Fetching

• Prologue
  
• 1. A Dog of a Day
  
• 2. House Broken
  
• 3. Invisible Fences
  
• 4. The Dog Word I'm Not Allowed to Say
  
• 5. Beware of Dog
  
• 6. Such Dogs
  
• 7. At the Starting Gait
  
• 8. The Almost-Hot Dog
  
• 9. New Tricks
  
• 10. Teachable Moments
  
• 11. Bites
  
• 12. Not-So-Well Bred
  
• 13. Panting
  
• 14. Good Grooming
  
• 15. Puppy Steps
  
• 16. Natural Instincts
  
• 17. Signs of Aggression
  
• 18. Go Fetch
  
• 19. Gentle Leader
  
• 20. In Dog We Trust
  
• 21. Kibble
  
• 22. Treats for Good Dogs
  
• 23. Scents and Sensibilities
  
• 24. Underdog Railroad
  
• 25. A Leg Up
  
• 26. Destructive Behaviors
  
• 27. Off-Leash Training
  
• 28. Digging for Bones
  
• 29. Pedigree
  
• 30. Every Dog Has Her Day
  
• 31. Strays
  
• 32. The Collar
  
• 33. Survival Instincts
  
• 34. Agility
  
• 35. Basic Training
  
• 36. Pick of the Litter
  
• 37. Lost Dogs
  
• 38. The Pound
  
• 39. The Other End of the Leash
  
• 40. Common Traits
  
• 41. New Pets
  
• 42. Obedience
  
• 43. The Loyal Companion
  
• 44. Separation Anxiety
  
• 45. Hounded
  
• 46. La Vida del Perro
  
• 47. Doghouse
  
• 48. Whelped
  
• 49. The Omega Dog
  
• 50. The Pack
  
• 51. Leashed
  
• 52. How to Beg (Forgiveness
  
• 53. With Tucked Tail
  
• 54. Speak
  
• 55. Mad Dog
  
• 56. Down Dog
  
• 57. Heeling
  
• 58. A Girl's Best Friends
  
• Acknowledgments
  

For Kylie, with lots of love.

You are a treat.

ONCE THE BELL
rings, look around. You may not have noticed them at first, not in the way you think, but they're everywhere. Racing down the halls, lapping up their lunches, lazing around the classrooms, playing fetch in the gym.

There are the toy breeds, society's spoiled little darlings, and the terriers, who really sink their teeth into things. There are the working breeds, who let nothing get in the way of an A.

There are the sporting breeds, who are better on the field than in the classroom, and the non-sporters, who are still sniffing out their niches.

There are hounds, who can smell fear a mile away, and there are herders, who are always looking for a pack.

There are mad dogs and female dogs, pit bulls and bulldogs. There are lapdogs and pets, puppies and runts.

Dogs. Every middle school has them.

Welcome to mine.

SO IT'S THE
second day of eighth grade and I'm hearing people giggle and whisper things like “Oh my God” behind me. That part doesn't surprise me—it's happened a few times before. Usually it's because my jeans might be a couple of inches too short, or maybe I have dog hair stuck to the seat of my pants, or maybe I missed a belt loop or something unforgivable like that.

But never because of
this
.

Mr. Chang is at his desk at the front of the room when I walk into fifth period a good three minutes early. As I pass his desk, I hear a loud gasp, and then he starts to stutter. It takes me a minute to realize he's trying to say my name.

“Um, uh, uh, uh, Olivia?”

I turn my head. His face is red and pinched like he's in a lot of pain. Whatever's going on with him, he doesn't exactly look healthy.

“You okay?” I ask stupidly. Moronically. I wonder if he's having a heart attack or something.

“Yes, uh.” His hand goes to his forehead. I look around the room. Erin Monroe is at her desk, already immersed in her Spanish warm-up. Carson Winger is slumped over his desk, taking a nap. They are the only other people in the room, and neither of them looks like they know CPR.

