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sideways and came down eyeball- to- eyeball with a snarling, mean-eyed dog. Its lip was curled all the way back to show pink and black gums above sharp white teeth.
    "Ohhhhh, hey, easy now."
    Travis backed away, looking down, sideways, anywhere but directly into those eyes. His body twitched with wanting to run. He forced himself to step slow and willed the dog to stay in its driveway. The dog kept snarling that low- throated growl, its tail pointing straight back. One wrong move and it would start throat ripping. Travis kept talking in a low, easy voice.
    "Sorry, I didn't see your driveway there. I know, you're just doing your job, and woo, you're good at it. Look, I'm leaving, see? Here I go."
    He didn't take a full breath until he was a good fifty feet away. Then he snuck a look over his shoulder. The dog trotted back up the drive, all relaxed, looking like he'd just gone out to get the mail and not like he'd been threatening murder. Travis grinned. He knew how that felt. KaBLOW, snarl, and snap, and then it's over, and hey, did I just bite your leg off ? Sorry - I didn't really mean to.
    A woodpecker hammered nearby, and Travis sucked in a big lungful of crisp air. He stepped into the cornfield, walked down a row far enough that he couldn't see the road, and lay down. The ground under his back was solid, dry, reassuring. The corn enclosed him in green, stalks on either side, the blades forming a shifting ceiling overhead.
    Maybe that was his problem. He'd been raised by a dog, so he didn't know how to act right around people.
    Grandpa was no help - that was for sure. In the days after Rosco left, he was either gone or holed up in his room.
    After a few days of that, he told Travis that he'd been going to Alcoholics Anonymous. And that they were moving.
    "We can't leave! What if Rosco comes back?"
    "Trav, it's been almost a week. He's not coming back."
    "But what about that dog that took months to get from Texas to Alaska? He might be doing something like that."
    "Because Rosco got to Texas how?"
    After that, everything rattled by in an unreal kind of nightmare. Packing up, cleaning the place they'd always lived. At first Travis refused to help.
    What if Rosco came back and they were gone? Grandpa finally called Chuck, the landlord, and asked him to give the new renters their number and keep an eye out for Rosco. He talked at Travis all the time about "one day at a time" and

    "easy does it" and blah blah. He said over and over that it was high time for things to change.
    Well, they'd changed, all right. Travis pushed himself up off the ground. He emerged from the cornfield and looked back toward the snarling dog's driveway. Next time he went by there, he'd have a little bit of something good to eat in his pocket. He turned the other way and kept walking.
    on SATURDAY
    This day started with reality crawling up my face and jabbing me in the eyeballs before I was even awake. Reminding me it's all no- Calvin weekends.
    Then I remembered: new job.
    Connie sent me to the bakery. She uses cookies and doughnut holes to lure people into the library, and then she hits them over the head with books. I told her I don't read books, and she said, "If you work in my library, you do," and I asked her if she was going to fire me and she shoved a book in my hands.
    Calvin, your friend Connie is a fanatic.
    But she gave me twenty dollars for working and a few doughnut holes, even though I kept running across the street to the Laundromat to punch quarters, because when else am I going to do it? After work, I hid the laundry under a towel and headed home, rattling my little red wagon behind me.
    When I got to the hedges on the library side yard, Travis suddenly apparated in front of me. I spun a round kick to his head, dropped to the ground, and swept his feet out from under, all Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon. Or maybe I just shoved him really hard in the chest. I'm not sure
    - I was kinda startled.
    I stood over him and said, "Holy