Notes from the Dog (10 page)

I didn’t sleep very well after my date so the next day I was out of bed and downstairs early to get started working in the garden.

I took one look and ran back upstairs. I pounded on the guest room door like a maniac. Dylan added to the chaos by barking and jumping up and down. It briefly crossed my mind that we might wake up Dad, if not the rest of the neighborhood. Matthew threw open the door and squinted at me, half asleep.

“This better be good.”

“Come see,” I said. I dragged him to the yard and pointed at the tiny green buds poking out of the black dirt.

Matthew shrugged. “You got me out of bed for this?” He poked at the seedlings. “What’s the big deal? Weeds do it all the time.”

“Well, yeah. Yeah, but I planted these from seeds and now they’re buds.”

“Wow.”

The nasty tone of his voice, so un-Matthew-like, made me take a step back.

Then he rolled his eyes.

I went from pride to anger in a heartbeat.

I’d never been mad at Matthew before. Not really. But I was suddenly furious, madder than I’d ever been at anyone. Ever.

“My grandpa says people who attack others for no reason are doing nothing more than pointing out their own character defects and personality flaws.” My voice cracked.

He turned to me, eyes blazing. “Don’t you ever have any thoughts of your own? I’ve had a bellyful of ‘My grandpa says this’ and ‘My dad says that.’ But you know what really gets me? The way you’re always saying ‘Do you know what Johanna told me?’ or ‘When Johanna and I were talking …’ It’s like you think she belongs to you or something.”

I saw red. One moment I was just standing there and the next I was shoving Matthew backward so hard he fell flat on his back.

He scrambled up and socked me in the ear. I grunted from the pain and hit him back, then tackled him. We were rolling around on the ground, fists flying. Somehow I knew enough to roll away from the
flower bed. I grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt and dragged him with me.

We snarled and punched and kicked. Dylan was barking like crazy and running around us, unsure whether we were playing or not. Matthew popped me on my cheekbone and I swung back as hard as I could and caught him on the left eye with a sound like a hammer hitting a melon.

We stopped fighting then, staring at each other, holding our sore eye and cheek, panting and confused.

“What’s going on?” I asked him. “Why are we fighting? We never fight.”

“It’s … Johanna.”

“What’s Johanna?”

“I can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah, oh.”

“I … uh … I feel the same way.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“There’s … something … The way she throws her head back when you make her laugh.” He looked over at her house.

“Or … when you’re talking to her … and she leans in to listen harder …”

“No one’s ever … talked to me like she does.”

“No one’s ever listened to me like she does.”

“I love that. I … well, I guess, I kind of love …
her.” He picked up the binder, which was next to his foot.

“Me too.” I stopped, amazed. I’d had no idea I was going to say that. “Not like I feel about Karla, but …”

And there it was, I thought. Matthew and I had come to love Johanna. I’d never loved anyone but family before and I’m pretty sure Matthew hadn’t either.

“I didn’t know that until just now,” he said.

“Me either.”

We sat staring at the dirt, thinking. Johanna’s laugh rang out from the front yard and we got up and walked around the house. She was leaning against her bike, just back from a training ride with a group of women. They hugged her and pedaled off, waving to us.

“Hello, garden boy. Hello, friend of garden boy. What’s new?”

We looked at each other, knowing we had no intention of answering
that
question.

“How was your ride?” Matthew asked.

“Brutal.”

“You swim tomorrow?”

“Yep. I’m on a one-sport-a-day training regime. I like the swimming part best. I’m not the best swimmer, but I float great. And, in the interest of full disclosure: I don’t so much run as I walk briskly. Some days I even stroll.”

“Johanna,” I said, “how are you going to do the race? It’s coming up really fast and you don’t seem ready.”

She bent down to the sidewalk. “A lucky penny. Let’s all make a wish.”

“I wish I could … uh, remember all the words to the songs on the radio,” Matthew said.

“I wish you could too.” Johanna and I spoke at the same time and then laughed.

“What do you really wish for, Johanna?” Matthew asked.

“I wish I could see the garden all done.”

“That’s not very excit—” I started to say, but then Matthew pegged me square in the solar plexus with the garden binder. I went over backward, the wind knocked out of me.

I sat on the ground, rubbing my chest. “That really hurt. What’s your problem?”

He looked at me, shook his head and glanced at Johanna, who was rubbing noses with Dylan. Her eyes were bright. Bright like when she’d asked me to do the garden for her.

I didn’t know exactly what had just happened, but I knew that a second thing we weren’t going to talk about with Johanna had just occurred.

Every so often, Dylan would show up with a note clutched between his teeth, wagging his tail and wiggling all over like he’d just done a good trick or seen someone drop a pork chop.

I’d gotten three notes so far. Two were typed. One was scribbled by hand. They were all torn and spitty from Dylan’s mouth, too smudgy in places to read clearly. He’d bring one to me and I’d read it, shove it into my pocket.

