I sat in the front seat of the car, feeling like my chest had been split open with blunt-edge scissors. March and CindeeRae had missed their buses and sat in the backseat, their silence somehow making the car quieter than it would’ve been without them.
“Sweetie.” Mom rested her palm on my leg. “Genki jumped the fence, and I thought he was chasing squirrels again, so I drove to all his favorite places and couldn’t find him. When I went to the police station to file a report, they said four other dogs had been taken in the last two days. It seems the dognappers strike in batches.”
Mom watched me process the information. I turned my head toward the window.
I had almost forgotten March and CindeeRae were in the car when CindeeRae spoke, unexpected and loud like a megaphone. “Lobster was taken from my backyard one night. He’s purebred, so Daddy thinks the dognappers may have sold him to a puppy mill. But we’ll get him back when they catch the dognapper.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what Crowley would do with Genki. He was a big dog, bred to fight, and if you didn’t know about his social anxiety disorder, you might think he snacked on Chihuahuas. What if Crowley sold Genki to dogfighters? Or maybe worse, what if he became a lab dog, injected with all sorts of things that would turn him into a Frankendoggie?
“Madeleine’s dog was taken, too,” I mumbled to Mom under my breath.
“What, sweetheart?”
March answered for me, like he had last week when I stopped talking. “Madeleine Brown, this girl at our school. Her dog disappeared two nights ago from Sleepy Hollow. She was a wreck.” His voice turned on the last word when he realized I was kind of a mess, too, but instead of changing it, he just mispronounced it. Wrecky.
By the time Mom pulled in front of CindeeRae’s house, CindeeRae had invited herself over for a Halloween party later that night, since she couldn’t go trick-or-treating, and I no longer wanted to. Mom promised lots of candy, and maybe a scary movie. I imagined March’s tormented push against the back of my seat at the thought of surrendering his last eligible night of T-or-T. But when Mom parked in front of his house, he got out of the car and yelled, without a hitch, “See you at the Halloween Par-tay, Kazu.”
It was the most ordinary sentence in the world, but it made my eyes sting as I watched March bob toward his front door.
March, CindeeRae, and I sat in my basement, the old Poltergeist movie playing in the background as we sifted through piles of candy on the floor. My parents had dumped one pitcher full into our trick-or-treat bags at the beginning of this impromptu Halloween party, and now we halfheartedly traded unearned candy that looked too prim and glossy in the wrappers.
The basement was dark, with a small end-table light flickering like a heartbeat. Any other Halloween, it would have spooked me, but tonight, all I could think about was Genki.
We sat in a circle. “Are you okay?” CindeeRae asked, the first thing that any of us had said since dumping the candy and sorting through it with indifferent fingers.
The question triggered my tear ducts, so instead of answering I just shook my head. March, sitting cross-legged next to me, bumped my knee with his, and it was just like a hug.
“I like your posters,” CindeeRae said, trying to change the subject.
Our walls were covered with Japanese movie posters: My Neighbor Totoro, Seven Samurai, Battle Royale, Ring (Ringu), and Godzilla, King of the Monsters. My parents had a thing for classic Japanese cinema.
“Thanks,” I said. Our basement looked like a makeshift cinema room, with dark red walls and black leather recliners. To make it kid-friendly, my parents had gotten a ginormous Lovesac that was pushed up against the back of the room, but Genki always used it as a kingly dog bed whenever we came downstairs.
We turned back to the television, watching as one of the poltergeist hunters tried to peel his face off in the bathroom after rummaging through his host’s refrigerator. We watched for another hour, clear until the clown doll came alive and pulled the boy under the bed.
“Genki’s probably still in Crowley’s van,” I said. We knew Crowley took the dogs, but we also knew he didn’t keep them in his house. As the Poltergeist boy’s kicking legs disappeared beneath the bed and his sister watched horrified, my two friends turned to me.
“Probably,” March said. “But he won’t be for long.”
CindeeRae grabbed my hand and squeezed. Less than three blocks from where we sat, Genki might be huddled, terrified and alone, with no dining room table or blanket nest to soothe him. What would Crowley do with my puppy?
“We should sneak into his garage,” I mumbled, barely able to hear the words myself. “And see if he’s there.”
From the television, the Poltergeist mom screamed “No, no, no!” as some invisible force dragged her up the wall and across the ceiling.
March’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Maybe we could save him—tonight.”