Normally, Hadley would giggle, at the very least. Now she just shrugged.
“And what kind of mom has hair like that?” I continued. “I’m sure glad Mom doesn’t look like an old teenager. Aren’t you, Had?”
Hadley shrugged again.
I sighed. “Okay. So are you mad at me?”
“Yeah,” Hadley said.
I sat at the table. “Well, I’m very sorry. I had to stay late at school. It wasn’t my choice.”
“You had a project?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“What’s it on?”
“It’s complicated. Anyway, if I ever have another project, I’ll call Mrs. Ames, so you don’t have to worry. And next time I’ll get home faster, I promise.”
“Okay,” Hadley said. She didn’t sound super convinced.
I watched as she drank her milk to the bottom of the glass.
Then I said, “Hadley? Can you do me a huge, huge favor? Can you not tell Mom I was late?”
“You mean not tell her about your project?”
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
“Well, because she’s so stressed about her job these days, isn’t she? She’s always talking about her mean boss. And I don’t want her to worry about me.”
Hadley frowned. “Why would she worry about you?”
“Oh, because she worries about everything! And she’s so tired when she gets home. We just need to let her relax, okay?”
Hadley’s face scrunched up, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. But then I realized it was a dog-sniffing face.
And suddenly she got up from the table and ran into the living room.
“Eww, gross,” she shouted. “Delilah had an accident!”
PARK
After that long walk home, the absolute last thing I wanted to do right then was walk Delilah. But not walking her wouldn’t be fair; it wasn’t her fault I couldn’t take the bus. Or that I was late, and she’d had the accident.
So after cleaning up the mess, I told Hadley I was taking Delilah to Deamer Park to run off leash, which was her favorite thing ever. And of course if Delilah and I were going, Hadley had to come too.
“Well, okayyy,” Hadley said. Like, I’m still mad at you, Mila, so you’d better be nice to me, or I’ll tell.
But as soon as we were out the door, she was her old self again, chatting nonstop about a kid in her class who lost a tooth and got ten dollars from the Tooth Fairy. And then his big brother asked him if he believed there was really a Tooth Fairy, and when he said no, the brother said he should return the money.
There was way more to this story, but after a while I zoned out, letting Hadley go on and on, just adding “Huh” and “Uh-huh” whenever she paused. Mostly I was watching the people on the street step into stores and check their mail and feed the parking meter. And I can’t explain why, but after all the weirdness today, seeing all this normal, boring stuff was sort of comforting.
It was like: You know those camera shots where there’s this goldfish swimming in a little bowl, and then the camera pulls back and you realize the bowl is actually a pond? And then it pulls back again, so you can see the pond is really the ocean? And then the camera keeps zooming out, farther and farther, until you see all the oceans and continents on Planet Earth?
I always liked that camera stuff, because to me it was saying that all your problems—the swimming-in-the-goldfish-bowl stuff—were really small and unimportant compared to the entire world. And walking with Hadley and Delilah that day, seeing everything that happened on a regular afternoon, it was kind of a version of that wide camera shot, reminding me of all the things in existence that were Not-School.
Which was a surprisingly long list, actually, I thought as we passed the library, the post office, my favorite pizza place, the urgent-care building, a real-estate office, a building with a new sign that said E MOTIONS. For a block or two, my brain played with that: What were they selling in there? Embarrassment? Jealousy? No, because who’d want that?
Can I please have a quarter pound of Happiness? With a dash of Relief? No, make that two dashes, please. And an order of Surprise to go.
Finally we arrived at the entrance of Deamer Park. And then my heart stopped, because there, under a red maple tree, was Tobias. He was with a small curly-haired girl in purple overalls who looked like she was about two years old, and he was holding her hand.
“No ice cream, Bella,” he was saying. “Too close to supper.”
I froze. He hadn’t noticed me yet.
“Why’d you stop?” Hadley protested. “Delilah’s all excited. She wants to go in!”
Our dog was on her hind legs, straining toward the dog run, whimpering.
“Wanna pet that doggie,” the little girl announced. She pointed a finger at Delilah.
“Oh,” Tobias said, when he realized who Delilah was attached to. A blush began creeping up his neck. “Hi, Mila.”
“Hi,” I said. “It’s okay if she wants to pet her. My dog is friendly.”
Immediately I was furious at myself: Why had I said this? It was like a stupid reflex:
Other person: Ooh, nice dog. Can I pet her?
Me (proud dog owner): Sure!
And maybe I could have followed up with a line like: Tobias, as long as we’re having a normal conversation, why do you keep acting like such a jerk? Or: Stop teasing me at school, because it’s horrible and I don’t like it. Or even: Keep your hands off me, Tobias, and tell your stupid friends, too!
But I didn’t say anything. For three reasons.
First, because I was with Hadley. I’d already asked her not to tell Mom about my being late; I couldn’t also ask her to keep quiet about the boy thing.
Second, because the little girl, who I guessed was Tobias’s sister, began smooshing Delilah’s ears, which made Delilah wag her tail, and then lean against Tobias in total love with him. Which made Tobias start crooning stuff like “good girl” and “nice doggie” while his little sister squealed with delight. So yelling at him would have been kind of awkward.
And third, because ten seconds later a curly-haired woman walked out of the playground loudly scolding a boy around Hadley’s age.
“When I say it’s time to leave, no arguments, Sam,” the woman told the boy. Then she spotted Tobias and Bella. And Hadley, Delilah, and me.
She snatched Bella’s hand from Delilah’s head. Bella immediately started howling.
“Bell, we never pet strange dogs,” the woman said sharply. “Tobias, did you ask—?”
Obviously, this was Tobias’s mom. So I could have said, No, actually, he didn’t!
And you want to hear what else he didn’t ask?
But this woman was cranky, clearly in no mood to listen. And anyhow, I thought, tattling to his mom would probably backfire.
“It’s okay,” I said, avoiding Tobias’s eyes. “I told them my dog is friendly.”
“Even so, Bell, we keep our hands to ourselves,” Tobias’s mom said.
DOGS
Hadley and I sat on a rickety old bench in the dog run, watching Delilah zoom through the leaves with three other dogs. It must be great to be a dog, I thought. You make friends with everyone, just like that. And if another dog gets in your face, you growl and right away the other dog backs off. It’s all so incredibly… simple.