Nobody's Dog (7 page)

“Really — tell me,” I say.

“She's an artist in New York. She's had exhibitions all
over the world — she's really famous. And she's a feminist.”

“Great.”

“Haven't you ever been passionate about something?”

“No,” I say, but I don't even sound convincing to me.

“Isn't there anything you're so into you can't stop thinking about it and you want to live it all day, every day?” She doodles on the new page of her sketchbook without looking at it.

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe.” I lean against a tree trunk. But I screwed up my thing and I'll never see it again.

“Well, then you understand. I love to draw.” She holds out the pencil and book again. “Come on. You won't look stupid, I promise.”

Knowing this could be the lamest thing I've ever done, I take the book and the pencil.

“Now just choose something to draw. Anything.” She looks around. “How about that tree?”

I follow her finger. “The one with all the crazy branches?”

“Sure. It looks angry, don't you think?”

I hold out her stuff. “Show me first. You're better at it.”

“No, I'm not. You haven't even tried yet.”

“Libby, this is stupid.” I feel even more stupid holding her stuff because she won't take it back.

“Why? Because you might not like what you draw? Who cares? Who says it has to look a certain way?”

“I just can't do it.” I reach down to put the sketchbook on the ground.

“Wait — draw this leaf.” She holds out a salmonberry branch. “Sit right there and draw what your hand sees.”

“And where's the story there?” I ask, the sketchbook heavy in my arm.

She smiles, holds the leaf out. “It's in whatever you draw.”

The whole time I'm drawing the leaf, J screams in my head about stupid artsy crap and how idiotic this all is. She is nuts. I'm nuts too.

It takes about two minutes of scratching on the page before my dark blob looks anything like the leaf. But it actually kind of does. J grumbles, but before he can start up again, Libby steps in front of me.

“See? You did great. It's totally a leaf. Now try this flower.”

“Thanks, but I think it's your turn again,” I say, handing back her sketchbook. “My hand's tired.”

She shrugs and squats in front of the blue flower, already drawing. “You have to draw more, Jakob. You should practise.”

“What am I practising for? It's not a sport.”

“I'll draw one, then you draw one.”

J complains loudly that this will seriously kill the rest of the morning. “I think we should get back to the house,” I say. “My aunt's going to be home soon.”

“You don't have to be scared,” she says.

I want to shake her. “I'm
not
scared.”

“Fine. You're not scared.”

I pull off a salmonberry leaf and shred it. “I'm not.”

She watches the pieces fall to the ground. “I know. It's obvious.”

“What is?”

“That you're not scared.”

I throw up my hands. “Man — are you like this with your friends?”

She goes back to her drawing.

On our way home from the creek, Libby starts going on about feminism and pop art as if I'm actually interested. I try to smile and nod, but after a while I can feel a headache
coming on. I just want to get home, so I suggest we take a short cut.

“That's where my mom's new boyfriend lives.” She points down the street. “The blue house with the brown roof.”

“What's he like?” I ask, not really caring, but happy that a question has made her stop the art lecture.

“He's really nice. He has this cool dog. We took it for a walk yesterday.”

My stomach tightens, even though it could be any guy and any dog. What are the chances? J says the chances are pretty good. We're only three streets up from my house.

“What kind of dog?” I ask, my heart already hammering in my chest.

Libby walks down the lane. “Come on. I'll show you.”

She stops in front of a chain-link fence. I try to breathe normally as I come up beside her. The grass stretches from the fence to the back of the blue house. On the lawn are dog toys — bones and ropes and balls. Inside a big cardboard box, the kind used for fridges or stoves, is a black and white dog. He lies on his side, asleep.

“His name's Chilko,” Libby's saying. “He's huge but Patrick says he's not dangerous. Big dogs freak me out sometimes, but Chilko seems nice. Do you want to meet him?”

His name's Chilko. His owner's name is Patrick. Patrick's dating Soleil.

My life just got more complicated in a million ways.

