I saw Jules watching Otis and me, so I knew what was coming next:
“What’s that about?” she asked.
I hesitated. Otis had just alerted—he’d told me my blood sugar was too low. Everybody loves hearing about diabetic-alert dogs and all the things they can do—how they can smell blood sugar across two campsites through a haze of barbecues, how they’re on duty even when they’re asleep. But if I told Jules about Otis, would she start grilling me all about what it’s like to have diabetes?
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a game we play.”
We went inside, and Otis and I stopped in the bathroom to make sure he was right, even though Otis is never wrong about highs or lows. And he almost never misses an alert—just when he’s sick or when something incredible happens to distract him, like the time an entire flock of geese made a pit stop in our backyard at dawn and he barked the whole house awake until Dad let him out so he could have the joy of chasing every last goose into the neighbor’s yard.
I pricked my finger with a tiny lancet and then squeezed a drop of blood onto a test strip in my glucometer so I could check my sugar level. Otis stared at the meter with the tip of his tail wagging. He knew that if he was right, he’d get a treat.
Five… four… three… two… one…
“Good low, Oats Magoats.” He gobbled down a square of turkey jerky, which I carry in a treat baggie in my pocket.
My deal with my parents is that they check the numbers stored on my pump at the end of each day, but I have to let them know in real-time if I get too high or too low. I texted them:
Me: BS 68. About to have lunch (30g carbs). Will take 1 unit insulin after I eat
Dad: Sounds right
Mom: How are you feeling?
Me: Ok
Dad: Headache?
Me: Not too bad
Mom: Dizzy?
Me: No
Dad: Sweaty?
Me: I’m FINE
This is how it goes with us, ever since my last birthday when I convinced my parents—with a lot of help from Dr. Basch, my diabetes doctor—that they needed to start letting me be the one to deal with my diabetes instead of them making all the decisions. Every single day of my life, my parents have known every bite of food I’ve eaten, every place I’ve gone, everything I’ve done, every hour I’ve slept. For the record, there’s nothing quite like the special joy a girl feels when her dad says, “You’ve been low for the last two days, sweetie. Period starting?”
My parents have been pressuring me to get a continuous glucose monitor—a machine that would automatically check my blood sugar every few minutes. But a CGM would mean another port in my body, and one was more than enough. Plus, I really didn’t want Mom and Dad getting my blood sugar updates texted to their phones all day. Plus, CGMs are expensive. Plus, I had Otis. So… no.
I found Jules in the kitchen and prayed she wouldn’t say anything about the piles and boxes near the basement door that make the hall look like a yard sale. Mom and I can be messy, but Dad, according to her, is “two psychological wrong turns away from being a hoarder.”
Dad hates throwing anything away, so our house just gets messier and messier and messier until finally Mom has a meltdown. “I can’t take it anymore!” she’ll yell. “Living in all this clutter makes me feel like I’m wearing a hair shirt.” Dad will do a minor cleanup, and then the cycle repeats itself.
Last winter, though, Dad’s piles grew bigger than ever, until one night at dinner Mom announced, “IT’S TIME TO CLEAN THE BASEMENT.”
Otis’s hind leg, which he’d been using to scratch behind his ear, froze in midair. Dad dropped his pork chop. “Oh, Em, no—” he begged.
“We need space, Hal. It’s the only way.”
Dad deflated. “Next year—”
“Now.”
Dad put in a few weekends, but then his busy season started, and now everything he’d brought up from the basement to get rid of was piled in the hall. There was enough space to walk from the front door to the kitchen, but just barely.
Jules was looking out the kitchen window at the backyard. Otis let himself out the door and went to pee on the wood chips that Mom had laid down for him to use as a toilet so he wouldn’t poison the grass. Otis figured out how to work a lever-type door handle when he was a puppy just by watching. He also knows how to flip a light switch and when to cross at a traffic stop. He thinks he can dance too, but it’s really more of a rump bop. Turns out dogs don’t have much rhythm, but then again, neither do plenty of people.
I got the tuna salad from the fridge and made myself a sandwich.
“Want one?” I asked.
“No thanks,” Jules said. “Your house is cool. You have so many flowers in your garden. Those are peonies, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said between bites.
“What are those?” She pointed at the flowers that covered the shady part of the yard next to the fence.
“Bluebells,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask more about them. My mom named me Bluebell for her favorite flower. Since I’m not a dairy cow, I go by Blue.
I wondered whether I should say something about Jules’s dad and Anna Bowdin. I mean, what was there to say? I’m sorry your dad dumped your nice, normal mom so he could date an actress who’s young enough to be your sister?
Luckily, Jules didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Instead, she snapped, “So are we gonna go out on your boat or what?”
Obviously, I wanted to go out on the boat more than anything, but I didn’t want to do it with Jules. Was there a way to take Jules treasure hunting without letting her know we were treasure hunting? Maybe what I needed was a decoy. Something that would distract Jules from the seemingly dull and boring but actually super-exciting treasure hunt that I didn’t want her to know about.
“Do you like tubing?” I asked.
“You mean where you lie on a raft and a boat pulls you really fast and you fall off and get rope burn and water up your nose?”
“Exactly.”
Jules grinned. “What’s not to like?”
Decoy activated!
“Ahoy, Otis! To the boats!”
Otis woofed with joy. German shepherds aren’t usually big water dogs—not like Newfies or Labs—but Otis was raised at sea and loves the feel of spray on his muzzle. He’s not a fan of actual swimming ever since he tried to eat a jellyfish, but he’ll go in if I go with him.
Before heading outside, I went to the bathroom to take insulin. I’d have to recheck my blood sugar on the boat without Jules seeing, but I had a plan for that.
Otis led the way to our dock at the end of the yard, where the inner tube was leaning against the fence that separates our property from our next-door neighbor’s. The tube looks like a giant rubber doughnut with a thin bottom in the hole. You can sit in the hole or lie across the whole doughnut while somebody else drives the boat. It’s actually really fun—not that I had any intention of tubing today myself.
“Tube, Otis.”
Otis took the rope in his mouth and dragged the tube to the dock.
“Will he do anything you tell him to?” Jules asked.
“Well, he can’t open a jar of pickles,” I said.
“He must be really smart,” Jules said with a look of admiration. Maybe she’s not a dog-hater after all. “I see the way he watches you and does everything you say.”