Buster

by Caleb Huett

“That’s a really big change! I think anyone would be nervous to move to a totally different place.” Dr. Jake was doing a really great job not looking frustrated, but I was starting to get used to him. I could feel the shift in his mood. He knew Tonio was lying, or was at least pretty sure, but didn’t want to scare him by mentioning it. Tonio had to decide to tell the truth himself.

  Or, I realized, I can help him.

  “Thanks. I’ve been doing pretty well lately, so …” I looked right at Tonio and barked. One short, sharp one. “Ah! Sorry, I—” He knit his eyebrows together.

  “No problem. You okay there, buddy?” Dr. Jake scratched my ears. I licked his hand, then looked back at Tonio. I knew he would understand right away—he was a smart kid. “Did your parents say why they want to move?”

  “Uh, I guess because the store’s having some trouble. Dad’s been trying to make it better with deliveries and stuff, but that’s pretty much—” I barked again. Both humans looked at me. “Buster, what are you doing?”

  “Maybe he can hear something outside?” Dr. Jake offered. “I hope we don’t have mice in the office.”

  I rested my head down on the floor and kept watching Tonio. I’m just a bad dog, doing random things a dog does.

  Tonio narrowed his eyes at me. “No, Buster. Stop.” He turned back to Dr. Jake. “I think …” He glanced down at me. “My parents think maybe the best thing is to switch me to a different school.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “It might be a good idea.” I can always tell when Tonio’s lying now. I folded my ears back and rumbled a low growl from the floor. “Maybe I should just put him outside.”

  I bared my teeth just a little at him, where Dr. Jake couldn’t see. No.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Dr. Jake gently patted my head. “He doesn’t seem worked up. Just noticing something we’re not noticing. I don’t mind.”

  “I mind. But—” Tonio sighed. “I don’t think it will be any better at a different school. I’m just not good at making friends or talking to other kids. They’ll all think I’m crazy no matter where I go.” Tonio spoke like every word of this was a challenge to get out of his mouth. “I don’t want to go back at all.”

  “What do you think will happen if you go back?”

  “The kids will think something’s wrong with me!”

  “Why will they think that?”

  Now we were getting somewhere. Even just a little bit of honesty from Tonio gave Dr. Jake something to work with. Tonio’s eyebrows pushed together while he thought of an answer.

  “Because I know I’ll have a panic attack sometime.”

  “Panic attacks don’t mean you’re ‘crazy.’ They happen to almost everybody at least once in their life. They just happen to you a little more often, and they started earlier than they do for most people.”

  “The other kids don’t know that. I’ll be the weird kid who freaks out all the time.”

  Dr. Jake’s head tilted. “Why do you care if they think you’re ‘the weird kid’?”

  “It’s embarrassing!”

  Dr. Jake’s expression was gentle, but he pushed again. “Why is it embarrassing?”

  Tonio looked surprised. He stared at the floor in silence for a few seconds, and Dr. Jake waited patiently. “I don’t understand.”

  “Why is it bad for someone to think you’re weird?”

  Tonio opened his mouth, closed it, then pushed air through his nose, frustrated. “Because it’s bad! I don’t know!”

  “It’s a hard question. How about this: Let’s say another kid sees you have a panic attack. What are you worried they will do, not just think?”

  “Make fun of me,” Tonio mumbled.

  “What happens if they make fun of you?”

  “I get embarrassed.”

  “That’s how you feel. What happens, what really changes, when they make fun of you?”

  Tonio considered. “They won’t want to be around me. Or be my friend.”

  “I see.” Dr. Jake made a little note. “So you want them to be your friends.”

  “Well … yeah. I want people to like me. Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Sometimes. But if you don’t go to school, doesn’t that mean there’s no chance they could like you? They won’t even know you.”

  Tonio wriggled on his beanbag. “Yeah, but not knowing me is better than thinking I’m messed up.”

  “It sounds like maybe there’s something else that you’re worried about, then. Something that could happen other than losing friends.”

