by Caleb Huett
“What’s your favorite?” She didn’t seem like she was going to take no for an answer.
“Cookie dough.”
Skyler pulled some from the freezer and stuck it on a small cone for him. “There’re some guys in the back playing Beamblade, if you want to join. I think that kid’s still here.” She gestured toward long tables in the back. I followed where she pointed and saw some younger adults playing with a kid around Tonio’s age.
Tonio didn’t even look. “Thanks,” he said, with an expression that said no thanks. He moved his face up to the glass and scanned through cards like Cordurboy the Fabricant, with his wand of creation, and Nine-Eyes, hacker pirate of the Galaxy Wide Web.
Skyler had started messing with the register and wasn’t looking at Tonio anymore. I saw him look from her, to the case, and back to her. He tensed up, uncomfortable with the idea of interrupting her. “Um, excuse me,” he mumbled, too quietly.
She didn’t look up. Tonio looked back at the case, clenched his hand tight around my leash, and headed for the door.
I wanted to stop, to tug him back, but that wasn’t my job. I was disappointed, but it was his decision. He reached up to push the door open, then closed his eyes and turned back around. Yes! He took the few steps back to the register and tried a little louder.
“Excuse me, do you have Om, the Martian Dragon?”
Skyler’s eyes lit up. “You’re after the good stuff! A lot of people are looking for him right now, but I actually just bought one off of somebody this morning.” She took off her ice-cream serving gloves, turned around, and flipped through a folder of cards in plastic sleeves. After a moment, she pulled one out and presented it for Tonio to see.
The image on the card wasn’t like anything I’d seen before, and I understood immediately why Tonio wasn’t able to draw it himself. Unlike the other Beamblade cards, which were mostly flat illustrations, Om’s “face” was made out of a special kind of shiny foil that gave the effect of a void filled with glittering stars that moved when your head moved. It wasn’t something you could copy with pens and paper.
“Most attack power in the set,” Skyler said. “The foil’s so cool, right?” Tonio nodded emphatically. “He’s really rare, though. If you want to take him home, it’ll be fifty-five dollars.”
Oof. That took the wind out of Tonio’s jowls. He shook his head and Skyler nodded, understanding.
From the back of the store, one of the adult players had started to argue with the kid who was playing.
Skyler called out, “Hey, now! I’m the one with the judge badge. What’s going on over there?”
“Does Summon Advanced Familiar’s ability work on the Manabytes you use to cast it?” The adult’s words sounded like absolute nonsense to me. Skyler looked a little confused, too.
“No,” Tonio whispered. “Because the spell isn’t finished until the familiar is on the field. It can’t recharge Manabytes that aren’t spent yet.”
“No!” Skyler also said, then repeated what Tonio had said. After she was done, she looked down at him and whispered back, “You sure you don’t play? It sounds like you know your stuff. Come on—just sit in for a bit and see how it goes.”
I nuzzled the palm of Tonio’s hand with my nose, and he scratched behind my ears while he thought about her offer.
Finally, he said, “Okay.” She grinned, and we followed her to the tables in the back. She introduced the players as she went.
“You already know Phil, and that’s Keegan. Laurie Ann went out for pizza, I think, and—oh, right. The new kid’s name is Devon. Say hi, everybody! This is—actually, I forgot to ask. What’s your name?”
“Antonio!” Devon, the kid Tonio’s age with the gap between his front teeth, smiled a big smile and waved. “What’s up?”
It was like an anvil had fallen on Tonio’s chest. He dropped the rest of his cookie dough ice cream on the floor and took two steps backward.
“Are you okay, Antonio?” Skyler asked, a concerned look on her face. Tonio did the signal on his leg, so I pawed at him and whined a little.
“Sorry, I’m sorry. My dog really has to pee. I’m sorry!” And just like that, we were out the door. As soon as they couldn’t see him, he was gasping for air. I gently guided him over to a bench by the corner so he could sit down and collect himself.
