His nails scratched at the wood floor, his paws working furiously to keep him in place. I slid him just an inch farther and he bit down hard on my hand. It was so startling I pulled back, and he darted straight across the living room and under the dining table.
I looked at my hand, stunned. He’d gotten the fleshy bit around my thumb and it was already bleeding, the skin broken in two different places. I yanked a tissue from the box on the coffee table and wrapped it around the wound before going back to him.
“Bad,” I said in my sternest voice. “Bad Fuller.”
He sunk in on himself, both of his paws splayed out in front of him. When I knelt down, reprimanding him again, he flipped onto his back in submission. He knew he’d done something really horrible.
That’s when I noticed his chest. Instead of seven small, speckled grey spots, there was only one. His ears were different too. The skin on the right one was perfect—the two stitches were gone and there was no scar. How was that possible?
I leaned back against the wall, trying to steady myself. I don’t know how long I stayed there, silent, the world continuing on around me.
That wasn’t my dog.
12
“Dad…something is really wrong.”
I stood at the top of the den stairs, watching the light from the television flicker across his face. He didn’t register me. Instead he leaned in and raised his fists, tracking something in the game.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered. “Go, go, yes!”
He jabbed the air. Cheers filled the room. The announcer said something about it being a tied game, and the Red Sox having a good night.
“Did you need something, Jess?” he said, finally noticing me there. He lowered the volume with the remote so he could hear better.
“That dog…it isn’t Fuller. He doesn’t have the spots on his stomach and he hates me, he bit my hand.” It didn’t feel like enough somehow, so I added, “The scar on his ear is gone.”
My dad rubbed his temple, as if a sudden migraine was coming on.
“You’re sure?” he finally said.
“Am I sure? Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “I know my dog.”
“That’s um…” He stared at the floor, like the answer might be printed on the carpet. “That’s really odd. I don’t know what to tell you.”
I thought he was going to say something else, but he just shrugged and turned his attention back to the game. I stared at him. Why was he being so weird? He wasn’t concerned that Fuller was missing? That some random dog was in our house?
I tore up the stairs, the sound of the game following me. He’d already raised the volume back to its normal can’t-hear-yourself-think level. I tried to go through my routine like nothing had happened. I put on my pajamas and lay in bed, listening to Love Phones on my stereo until the house was quiet and dark. Love Phones always made me forget my problems because the caller’s problems were so absurd. Like the girl whose new boyfriend asked her to dress up like a horse. I listened to hours of it, then the whole Tidal album start to finish, but the entire time I kept thinking about the imposter Fuller under the couch.
Was it some kind of stress-induced hallucination? How could Fuller…not be Fuller?
It must’ve been three a.m. by the time my mom’s headlights flashed across my bedroom wall. I pushed off the covers and ran downstairs, but it took forever for her to get to the front door.
“Christ, Jess! You scared me.”
She squinted against the foyer light. There were gray circles under her eyes and her sweater was creased across the front. She carried her purse like there was a bowling ball inside it.
“How’s Sara doing?” I followed her into the kitchen. She opened the fridge and stared into it, her face a mask of strange, ghostly light.
“She’s stable. They told me to go home and get some rest.” She glanced at her watch, then pulled out some leftover pasta. “I’m going to go back at eight. I couldn’t sleep there, but I can’t imagine I’ll be able to sleep here either.”
“So she’s going to be okay?”
“They don’t know.”
She didn’t look at me as she said it. Instead she grabbed a fork and ate right from the Tupperware, leaning against the sink for support. She picked around the pasta to get the cheesy bits of tomato and broccoli. It had been years since I’d seen her eat carbs.
“Something happened while you were out. With Fuller.”
“Please don’t tell me he got into a fight again.”
Part of me wondered if she’d been the one who’d done it. If Fuller had died right now, would she lie to protect me? Would she go as far as replacing him so I didn’t have to deal with that loss, on top of everything else? But her expression was an open door. She watched me, taking another bite, waiting for my answer.
“He bit me.” I held up my hand, showing her the tissue that was still wrapped around my thumb.
“He bit you? Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“He must be stressed. The paramedics coming through, all the commotion.”
“But it’s not just that. His ear…it’s like nothing ever happened. The stitches are gone.”
“I knew that vet was good.” She gestured with her fork. “He was like a plastic surgeon, the way he stitched Fuller up. They must’ve been the dissolvable kind.”
She closed the Tupperware and slid it back into the fridge.
“No—you’re not getting it. It’s not Fuller. There isn’t even a scar. And there aren’t any spots on his chest, not like before. Someone did something to the real Fuller. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean, the real Fuller?” She smiled as she said it, like I’d just told her some cheesy joke.
“He’s gone. There’s some random, fake Fuller in our house. A straight-up Fuller imposter.”
“Jess, come on. I’m too tired for this.”
“Seriously. It’s like…it’s like someone replaced him. Come here.”
I gestured for her to follow me to the living room, back to the couch and the mound of white fur beneath it. We were still a foot away from him when he started growling.
“See?” I said. “Fuller would never do that.”
Mom shook her head. “He’s probably still anxious about everything that happened today. No one replaced Fuller, Jess. I promise.”
I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. I reached under the couch for him, but as soon as I got within two feet he went wild, each bark louder than the last. She plugged her ears with her fingers until I pulled my hand away.