  “I don’t know.” Tonio wasn’t lying this time—he really didn’t know. “I can’t think of anything.”

  Dr. Jake nodded. “I believe you. Remember, anxiety is trying to protect you. It’s not a bad guy; it’s more like a good guy who is working too hard. In small amounts, worry helps you do your homework on time, or help the people you care about. But in big amounts, like you feel sometimes, it can keep you from doing anything at all. Sometimes it protects you so well that you don’t even know what it’s protecting you from.”

  “So you’re trying to figure out why my anxiety is protecting me?”

  “Exactly. That’s why our sessions work best when you give me honest, detailed answers—I can help you figure it out, because I’m good at asking questions.” Dr. Jake smiled at Tonio. “You’re good at asking questions, too, so I think you’ll catch on fast.”

  Tonio’s face turned red—he was embarrassed but smiled back. Good, I thought. He’ll see that Dr. Jake doesn’t just want him to seem better. He wants to help him for real.

  “I understand, I think.” Then a thought hit Tonio, and I saw a glimmer in his eyes. “It’s like a mystery! We know what anxiety is doing, which is making me feel worried—and we know where it’s doing something, because it’s the times and places I feel anxious. But we have to figure out the why.”

  I felt relief from Dr. Jake. He had been trying to help Tonio see this for a long time, and had finally found the words to make it happen. (With a little help from me, of course.) I grabbed the chewing ball and kept listening.

  “That’s exactly right. Do you have any guesses about why?”

  “Maybe. When I think about it very hard, I start to feel anxious, and that can make me feel kind of sick.”

  “Focus on your breathing and take your time. I’m here for as long as you need me.”

  Tonio closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. After a minute, he opened his eyes. “Do you have a piece of paper? I think better with my hands.” Dr. Jake gave him a pad of paper, and Tonio started writing. I didn’t peek over—I wanted to give him privacy and not distract him by reminding him about me right now.

  “Okay,” he said after a few minutes, with a few breaks to close his eyes and breathe again. “I have some theories.”

  “Let’s hear them!”

  “Okay. When kids see me having a panic attack, they might think there’s something wrong with me for real, and they might start being nice to me just because they think they’re supposed to. I don’t like when people lie to me, because I usually can’t tell. So I’m scared that I won’t know when people are lying, and then I’ll be embarrassed when I find out.” He paused. “But that’s just being embarrassed again. And you said to think about why that was embarrassing. In this case, I think I don’t want to be wrong. And also I don’t want people to talk behind my back.”

  “We can still ask why on both of those,” Dr. Jake pointed out. “So let’s pick one to focus on. You don’t want people to make fun of you and you don’t want people to talk behind your back. What happens when people talk about you?”

  “More people think there’s something wrong with me, and if more people think that, then even people I don’t know will already think there’s something wrong with me, and so I can’t ever know if anybody is treating me like a real person, or if they are all being nice to me just because they know I’m not normal. Like my—”

  Tonio froze. The concerned look
on his face made me risk moving over to flop my head onto his lap. I couldn’t help it. “Like my parents,” he mumbled finally. “They don’t act like they used to, and I don’t want everyone else to act like that, too.”

  “What’s different?” Dr. Jake asked softly.

  “They changed everything for me. They used to throw parties and have friends over all the time. They used to play card games, and my mom was in a band.” Tonio’s voice quavered, and his eyes filled up with tears. “I’m sorry. One second.” His breaths were shallower, too, and I could tell his anxiety was spiking.

  “No need to apologize.” Dr. Jake handed him a few tissues. “Remember that anxiety works extra hard when you’re close to it. I think you’re on the right track.”

  After another shuddery breath, Tonio continued. “I know they changed some things when I was little, but they changed more because of my anxiety. And now they even want to move because they think it might cure my anxiety.”

  For the first time, I saw Dr. Jake look genuinely stunned. “They said that to you?”

  “Sort of.” Tonio rubbed at his eyes. “I know that’s why.”