Devon, I realized, was the same Devon he’d thrown up on at yearbook signing—and the reason he was scared to go back to school. I couldn’t believe that goofy kid with the sweet smile had such a strong effect on Tonio, but there were a lot of things about how Tonio’s anxiety worked I was still learning to understand. I stepped up onto the bench and laid down over Tonio’s lap, trying to add warmth and reassurance in some small way.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. I couldn’t do much in response other than wiggle, but I wished he wouldn’t apologize. I turned and licked his face. He pushed me away, laughing and making a “pwuh” noise. “I guess you don’t care, huh? You’re just having a good time outside.” He smiled. “Thanks.”
At least that was something. He glanced back at Roll the Ice, sighed, and started walking home. We’ll keep trying, I promised silently. Things are going to change.
But first I had to figure out what to do.
Mr. Pulaski was going in for another night shift, so we had “dinner” again at four in the afternoon.
“I saw you had some Beamblade cards out,” Mr. Pulaski said once the tuna casserole had been finished off. “You know, I’ve got a bunch of my old cards in storage, if you need ’em. Gotta blade, right?”
“That’s okay,” Tonio replied. “You don’t have to.”
“I know, but I will. A Beamblade card isn’t meant to sit alone in a box. It’s meant to blade! I wish I was still in college. I’d slash through all your life crystals in three turns, flat.”
Tonio didn’t answer. Mr. Pulaski shook his head like he was suddenly amazed. “You’re such a good kid, Tonio.”
“Dad, I—”
“No, no, I’m gonna be a dad here for a second and tell you how good of a kid you are! All our friends, everybody, their kids would yell, and scream, and throw tantrums. You never did that, never threw a tantrum, not once. Still haven’t. You’re almost a teenager now, sure, but I know you won’t be any trouble.”
He was trying to be nice, but something about his compliment rubbed my fur in the wrong direction. I could already tell Tonio was a lot of things—smart, for one. Observant, like I said. His art was good, and he cared a lot about how other people felt. But his dad was telling him he liked that he was quiet? That he didn’t cause trouble?
I wondered if Tonio felt the way that I felt, when I was in Dog Court the first time. When I thought, You just want me to sit and stay. To lie down.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“And once we get past this tough spot you’ve been in lately, everything will be fine. And we’re almost past it. I can feel that, for sure.” Just say anxiety, I thought, feeling protective of Tonio all over again. “And if you have time later, you should come by the store! I could show you how to use the sticker maker! I got it custom-made to look like the biometric scanner in Aliens Everywhere, Part 2: ‘2’ Many Aliens.” And just like that, he was on a roll: “It’s famous because they didn’t introduce it until part two, but if biometric analysis already existed in the universe, then half of the problems in part one wouldn’t have even—”
The doorbell rang, saving everyone.
“I’ll go see who it is!” Mr. Pulaski announced in a big action-hero voice. He patted my head as he passed.
A voice chimed through when he opened the door, saying, “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Pulaski!” It was Mia! My ears perked up. I trotted over to get a better view right away.
“Mia! Good to see ya!”
Mia was wearing a green ribbon in her hair this time, matching a T-shirt featuring a centipede in a Bug Scouts hat (and one hundred boots). “Ring, ring! I was wondering if I could interest you in some Bug Bites.” She lif
ted up a tray of snacks for emphasis, and her voice shifted into a serious, practiced pattern. “As you may know, the Bellville Bug Scouts work hard every year to bring you high-quality snacks and raise money for various activities. As you also know, all of these activities are out in nature. But like we Bug Scouts always say, ‘Nature is Expensive!’ so I am hoping you will buy some of these Bug Bites. How many would you like?”
Mr. Pulaski blinked. “Is that a real Bug Scout motto? I don’t know that one.”
But Mrs. Pulaski was looming behind him, hunger in her tired eyes. “Peanut Butter Beetles?”
Mia smiled and held up her cardboard tray of snacks. “Twenty dollars.”
Mr. Pulaski’s eyes widened. “For one box?”
“Prices are up over the summer. Of course,” she said with a big smile, “you can always wait four months for the regular season.”
