. Something in her voice made me drop my eyes from her face. I looked at Dylan. When he saw me look at him, he put a paw on her knee.
    She turned back and her eyes were bright. “So will you do it?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I most certainly will.”
    I would have said anything to make the sad look in her eyes go away.

3
    We spent most of the rest of the day, the day that gave the world Johanna’s Great Idea About the Garden That Was Going to Kill Finn, at the library.
    There are literally hundreds of books about dirt.
    Just dirt.
    She took notes and made sketches and I tried to look interested as I paged through the first pile of books she’d shoved in my direction. But after barely getting through one chapter, I was so bored that I started alphabetizing the books she’d discarded so I’d look busy. I excused myself to go to the bathroom so many times I wondered if Johanna thought I had a bladder infection or an attachment to public rest-rooms. The librarian shelving books nearest the men’s room started to look at me funny.
    I finally headed over to the fiction section and took my time picking out the novels I wanted to read that week. I returned to our table with a bag of books; she hadn’t even noticed I was gone.
    I’d originally thought Johanna had a few rows of flowers in mind, but I soon realized that she aimed to smother every square inch of the yard under flowers, plants, shrubs, bushes, vegetables and something called container gardens. She sat muttering to herself, “USDA zones and plant hardiness … slope and drainage of the property