I look at the time in the corner of the computer screen: It’s half past very late, but I can’t seem to peel myself away. I’ve been putting it off, but I finally go to Janie’s profile. I tell myself I’m just looking, but I know that’s a serious understatement. I’ve got all night, and the plan is to pore through it: to scroll through all of the status updates and wall posts since I left; to click through her new pictures and the pictures of the people in them. I’m looking for signs of some other guy, some dude with his arm around her at a party or leaving messages for her or, well, any of the things that I used to do, basically. It’s a lot of work and maybe a little insane, but I haven’t been sleeping much anyway.

It’s a very short trip. I’m sitting there waiting for her page to load, wondering what’s up with my connection, when I realize that it has loaded. I can only get the partial view, the “limited profile.” I didn’t see that coming. Did she cut me off? It’s the first thing I think. Someone must’ve told her I’m back, or she found out somehow, and she put up the deflector shields. It’s a total kick in the crotch, and for a while, I just sit there staring at the few things on the screen: the same profile pic she always uses; her hometown, same as mine; and her birthday with no year. Then I spend a few seconds confirming that nothing is clickable, even though I was already fairly sure of that.

Finally, my pride kicks in and I start looking for other explanations. Maybe she got another message from the Creeper. There was this guy who started sending her weird messages and commenting on her pictures and stuff like that last winter. He’s really old, maybe even retired, and it sort of freaked her out. He lives a few states away, but I think she was a little worried that he would hop in his unmarked pervert van and make the trip. I was kind of worried, too, but I was also hoping for the chance to beat him into a little pile of creep dust.

So maybe he’s back. Or maybe there’s another one. The world is full of creepy dudes, I tell myself — and then I realize that the only guy I know for sure is obsessing over Janie’s profile tonight is me.

I click over to my page. I sort of feel like hiding it, too, just out of pride, but I realize that it would affect approximately no one. The page is a total ghost town. I haven’t posted anything in months.

I’m not sure how this computer can make me feel any worse tonight, but I figure I’ll give it a try. I Google “rescue dogs.” That does the trick. I’m sort of looking for clues about why ours acts the way he does, but I have to click away after a few minutes. It’s the pictures — what they were rescued from. The dogs are filthy or beat-up, lying in mud or covered in ticks. One of them has a broken leg. It’s not, like, in a clean white cast; it’s bent, broken, and dirty. The caption says “Bonnie, lab. mix, approx. 1 year old.”

I guess I hadn’t really thought about that part: how bad it has to be before a dog gets rescued. On the one hand, it makes me sad, but on the other hand — well, that hand is a fist. There’s a picture of this guy who was keeping pit bulls in his basement. It’s right after the dogs got taken away, and he’s smiling like it’s nothing, like a kid who broke a plate. I feel like I did when Janie told me about the Creeper: that same anger toward someone you don’t really know, but you also sort of do know.

The computer screen is still on when I get up on Tuesday. The screen saver is dancing around and when I hit the space bar, a page about this year’s “NFL Impact Rookies” appears. I don’t even remember looking at that, and I feel really groggy. I was up so late that this morning just feels like more of the same day.

I want to go back to sleep, but it’s already close to eleven and Rudy is coming over soon to see JR. That makes me think of the pictures from last night. It’s hard to think of him that way, beat-up and filthy. It makes me angry again, but I feel like I’ve been angry for months, and I need to chill out.

Anyway, I head straight to the kitchen to get some cereal, because you can’t properly chill out on an empty stomach. Fifteen minutes later, I’m one bowl of Crunch Berries in and considering a shower when Rudy knocks on the door. I’m still half-asleep, so the first thing I say is really dumb: “Hey, man. I was about to take a shower.”

He shakes his head and says, “Well, I’m not joining you, if that’s what you mean.”

And then I’m just backpedaling and digging myself deeper. “No, no, I mean, I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t. I hate it when you’re in the shower and, like, hear something, you know? Always freaks me out.”

“O-o-o-kay then,” he says, stepping inside.

“Sorry, man,” I say. “Up late.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Whole summer without porn. Must’ve been tough.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was going to be a cold shower.”

And then he laughs and I do, too.

“Whoa,” he says. “Is that him?”

I look back over my shoulder. Johnny is standing by the doorway to the living room, hoping for a biscuit. “Nah,” I say. “That’s some other dog.”

“Can I pet ’im?” says Rudy, but he takes a step forward and Johnny takes a step back, and that basically answers that question.

“I don’t know, man. I think he had it pretty rough. My mom says he’s, like, not so down with men, ’cause his last owner was a dude. And a jerk.”

“Was he having him fight and stuff?” says Rudy.

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Mom says he was just kept outside, chained to a tree. And maybe beaten.”

“That all?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Geez, look at his head,” says Rudy. “It’s like a … I don’t even know. Look at his mouth!”

Johnny is standing half on the kitchen tile and half off. I think he knows we’re talking about him. I turn back to Rudy. “Watch this,” I say, and head over to the biscuit jar.

Johnny is all kinds of conflicted, torn between sheer love of biscuits and total distrust of dudes. He doesn’t come quite as close with both of us there, but that just makes the leaping chomp more impressive.

“Awesome!” says Rudy. “It’s like those sharks.”

“That’s what I thought!”

As Air Jaws finishes gulping down the biscuit and vacuums the crumbs off the floor, I give him a close look. His fur is pretty much smooth and shiny — I know Mom has been giving him this special dry food — but there’s this one patch above his left hind leg. It’s on the border between his black hip and his brown leg, and the fur there is a little thinner and doesn’t really lie flat. I wonder how he got that: a scar, maybe, or ticks.

“I’d sort of like to find the guy,” I say.

“I think that’d be a bad idea,” says Rudy.

“What do you think, namewise: Johnny or JR? I can’t call him Johnny Rotten all the time.”

“I think maybe JR,” says Rudy. “Like JD.”

“I thought that, too,” I say. Rudy’s been my friend for so long that we think alike sometimes. Or maybe that’s why we became friends. It works out the same either way.

“Hey, JR,” he says.

JR looks over, and he definitely knows that’s him. His ears perk up a little, and I’m pretty sure he’s thinking: Is this new person also a potential food source? He must decide he’s not, because he wheels around and heads for his spot in the corner of the living room. Mom moved his water dish there, so it’s officially his place now.

“Cool,” says Rudy. “You see his ears move?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“It’s kind of a downer to see a big dog like that so freaked out.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sort of thinking maybe he won’t always be.”

“Well, let me know,” he says. “Because that dog would be a chick magnet.”

“You think?” I say. The thought had definitely crossed my mind. “Don’t they like the little dogs? Like purse sized and rat looking?”

“That’s just what they get for themselves,” he says. “Really, they like the big dogs.”

“That’s awesome,” I say.

“Big Dog!” Rudy calls out toward the living room, and maybe because he knows what it means or maybe because he still isn’t familiar with Rudy’s voice, we get one loud bark back.

“HAARRFF!”