“I’m sorry,” Tonio said honestly. “I hoped you guys would win.”
“The sparkly dragon is what really got me,” Mia said.
“He’s got OM?!” Tonio was stunned. “How am I supposed to win against that?”
Mia crossed her arms. “I don’t know, but you have to. You’re our only chance to take this guy down.”
I could feel his heartbeat skyrocket. “What? What do you mean?”
“It’s the finals! You two are the only ones left.”
Tonio shook his head. “Maybe one of you could play for me instead? I don’t know if I’m ready to be in the finals.”
“Not ready?!” Devon looked confused. “You’ve won every match! You are, by definition, the most ready out of everybody here.”
“Except for Phil,” Mia pointed out.
“Right,” Devon said. “Except Phil. But this is your first tournament, and he’s probably done like a thousand.”
Tonio’s eyes flared wide.
Mia gawked at Devon. “Do you think before you say anything?”
“No!” Devon declared with a smirk. “Unlike you, who obviously plans everything you do very carefully.”
“I dunno,” Tonio interrupted before they could escalate into an argument. He wrung his hands on the edge of his shirt and tried not to let the stress show on his face. “I didn’t expect to make it this far, and maybe that’s enough.”
“No way.” Mia leaned her chair back onto its back legs.
Devon said, “We just gotta beat Phil the old-fashioned way: pumping up your confidence and helping you win with the power of friendship!” He pulled a Sharpie out of his backpack. “What if we put our hands together and I drew a smiley face on them?”
“What’s that gonna do?” Mia asked.
Tonio shook his head. “I read online that drawing on your skin is bad for you.”
“Oh.” Devon deflated. “I saw it on a show once, so I thought—”
“We can try it!” Tonio blurted out. “It’s probably not that bad!”
“It’s okay. It was a bad idea.”
“No, it wasn’t!”
“Yes,” Mia said, “it was.” She pointed a card at Tonio. “You made me come all the way in here, and you promised to split the money with me. So you can’t quit. You just gotta barrel right in and beat him as fast as you can, before he can get set up.”
Tonio said, “That makes sense.”
Devon shook his head. “You want my advice? Phil wins when he stays all calm and strategic, and he’s got a basically perfect deck. But he falls apart when he loses control—I beat him before because he was so worried about losing to a kid, he freaked out. You want a chance, you gotta throw him off balance.”
“Thank you,” Tonio answered, with an expression that, to me, showed he hadn’t processed any of it. I noticed a strange movement under the table and lifted my head to see around the bottom of the chair. Tonio was tapping his leg—the first signal we’d learned in training. He wanted to go outside.
“Heeeeeeeeeey,” I whined. “I gotta go!!!! I really gotta goooooo!” I pawed at his ankle.
“You sound like a puppy.” Mozart giggled from the table.
Tonio scooted his chair back and looked down with fake surprise. “Oh,” he said, “looks like Buster needs to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, Tonio,” Mia said. Then she turned to Devon. “What if we set Phil’s pants on fire during the match?”
Devon thought about it. “I think we’d probably get Tonio disqualified.”
“Fair.”
As soon as we stepped outside, I smelled something on the wind. Two somethings: one big, one small, both very official and important. The officers. I tried not to give away the burst of fear I felt, and casually looked around for any sign of them.
“Thank you, Buster,” Tonio said. I very carefully kept my face forward, and my body unresponsive. Where are they? He led me across the street, to a bench in the little bell park. “I’m gonna mess it all up. I already have. Mia and Devon are nothing alike, and now they’re only talking because they want me to win, and if I don’t win, they’ll know they shouldn’t have bothered.” I wanted to help him so bad, but I couldn’t do anything. It felt like we were back in the beginning, when I was “just a dog,” and he was a boy I couldn’t help as much as I wanted to.
Be a Good Dog, I reminded myself. Don’t talk back.
“What should I do?” he asked me.
A rustle in the bushes. Two pairs of eyes peering at me from a hedge beside the bell. Tonio didn’t notice them, and I couldn’t do anything to let him know we were being watched.
He talking to you? Officer Sergeant underspoke. I started to pose, but she cut me off. Don’t answer that. I want to see what he does.
I did, too, but I kept my eyes on the officers. Tonio was nothing if not observant, so I sent prayers silently up to Laika that he’d realize what was happening.
The pause went on for way too long—me watching the officers watching Tonio.
Finally, Tonio sighed. “I wish you could talk,” he lamented. “Maybe you’d give me good advice.”
I relaxed. It sounded a little forced to me, but I was pretty sure neither of the officers knew Tonio as well as I did. It was believable enough.
All right, you can underspeak. Carefully. Officer Sergeant relaxed a little, too, but Grizzle’s fur stayed on end. We’ve received some evidence—
“INCRIMINATING evidence!” Grizzle barked.
“Nearly incriminating evidence, that you have not been as careful as you were instructed to be when you moved to Bellville.”
I tried to get ahead of what I was sure they were about to bring up—the video. “Nothing happened with the computer!” I rushed to explain. “And I’ve been a Good Dog. I’ve even helped Mozart—”
“Plot to change the course of his human’s life?” Grizzle interrupted.
Sergeant explained, “We followed him here. We saw that you worked together. I
