TWENTY-NINE: DOGFIGHTER

WE’RE WALKING INTO TOWN, which is only a mile or so away, and it’s the kind of long summer afternoon that goes on forever because we’re twelve and only ever worry about everything and nothing at the same time. My Superman shirt is still baggy on me, but at least it doesn’t cover my knees anymore.

“Yeah, but the tunnel would lead to the fort,” Charlie says.

“The fort should be in the tree though,” I say. I don’t have to tell him which tree I’m talking about. Three houses up, there’s a big dog asleep on the front lawn.

“A tree fort with a tunnel system.”

Neither one of us looks at the palm-down-palm-up high five but it gets the dog’s attention, making it raise its head up and twitch its ears.

“We could put lights in the tunnel. Like, string lights through it. And a sound system,” I say.

“And snakes. Gotta buy some snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“To keep intruders out.”

“I’ll see if we can buy snakes online.” The dog doesn’t take its eyes off of us and as we get in front of its house, it scrabbles to its feet and starts growling. “I wonder if a dog could live in the tunnel,” I ask him.

“We should find out,” he says, and I hear the volume rising in his voice midway though the sentence and I’m aware of the increasing upswing of laughter on the words and I even feel his arms brace against my shoulders, but I still don’t realize that he’s about to push me toward the dog that is easily three-quarters as big as me.

I hear three things as I catch myself, hands braced out and eyes to the ground:

Charlie laughing.

Charlie’s footsteps as he runs off.

And growling.

I pull back with my hands out, and I say, in the calmest voice possible, “It’s okay. It’s oka—” but the dog jumps at me anyway, simultaneously pulling me down and pushing me back.

I don’t expect to hear the next sound: me laughing. Even as the dog’s claws dig pale red trenches into my arm while I try to keep its head pushed back, even as it shoves me further back onto the lawn and starts shredding my pant leg, I can’t stop laughing.

Even as a faraway part of my brain registers that my best friend just made this happen.

The claw marks are starting to spill over, sending red teardrops down either side of my arm, and the dog has managed to pull my pants all the way off, whipping its head back and forth, when Charlie comes screaming back, yelling “We are the champions, motherfucker!” adding twenty extra syllables to “motherfucker” as he tackles the dog into a low hedge.

And I can’t hate him because I am invincible and my Superman shirt isn’t even torn. I can’t imagine any other way we’re supposed to be around each other.

An hour later we’re playing video games like nothing happened and he leans over and says, without context, “Plus, now we know dogs can’t hurt you either.”