When I got undressed at night, I’d take the note from my pocket, smooth it out and put it in the wooden cigar box where I keep cool things, like the gold coin my grandpa gave me and the receipt from the ice cream place where Karla and I went on our date.

The fourth note, the one Dylan had brought me earlier today, read:
Family is who you find
.

They were like fortune cookies without the General Tso’s chicken.

The first one made me wonder if Dylan had been going through someone’s garbage, like when the spider and the pig sent that rat to the dump to find words the spider could write in her web in that book
Charlottes Web
, and the rat would rip pieces of labels off boxes to bring back to the barnyard.

I was too tired from the garden to read my stack of novels for very long like I usually do at night. So I’d lie there in the dark and think about the notes.

Normally, I would have asked Matthew what he thought, but for some reason the notes were too private.

I kept them because I like words.

I kept them to myself because I knew they meant something special.

I kept thinking about them because I knew they were from Johanna.

“Grandpa and Auntie Bean are contemplating living in sin.”

“What did you just say?” Johanna stared.

“My grandfather and your Auntie Bean are thinking of renting an apartment and moving in together.”

Johanna was just coming back from swimming. I was sitting on the curb in front of her house, waiting to talk to her.

“He’s leaving the—”

“Assisted-living retirement community, yes. They came over for supper last night and told us.”

“I’m glad they’re happy.”

“Hmmm.”

“You have room for one more hungry mouth at your place?”

“Sure.” I hesitated. “I asked Karla to come over and eat with us.”

“You really like this girl, don’t you?”

“Even more than I thought. I used to think she was perfect, but now that I know her, I see that she’s better than perfect. She’s … funny and smart, and even though she’s so pretty it’s hard to breathe, I, uh, I dunno. I like being with her.”

“Were you scared when you called to ask her over tonight?”

“Terrified.”

“Then you’re doing it right. C’mon, let’s eat; I built up a huge appetite in the pool today.”

I started to lead her into the backyard, where I could hear Fernanda laughing with Dad as they set the picnic table. I looked over at Matthew and Karla sitting on the steps sharing a comic book he’d brought over. Grandpa and Auntie Bean were swinging together in the hammock.

“Hey, Johanna?”

“Hmmm?”

“Well, Dad and Fernanda are dating, and Grandpa and Auntie Bean are … whatever, and even I’m hanging out with Karla.”

“Um-hmm.”

“We’re not a family of men anymore.”

“No. Now you’re just a family.”

“How’d you do that?”

“How did Dylan come to live with you?” She seemed to be changing the subject.

“My dad found him on campus.”

“He was a stray?”

“He didn’t belong to anyone so Dad brought him home.”

“That’s kind of what my family does. Only, with people.”

I stopped to think on what she was talking about as she continued into the backyard.

I heard Karla say, “Johanna, will you go school-clothes shopping with me in a few days?”

“First day is just around the corner, huh?”

“I’m kind of looking forward to school starting next week,” I said as I sat down at the table.

“You?”
Johanna and Matthew blurted.

“Yeah, well, right now all I do is worry about rabbits and weevils and the weather. School doesn’t seem so bad. Weird, huh?”

“Only for you, Finn, only for you.”

Everyone laughed and so did I. That was a first.

“Dude,” Matthew said, “what’s with all the rocks behind the garage?”

“They’re from the yard. I picked them out of the ground.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Hope that rock genies take them away in the night?”

“And what’s with that”—he looked toward a corner of the yard—“gaping hole?”

“Dylan tried to help and dug a hole when I wasn’t looking.”

“Hmmm …” Matthew was thinking hard. “Got it! We can build a fire pit—you know, like an outdoor fireplace. We can line the hole with the rocks and dump in some of that leftover concrete from the stepping stone project.”

“I’ll get the binder and make the changes.”

When I came back outside to the table with the gardening binder, Fernanda said, “Finn, have you lost weight?”

I stood a little straighter.

Then Auntie Bean said, “And you’ve gotten taller this summer, too.”

I squared my shoulders, glanced at Karla to see if she agreed, and started to answer. And then I saw Matthew and Johanna choking back laughter and knew they’d put Auntie Bean and Fernanda up to teasing me.

“Go ahead, laugh; I think Fernanda and Auntie Bean have great taste in men.”

Before then I’d never even been in on a joke. I’d certainly never been a part of one like that.

After we’d sat together for a couple of hours eating and talking and laughing, Dad and I got up to start doing the dishes. Grandpa and Auntie Bean said they’d drive Karla and Fernanda home, and Matthew walked Johanna over to her place.

Later Dad and I sat on the back steps together admiring the lanterns he’d helped me hang in the trees. The stench from the manure was just a distant
memory, and in the dark it was easy to overlook the straggly flower beds and the sun-wilted vegetable patch.