“Come here, please,” Mr. Chang says quietly. His eyes are squinted closed, and his thumb and forefinger are squeezing the bridge of his nose. This is what my mother used to do when she was getting a migraine. Probably still does; who knows?

I walk closer. “Um, Mr. Chang, are you okay?”

He doesn't open his eyes. He just mutters something to me about the nurse's office.

Oh, dear crap. His life is in my hands.

More people have come into the room, but no one seems concerned about Mr. Chang at all—and he's practically purple and could be
dying
. In fact, they're looking at me, smirking. I guess they don't think I can handle this type of emergency. My heart is pounding, and time is wasting, so I open my mouth and yell, “Someone call nine-one-one!”

“What!?”
Mr. Chang's eyes snap wide open. “No!”

The class is filling up quickly, and people start roaring with laughter. Mr. Chang winces, cups his hands around his mouth, and whispers to me, “You've had an
accident
.” He exhales, closes his eyes, and lets his hands drop to his desk. “Now, hurry,” he tells me, jerking his head toward the door and avoiding my eyes.

I'm nearly frozen with terror. Somehow I thaw enough to move in the general direction of the door, but I bump into Tamberlin Ziff, who says, “Watch it, Kotex,” and gives me an evil smile, and I think, Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, please God. No.

It occurs to me on the long sideways crawl to the nurse's office that despite the red stain on my pants, it can't be
that
time of the month. There's no way it can be.

It also occurs to me that earlier today, when I was just about to sit down to lunch, the evil/popular/conniving Brynne Shawnson approached our table, whipped out a camera, and started shooting “first-week-of-school” photos for the yearbook committee. My best friend, Delia, and I tried the duck-and-cover approach; Phoebe declared it “unwelcome and cruel”; Mandy raised her pierced eyebrow and made some illegal gestures; and Joey polished off his Little Debbie and was too busy huffing the oatmeal scent on the wrapper to really care.

It occurs to me, now that I think of it, my seat felt a little slimy when I sat down. And if I hadn't been so busy trying to hide from the camera, I probably would have thought to investigate this slime.

It also occurs to me now that Brynne high-fived Tamberlin when she returned to her own lunch table. And that Brynne and Tamberlin and all the rest of that mean, beautiful group threw their heads back and laughed out loud.

And it occurs to me now that a flattened ketchup packet fell to the floor when I stood up.

And it occurs to me now that I'm a complete and utter idiot.

“Oh,
honey
,” Mrs. Arafata gushes when she sees the seat of my khakis.

“It's not what it looks like,” I tell her, every inch of my body burning with embarrassment. My face is probably about as red as the massive ketchup stain on my butt. “It's ketchup. Someone's idea of a joke.”

She gives me a big fake smile. “Of course it is, dear. Now
this
”—she lays a pad roughly the size and shape of the state of Pennsylvania across my forearms—“should take care of your lady problem. And
this
”—she turns around, opens what appears to be a big black trash bag, and pulls out a crumpled pair of tan polyester pants—the kind great-grandmothers wear. She shakes them out and holds them up for display. “This should take care of everything else.”

I stare at the pants, horrified. “There's no way I can wear those.”

“Sure you can, dear.” She pulls her hands apart, stretching the waistband between them. “They've got an elastic waist.” Then she folds up the pants and places them on top of the pad I'm holding. I look down at the label. It reads “Sassie Lass™ Walking Slack. Color: Taupe. One Size Fits Most.”

The backs of my eyes start to ache. I blink hard and look up at the ceiling tiles and will myself not to cry. “Can't I just”—I try to speak, but my throat keeps closing up. I take a breath and try to finish—“call my grandmother? To pick me up?” My grandmother, Cornelia, a.k.a. Corny, is volunteering at the dog pound today. She's teaching basic commands to a couple of strays, but I know she'll come get me if I ask her to. It's been more than a year since my mother took off, and Corny is still trying to make up for it. My mom's her kid, so I guess she feels a little responsible.

