Notes from the Dog Read Free Page A

… cliché of having upright plants on either side of the entry …” and so on.
    A garden? This was a farm.
    She showed me photos of bushes that had been trimmed in the shapes of animals and, for the first time all morning, I was kind of jazzed. I started reeling off cool ideas: pouncing tigers, bears standing on their back legs, huge spiders and killer sharks with wide-open mouths …
    “That’s not,” she said finally, “the image we’re going for.”
    “But the koi pond
is
?”
    “I see your point,” she said, making a big X in her notes. “You’re signing up to be a gardener, not a fish wrangler.”
    I wasn’t “signing up” for anything. She’d ambushed me, and I still couldn’t figure out how she’d done it.
    “Okay!” Johanna finally jumped up, stuffing hernotes in her backpack. “Enough for now. Let’s get something to eat. How about Java Joe and Juice?”
    “Um, I’m not really, you know, into organic fruit smoothies with bee pollen or whatever.”
    She laughed. “It was just a suggestion.”
    “I’m more a burger and fries or deep-dish pizza kind of guy.”
    “The Holy Trifecta of Grease, Carbs and Meat … I should have guessed. How about the burrito place around the corner?”
    I nodded and we headed out and picked up Dylan. We’d tied his leash to the shaded bike rack behind the library.
    Johanna ordered a grilled veggie burrito and I asked for a beef and pork burrito with extra cheese, sour cream, double guacamole and gut-busting-hot salsa. We ate at the outdoor table where we’d left Dylan. He scooted close to her chair, sensing a soft touch for scraps.
    I’d inhaled most of my food before I realized that Dylan was getting most of Johanna’s. Whoa. Beans. Beans + Dylan = Killer Farts. I’d have to open my bedroom window that night.
    “Kinda sucky, huh?” I slurped my soda.
    Johanna turned from giving Dylan another bite. “What’s sucky?”
    “Brown rice, whole-wheat tortilla, no cheese. I don’t know how you ever thought you’d be able to eat something like that in the first place.”
    “A girl’s got to watch her figure.”
    If she didn’t have what my grandpa calls a good square meal pretty quick, her figure would disappear. I know from Jamie that girls think skinny is the way to be. But most guys like girls who aren’t so bony and hyper about what they look like.
    I worry about being fat, so I know how it feels, but I’ve never once skipped a meal, eaten a salad as a meal or weighed myself between doctor appointments, and I don’t whine about my fat to anyone but Dylan and Matthew.
    I dropped my plate next to Dylan so he could snuffle up the leftover bits. He cleaned the plate and hiccupped.
    “Let’s take a walk,” Johanna said. “Dylan could use the exercise after his big meal and it’s a shame to waste such a beautiful day.”
    I was just so glad she hadn’t suggested going back to the library that I’d have done pretty much anything she said. We wandered down to the river that cuts through downtown and set out on the path along the water.
    “So why did you move in next door?” I don’t normally ask personal questions but Johanna was like Matthew somehow and I didn’t feel too self-conscious talking to her.
    “I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve been living in cinder-block dorm rooms and ratty apartments with weird roommates since I was eighteen. I didn’t want tomove back home with my folks because I’ve never had a place all to myself and I wanted my own space for a little while. Plus, it’s close to school and free.”
    “Do you have family nearby?”
    “You can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting someone I’m related to by blood or marriage or friendships that go back forever. How about you?”
    “Just my dad. Dylan, of course. And my grandpa lives nearby.”
    “That’s all?”
    “Grandpa says we’re a family of men.”
    “Hmmm.” She nodded. “My grandfather says we’re a family of stark raving