Rules of the Ruff

by Heidi Lang

“Pictures,” Wes said softly. “She sends you pictures.”

  “And cute little notes,” Agatha added. “She said Angel was a good dog.”

  “I’m sorry, Wes.” Bill looked down at the floor. “Thank you for your care. And, uh, we’ll still pay you for today, of course.”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t want your money.” Wes turned and strode from the porch.

  “Well, that was a little rude. Don’t you think that was a little rude?” Agatha asked her husband.

  Bill shrugged. “I think, for Wes, that was very . . . restrained. He has been walking Angel for a long time.”

  “But still. He’s our dog, and it’s our choice.”

  “Your choice. I’d prefer to stick with Wes.”

  “Well,” Agatha huffed. Then she seemed to notice Jessie for the first time. “And who are you?”

  Jessie hesitated. She knew she should have followed Wes off the porch, but she couldn’t just leave. She had to say something. Swallowing, she looked Agatha in the eye. “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “Who is she, Bill?” Agatha turned to her husband.

  “How should I know?”

  “I’m Wes’s assistant. And he’s a really good dog walker. I mean, he’s not good at all the other stuff, the people stuff, but he’s good with the dogs.” Jessie’s face burned and she began to wish she’d never opened her mouth, especially as Agatha peered at her like she was some sort of strange insect. Clearly, she wasn’t very good at the people stuff, either. “Anyways. I thought you should know,” she mumbled. And then she turned and ran back to the car. Like a coward, her tail between her legs.

  Wes was already in the driver’s seat. Jessie barely had time to jump into the back and shut the door before he was backing out of the driveway. They drove in complete and painful silence, until Wes pulled back into his own driveway.

  “What about the rest of the dogs?” Jessie asked.

  Wes tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “I’ll take care of them,” he decided. “You go on home.”

  “What? Why? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No. I just . . .” He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I need to be alone with my dogs today. Please, just go away.”

  It was the “please” that did it. Jessie had never heard him say that word before, and his whole body sagged around it. It was like watching a dog who has just been dropped at the shelter, the moment he realizes the people he loves are driving away from him forever.

  Jessie sniffed, unclipped her leash from her belt, and slid out of the car without another word. What could she possibly say to make him feel better? He’d lost so many dogs, and now Angel, too . . .

  So she left him, sitting in his car, all alone. She felt so heavy, for once she couldn’t even imagine herself as something else. She was just Jessie, defeated.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jessie found herself at the park, almost without realizing it. It was like her feet knew she wasn’t ready to go home. It was overcast that morning, a perfect cool temperature. The dogs would really appreciate that.

  She sighed and sat down under a tree, hugging herself. The dogs might appreciate it, but she was beginning to wish she’d worn something with long sleeves. She thought about running; running always warmed her up, and without any dogs to walk today, she could use the exercise. But she just sat there. Running took too much energy. Getting up took too much energy. Everything took too much energy.

  “Angel, no. Heel. Heel!”

  Jessie’s unfocused gaze drifted across the park. There was Angel . . . she felt the shock of recognition like a punch to the stomach. Even though she’d been ready for it. Even though this must have been part of the reason her feet took her to the park: to see the other dog walker. Monique. She rolled the name around in her mind and tried not to like it.

  Angel lunged after a squirrel, and Monique tripped and stumbled and cursed next to him. “Someone’s not using calm, confident energy,” Jessie whispered. But it didn’t make her feel better. Well, maybe a little better.

  “Jessie?”

  Jessie looked up. And the world. Just. Stopped.

  He wore a snug navy-blue shirt with white stripes on the sleeves, black shorts, and his normal ratty baseball cap pulled low.

  “So it is you! It’s been so long, I forgot what you looked like.” He grinned, his sharp canines on full display.

  Jessie’s heart twisted in her chest. She was not prepared for this meeting. She needed time to remember how angry she was, and that was hard to do when Max was smiling his fox smile and acting so happy to see her. “Er,” she managed.

  “So, where’ve you been?” Max sat down next to her, his leg lightly brushing hers. Jessie hated that she noticed that.