“Well, all right. Always happy to help out the Scouts. Laura, do you want any—” Mrs. Pulaski shoved Mr. Pulaski out of the way and slammed twenty dollars down on Mia’s tray. She took a box of Peanut Butter Beetles and zombie-walked her way back to her office.
Never get in the way of her snack, I noted.
“Is Antonio home, by the way? He left something at the shelter.”
“Antonio!” Mr. Pulaski called out. “Mia’s got something for you!”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad.” Tonio was blushing as he got to us. He stepped around Mr. Pulaski and slipped out the door with me at his heels. It was only when the door was shut and Mr. Pulaski was gone that Tonio looked at Mia directly. “Why aren’t you wearing the Bug Scout uniform?” he asked.
“I’m not really a Bug Scout. They’re all at camp.” She set the tray of snacks down on the landing in front of Tonio’s door and leaned against the rail. “But people pay good money for this junk when you can’t find it anywhere else. I bought a bunch of boxes in the fall and saved them up for summer.”
“You lied to my parents?!” I don’t think he even thought that was possible.
“So what? Your mom wanted them, and there aren’t any real Scouts around.” I’m sure Tonio wanted to argue, but his confidence wilted when he saw how sure she seemed. Maybe I made the wrong call, I thought, getting her attention.
Mia saw something in his face change, and she sighed. “I came over because I wanted to say sorry for yelling at you.”
I noticed that this was not, technically, an apology.
Tonio said, “Oh.”
She held out his journal. “Plus, you left this at the dog park.”
Tonio took it from her, surprised.
Mia went on. “My best friend used to draw. You’re not as good as her, but you’re pretty good.” She hefted up the tray of Bug Bites. “I’m at the shelter pretty much all the time. Usually over by the stable. There’s always stuff to do.”
Tonio’s eyebrows pushed together. “I don’t understand.”
She sighed in frustration. “We’re, like, the only kids in town, okay? And I saw how much you draw in that thing, so I know you don’t have anything better to do.”
My tail wagged. A friend! She wants to be friends! I did it!
“Better to do than what?” Tonio seemed genuinely confused.
Mia laughed again, harsher. “Okay, never mind. I get it. Sorry I lied to your dad.” She turned around and started heading down the stairs. Tonio looked down at me, alarmed, and then realized I was a dog and could not help with this one.
“Wait!” he called out. “Get what? What do you mean?”
She didn’t turn around. “I’ll see you later, Tonio. Bye, Buster.”
We stood there, together, and watched her walk away. Tonio shook his head and pushed the door back open for me. Fifteen minutes of staring blankly at his computer screen later, he finally spoke again.
“Does she want to be my friend?”
Now that Tonio knew Devon wasn’t at camp and could appear anytime, he was extra careful about going outside. Before we left for our next appointment with Dr. Jake, he looked out his bedroom window to make sure the other kid wasn’t walking around the square, and the whole ride there he slid down in his seat, like Devon could show up any second and stare right into the window of a moving car.
When we got to Dr. Jake’s office, that tension was replaced with a different one: the fake-happy smile and weird vibe Tonio put out when he was trying to pretend everything was okay.
“You look a little tired, Tonio,” Dr. Jake observed. I moved to him for a treat, and he had one ready in his hand. What a guy. “Is everything all right?”
He’d spent a long time thinking since Mia left. I didn’t know what about, exactly, but I hoped he would at least talk to Dr. Jake about it this time.
“If I did something bad,” Tonio said, “would you tell my parents about it?”
Concern flashed across Dr. Jake’s face, and before he could say anything, Tonio was already talking again. “I don’t mean that I did anything bad. But like … if you saw me doing something that you thought was bad, would you tell my parents or anybody about it?”
“We’ve talked before about how our sessions are confidential. Anything you tell me in here is between us, unless you or someone else is in danger.”
“Yeah, but if you weren’t my doctor. If we were friends.”
“I would need more information to know for sure. But if there’s something you want to tell me, I promise you’re safe. I’m here to listen.”
Tonio shook his head. “Oh, thanks, but I didn’t mean anything specific. I was just wondering.”
