Buster, Caleb Huett [great novels .TXT] 📗

parents, about my old firehouse, about Dog Court. I told him about the Big Three, the journal, the tournament flyer, and finally about Sloan. When we got there, I knew I needed to apologize.

I wanted to help you and Mia, but I didn’t do it the right way. I didn’t get all the information first, and I made decisions for both of you that weren’t my decisions to make. I hadn’t thought very far ahead, but in the moment, I suddenly knew what I wanted. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be a team.

“A team,” Tonio repeated. “What do you mean?”

There’s a voice in your head sometimes, I know, that makes you feel bad. That says you aren’t enough, or that you’re doing things wrong. I want to be another voice, a good voice, to help you fight that one.

“But a team means we’re working together. How could I help you? I’m just—” I was already typing a response, so he stopped to read.

You don’t know how good it feels to talk to a human. To really get to be who I am. That’s enough for me.

“No,” Tonio argued. “It’s not.” I tilted my head back, surprised at how quickly he answered. “Sorry. I just mean—well, I mean no, it’s not, but I should have said it nicer, maybe, because …” He squeezed his hands into fists, then released them. “If you’re a real person, your life can’t just be about me. That’s not okay.”

This was why I liked Tonio. He was right—it wasn’t fair to either of us if I told him the truth and then kept making everything about him. He’d feel too guilty, and … I wanted to be a person, too, didn’t I? If I was honest with myself, that’s part of why I told him. That’s why I wanted to help people. I wanted them to see me. The thought made me uncomfortable—I’d gone my whole life hearing people tell me to sit and stay—but I knew, deep down, it was true.

Thank you. But I don’t know right now. If I promise I’ll think about it, will you let me help you first?

Tonio bit the inside of his cheek, then nodded. “Okay, sure, you can help me. But what does that even mean? My parents say we’re leaving, so that’s that. What else am I supposed to do?”

I couldn’t just tell Tonio what I thought he needed help with—I needed to be better than that. So I asked him something instead.

If you could change anything, I typed, what would you change?

“I would get rid of my anxiety.”

Yeah, I agreed.

“But Dr. Jake said that might not ever happen, so I don’t know.” He kept making his thinking face, so I just waited. “I want Mom and Dad to stop changing things because they think it will make me better. I don’t want to be scared to go to school. I don’t want to get sick to my stomach every time I see Devon Wilcrest, and I want Miles and Parker to leave him alone. I don’t want to have panic attacks anymore, and I want everything to be the way it was when I was eight again. I don’t want to move. I want Om, the Martian Dragon, and I want Mia to feel better. I don’t know.”

It sounds like you do know, I tried.

“But I don’t know. I don’t know if any of that stuff is the right thing. What if moving would make my anxiety better, if there’s a good school in the city? What if Mia shouldn’t be my friend, because I’ll just annoy her or hurt her feelings again?” His voice spiked up and down, but the words kept spilling out of him. “What if Mom and Dad are right, and if they go back to their old life, my panic attacks get worse, and then they get even more scared to do the things they like? And I wasn’t so anxious when I was eight, but I also had, like, three ear infections, so probably it would be bad anyways, even if I did go back.”

I tried to think, and to take everything Tonio said seriously. The unfortunate truth of the matter was that anxiety couldn’t just disappear, and neither could his panic attacks—and making them go away wasn’t an actual action he could take right now.

You don’t want to move. Why not?

“I don’t want my parents to have to go somewhere else just because of me. And I don’t want to have to give you away!”

Are there any positive reasons? What do you like about Bellville?

“I know everybody here, and almost everybody is nice. I like that it’s quiet.” Tonio stretched and looked out his window. “I like the trees, and I like that it’s mostly warm all the time, even though it’s been super hot this summer.”

What about school?

“I don’t know. Everyone there is so interesting. Like, school on TV or in books or whatever, none of them are as weird as Bellville. And I’ve known all the other kids since I was, like, born.”

What is Mia like? I asked. At school.

Tonio smiled—he liked getting to share all the stuff he’d noticed. “She is so loud! Well … was. When Miles and Parker started making fun of Devon, and they saw that some people liked them more when they did that, they also started looking for other people to make fun of, too, kinda. Once they said something rude about how Sloan was chewing on pencils all the time, and Mia basically threw them out of the class.” He rubbed his finger on the corner of the tablet. “But then Sloan left, and she stopped talking.”

What about Devon?

Tonio didn’t like thinking about Devon too hard, but he closed his eyes and took deep breaths to fight back against his sudden jump in heart rate. “He’s really nice. So nice. That’s why I know he hasn’t even noticed that they make fun of him behind his