  “Er,” she tried again, still mentally groping for that anger.

  “I’ve had to find other soccer partners. But don’t worry,” he punched her lightly in the shoulder, “none of them are anywhere near as good as you.”

  “By other soccer partners, do you mean Loralee?” And just like that her anger was back. Jessie wrapped herself in it, imagining it as a fluffy blanket, soft and stifling.

  “And other people, too,” Max said defensively. “I don’t spend all my time with her.”

  Jessie snorted.

  “Hey, you ditched me. You can’t exactly be angry at me.”

  Jessie gaped at him. “OK, first of all, I can be whatever I want to be, and second of all, I never ditched you! You ditched me! We were supposed to meet at the park, and you never showed.”

  “What? No! You’re the one who didn’t show. I might have been late, but you stopped coming altogether.”

  “Whatever,” Jessie huffed, standing.

  “And there you go again.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll be too busy with your girlfriend to play anyhow.”

  “Actually, she’s busy today, so I’m free.”

  Jessie noticed he didn’t correct her terminology. “Girlfriend” loomed between them, larger and smellier than anything Jessie had ever had to clean up for Wes.

  “I’m busy, too,” she said.

  “No, you’re not. You’re just sulking like a little girl.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, a little baby girl who’s too scared to play me in soccer.”

  Jessie crossed her arms. “Your reverse psychology isn’t going to work on me.”

  Max stood, too, and mirrored her pose. “No? Well, that’s good, because I didn’t want to play you in soccer anyhow.”

  “Yeah, you did. Admit it.”

  “If I admit it, will you play?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, then yeah, I did want to play you in soccer. You can start.” He grinned and tossed the ball at her, and Jessie caught it automatically.

  “W-wait—”

  “Too late! We made a deal.” Max sprinted across the field, already turning his hat backward.

  Jessie hesitated for another second and then had to admit grudgingly that he’d caught her. She’d play him; after all, it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. But she would stay angry. She wasn’t going to forget she was angry with him. Not for one single moment.

  Jessie ducked left, circled right, and launched the ball. It sailed effortlessly past Max and through the goal. Victory. “Are you letting me win? Because this was just too easy,” Jessie laughed.

  Max went after the ball and dropped it in front of her. “That was just the warm-up game. Everyone knows it’s the second game that really counts.”

  “Says who?”

  “Everyone. Obviously.” Max grinned. Then he looked past her, and his grin faltered.

  “What?” Jessie glanced behind her. “Oh.”

  Loralee leaned against a tree, her body a sharp slash of irritation, from her tightly crossed arms to her tightly pressed lips to the tap-tap-tap of one of her tightly laced boots. “Finally noticed me?” she huffed.

  “Uh, hey, Loralee,” Max said. He glanced at Jessie, then away.
“Er, I thought you were busy today?”

  Loralee pushed away from the tree and stalked toward them, her hair swishing dangerously down her back. “I said I might be busy. Looks like you just jumped all over that opportunity.” She bared her teeth in the worst excuse for a smile Jessie had ever seen. “But it turns out I’m completely free today. Isn’t that great?”

  Max frowned. “What’s with the attitude?”

  Loralee froze. And then it was like a shiver ran through her whole body, her icy expression melting away. “Oh, Max. You know I’m just playing around.” This time her smile was wide and sweet and so very, very fake. There was no way Max was buying it. Right? But when Jessie snuck a peek at him, he was already relaxing, his easy grin sliding slowly into place.

  “I just hope you’re not too busy now for me,” Loralee said. “You know, now that I went through all this trouble so we could spend the day together.”

  “Never too busy for you,” Max said.

  Jessie wanted to throw up. She should leave. She should sneak away. Now. But it was like her feet were stuck to the grass.

  Max took his baseball cap off, ran a hand through his sweaty curls, and put the hat back on facing forward, a sure sign their soccer playing was over.

