Mom gets home a little early and is flapping around the house in crisis mode. “No one came by, did they?” she asks, midflap.

“No,” I say. “Who would’ve?”

“No one,” she says.

It’s pretty obvious that there’s something she’s not telling me, so I have two choices: try to pry it out of her or maintain the committed ignorance-is-bliss mind-set that has gotten me so far in life. I don’t pry, and she settles down after a while. There’s not really anything she can do. She hasn’t heard back from Mrs. DiMartino or the hospital, and I haven’t heard back from Mars.

She’s still wound up, though, and decides to take JR for a walk. It turns out he’s exactly the same way with walks as he is with biscuits: He could’ve had one a minute before and you’d never know. Mom gets the leash and he gets up and starts twitching around in excitement, and it’s like, Dude! We just went all the way to the frickin’ pond and back, remember? You met Mr. and Mrs. Windbreaker and won the Nobel Beast Prize? But, nope, it’s like he’s never been out of the house before.

“You let him out today, right?” says Mom. “I mean, after the thing?”

The thing … Is that what she’s going to call it?

“Yeah,” I say. “I walked him halfway to Brantley!”

We both look at Johnny, and he gives us this wide-eyed whome? look. And now Mom is thinking the same thing as me: dumb as a post with the memory of a goldfish, or a smooth operator who’s got us right where he wants us? I feel like the evidence is shifting in his favor. Anyway, out they go, and I start to wonder when or if I’m going to get dinner.

I nuke some pizza rolls to hold me over, and it sort of feels weird to eat them all myself. I think about texting Mars again, but the ball is definitely in his court. The rules of the game are: If you hit it twice in a row, you lose. Mom comes home a half hour later and makes us macaroni and cheese.

I spend a long time online after that. I don’t even know why I’m doing it until Janie’s name pops up with the little green dot next to it — available to chat — and then it’s like, Yep, that’s why I’m here.

The room has gotten dark by now, so I sit there lit up by the computer screen and think about it. The ball is 100 percent in her court, too, but this game feels different. For one thing, it’s been going on a lot longer. For another, I already feel like a loser. I remember the bike ride, the stupid hair gel, and her father, the prince of darkness, filling up the door frame.

Hey, I type.

Then I wait.

I wait my loser wait.

I sort of need her to reply. This day has kicked my butt and I need something good to happen. But I can’t make it happen. I can’t hit the same ball three times. That’s pretty much unprecedented in human and tennis history.

I get up and turn on the light.

I sit back down.

I wait some more.

Hey, she types.

Now I’m like: What next? I’m trying to think of something funny or clever or at least not idiotic or pathetic, but she is typing again.

 

Heard you stopped by …

Didn’t think he’d tell you!

 

She doesn’t reply immediately, so I have time to reread my response about eight times. Was that pathetic? It was supposed to be a joke. Sort of. Maybe the exclamation point was too much?

She’s typing: I probably shouldn’t tell you haw he phrased it!

I read it twice. There’s a typo and an exclamation point, and it’s a joke. Sort of. It is the best response anyone has ever written in the history of online chats! And then I remember that I might be mad at her, and she is 100 percent on record as being mad at me.

Ha! I type, just to type something.

Then I type: Were you home?

I look at it. Delete it.

I’m back.

But she knows that already. Delete it.

How have you been?

Delete it.

I got a dog.

Send.

 

cool.

He’s a rottweiler.

excellent

 

I’m waiting for her to ask me his name. She’s not into punk rock or metal or anything like that. Just to be totally honest, she’s one of those people who, if you said, “Music sucks right now,” she would say, “What do you mean? What about sucky band X or sucky band Y?” But I still think she’ll like the name. The other possibility is that she’ll think it’s mean. She’s a lot nicer than I am.

He bit Mars :o

Delete it.

Her name pops up: Gotta go!

We must have been typing at the same time. And just like that, she’s off-line. Unless her house is on fire or something, she chat–hung up on me. It sort of stings, but then I read back through and it doesn’t seem so bad. She hit the ball back, maybe not directly into my court but at least in my general direction.

Anyway, it’s amazing how easy it is to think of things to say now that she’s off-line. I type out a long paragraph to her. I just kind of put it all out there. I think it’s pretty good, all things considered. I read it over again. Delete it.