We’d only been there a little while when Todd came walking up. I hadn’t seen much of Todd lately, though his sister, Linda, still rode up and down the street on a bicycle all the time. “Hi, Bailey,” he said to me, really friendly, but there was still something very wrong about him and I just sniffed at his hand when he offered it to me.
“Do you know Bailey?” the girl asked. I wagged at the mention of my name.
“We’re old pals, aren’t we, boy. Good dog.”
I did not need to be called good dog by someone like Todd.
“You don’t go to school here; do you go to East?” Todd asked.
“No, I’m just visiting Ethan’s family.”
“What are you, a cousin or something?”
The people in the crowd all shouted and I jerked my head around, but there was nothing happening but more wrestling. It fooled me every time they did that.
“No, just . . . a friend.”
“So you want to party?” Todd asked her.
“Sorry?”
“Want to party? Some of us are getting together. This game’s going nowhere.”
“No, I . . . I’d better wait for Ethan.” I cocked my head at the girl. I could sense her getting anxious for some reason, and I could feel Todd’s anger building inside him like it always did.
“Ethan!” Todd turned and spat in the grass. “So are you two a couple, or what?”
“Well . . .”
“ ’Cause you should know, he’s pretty much going out with Michele Underwood.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Like, everybody knows it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So if you’re thinking, you know, him and you, that’s not, you know, that’s not going to happen.” Todd moved closer to the girl, and when she stiffened I saw that his hand was touching her shoulder. Her rising tension brought me back to my feet. Todd looked down at me and we locked eyes, and I felt the fur lifting on the back of my neck. Almost involuntarily, a low growl emerged from deep in my throat.
“Bailey!” The girl leaped to her feet. “What’s the matter?”
“Yeah, Bailey, it’s
“I’m Hannah.”
“Why don’t you tie up the dog and come with me? It’ll be fun.”
“Um, no, uh-uh. I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not? Come on.”
“No, I have to take care of Bailey.”
Todd shrugged. He stared at her. “Yeah. Well, whatever.”
The force of his anger was so strong I growled again, and this time the girl didn’t say anything to me about it. “Fine,” Todd said. “You ask Ethan about Michele. Okay?”
“Yes, okay.”
“You ask him.” Todd jammed his hands in his pockets and walked away.
Ethan was pretty happy and excited when he ran over to see us an hour or so later. “Michigan State, here we come. Spartans!” he shouted. I wagged and barked, and then his happiness went away.
“What’s the matter, Hannah?”
“Who is Michele?”
I put my paw on Ethan’s leg to let him know I was ready to play with the football, if he wanted.
“Michele? Who do you mean?” Ethan laughed, but the laughter stopped after a second, as if he had run out of air. “What’s wrong?”
They walked me in circles around the big yard, talking, so intently involved in conversation they didn’t notice when I ate a half of a hot dog, some popcorn, and bits of a tuna sandwich. Before long nearly everyone else had left, but they kept walking around and around.
“I don’t know this girl,” Ethan kept saying. “Who did you talk to?”
“I don’t remember his name. He knew Bailey, though.”
I froze at my name, wondering if I was going to get in trouble for the candy wrapper I was stealthily eating.
“Everybody knows Bailey; he comes to all the games.”
I quickly swallowed, but apparently I wasn’t in trouble. After another circuit around the big yard, made uninteresting by the fact that I’d pretty much found everything edible, the boy and the girl stopped and hugged. They did that a lot. “You’re all sweaty,” the girl laughed, pushing him away.
