Buster, Caleb Huett [great novels .TXT] 📗

said. “Look at your big poofy chest.” Mozart puffed up his chest proudly. Tonio scratched at it, and I rolled my eyes—puppies have it so easy! But at least Mozart helped calm Tonio down.

I decided to ask Mozart a question, since he was in a good mood. Why is Mia working so hard to get money?

“None of your business, old man! It’s a secret.”

If you tell me, maybe I could help.

He bared his teeth, but it was more cute than scary on his tiny face. “We don’t need your help!”

“Here.” Mia was back. She held out a water bottle and looked down at me. “Okay if I come through?”

I stepped out of the way, and Mozart hopped in circles around Mia. Tonio took the water and gulped it down while Mia looked around at the cards.

“Your handwriting is cute. ‘Are Bug Scout cookies the only thing you lie about?’ ‘What’s your favorite movie?’ ”

“I was—I’m—” Tonio was already embarrassed. I sat down and leaned my weight against him. “I wanted to know if you were good or bad. I thought that would help. But it was stupid.”

She looked amused. “Good or bad at what?”

“At … like, all around.”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’m good.”

“If you were bad, you would also say that.”

“Okay, but I’m not.”

Mia stared Tonio down. He took another drink of water.

“Can we go somewhere else?” she asked. “It smells like throw-up over here.”

“I’m sorry,” Tonio mumbled miserably. “I should go home.”

Mia was already walking toward the stable. “You just got here! Besides, I need your help.”

“My help?” Tonio was surprised. He pushed off the ground and quickly gathered up the cards that hadn’t ended up in the splash zone. “With what?”

“My dads are busy, Leila spent all morning rolling in mud, and it’s hard to give her a bath by myself.”

“Leila isn’t a bad dog or anything, but she has so much fur,” Mia explained when we got to the stable. She was right—Leila was part mastiff, part Saint Bernard, part everything huge and fluffy. And she was absolutely caked in mud. “She’s the sweetest dog on the planet, absolutely perfect, but if anyone’s ever going to adopt her, she has to be clean. It’s like she knows when humans are coming and gets extra dirty.”

Leila winked at me—or at least I think she did, under the dripping gunk and thick fuzz. Almost like it’s on purpose, she underspoke to me with a twitch of her nose and tail.

You’re making the humans waste time cleaning you on purpose? I asked, surprised. Mia tossed Tonio a bottle of shampoo and walked to the stable’s wall to hook up the hose. Why don’t you want to be adopted?

All my friends are here. I like the wrestling league, and I don’t like leashes. Leila wagged her tail when Mia started blasting the hose without warning. Tonio had to dive out of the way before he got soaked.

But you’d probably stay in Bellville, I argued. And you could still come here to wrestle sometimes. Is that really it?

You’re nosy! Even for a service dog. You know that?

“I don’t want to be adopted, either!” Mozart yipped, oblivious to Leila’s tone. She laughed as he jumped in front of the hose’s stream, trying to catch water in his mouth.

You won’t be, little pup. You’re Mia’s favorite.

“That’s right!” Mozart said. Mia turned the hose off and showed Tonio how to start scrubbing the shampoo into Leila’s fur. “And she’s gonna take me with her when she leaves.”

Leila swatted him on the snout as my ears perked up.

Leaves? I asked. To go where?

See? Leila underspoke. Nosy.

“Nunya biz, old man!” Mozart barked. “It’s a secret!”

Don’t worry about it, Leila added. As if to emphasize the point, she flexed and shook out her fur, spraying sudsy water all over the kids. Tonio sputtered in surprise, Mia laughed, and after a second, Tonio laughed, too.

“It seems like you throw up a lot. You’re not sick, are you?” Mia asked once they’d settled into a rhythm and were working their way through opposite sides of Leila’s mountain of hair. “I can’t get sick right now.”

“No, I’m not sick. Not like that.”

Mozart slammed into my front leg while dashing around. I grabbed his neck in my mouth and set him to the side. He recovered immediately and tried to jump onto my back.

“ ‘Not like that’? Meaning … ?”

“I have anxiety.”

Mia leaned over to look at him suspiciously under Leila’s stomach. “Is that contagious?”

A smile dug through Tonio’s stressed face. “No, it’s not like that.”

“Okay, well, I’m tired of asking you to explain what you mean, so you can either tell me or we can just sit here and clean the dog.”

Tonio blushed, embarrassed. I shook off Mozart and moved over to nudge him supportively. “It’s, like, a brain problem. Where I get really worried. But …” Tonio checked Mia’s face to see if she was actually interested, or just being nice—or, worse, getting ready to make fun of him. She was watching him seriously, so he continued. “But when it’s bad, I feel it in my stomach. Or in my throat. It can hurt, or make me throw up.” He paused, then added, “I don’t really throw up a lot.”

Mia made a face like she wasn’t sure she believed him about that, but she said, “Did you have any other questions you wanted to ask? On your cards?”

Tonio considered. “Why did you ask me to come back here?”

With a crackle, Mia unwrapped a ball of Crunchsquish gum (First You Crunch and Then You Squish™) and popped it in her mouth using her bare, soapy hands. I winced at the combination of flavors this must have created, but she didn’t flinch. “I dunno. I just did.”

The look on Tonio’s face reminded me of robots in movies when you tell them something that doesn’t compute. “But you came all the way to my house.”

“I came to your house to drop off your sketchbook,” she pointed out. “Everything else I just thought of