Mr. Pulaski was clearing his throat more than normal, just tiny ones, like he was getting ready to speak but then didn’t say anything. Twice I caught him open his mouth in a silent moment and shut it again. Finally, a few blocks from Bellville Square, he found the words.
“So your mom talked to you, I gather.” The wagon’s wheels whistled along the sidewalk. Tonio knew what he meant but didn’t answer right away. “She said you didn’t like the idea so much.” Again, no answer. Tonio kicked a pebble on the ground. “Why not?”
“I don’t know how you could even think about it. You love Bellville. It’s our home.”
“Our home, huh? It hasn’t seemed lately like you like it so much. Always in your room, saying you don’t want to go back to school. There is a lot to love about Bellville, sure, but maybe it’s not the right place for you.”
“That’s not—” The words jumped out of Tonio’s mouth immediately, but he caught himself and swallowed the rest of his sentence. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“No, come on.” Mr. Pulaski stopped walking, let the handle of the wagon drop. The spaceship’s foam antennas vibrated with the impact. “Tell me what you’re thinking, buddy. I can take it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Mr. Pulaski scratched under the edge of his hat. “You know, to me, it does.”
“Let’s just go home, okay?” Tonio pulled his wagon back into motion.
Mr. Pulaski crossed his arms. “This spaceship isn’t going anywhere until you tell me what you’re thinking, young man! Buster, stay.”
“He’s trained to listen to me. He’s not going to—” Tonio was wrong. He needed to talk to his dad. I sat down on the ground. Tonio wasn’t very strong—he wouldn’t be able to pull me if I didn’t let him. “Buster, come.”
I stayed.
Mr. Pulaski wheeled his hands around each other, a keep going motion. “I’ll start your sentence over for you: ‘That’s not …’ ”
Tonio looked from his dad to me to the wagon. He sighed. “That’s not what it is,” he mumbled. “You guys always talk like I’m like this on purpose, but that’s not true. I don’t want to be in my room all the time. I don’t want to be scared. But I can’t help it. All I do is ruin things.”
“Oh, Antonio.” Mr. Pulaski stepped forward, and Tonio flinched backward, dropping the wagon handle and my leash. “That’s not true.”
“It is. You don’t want to leave. Mom doesn’t want to leave. You’re only even talking about it because of me.”
Mr. Pulaski took a few more steps this time, and Tonio didn’t move away. He pulled his son into a hug and squeezed. “We want you to be happy. Anything that will help you is worth it to us. You don’t have to worry.”
Tonio hugged him back, but his face went blank. Mr. Pulaski doesn’t get it, I thought. Of course Tonio was going to worry. He was always going to worry.
“Feel better?” Mr. Pulaski asked.
I whimpered, and Tonio picked up my leash. They both grabbed their wagon handles and started walking.
“Yeah,” Tonio said. “Thanks, Dad.”
But I’m pretty sure he felt worse.
Tonio laid down in bed as soon as we got home, but by the time I fell asleep, I still hadn’t seen him close his eyes. The next morning, he was awake before everyone else in the house again, buzzing in the same way he had been last time, and cooking everybody breakfast.
I don’t know what was going on in his head because he wasn’t talking to me, but his body was acting like he was jogging—his heart was irregular, and he was sweating a lot (though that could have just been June in South Carolina). I tried to get his attention a few times, but he would just move me out of the way with his foot and go back to pushing eggs around in the pan.
I still didn’t understand this part of anxiety. It wasn’t a kind I was trained to deal with as a service dog, and it wasn’t one I knew how to help Tonio with as a person. His body added a layer of fear over everything and wore him down, little by little. I knew this kind could turn into a panic attack, though, so I tried to stay extra on guard, all the way up until he was unclipping my leash and waving for me to go out into the dog park.
“Go on!” he said. “I’ll be okay. Go play with some other dogs.” I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach that this was the first thing he’d said to me all morning. He opened a box of cards he’d brought and started trying out different combinations for Mia’s deck.
I told myself I could deal with it later if I had to. For now, I needed to take the time I had to find out what was going on with Mozart and Mia.
A quick listen to the sounds of the shelter didn’t point me toward Mozart, but there was a huge commotion in the dirt field, so I headed over there to investigate. Dozens of dogs were pretending to be doing all sorts of activities while really watching a tug-of-war unfold in the center.
Two lines drawn in the mud showed how far the knot in the middle of the rope had to move before one team or the other won. A bunch of dogs I didn’t recognize—a team of pets, I guess—stretched and gnashed their teeth on one end, while Leila and a small team of other shelter dogs huddled quietly and talked about strategy.
I found Jpeg at the front of the crowd, mud painted on her face to mirror the markings in Leila’s fur. “YOU CAN DO IT, LEILA!” she barked.
“No computer today?” I asked, nudging up beside her. “That’s unusual.”
She shrugged, curly tail wagging pleasantly. “What can I say? I love the sport.”
A retriever walked up to her and muttered, “I’ll put one
