Buster, Caleb Huett [great novels .TXT] 📗

something I could do, but I had to leave my faith in the plan. I’m doing all I can, I thought. All a Good Dog can do, and then some.

I just hoped it was enough.

I’d spent a lot of time around Mia now, and I noticed right away something was off when she got to Tonio’s the next day. She wasn’t lying, exactly, but she sounded strained. Like she was working really hard to sound like she normally did—and not quite making it. Her eyes were just a little puffy, and red.

Tonio noticed, too. “Are you okay?” She looked away, self-conscious for the first time I’d ever noticed, and waved a hand back at him like he had said something ridiculous.

“I’m fine!” It sounded perfectly convincing, if you didn’t know Mia. I tilted my head in confusion, then realized Tonio had tilted his head at the exact same time.

They sat down in his room, and Mia immediately began shuffling her cards. Tonio grabbed one of his new decks and tapped the corner of the cards against his leg a few times before finally saying, “I need to tell you something.”

Mia’s eyes shot up, fake smile melting away and a sudden force in her gaze. “Did you tell her?” she snapped.

Oh no. Jpeg’s email must have gotten through. I hadn’t even considered that Mia might think Tonio had—

“What?” Tonio’s confusion was so genuine it couldn’t possibly be a lie, and I saw Mia relax right away. “Tell who?”

“Sorry, nothing.” She counted seven cards and fanned them out in front of her. “I’ve just had kind of a bad morning. But this is fun, and I just …” She swallowed and rubbed at her eyes. “I just want to have fun. For a second. What were you going to tell me?”

Tonio’s heartbeat spiked up through the ruff. Excuse me, roof. “Never mind. It can wait.”

What was he going to tell her? I wondered. His face didn’t give me any hints. What was I missing?

They played a few turns of the game in silence, and Mia won very quickly because Tonio was distracted. “You had Auntie Virus in your hand and didn’t play her? Why not?”

“Oh, I just—I didn’t realize that I could—”

Mia rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, Tonio. You don’t have to let me win.”

He blushed. “You just seemed like—like maybe you were—”

“Don’t.” She shuffled her cards and splayed out another starting hand. Tonio reset the hand-drawn cards they were using to represent Spirit Batteries. “That’s annoying. I want to play the game for real.”

“Okay.” His blush rose through his whole face and ears. “I’m sorry.”

They played another game, but this time, Tonio was so clearly stuck in his head that he made some really bad moves, and Mia kept stopping him and having him redo his turn so he wouldn’t just lose. Around the tenth time he’d apologized, she tossed her cards down and stared at him. “Do I just need to go home? What’s the deal?”

He didn’t—or couldn’t—look up from his deck. He swallowed, squeezed his eyes tight, then finally forced them up to look at her. I thought, What could be so bad that he—

“I think I’m moving. At the end of the summer.”

Oh.

Mia’s posture stiffened straight up and back, like a snake trying to scare someone away. Her face didn’t change, but her eyes looked like they were going to drill directly into Tonio’s head. “Are you messing with me?”

“No, I—”

“Because it’s not funny if you are.” Her words came out poisonous, disgusted. Tonio shrank and looked away.

“My parents think it’s the best thing if I go to a new school.”

Mia’s face settled back into a bored expression, even though I could tell she was choking down some very strong feelings under the surface.

She said, “Okay,” and then stood up to leave.

“We can still play,” Tonio tried, voice weak. “The tournament is less than a week away, and I’ll still—”

“No thanks.” Mia shot him a quick, meaningless smile. “I only needed your help to get the money. And now—” Her face broke, and some of that anger came back into her expression. “Since I don’t need it anyway, who cares? We weren’t really friends, either way.”

A sharp inhale from Tonio, who was trying his best to seem calm, like her, and failing. I looked back and forth between them, desperate for something I could do or say, but I was just a dog. I was a dog in the middle of two kids who didn’t really know what the other was going through, and didn’t know how to ask.

I felt Tonio’s heartbeat hammering in his chest as he searched for something to say. Every option probably looked bad from where he was.

When Mia realized he wasn’t going to say anything else, she shook her head and turned away. “You should move!” She yanked his door open and didn’t look back. “This place is the worst.”

I expected a panic attack, so I stood up immediately and turned to throw myself on Tonio’s lap, trying to distract him from his anxiety—but his face had the same scary look it had after talking to his dad. Worse than panic, and worse than sadness: nothing.

“At least you’re here,” Tonio said, and that would have made me feel better if it hadn’t sounded so empty. He scratched me behind the ears and took several deep breaths. Eventually, he stood up. “Let’s go downstairs, okay, boy? I want to try something.”

Three plastic cups sat, upside down, in a line on Tonio’s carpet. One of them covered a treat—Tonio showed me when he placed it underneath—and the other two were empty. A stopwatch clicked in Tonio’s hand. “Okay, get the treat, Buster!”

I was being tested. Of course I knew the center cup held the treat—he’d put it there right in front of me. But this was only one part of an intelligence test, the kind