“Uh — no,” I say. “I'm not a dog person. I like cats better.” J keeps feeding me lies, but I clamp my mouth shut.

Libby looks at me. “Are you sure? He's not a mean dog.”

“I just don't like dogs that much.”

Footsteps crunch behind us. I freeze.

Libby turns around with a smile. “Oh, hi, George.”

A skinny blond guy is standing there. He looks too old for the skater T-shirt and jeans he's wearing.

“Hi,” George says. “Libby, right?”

“Yeah, and this is —”

“I'm J,” I say, putting my hands in my pockets.

“Are you here to walk Chilko?” Libby asks.

George opens the gate and nods. “Yup. You guys want to come in?”

I say no at the same time Libby says yes.

George blinks. “Whatever. I'm just going to get his leash.” He walks across the lawn, whistling to Chilko. I wish I'd thought of doing that when we were out at night. Chilko springs up when he hears the whistle and comes bounding over to George. His tail makes a circle behind him.

“Are you nervous?” Libby asks, touching my hand that grips the chain-link fence.

I pull away. “Why would I be nervous? I just think we should go.”

But Chilko's seen us. His ears are up. His eyes lock onto mine. It takes him two seconds to cover the distance between us.

He almost knocks me over with his paws and Libby jumps back. It's her turn to look scared.

“Whoa, he really likes you,” she says. “I only saw him act like that with Patrick.”

I don't meet her gaze.

Chilko's wagging his tail for me, sniffing my clothes and turning around so I can scratch his back. He moans a little in his wolfy way. I bury my fingers in his fur, feeling like I haven't seen him in a year. And how great it would be if I
could walk him in daylight.

“You make him crazy,” George says, walking up with the leash. “Do you know huskies?”

“No,” I say, stepping back. “He just ran over.”

I can feel Libby's eyes on me, but I can't look at her. I'm glued to Chilko. He's acting like all his favourite people are here. I've never seen him so happy. At night he acts more quiet and aloof.

“We better get going, buddy,” George says. “You guys want to come?”

“Well,” Libby begins.

“We can't,” I finish for her. “We have to get home.”

“Sure. Nice to meet you, Jake,” George says.

“It's J,” I say.

“Right, J. See you around.” He leads Chilko out of the yard and up the alley.

“Bye, Chilko,” Libby says quietly beside me.

As we walk across the next street, I try to find the right words. I know she's suspicious. She hasn't said anything, and that's unusual.

“I guess I'm a dog whisperer or something,” I mumble. Right after, I wish I hadn't listened to J on that one. I want to tell her the truth or ask her if she knows, but even I know that's the stupidest thing I could do.

We walk into the next alley, past a fence with a yapping dachshund that waddles along beside us, protecting his yard.

“There was a story in all that, wasn't there?” Libby says.

“What are you talking about?” I ask too quickly.

She stares ahead, as if trying to see something far away. “The way he greeted you. His wagging tail. It was pure happiness. I'd love to draw that.”

Getting home is a blur because of all the new complications floating around in my head. Aunt Laura actually keeps her promise and takes Libby and me to the beach, but I can't do anything but lie in the sand and think. It doesn't even feel like thinking — it's bouncing from one problem, one lie, to another. I can't count how many I've told so far. It's a pretty big number.

My mom always knew when I was lying. It was some kind of superpower, like she could see inside me and find the lie circling around in my bloodstream. When I was five I lied about taking cookies from the package we were saving for a party. She stared me down until I started blubbing and confessed, in tears. From that day on, I couldn't lie to her. Her power was too strong. But now that she's not here, I can lie any time I want and get away with it. Part of me feels free when I lie, but another part gets a little more trapped.

Libby wades in the water with a bucket, looking for crabs. Seagulls fly above her. Aunt Laura leans against a log and reads a magazine about the broken marriages of movie stars. It could be a scene from a perfect afternoon. Any stranger seeing us would think so. Only I know the truth.

