The backyard is little more than patchy green grass, rocks, shells, and sandy soil, but it’s mine. There’s a single palm tree that swishes and paints the sky, and trees like this one are why swishing sounds are always blue.
I’m sunning myself. The pleasure of sunning oneself should never be underestimated. My soul is green in the sun. It opens, and I am bigger.
I need to rest. We’ve been training over many moments lately. Alex says, “One week! One week to go!” His words feel like green-grass bellyaches, like pokes from a sharp stick. So I’m sunning myself after a long day of being useful.
Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.
The sound I see is red and orange and yellow. A burst of flame. I open my nostrils to it and taste Smaug.
I follow the scent. He’s around the side of the house and he’s sunning himself, too, on a rock. His eyes are closed, and he’s moving slowly, intentionally, like a poem of flower buds lining a tree branch.
Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.
The sound he makes by dropping open his spiky bearded chin and waggling his tongue. It’s the sound of hot, hissing, crackling fire.
A fire-breathing dragon.
Do you believe it? Smaug says, eyes still shut. I didn’t know he knew I was here. Do you believe the fire?
I don’t. I learned long ago the difference between fire in my soul and fire on my skin. Don’t be silly, I say.
Smaug opens one roly-poly bug eye. If you believe, it becomes.
I huff. Not always. “Always” is every time. “Not always” is not.
Your belief is flimsy, Smaug says. He waves a claw through the air like a breeze. I am a fire-breathing dragon. What are you?
I pull my neck backward, a turtle in retreat. Pardon me?
What are you? What do you choose to believe about yourself?
Beliefs are leaves: each different, each essential. Plump with green, full of hope and promise, each one supporting growth. Renewing.
If I could pick any leaf in a world of leaves, I’d pick the one that seems most important to my pack: the tool leaf. The useful one. The one that proves my first pack was wrong about me. But I don’t tell Smaug this, because his point is I can become anything, anything at all, and that is simply absurd and untrue. Untruths taste like turkey bacon.
I think back to Micah and his flying-friend birthday party.
I want to fly, I say. That’s not a turkey-bacon truth, that’s 100 percent pure pork. Who doesn’t envy birds? But me flying is as absurd as Smaug believing he’s truly breathing fire.
Then jump, Smaug says. You can’t fly without jumping.
I’m shaking my head so hard at this silly lizard, my tags jangle. He jerks his whiskery chin at the big metal box that blows cool air inside the house.
He’s daring me to jump off it. Dares taste like sardines, salty and boneless.
I clamber atop the metal thing, my toenails making horrible knifelike noises as they claw the ridges on the box.
The metal is hot under my paw pads. This box has been sunning itself, too.
Smaug spins his head so his eyes are almost where his chin should be. He is rubber-ball unpredictable. Now the potential to fly exists. Jump.
The box is taller than I thought it was, now that I’m up here. Why do our eyes sometimes lie to us? My knees tremble like butterflies.
Fly.
I close my eyes.
I jump.
My legs spiral through air, swimming.
And the second before I land, I feel it. I feel flying.
I smile, loll my tongue.
But I don’t tell Smaug. Why give him such satisfaction?
Smaug’s eyes are closed again, and he’s hissing fire colors: Hheeeeeeessssshhhh.
I climb back onto the metal box. It’s not easy, and it’s sidewalk hot, but flying!
I jump again. This time I twist my hips and let my tongue flap. Flying!
I can’t hold it back. Did you see that? I say, grinning. I’m grateful that Smaug is not an I-told-you-so kind of lizard. I-told-you-sos rank at the same level as tattletales.
Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.
And again. I climb. I ready myself. I leap—
Hheeeeeeessssshhhhh.
“DAISY!”
Micah’s voice hits me with a crack, like a ball hits a bat. I open my eyes. I don’t fly. I crash. Onto Smaug.
Smaug curls, hisses. I can’t blame him. Instinct is blood.
Micah marches to us, his feet furious. “Daisy! Bad girl, attacking Smaug! Bad, bad girl!”
And then he does it. He takes the basketball he’s always holding and he throws it with all his might. It hits my jaw like a car bumper. Silver chrome pain shoots through my skull.
I duck my head, instinctively protecting my torn left ear, and tuck my tail. I am tangled-leash confused. This is something my first pack would do. My heart knots with sadness.
Micah scoops up his ball, his lizard, and stomps inside, his feet tattletaling my mistake to the Colonel. “Dad!”
If you believe, it becomes.
I believe I need to stick to that tool leaf.
“Well, you shouldn’t let that lizard wander around like that!” the Colonel snaps at Micah. He leans against me, taking the weight off his walking stick.
Yeah! I chime in.
Micah flinches. I swear, I think he hears me better than any of them.
“It’s a bearded dragon, Dad. And he was here first.”
The Colonel pinches the skin between his eyes, and the gesture gives off a high-pitched shriek, like escaping air. It only seems to bother me, though. I cock my head.
“Micah, honey,” Anna says. She lays a hand on his shoulder. “You just have to keep him in his tank now, okay?”
Micah scowls at me like I smell of skunk. His feet twitch. I pull back.
“We know you love Smaug,” Anna says. “But we need Daisy. Understand?”
Everyone is stone quiet except the Colonel’s pinch. It’s nerve-snapping shrill.
Micah scoots his chair back. He leaves. Anna sighs smoke. Victor pinches—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
I understand.
Smaug is love.
I am need.
But need is useful.
Right?