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storm has nothing to do with us, with how good or bad we are. Everybody is getting rained on, good guys and bad guys both. It’s not our fault. It’s nobody’s fault. Dad and Víctor and Ruby will be back when the storm stops. And it will go away someday.”
    â€œYes,” Juan says. I can hear the sleepiness in his voice, and sure enough, within a few minutes I hear his little snores again.
    I lie in the darkness thinking about what I’ve just said to Juan. The storm will go away—if only I could believe this myself!
    I glance over at Víctor’s clock again. 12:18.
    Before I can fall back asleep, the rain comes back, but it’s not like the rain from earlier. It’s not so heavy, and the sound of it falling is almost nice, like rain is supposed to be. The winds have calmed down too. I feel safe for the first time all night. My hands are steady and my insides are calm. My breathing feels almost relaxed. Maybe the storm is over.
    I start to think about Berti again. How stupid and selfish can I be? She’s just a dog, for crying out loud, and not much of a dog at that. But with the storm calmer now, I’m not as worried about Dad and Víctor and Ruby as I was earlier, so Berti comes back into my thoughts.
    I remember when I first met her. She showed up in La Rupa about a year ago. I was out in the street by myself kicking a soccer ball, when suddenly this medium-sized tan dog came trotting right up to me. I saw her coming from way down the street. She never hesitated as she walked, with her head up and her eyes looking straight at me. She stopped about ten feet away from me and barked.
    I said, “Hi.” She walked right over to our house and just sat there at the foot of our steps, looking back and forth between the house and me. Her ears stood up and she wagged her tail. It was almost like she felt that our house was her house, and like she was waiting for me to invite her in.
    I went over and petted her on her head and back. She was muscular and had short hair. She smiled as I scratched her neck. After a while I went up the steps and walked into the house. The dog followed me as if she’d done it a million times before.
    She hung around the house the rest of the day. I noticed that she had a black tongue. It was a little pink but mostly black. I worried that she had the plague or something, but when Dad came home, he explained that she was probably part Shar-Pei, a breed of dog from China, the kind you see in pictures with too much wrinkly skin.
    â€œShar-Peis have black tongues,” Dad said. “Yep, she must be part Shar-Pei and part shepherd or collie, which would be the part where her smarts come from.”
    Everybody in the house oohed and aahed over the dog all night. She licked everybody’s hands and kept wagging her tail.
    Dad said that when he was a boy, he had a great dog. “This new dog is so sweet and relaxed that she reminds me of Roberto,” he said. Dad started calling her Roberta, and pretty soon she became Berti.
    At school the next day I looked up Shar-Pei in an encyclopedia. Under the part where they say what the breed is supposed to do, like German shepherds are good guard and search dogs, Jack Russell terriers are rat killers, collies herd, and Labradors hunt, Shar-Peis, I learned, have been bred over the centuries for … nothing. Under the category for Special Talents was just that one word: nothing . And sure enough, Berti has been pretty much true to her Shar-Pei bloodline: good at almost nothing except being sweet and happy and laid back.
    So where are you tonight, Berti? Out in this storm? When are you coming home? Why did you run away?
    I’ve always thought of Berti as my dog, partly because I found her and let her into the house that first day, and partly because I just want her to be mine. Víctor works with Dad every day, so he and Dad are best friends. Juan is the baby and gets most of Mom’s and everyone