“Are you sure? If something’s bothering you, I want to know. I care about how you’re feeling.”
He shrugged. “No, I’m just making things up, but do you think that if you hear about something bad, and you don’t say anything or do anything to stop it, you kind of did the bad thing, too?”
A pause while Dr. Jake considered his answer. I found the squishy ball and chewed on it again. To me, this sounded a lot like what Tonio had told me about what happened with Devon—he’d been concerned for Devon, because of the way those other kids talked about him, but never spoke up. And now, I realized, he’d seen what Mia was doing with the Bug Bites.
“There are a lot of reasons why you might keep a bad thing secret. Like if you are trying to protect someone, or if talking about the bad thing would only hurt somebody.” Dr. Jake stretched out his long legs and leaned over more toward us. “Plus, if we made ourselves feel personally responsible for every bad thing in the world we heard about, we wouldn’t have any time to be our own selves.”
Tonio stared at the carpet.
“We don’t always know what’s ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ” Dr. Jake continued. “Not really. And looking for those labels will waste a lot of your time. But if you feel like you want to do or change something, to make life better for you or someone else, then I think you should listen to that feeling. That feeling tells you who you are.”
I thought Tonio might try to stay away from Mia, but instead, he asked his parents if he could go over to the shelter-park the next day.
Tonio’s parents had two vehicles: “the nice car” and “the truck.” The Lins’ shelter was down a dirt road on the north side of town, so Mrs. Pulaski decided to take the truck. The truck seemed to imagine bumps even on regular roads, so I spent the drive bouncing between them in the middle seat.
Mrs. Pulaski talked to Tonio as she drove. “You know, I got your dad into Beamblade back in college. He did what he always does and got totally obsessed with it. Memorized the cards, tried to collect every ultra rare.” The car leaped two hundred thousand feet in the air, and my paws scrabbled on the scratchy seats for balance. “Didn’t they change that? Are those called ‘epic rare’ now?”
Tonio’s fingers tightened around his box of Beamblade cards. Before going downstairs, he’d written a series of questions and concerns on note cards—a list of everything he wanted to talk about with Mia, so he didn’t get nervous and forget anything. He neatly orde
red them in a box next to some of the Beamblade cards he’d drawn, which he must have brought just in case Mia was interested in the game, too.
“I think so,” he said.
“You think? You’ll have to know these things if you’re ever going to be a Beamblade master!” Mrs. Pulaski smiled at Tonio, but he stared out the window with a tense expression and didn’t acknowledge her teasing at all. She looked out the opposite window before he could notice her disappointment. I licked at her hand on the wheel, and she patted my head.
The red truck curved into one of its very slow but somehow still extremely jumpy turns. I spread my front legs and tried to wedge them under the humans’ legs so I wouldn’t go flying off the seat. A whine wriggled its way out of my jaws, despite my best efforts.
“Wow, he hates the truck, huh?” Mrs. Pulaski said.
Tonio looked at me sympathetically. “Sorry, buddy.”
No problem, guys. I can handle a little—ugh—being thrown around inside the stomach of an angry monster.
Mrs. Pulaski leaned out the window to hit a buzzer and open the gate at the edge of the Lins’ property. She parked close to their house, which looked like it was as old as Bellville itself.
“Do you remember going to the fall festival here when you were little?”
Tonio nodded, his eyebrows still pushing painfully into each other. “Did they stop doing it?”
“No, the festival still happens. We just—you didn’t—” Mrs. Pulaski was trying not to say something, working her way around it.
“You didn’t want to take me anymore.”
“That’s not it. Of course we wanted to take you. You just didn’t seem like you wanted to go.” She took her hands off the wheel and reached out toward Tonio’s leg—but then put her hand on my head instead, and petted me. “Maybe we should have asked.”
“Can we go back home?” The edges of the box were crumpling under Tonio’s grip. Mrs. Pulaski and I both turned our heads to Tonio, surprised.
“We just got here!” Mrs. Pulaski said, echoing what I was thinking. “Don’t you want to see your friend?”