  Loralee’s gaze locked on Jessie, and all traces of her smile, fake or otherwise, vanished. “I’m sure you,” Loralee jerked her chin at Jessie, “have better things to do than hang around with other people’s boyfriends. Like, I don’t know, dressing up as a fairy princess, or whatever?”

  Jessie’s face was a sun, scalding and hot and full of throbbing embarrassment. She unstuck her feet and silently marched away.

  “You don’t have to be so mean to her,” she heard Max say, and she sped up. She didn’t want to hear Loralee’s response. She didn’t want to hear Max’s pity. She just wanted to go find a deep, dark hole somewhere and crawl inside forever.

  Jessie was running by the time she got to the house. She slipped in through the back door and headed to her cousin’s room, planning on burrowing under the blankets on her cot and imagining herself inside a cave, hidden away in the depths of Alaska, or South America, or somewhere else even farther away. The moon, perhaps.

  She pushed open Ann’s bedroom door and stopped short.

  Ann was very pink; the rims of her eyes were pink, the tip of her nose was pink, and she had two little pink spots on her pale cheeks. “Oh, h-hey, Jess,” Ann sniffed, surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I was just . . . I was . . .” She sniffed again. “Do you have a tissue?”

  Jessie went to the bathroom for some toilet paper and brought it back.

  Ann blew her nose noisily. “Sorry. I think I have a cold. Or a-allergies.” She tried to smile. “Came on s-sudden.” Her voice hitched in a little sob, and she buried her face in her wad of toilet paper.

  Ann wore a large Hello Kitty shirt, her old favorite, and looked nothing like the Ann-Marie she’d been all summer. She looked . . . crushed. She looked like Wes after losing Angel, like a dog locked inside on a summer’s day.

  Jessie’s insides thawed. “Loralee busy today?” she asked softly.

  Ann sniffed and blew her nose again, then nodded. “S-something came up.”

  “I’ll bet.” Jessie pictured Loralee out on the field, staking her claim on Max. She hesitated. Ann had been a terrible excuse for a cousin, ditching her for Loralee again and again. If Loralee were here, Ann would be ditching her still. But she just looked so sad, so lonely, and Jessie found herself asking, “You wanna watch a movie or something?”

  Ann looked up. “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not busy with that dog guy?”

  Jessie smiled. “No. Something came up.”

  Ann’s smile was a little more genuine. “OK. I mean, if you want to.”

  “No romantic comedies,” Jessie warned as she followed her cousin out of the room. “Nothing stupid, OK?”

  “Yes, yes,” Ann sighed. “I remember.”

  “He is definitely not the greatest character of all time,” Ann said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know why you love these movies so much. They’re so old.”

  “They’re classics,” Jessie said. “That makes them timeless. And he so is the greatest. Yippee-ki-yay—”

  “Don’t finish that. Mom will kill you.”

  Jessie grinned. “I wasn’t going to finish it. I’m just saying John McClane is amazing.”

  “Well. I suppose he’s OK. For a bald guy.”

  “I am going to ignore that snide remark and start movie three.” Jessie was just about to push play when her uncle wandered into the living room.

  “Die Hard marathon, is it?” he asked.

  “You bet,” Jessie said. “Want to join us?” She knew that while Ann only secretly loved these movies, her uncle was a wholehearted supporter.

  “Save me,” Ann muttered, but she didn’t get off the couch.

  “I’d love to join you ladies, but unfortunately I have to put a stop to the movie watching. Bea wants you to get dressed and ready for the party.”

  “Already?” Jessie whined.

  “Already? Jessie, it’s five P.M.”

  “Is it really?” Ann shot off the couch. “I have to get ready!” She dashed toward her room, Jessie reluctantly following.

  “What’s the rush?” Jessie asked as her cousin rummaged around in her closet.

  “Loralee said she’d swing by early.”

  Jessie felt cold suddenly. “She’s still coming with us?”

  “Of course she is. Why wouldn’t she?”

  “Well, she was supposed to hang out with you today, too. And then she bailed. You really want to bring her to some stupid party?”

  “She didn’t bail. Something important came up.”

