That night, I was lolling belly-down on my bed with the French textbook open in front of me. I hadn’t gotten any notes from Jasmine today, so I tried catching up on my own. Diligently, I conjugated: je connais; vous connaissez; nous connaissons—I know, you know, we know. Suddenly, a shot of hot stinky dog breath polluted my space.
Rex’s snowy paws inched up on the edge of the bedspread. “Wanna play?” the irrepressible pooch panted in anticipation.
“Can’t,” I said, motioning at the homework.
“But wait till you see what I found!” Rex’s paws momentarily disappeared. A minute later, the whole bed shook as his bulky body bounced on it. He’d brought a gift: my old catcher’s mitt.
I frowned. “Where’d you get that?”
“Your closet. BTW, it’s a worse wreck than your room.”
“You shouldn’t be snooping in there,” I scolded him.
“I found a softball, too.”
“Good for you. Pretend they’re chew toys—chomp and destroy.” I tossed the mitt on the floor.
“Ah, come on,” he urged. “Let’s have a catch for old time’s sake.”
Old time’s sake? He’d been here less than three months—we don’t have old times. Besides, I will never wear that glove again.
“There’s still enough light outside,” Rex continued. “We could play for a while; then you can get back to your homework.”
Le chien parle. The dog talks. Le chien parle trop! The dog talks too much!
Rex rested his wiry snout right on the open textbook and stared at me with big hopeful eyes. If I looked hard enough, I mused, would I see a soul in there? I reached over and with my thumb, smoothed the spot between his eyes. “Who are you, Rex?” I whispered.
“Who am I? I’m the guy you saved from the pound! I’m the luckiest dog in the whole world!”
“But what are you, really?”
“What do you mean?” Rex looked perplexed.
“Talking dogs don’t exist. So what else is there I need to know?”
“Hmmm … You already know my taste in haute cuisine …”
I bent forward at the waist and cradled his head in my hands. “Do I need to see a shrink?” I shuddered at the thought.
“About what?”
“About you! You’re like a drug-sniffing dog, except you somehow know when people are cheating or stealing. Detectives, private investigators do that, not untrained shelter dogs.”
“I’m ruff on crime!” he chortled.
I groaned.
“Oh, come on, Stacey, where’s your sense of humor? That was funny!”
“Rex … if you really want to help me, make me understand what’s going on. ’Cause I’m really confused.”
“Would you believe I’m Deputy Dawg?”
I stared at him.
“What do I have to do to get a smile out of you?”
“Tell me why you purposely led me to that boy’s house.”
“Can’t we just play catch?”
“Why is that so important to you?” I demanded.
Rex looked genuinely puzzled. “You’re overthinking it. You’re a girl, I’m a dog. You throw the ball, I run after it and bring it back. What’s the problem?”
“The problem? The problem is that … ,” I sputtered, then gave up. What am I doing? What am I thinking?
Rex stretched, got up on all fours, and jumped off the bed. A second later, the softball was in his mouth. He sat ramrod straight and stared at me. The dog had a one-track mind. He wanted to play ball. He’d wait.
“Fine!” I grumbled. I closed the textbook, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and plucked the ball out of his mouth. “You win—go get it!” I reared back and hurled the ball across the room—it bounced hard off the wall, chipping the black paint.
Rex dashed after it, cheering. “Now you’re talking!”
“You’re talking.” My sister, never one for subtlety, let alone knocking, slipped inside the door just as Rex caught up with the softball.
I shrugged. “I’m playing with the dog.”
“I heard you,” she contradicted. “You were having a conversation with the dog. Like he’s real.”
“Of course he’s real, Regan. Does he look stuffed to you?”
She eyed him critically. “He could use some exercise.”
“So I’ve put on a few pounds!” Miffed, Rex dropped the ball.
“Why’s he barking at me?” Regan asked.
He’s not barking at you. He’s talking to me. You insulted him.
“What do you want, Regan?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up the softball. “Ick. He drooled on it.” She grabbed a T-shirt from the floor and wiped it off.
“Seriously, Regan. What favor do you need?”
“Like I only talk to you when I need something?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder regally. A move I couldn’t pull off if I tried.
I folded my arms and gave her an accusatory stare.
She avoided my gaze. Her eyes darted around the room until they fell on the catcher’s mitt, which had landed haphazardly atop a pile of clothes. “It’s good you’re playing with that again.”
“Don’t remember asking your opinion.”
With a humongous sigh, she dropped into the chair by my desk, still toying with the ball. Her manicured nails, a neon pink, looked incongruous around the scuffed, grayish white softball. Then she really shocked me—she tossed it at me. Instinctively, I shielded my face. Her throw went sailing over my head. I reached up to grab it before it smashed into the trophies on the shelf above my bed.
“Oopsie,” she said with a giggle. “I never did have great aim.”
“Only with a put-down,” I said.
Suddenly, she laughed. “Remember when Dad tried to teach me to play?”
In spite of myself, I smiled. How could I forget? I was about six; Regan, nine. I’d just started peewee league. We were in the backyard and Dad was pitching as I practiced my meager swings. Regan flounced outside wearing flip-flops and a frilly pink sundress. Dad wanted her to join us, but Regan, flaxen-haired, pouty, and adorable, didn’t want to. Somehow, he talked her into staying for one at bat. “All you have to do is aim the ball at Gracie’s bat. When she hits it, catch it and throw it back to her. It’s fun, you’ll see.”
He positioned Regan a few feet from me. Even so, her wimpy toss landed short.