  “That’s a lot of pressure to put on you. I’m sorry to hear that.” He wrote a little note down in his book. “You know, Tonio, I’ve talked to your parents about something, and now that I think of it, I might not have explained it to you very well.” He tucked his pen into his book and closed it over to focus completely on Tonio. “Anxiety isn’t something that you can cure, exactly, and panic attacks are something even doctors don’t totally understand yet. Lots of doctors and scientists are still trying to figure out why they happen to some people more than others. What we can do is make sure you have ways to keep it from interfering with your life.”

  Tonio frowned. “So I might never get better? That’s not fair.”

  Dr. Jake shook his head. “You’ll definitely get better. And sometimes, with enough work and time, anxiety disorders can shrink down so small you hardly even notice them anymore. But it’s likely you’ll have some amount of extra anxiety for your whole life—and you’re right that it’s not fair.” He looked down at his book. “I wish I had realized sooner how much your parents have been looking for a cure, because that’s not the right idea at all.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant.” He smiled at Tonio. “You haven’t done anything wrong. And I’m really proud of how hard you’ve worked today.”

  Tonio blushed again. “Thank you.” I licked his cheek, and he remembered I was there. He scratched my ears and whispered, even tinier, “Thank you.”

  “I’m going to talk to your parents soon. I won’t tell them anything you’ve said, but I am going to try to find out more about this move—and try to remind them of what our treatment is really about. I think they need to hear from you, too.”

  Tonio’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “You should tell them what you’ve told me today. The parties, the card games, your mom’s band. If you want them to do those things again, you should tell them. I think they’re trying their best to help you, but don’t know how.”

  “Like anxiety!” Tonio realized. “They’re trying to do something good, but doing it too much.”

  Dr. Jake smiled. “You’re a really smart person, Tonio. And you’re very kind. If you talk to them, if you tell them what matters to you, I know they’ll listen.”

  Another deep breath, another swallow. “I’ll think about it.”

  I wished I had hands so I could give Tonio a real high five. This was amazing. To wrap up their session, Dr. Jake asked Tonio to do more of what he’d done that day: Find a place where he was feeling anxious, try to solve the mystery around it, and write it all down to bring to therapy the next week. For the first time, Tonio seemed genuinely excited to think about his anxiety.

  Dr. Jake seemed happy, too, as far as I could tell. He liked his job, and he liked Tonio. (I also liked him, and now it wasn’t just because he had such good treats.) Tonio had taken a really strong step toward feeling better—all because I stopped trying to be a Good Dog.

  But we still had a lot to talk about. And I had no clue what was coming.

  The door to Mrs. Pulaski’s office wore at least fifteen Do Not Disturb signs slapped on at various angles, including the handwritten one hanging from the handle. I’d never been inside before, but she opened the door for us when we got home from Dr. Jake’s—Tonio had asked to borrow a tablet.

  “There’s definitely one around here somewhere you can use!” Mrs. Pulaski swept a pile of old snack food wrappers into her trash can. The room smelled like salt, sugar, ink, and the tiniest whiff of a candle she must have lit to try to combat the snack food dust. “Just have to find it.”

  Tonio began collecting old cans of soda and sparkling water, piling them in his arms to take to the recycling. “Do you need help, Mom?” he asked. “I don’t mind cleaning up in here.”

  She dismissed that idea with a wave of her hand. “Oh, no, I’ll get to it after I finish this project. Once the Gargle site is done, I’ll take a bit of time off, get everything organized.” She sniffed at a bag of Cheese Bobs, apparently decided they were still good, rolled the top shut, and shoved them in a drawer.

  “Really? You never take time off.”

  “Well, I’m trading emails with a few clients right now, so I’ll probably be doing something, but less, for sure.” Tonio’s face looked like that was about what he expected. “Hopefully something other than websites for a little while. I’m bored!”

  I looked around at her walls and saw posters for a bunch of old bands—Blip Gloss, AARCTIIC TUUNDRAA, Typorgaphy Error, Our Elaborate Misconceptions … Her office walls were a catalog of famous bands from the last twenty years. It didn’t take me long to realize why. All the posters had the same signature in the bottom right: L(squiggle)P(squiggle). Laura Pulaski. She’d designed all of them.

