The Unexpected Everything (23 page)

I shook my head as I looked at the texts, wondering if Toby was, like me, becoming aware of how hard this was going to be to keep up all summer.

ME

Guys, stop messing with her.

Gotta go—I'll text tomorrow!

PALMER

Send updates!

BRI

Seconded

TOBY

PALMER

Didn't quite get your meaning there, T.

I smiled as I dropped my phone back in my pocket, knowing this might go on for a while. I picked up Bertie's water dish, filled it with fresh water, and then dropped in a few ice cubes, in case that made it more appealing.

Then, carrying it carefully, I walked back to the laundry room. Clark was sitting cross-legged next to Bertie, patting his head every few seconds. “Any change?” I asked as I set the water bowl down in front of the dog. Bertie raised his head slightly, glanced at the water, then closed his eyes again.

Clark shook his head. “The same,” he said. “But he's not shaking anymore, so that's a good sign, I think.”

I nodded as I sat down on Bertie's other side, tucking my legs beneath me and smoothing my dress down. I met Clark's eye over Bertie's head, and then we both looked away again. I told myself firmly that it would be fine as I ran my hand over the hair on the dog's back. We could just watch the dog. It wasn't like we had to talk or anything.

•  •  •

It turns out there's only so long you can sit in silence and stare at a sick dog. And that amount of time is apparently twenty minutes. “So,” I said, when I absolutely, positively couldn't stand the silence for a moment longer. “You're from Colorado?”

Clark looked at me over Bertie and gave me a half smile, the kind you give when you're being polite, not because you're happy about something. I looked in vain for the dimples, but it seemed they only emerged for the real thing. “I am,” he said. He didn't
say anything else, and as silence fell again, I took a breath to ask a follow-up. I really didn't even care what it was. I'd see who could recite all the state capitals faster. I just couldn't take the quiet anymore. But before I could say anything, Clark went on. “I was born in Steamboat Springs, but when I was eleven, we moved way out to the country, almost to the Wyoming border.”

“That must have been cool,” I said. I was pretty sure I'd been to Colorado once—I had vague recollections of a white-water rafting trip from when I was little—but when I thought of the state, it was vague images culled from movies and magazines, of endless blue skies, snow-capped mountains, fields of green.

Clark shrugged as he ran his hand over Bertie's head. “In some ways,” he said after a moment. He looked up at me and smiled quickly, a more genuine smile this time. “I got to run around in the woods a lot. That was pretty great, because that's basically all you want to do when you're eleven.” I must have looked skeptical at that, because Clark's smile widened. “Well, if you're me. But it also got a little lonely. My sister was the only other kid for fifty miles.”

“Is that . . . ,” I started, remembering something he'd said in the foyer, which now seemed like a million years ago and not earlier that night. “When you were homeschooled?”

“Yep,” he said. “Sixth grade onward.” I nodded, trying to get my head around that. I couldn't imagine life without school—without my friends, without teachers, without all the daily drama that went along with it. “It really wasn't so bad,” he said with a laugh, and I realized, startled, that he'd been able to see what I was thinking. “I got to read a lot. And I was basically done with high school by the time I was fourteen.”

“But . . .” I started to ask why anyone would want to do that, then paused when I realized I didn't know the polite way to ask this question. “I mean, was there a reason you guys moved?”

Clark nodded. “My dad wanted some peace and quiet,” he said. “He wanted a place where he could focus on his work, uninterrupted.”

“What does he do?”

Clark's smile faltered a little. “He's an accountant,” he said. He looked down at Bertie and patted his head. “An accountant who wanted to be a novelist.” There was something in his voice that I recognized—a way of letting me know I was getting close to something tender, something he didn't want to talk about. I was a little surprised—he hadn't seemed to understand this when I'd tried to give him the same sign at the restaurant, and he was the one who'd been disappointed we hadn't talked about things that were
real
. But I looked a little closer and saw the tightness in his smile, the way his forehead was creasing, and realized that everyone, no matter what they might want to think, has things they don't want to talk about. So I nodded and let silence fall again. But it no longer felt oppressive and horrible, like it had before. Now it felt like a pause in a longer conversation.

•  •  •

“Did you ever have a dog?” Clark asked me after a few minutes of watching Bertie, both of us jumping at the slightest of movements. He seemed to be okay, as far as I could tell. He wasn't drinking his water, but he also wasn't moaning in pain or shaking violently. “Or . . . do you?”

I shook my head. “No on both counts.” I reached forward and scratched Bertie's ears, and his tail gave a small, weak
thump
.
“I always wanted one when I was little, but . . .” I stopped short. Even though this was just a small, simple fact, the act of saying it somehow felt scary, like I was dipping a toe into a pond I wasn't really sure I wanted to go into. “My mom was allergic,” I said, all at once, like I was ripping off a Band-Aid.

Clark nodded, and I held my breath, wondering if he was going to ask a follow-up question, willing him to somehow know not to. “My parents are cat people,” he said, looking back down at the dog again as I let out my breath. “We always had at least three. And for some reason, they always seem to hate me.”

“That's like my friend Bri's cat,” I said, shaking my head. “In fact, the last time I slept over at her house . . .” I paused and looked over at Clark, wondering if I should go on. After all, maybe he'd just been making idle conversation, not wanting to share stories. Maybe he didn't really want to hear about the unspeakable things Miss Cupcakes had done to my pillow. But he was looking at me, expectant, waiting. So I took a breath and told him the story.