“You throw like a girl!” I teased, pleased to be better at something than my big sister.
Regan trumped me: she always did. “That’s because I am a girl, you freak.”
Catching the shattered look on my face, my dad intervened, assuring me that playing sports didn’t make me any less feminine than my sister. Even so, watching Regan sashay away, my budding self-esteem had taken a direct hit.
“Ow—watch where you’re throwing,” she said now, as I underhanded the ball back at her. “I almost broke a nail.”
“And on that note, I ask again: What do you want, Regan?”
My sister is not shy. She doesn’t do avoidance. So it surprised me when, instead of just telling me, she slipped off the chair onto the carpet and busied herself with the mess on the floor. “This needs to be washed,” she said of my denim cutoffs. “But this monstrosity”—she held my moth-eaten Marlins T-shirt at arm’s length like it might contaminate her—“this goes in the garbage. As do these.” She plucked a pair of smelly sneakers up by the laces and dumped them on top of the T-shirt.
“I like those!” I protested but made no move to stop her. The only time my sister stoops to cleaning up my stuff is when she’s nervous. Really nervous.
I watched as she sat cross-legged on the floor and organized my trash heap. After she’d made neat piles of the clothes, she rounded up the random photos that littered the carpet, squared off their corners until she had one neat deck. “Do you have an album to put them in?” she asked.
I tossed her an empty shoebox from my closet. I’d wait her out—and get a semi-decluttered room in the bargain. I looked at the stuff she’d designated “garbage” and realized there was more that could go. I rounded up the softball trophies and went to put them in the pile.
That stopped Regan. “No. You’ll regret that,” she said, pulling them away from me.
I’d had enough. “Okay, Regan, spit it out. Why are you here?”
She focused on something over my shoulder. “Sheena kind of admitted the thing with Mom’s jewelry.”
My eyebrows shot up. So Regan was there to apologize? That’s why she was cleaning my room?
“Anyway.” She took a dramatic breath. “Here’s the thing. I knew … that is, I suspected, that every once in a while, she might have lifted something. But from a store. Not from someone’s home.”
“That makes it okay?”
“I guess I always told myself it was her thing. If it didn’t affect me—”
“A chacun à son goût?” The French phrase popped into my head and out my mouth.
“Huh?” My sister, who had enough trouble with her native tongue, wisely skipped taking foreign languages in high school.
“It’s French. It means, ‘Each to her own.’ Sort of, ‘live and let live.’”
“I didn’t think she’d ever steal from my house,” Regan croaked. “I feel so betrayed.” Her face crumpled. Big round anime-sized tears drizzled down her cheek.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never had to comfort Regan before.
“I trusted her,” she sobbed.
“I’m so stupid!”
“You’re not stupid, Regan.” It was the best I could do. I scrounged up a box of tissues from the night table and handed it to her. I should have felt vindicated. Instead, watching my sister fall apart, my heart ached.
“Did you tell Mom?” I asked gently.
She shook her head and blew her nose noisily. “I’m too embarrassed.”
I didn’t know my sister could be embarrassed. But I completely related.
“So anyway,” she continued. “I told Sheena I’m done, not to call or text or anything. And don’t dare show up here again.” Her voice caught, and she dabbed at her eyes.
“You iced your BFF?” That was huge. Bigger, maybe, than the stealing thing. “What’d she say?”
“You know.” Regan waved her hand dismissively. “Tried to make excuses, said she had a disease! Can you believe her nerve? She promised to get help if I forgave her.”
“But you’re not going to—?”
Regan shook her head. “She violated our family. That’s unforgiveable. If you hadn’t caught her—”
“It was really Rex.” That came out of my mouth before I could stop it.
Regan snorted. “Maybe he should be a police dog instead of a service dog.”
“About that … about Rex, I have something to ask you,” I ventured. “You said Dad suggested training a service dog.”
“He did,” she confirmed, wiping away her tears. “Okay, maybe he was kidding when he said it would look good for my college application.”
“Did he know specifically about Canine Connections?” I asked.
“Of course. How do you think I came up with them?”
I guess “research” was out of the question.
“Do you know if—”
“What?”
“Did he ever, you know, have any of the at-risk kids train a dog, like as a life-lesson thing—to learn responsibility, empathy, helping someone worse off than yourself?”
“All the time.” Regan looked at me curiously. “I thought you knew that, and that the real reason you didn’t force me into doing it was because you wanted to continue Dad’s work.”
Her words hit me like a punch. I’d never thought about it like that. Guess I was the only one, because Mom knew about Dad’s involvement in the program. We shared a lot of stuff, me and my dad, but when I think about it, I realize it was always my stuff, whatever I was going through, or interested in. He never talked about his work. Not specifically. Had I ever asked? Had Regan? Is that why she knew about this?
For a fleeting second, I saw my sister differently. True, she’ll always be everything I’m not, inside out and outside in. Outside our house, what Regan is—beautiful, popular, extroverted, trendy—is valued. She’s the girl other girls wish they were.
No one, as far as I know, wishes she were me.
Inside our house, my dad made me feel like the special one. I always thought he valued the person I was over Regan. But as the days go by, I can’t get away from the feeling—the knowing—that my dad was okay with both of us. That he loved her as deeply as he loved me.
“Regan?”
“What?”
“Would it be okay if I helped with your college essay?”
She narrowed her still-moist eyes. “What makes you think it needs help?”
I fessed up. “You got a lot of it wrong—about the training, I mean.”
A real smile formed on her bow lips. A warm smile, a sisterly smile.
An “I win again!” smile.