I must have dozed off because next thing I know, Libby's shaking my foot.

“What?”

“Time to turn over,” she says. Her head blocks the sun and for a second it's like she's surrounded by a halo.

I must be losing it. “What?” I ask again.

“You're burning. Time to do the other side.” She points at my legs, which are getting pretty lobsterish below my shorts. Aunt Laura offered me sunscreen but I was too lazy to put it on.

“Or you could come help me with the crabs,” Libby says.

“What?” I glance over at Aunt Laura but she's asleep under the tent of her magazine.

“You say ‘what' a lot.”

“Well, you're kind of random.”

She kneels beside me, holding out a crab in her palm.

I sit up, worried she'll drop it down my shirt or something, but that would be what Grant would do.

“I caught a bunch in a bucket and now I'm going to —”

“Let me guess. You're going to draw them.”

She rolls her eyes. “No. I was going to make a race track for them. Didn't you ever have crab races when you were a kid?”

So we end up making an oval Formula One track in the sand, shored up with rocks and more sand and with a round hill in the middle to discourage the crabs from getting off course.

I haven't played like this at the beach for a long time — probably since my parents took me when I was a kid. We'd make huge sandcastles. The bigger the better. Dad and I were the builders and Mom was the decorator. She searched the beach for small black pebbles or white shells while we put up the walls and towers and drawbridge. When it was finished, I'd put a stick through the top as a flagpole and we'd eat lunch and watch the sea come in and wash the foundation away.

Libby stands back from the oval track and smiles at me. “I think it's ready.”

“Wait.” I get on my knees and reach over the track's short wall. I trace a line with my finger in the sand. “We need a starting line. Right?”

“Great. Now, how many should be in the first heat?”

“Heat? Is this the Olympics?”

Libby looks at me like I'm an idiot. “I have done this before. Trust me. We'll have to do a few heats. If we put them all on the track, it'll be a free-for-all and a big mess.”

“Of course. Stupid me.”

“So, I say we start with five.” She reaches into the bucket.

“Do you want to make lanes too? And we could put little numbers on their backs.”

“Don't take it so seriously, Jakob. It's just fun.”

I stare at her with my mouth open. “Uh, yeah. Was that not clear from my sarcasm?”

She fake-flings a crab at me, making the same open-mouthed face I did. “Uh, yeah, Jakob. Didn't you know I could be sarcastic too?”

I don't really know what to say to that, so I reach into her bucket and pull out the biggest crab, which pinches me on the finger. He drops into the track and scuttles along the base of the hill.

“Head start — no fair,” Libby says. “We need to choose five and start them together.”

“Fine. You do it.” I squat beside the track and fold my arms across my knees.

“I can see you haven't done this before,” she says again, reaching into the bucket with both hands and bringing out four crabs.

“And you're some kind of expert crab racer?”

She puts the crabs near the starting line, grabs a stick and sweeps them all in the same direction. For a moment, it works. They all skitter away from the stick. Then a couple decide they want to go backwards and two more attack each other. “I used to do this with my dad,” she says.

“I didn't even know you had one,” I say. “Does he live here?”

“Calgary,” she says.

“So you don't see him much?”

She shakes her head, eyes on the crabs, which she's still poking forward with the stick. One is actually making progress around the track. My big one is almost at the top of the hill, waving a claw around.

“What's he like?” I'm not sure why I'm asking. Maybe because I'd never thought about Libby having a dad, or Soleil having an ex-husband.

She shrugs. “He has the same colour hair as me. He plays guitar in a band. He has a new family, though. He got married two years ago and had a baby.”

“Have you seen them?”

“Once. The baby was kind of cute, but he drooled everywhere.”

For someone who wouldn't shut up the past few days, she isn't saying much now. “Does he know about your art?” I ask, thinking this might be something she'll get more excited about.

The first crab makes it back to the starting line, thanks to Libby's prodding. She picks it up and puts it in the bucket.