•  •  •

“Okay, here's what it says,” Clark said as he came back into the laundry room, carrying a thin silver laptop, his face lit with the glow from the screen. We'd spent the last fifteen minutes trying to get Bertie to drink, without success, and I was getting increasingly worried that he was going to get dehydrated. I saw that there was something on the front of Clark's laptop—some kind of sticker—but before I could get a closer look, he was sitting next to me and holding the laptop out so that it was between us. “They say you can put fruit in the water, or ice cubes. . . .”

“Tried that,” I said, looking down at the bowl, where the ice cubes I'd put in there had long since melted.

“Or chicken broth works too,” he said, scrolling down the page. He looked at me and adjusted his glasses. “I know there's no fruit in the kitchen, because I'm the one who buys the groceries.”

“Chicken soup?” I asked, looking over at the dog, who seemed to be moving his head as far away from the bowl as possible.

“Maybe.” Clark shut the laptop, then pulled it toward him before I could get a look at the sticker. “Want to check?”

We walked into the kitchen—after setting up a video call between our phones and placing one in front of Bertie, so that we could see if there was any change in him—and I was relieved to see that, in addition to it being cleaner, the smell from before was almost totally gone. The windows were open, and I could hear the sound of wind and cicadas through them. Clark went around opening up cabinets and peering inside, and I pulled open the fridge, for no reason other than because I was curious what was in there. I realized I wasn't that surprised by the boy-bought groceries as I looked in—there was a take-out pizza box, a pack of cold cuts, and a bottle of ketchup. And that was about it, except for a six-pack of Coke.

“Feel free to take anything,” Clark said over his shoulder as he opened up a cabinet. “I know there's not much in there.”

“You shouldn't have gone to Alberto's,” I said, closing the fridge door. “Captain Pizza is
way
better.”

“Good to know.” Clark nodded. “I think I just called the first place that came up.”

“Any soup?”

“Chicken rice.” He held up a can. “Think that'll work?”

“Probably.” I figured that if the dog had already ingested enough chocolate to make him sick, he probably wasn't going to be super picky about his soup flavors.

“Okay.” Clark put his laptop on the counter and bent down to open up a cabinet underneath the sink. “So if you were a can opener, where would you be?”

I was only half listening, though. I was looking at the sticker on his laptop. It was one of those thin decals that stick right on, so you can still see the silver underneath. I'd seen them before, of course—Tom had a Kermit the Frog on his laptop, and Bri's younger sister Sonia had
The Giving Tree
—but I'd never seen this one before. It took me a moment to even figure out what I was seeing. There was what looked like a castle on a hill, with a very tall spire. Birds circled around the tower, the biggest ones at the corners of the laptop, then getting smaller as they got closer to it. Leaning out one window was a girl with a long braid. She was reaching her hand out to a bird, who was aiming for her, claws extended. I just stared at it, trying to figure out if I was missing something here.

“Andie?” My head snapped up, and I could see Clark looking at me, an open can of soup in his hand—clearly, at some point, he'd located a can opener.

“Yeah.” I blinked at him. It was clear he'd asked me a question, one that I hadn't heard at all. “Um, what was that?”

“I was asking if you think we should heat this up,” he said. “I don't know—do dogs ever eat hot food?”

“Well . . .” I stalled, not entirely sure myself. “Maybe just
warm it.” Clark nodded and stepped behind me to open a cabinet and pull down a bowl—all the dishes I saw inside it before the door shut again seemed to be white. “So . . . what is this?” I asked, nodding down at the laptop as Clark poured the soup into a bowl and headed for the microwave.

“My laptop?” he asked, sounding distracted as he punched the buttons, and with a
beep
, the microwave lit up and the bowl started turning around.

“The sticker.” I looked down at it again, hoping it wasn't something totally obvious that I was failing to get.

“Oh,” he said, just as the microwave beeped again. He pulled out the bowl of soup and brought it quickly over to the counter, dropping it rather than putting it down. “Hot,” he said, shaking out his hands. “We might need to wait a sec before giving it to Bert.” He ran his hand over the sticker quickly, a small smile appearing on his face. “It's . . . A reader of mine makes them. He sent one to me, and I liked it, so I stuck it on. I guess I was hoping it would give me some inspiration, or something.”

I nodded, like this was normal, to hear someone my age talking about their
readers
. “So what is it?”

“Oh,” Clark said, and adjusted his glasses quickly. He tilted his head slightly to the side, like he was trying to figure something out. “You're not . . . I assume you haven't read them.”

I shook my head. “I don't really read, you know, books.” Clark's eyebrows flew up, and it was like he took a step back from me, even though I was pretty sure his feet didn't actually move. “I know how to
read
,” I said, seeing the alarm in his expression. “I just don't love fiction. You know, novels.”

“If you don't love fiction novels,” Clark said, and even
though I tried to fight it, I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, “what do you read?” He shook his head, and it was like I could practically feel how baffled he was. “Wait, I'm sorry, but how do you not read books? Like—what do you do on planes?”

“I study,” I said with a shrug. “Or watch movies.”

Clark blinked at me. “I just . . . I've never met anyone who didn't read before,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, starting to get annoyed. “I
read
. I have a 4.0.” He was still just staring at me, so I explained. “That's a thing we have in high schools with more than two people. It's called a grade point average. . . .”

“Touché,” Clark said, and though he still looked rattled, he was smiling. “Okay. So if you haven't read my books . . . or, um, any books . . .” I rolled my eyes at that, even as I was trying not to smile. “It's showing the main character from the first two books, Tamsin. And these are the crows of Castleroy.”