  “She wanted to hang out with Max! She bailed on you to hang all over him instead!”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I saw her at the park, Ann.”

  Ann narrowed her eyes. “It’s Ann-Marie.”

  Jessie shook her head. She didn’t say anything else to her cousin as they took turns showering and getting dressed. Instead, she let the wall rise back up between them. She imagined it rising higher and higher, locking the old version of Ann away forever, trapping her behind this new Ann-Marie.

  As the minutes ticked away, though, Loralee didn’t show up. And when six p.m. rolled around, and still no Loralee, Jessie started to relax. Maybe she’d bailed. Again. Jessie pictured her curled up on the couch, draped all over Max, his arm around her shoulders . . .

  Argh. Now she kind of wanted Loralee to be here instead.

  No, no she didn’t. Of course, she didn’t.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ann asked.

  Jessie realized she was pacing and stopped herself. “I’m deep in thought.”

  “No wonder your face is all scrunched up. Must be painful.”

  Jessie stuck out her tongue, and Ann mirrored her.

  “Maturity, Ann-Marie, show a little maturity,” Aunt Beatrice sighed. She glanced at Jessie but just shook her head, like she knew those words would be wasted there. “Is that really what you’re wearing?” she asked instead.

  “What? I’m showered and presentable, exactly as promised.” Jessie ran her fingers through her damp curls. She had even put on her best pair of jeans. Shorts would be too casual. But as Uncle David wandered in wearing a button-down shirt and tie, Jessie began to get uncomfortable. Just how fancy was this party? Sure, Ann and Aunt Beatrice were wearing dresses, but they liked to dress up. Her uncle hated it.

  It didn’t matter. Jessie hadn’t brought any nicer clothes, and there was no way she was borrowing anything from Ann.

  “She’s fine, Bea,” Uncle David said. “In fact, I’m losing the tie in solidarity.” And he ripped it from around his neck and tossed it on the couch.

  “David!” Aunt Beatrice snapped.

  “What can I say? Jessie and I are rebels.” He winked.

 
; Aunt Beatrice sighed again, loud and dramatic, but before she could say anything, Ann’s phone beeped. “Loralee?” Aunt Beatrice asked.

  Ann read her text, her shoulders slumping. “She said she’d meet us there.”

  Aunt Beatrice’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t say anything bad about Loralee. She never said anything bad about Loralee. Jessie followed her aunt outside, mulling that over.

  Loralee was not very nice. But somehow, she’d managed to get everyone wrapped around her glossy little fingers. Ann was trying to turn into her, Max couldn’t get enough of her, and Aunt Beatrice would obviously switch Jessie out for Loralee in a heartbeat. Why? Why did everyone like her so much?

  As Jessie got into the back seat of the car, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it wasn’t that they liked Loralee more but that they just liked Jessie less.

  It was a terrible thought, a lonely thought, but she couldn’t get rid of it, and the entire drive she could feel it pressing her down, down, into a tinier version of herself.

  They parked on the street outside of a brightly lit house. Noise spilled from the open windows, reaching for them with long tentacles of high-pitched laughter and boring conversation. As they walked to the door, Jessie and Ann exchanged looks, and for a second Jessie felt that connection with her cousin again. They were going to be stuck together at some stuffy party full of adults. And neither of them could stop it.

  Her aunt rang the doorbell, then smoothed down the front of her dress and waited.

  The door opened, and Jessie’s stomach dropped. Standing there, framed in the doorway, was Monique.

  The Enemy.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Beatrice!” Monique gushed, stepping outside and exchanging one of those awkward fake adult hugs with Jessie’s aunt. “So glad you could make it!” She wore a slinky black shirt with a ruffle along the top and a long blue and silver skirt that swished as she moved. Her hair was still in hundreds of small braids, but she’d twisted half of them up into a knot. Next to Aunt Beatrice, with her flouncy floral sundress and overly teased hair, Monique looked more like a supermodel than ever.

  Jessie could hardly believe someone so beautiful could be so evil. But she knew behind those lovely cheekbones and that wide smile was a dog-walking thief.