Notes from the Dog Read Free Page B

lunatics.”
    Just then I saw Karla Tracey.
    She was sitting on a bench and glancing at her watch, waiting for someone. I couldn’t help myself. I stopped walking. And talking. And breathing. I didn’t, however, dive off the path and into the bushes to keep from being seen, which is what I would have done if I’d been by myself.
    “Yoo-hoo. You in there?” Johanna had been trying to get my attention.
    “Yes.” I pulled my gaze away from Karla and looked at Johanna. “What did you say?”
    “I asked if you knew that girl. From your reaction, that was a pointless question. What I should have asked was: How long have you liked that girl and why haven’t you asked her out yet?”
    “Like her …
Her?
… No, of course I don’t like her, I mean, she’s … well,
look at her
. She’s perfect, and then … I mean, I’m … and she … I could never, not ever, not in a million bazillion quintillion years, ask her out, because—”
    “Why not? She looks nice. Pretty hair, cute figure, she’s not dragging around dead house pets and, since we’re downwind of her, I can tell she doesn’t reek of sewer gas and rotting flesh.”
    “No, she smells like cookies.”
    “Cookies! I’ve never met anyone who smelled like cookies. That must be wonderful.”
    “It is.”
    “Then why haven’t you asked her out?”
    I looked down at the ground. Embarrassed that Johanna didn’t understand why a girl like Karla Marina Tracey would never go out with a guy like Finn Howard Duffy and wanting, more than anything, not to have to try to explain it to her.
    I looked up at Johanna. She was frowning, eyebrows scrunched, as she studied my face.
    “I could never ask Karla Tracey out. That would be …” I couldn’t even
think
of how wrong that would be, much less put it into words.
    “I think it’s a waste
not
to ask her out,” Johanna said. “And I hate waste.”
    “I’m … well, you know, I’m not good at talking to girls.”
    “We’ve been talking all day. You’re doing just fine.”
    “Oh. I guess so, but normally, I mean sometimes, well, most of the time, when other people talk, I’m so worried that what I’m going to say is going to come out wrong that I can’t focus on what they’re saying and then I lose track of what we were talking about in the first place.” I could see she didn’t get it. I knew it: I really
am
the only person in the world who freaks out about something as simple as a conversation with another human being.
    “Johanna, can we drop this subject? No offense.”
    “Sure. We have to get to the garden store to buy equipment anyway.” We turned and walked back the way we’d come, avoiding Karla, but I saw Johanna glance back over her shoulder.

4
    The sun was baking my skin. Bugs were feasting on the back of my neck. My lips cracked. Sweat poured down my forehead, stinging my eyes. I could see blisters beginning to form on my palms. Dirt was caked under my fingernails. My shoulders were on fire from carrying equipment. My legs ached from kneeling on the ground. I was lightheaded. Dizzy. Weak from exertion. I was starting to stink. I cursed my fate.
    I’d been working in the yard for seventeen minutes.
    It was eight-thirty in the morning and Dylan, no fool, was napping in the shade of the old sugar maple. I had never envied that dog more.
    I looked around me and groaned: Our small yard had taken on epic proportions.
    An hour earlier I’d been awakened by my dadpounding on my bedroom door. I staggered out of bed, groggy because I’d stayed up most of the night reading. I was also surprised because Dad didn’t usually wake me up in the mornings, not since I was little anyway.
    “You have company.” He grinned at me as I opened my door. Dylan streaked out of the room, skidded down the hallway and galloped downstairs to the kitchen. “It’s the girl next door. She brought muffins. You’d better pull on some clothes and get downstairs before I eat them all.”
    Other than Matthew and my