“Well, now, there's only two hours of school left. And once you get”—she pauses—“well, shall we say,
cleaned up
, you'll be as good as new.” She opens the door of the small clinic bathroom with a flourish of her hand. I go in, defeated.

The door shuts behind me. “Take your time, dear,” Mrs. Arafata says. I close the seat of the toilet and sit down. Giving up on my battle against the tears, I let myself wallow in the feeling of hate. Hate for Brynne Shawnson and all her friends. For middle school. For my life, at least today. My therapist would say hate is not a feeling—that it's the result of a lot of other feelings, like humiliation and disappointment and whatever else, but I say, so what? That's like saying you can't call bread
bread
—that you have to call it water and flour and yeast and all those other things that go into it. I mean,
seriously
.

A few minutes later, Mrs. Arafata knocks on the door. “Sorry to disrupt, but I didn't mean
this
much time,” she says. She adds a little giggle, like this whole situation is just some type of funny inconvenience and not the absolute worst day of my life.

I take a deep breath and step into the very condemning pants, which sag in the crotch and are cropped just above my ankle, and say farewell to my very last shred of dignity.

Mrs. Arafata sends me back to class, but I head to the front office instead. I do this for two reasons. For one, the last thing I want to do at this moment is to be seen in these pants by anyone under the age of forty. And two, I'm about to do something I've thought about doing many, many times before. All through seventh grade, in fact. I just never had the guts to do it. Until now.

Mrs. Forester, the assistant to the assistant principal, is manning the desk. The glass door chimes when I open it, and although her fingers and eyes stay on her keyboard, the corners of her mouth form an automatic semi-smile. “Can I help you?” she asks, without looking at me.

“I'd like to file a complaint,” I tell her, my voice quivering.

“A complaint?” She looks in my direction, drops her auto-smile, and adjusts her glasses. “What kind of complaint, hon?”

I'm not sure what to say. What kind of complaint would you make against someone who spreads rumors that you have fleas? Who once hooked a dog leash onto your back belt loop—which took you two hours to discover? Who takes a simple little fact about you—in my case, that dogs outnumber humans in my family—and turns it into endless entertainment for herself and her horrid little friends?

It's not like I'm the only target of Brynne and her cronies. All my friends—Delia, Mandy, Joey, and Phoebe—have suffered their wrath. In elementary school, before I got here, Brynne and Delia were best friends, but last year, Brynne smuggled Delia's bra out of the locker room and stuck it in Corbin Moon's backpack. Delia's mother had, unfortunately, sewn her name into it. For a whole month Delia had to endure the nickname “Triple A.” And Tamberlin, whose heart has been surgically removed and replaced by a pebble, convinced the art teacher that Mandy was some crazy goth girl who should be kept away from blades. Mandy had to do her midterm collage project with safety scissors and a buddy. And I'm sure it was Corbin who secretly signed up Joey for the wrestling camp at the high school, where competitive sports are not only allowed, but strongly encouraged. When Coach Adams called him down for a weigh-in, Joey had a panic attack. The school janitor found him later, under the bleachers, curled into a fetal position.

And I can't forget the bottle of eau de toilette that Carolyn Quim gave to Phoebe in the Secret Santa swap last year. Which really
was
de toilet.

“Well, hon, what happened?” Mrs. Forester asks, a little impatiently.

“I guess you could say I was sort of attacked by Brynne Shawnson.”

Her eyebrows lift, making thick pleats in her broad forehead. “Attacked? Are we talking assault or harassment?” Her thick fingers pick up a pen. This is all sounding so serious—so
Law & Order
. I am picturing Brynne Shawnson being handcuffed and taken to jail. I'm sure she won't look so pretty in her mug shot. “Well, hon, which was it? With words or fists?”

I take a breath and say, “With ketchup.”

Her lips clamp together, and she lowers her glasses and peers over the lenses at me. “Ketchup,” she says flatly. “So no one was hurt in this ‘attack.'” She even makes little quotation marks in the air with her fingers when she says this.