  “Aha! Here we go!” She found a tablet lying on one of her desks under a printed-out design with handwritten notes scribbled all around it. “I hardly use it, so you can keep it in your room. The charger is …” She rummaged in a drawer and pulled out a cord. “This one will work. I’m glad you’re interested in digital work! Let me know if you need any help, okay?”

  Mrs. Pulaski was excited to see Tonio interested in the kind of art she was making, too—which was making him feel nervous, because he was basically lying about why he wanted the tablet. “Okay, Mom. Thanks.”

  Music rumbled from under her door once we were out of it, loud enough that I was sure even Tonio could hear it until we shut the door to his room—that was normal, though. She liked to work to music. Sometimes she even sang.

  Tonio waved the tablet at me triumphantly as we walked up the stairs. “This will be perfect!” he said once his mom’s music made sure she wouldn’t hear. “It might take a little bit of practice, but you can type on here, and we can talk for real. Wait—” He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and turned to me. “You can’t just talk, right? I never really asked.”

  Nope. I tried to imitate the way a human speaks: “Aargggeeeohm!”

  “Got it.” He pushed open the door and plugged the tablet into the wall. We watched while it charged enough to turn on; then I unlocked it with a swipe and opened up an app to type in. “That is so weird.”

  What is? I typed slowly, with the pads of my paws and a lot of backspacing.

  “Watching you use technology! You’re a dog!”

  I’m not very good at it. You should see Jpeg.

  “Jpeg? The Shiba at the shelter? She’s—” He blinked. “Of course she is. They all are. You’re all smart.” I gave him the space to process. “What about other animals? Birds?”

  No.

  “Squirrels?”

  No.

  “Cats?”

  I winced. It’s complicated.

  “How is it complicated?!”

  We think they have an Underspeak language like we do, but it�
��s different from ours, and they don’t seem interested in talking to us.

  “Can you teach it to me so we can talk without a tablet?”

  I’ll try. You can learn to understand, I think, but probably not speak it.

  “Why not?”

  You don’t have a tail. Or the right kind of ears.

  “Are you going to get in trouble for telling me?”

  I tried not to scare him. Probably not. Maybe.

  “Then why did you tell me?!”

  I wanted to help you.

  “But why are you helping me?”

  It’s my job. I saw the look on Tonio’s face—a disappointed look—and I tried to explain it better. Not exactly job. It’s like my purpose. Dogs aren’t supposed to change anything about the world—we’re just supposed to watch while humans do. Being a service dog is one of our only chances to make a difference, instead of just lying around and getting petted.

  “That sounds kind of nice. Not having anything to worry about, I mean.” Tonio got a faraway look in his eyes, and I booped his nose with my paw.

  It’s not. Not for me, anyway.

  “I hate making choices. It feels like ever since I was born, all I’ve done is get in the way.” Tonio sighed. “I wish you were a human instead of me.”

  I don’t. Humans are gross.

  Tonio grinned. “YES! I’ve always thought that! We’re so gross. Like, fingernails? The worst.” Weird choice, I thought, but sure. “Don’t dogs, like … eat poop, though?”

  There’s good stuff in there sometimes.

  “THAT’S EVEN GROSSER THAN FINGERNAILS!” he yelled, the loudest I’d ever heard him get, with a big smile on his face. I wagged my tail, glad to see his mood swing over into something more positive. “I thought that would be one of the fake dog things!!!!!”

  We spent the next few hours going over everything. I told him how I’d never met my parents, about my old firehouse, about Dog Court. I told him about the Big Three, the journal, the tournament flyer, and finally about Sloan. When we got there, I knew I needed to apologize.

  I wanted to help you and Mia, but I didn’t do it the right way. I didn’t get all the information first, and I made decisions for both of you that weren’t my decisions to make. I hadn’t thought very far ahead, but in the moment, I suddenly knew what I wanted. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be a team.