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by. The phone rings, and a dog barks. I hear Doris’s muffled voice from the hallway. “Was that my Shopsy crying? What are they doing to him back there?”
    My throat closes.
    Saundra’s strong, reassuring voice: “Why don’t I checkon him for you?” Her footsteps clop down the hall. She pokes her head in the door and glares at me. “What’s going on in here?”
    “All under control,” Duff says without looking up. “Tell Doris five minutes.”
    “Fine.” Saundra’s angry gaze pierces a hole in my forehead. Then she clops back down the hall, and I hear her speaking in a low voice to Doris.
    Duff starts to trim the knot with the clippers. She works slowly, a little at a time. “I learned to do this using scissors, way back when,” she tells me. “You can accidentally cut a dog and not even know it. Sometimes they don’t even feel it. You notice when you see the blood.”
    I feel woozy even
thinking
about blood. “What do you do, stitch it up?”
    “If the cut is big, but first you clean it and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. But we don’t use scissors anymore. We use clippers. They’re safer.” She manages to talk while holding Shopsy with one hand and working with the other. The comb is still stuck in his hair, but soon the clump of fur is no longer attached to the dog. A big bald spot appears on his neck.
    “Well, that takes care of that.” Duff twists and pulls at the comb until it slips free of the hair; then she throws the clump into the garbage.
    “How did you do that?” I ask. I wanted to make Shopsy beautiful, but I couldn’t.
    Duff grins at me. Her top front teeth stick out a little. “You gotta feel for the knots. You can’t just yank the comb through. You gotta pay attention, and practice. Eventually, you become an artiste.”

Chapter Eight
DOG AFTERNOON
    S hopsy goes home with big patches of hair shaved off, as if a killer razor attacked him. Doris shouts, “Oh my Shopsy!” and “I’m never bringing him back here again!”
    “This is all my fault,” I tell Uncle Sanjay in the treatment room.
    He spritzes cleanser on the table. “No it’s not. Doris doesn’t take care of Shopsy the way she should. Look what happens.”
    “But if the comb hadn’t gotten stuck—”
    “Shopsy’s a matted dog with a nasty skin infection. Perhaps you should try brushing a healthy dog.”
    Duff has come in, carrying a chart. “Maybe Daffodil. She’s a golden retriever. Owner’s leaving her here to be groomed later on. We only do the basic stuff. You know—brushing.”
    “Daffodil, yes! A very sweet dog,” Uncle Sanjay says.
    Hope sparks inside me again. “I can do more than brushing. I’m good at styling.”
    Duff grins. “Well, there you go.”
    But Saundra keeps closing doors in my face—the door to the surgery suite, the door to the exam rooms, the door to the pharmacy room. She smiles at everyone except me. Whenever she breezes past, she screws up her face, like the clinic is a big sugar candy and I’m the only sour drop. “Doris is probably going to take Shopsy up to Freetown from now on,” she mutters, turning her back to me.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “Shopsy had knots.”
    She doesn’t reply, just keeps answering phones. I peek at a litter of fluffy kittens here for their vaccinations. The needles look scary and sharp, but the kittens don’t let out a peep.
    A pug puppy comes in for an exam, and a fat corgi with short legs needs to lose half his weight. Uncle Sanjaykeeps checking on me. He doesn’t want me to see anything else gross.
    “You can help me in the kennel room,” Hawk says, handing me the mop. While he scrubs the empty cages with disinfectant, I clean the floor.
    “I didn’t realize the place could get so dirty.” I wipe sweat from my forehead.
    Hawk straightens a few cases of canned cat food. “What did you expect? We treat animals. They have fur. They pee, they poo, they bleed when they’re wounded, and sometimes they throw up. Haven’t you