The Six Rules of Maybe Read Online Free PDF Page B

inflatable things you wear around your waist when you’re a kid. I actually had one in real life.”
    “A rooster? Not exactly a water animal.”
    “I know. Ask my mother. Maybe a whale or something, right? It was probably on sale. Anyway, forget my twisted childhood for a second, okay? I was gulping water and flailing around and then suddenly there was this shark.”
    “A shark.”
    He swallowed. Took another bite. Hayden was a vigorous eater. “But he was this …” He hesitated. “Very light white-red color.”
    “You mean pink,” I said.
    Silence. “Well. Yeah.”
    “A pink shark.” I laughed. I stopped. “I said I wouldn’t laugh.”
    “I believe you promised,” he said. I found the bacon in the fridge, opened the package. I laid out the flat slabs in a pan.
    “A pink shark, though,” I said. “You can’t exactly blame me.”
    “It was a horrible pink. Okay, shit.” He sighed. He ran his fingers through the loose curls of his hair. “I give up. I knew it would sound stupid. Nightmares sound so pathetic in the morning. ‘And then I was in the jaws of a giant hawk who turned into a can opener.’” Hayden held our own can opener, which he was aiming to use on the lid of a can of peaches.
    “Supposedly they’re your subconscious talking.”
    “My subconscious speaks in a foreign language,” he said.
    I tried to think what a pink shark might mean, but came up with nothing. I didn’t always believe much in the subconscious anyway. I knew pretty well what was going on inside my head, I thought, just maybe I didn’t always want to know. You can shield your eyes from an accident and still know the accident is there.Zeus was sitting right in front of the utensil drawer. I nudged him and he scooted to the side. “Sorry, boy.”
    Hayden pointed at me with the can of peaches. “Hey. You’re a person who apologizes to dogs.”
    “I probably apologize to everything.”
    “I’m positive that the world is made up of those who apologize to dogs and those who don’t.”
    “I apologize to this azalea in the front yard every time I run over it backing out of the driveway.”
    He laughed. “Hmm. A plant apologizer. This might blow my theory all to hell. Spatula?” I pointed, and he took one out of the drawer.
    “Can you imagine if you one day apologized to Zeus and he said, ‘Hey man, no problem’?” I said. The idea pleased me, dogs talking.
    “I wonder what his voice would sound like,” Hayden said. The bacon was beginning to sizzle nicely and the orange juice sat ready in our old pitcher and new toast had been pushed down into the toaster. Hayden cut a hunk of butter and plopped it into a second pan for eggs. The kitchen was humming with a nice busy importance.
    “Wouldn’t it be great, though, if you could have an actual conversation with him?”
    Hayden and I looked over at Zeus. Sometimes you were sure dogs had some secret, superior intelligence, and other times, like right then, you knew they were only their simple, goofy selves. Zeus looked back at us, a bit blank but hopeful, wondering if something was going to happen that involved him.
    “I’m not sure we’d want that,” Hayden said. He gave Zeus a long look. “Nah. He’d start doing all the things you hate in people. Bitching, complaining …”
    “Get me off of this leash! Who do you think I am?” I said.
    “This food tastes like shit ,” Hayden said.
    We were laughing when Mom came downstairs. Her brown hair was wet from a shower and she was already dressed in capris and a T-shirt. She gave me a look that said she didn’t approve of me liking Hayden when she hadn’t figured out yet whether she liked him or not herself. Mom was what you’d call fiercely protective . I know this was supposed to be a good thing and I appreciated some of its positive qualities, but it didn’t always feel like a good thing. It was hard to do “big things” in the world when she was on the other side of the street, wringing her