Saturday morning I pull out the numbers I’ve collected for the Pet Hut. I don’t have enough data to do any real calculations. I need to go back.
I call Windy 1st to ask her to go with me.
“I can’t. It’s my dad’s weekend. I have to hang out with him and his new girlfriend.” She makes a gagging noise into the phone.
Next, I call Levi. I try not to think too much about it. I’ve never called a boy before and asked him to hang out or work on a project or anything. He might take it the wrong way, since Windy won’t be there. And that’s the last thing I want.
“Really? Windy’s not going?” he asks, even though I’ve already told him that.
“Really. She’s at her dad’s this weekend.”
“Then I’m in. But I need a ride.”
“I’ll take care of it. But no camera, okay?” I don’t know the exact number (and that drives me crazy), but I know Levi has taken at least 17 pictures of me. He’s also snapped 11 of Windy.
“That’s like asking me not to bring my right arm.”
Nana’s way too happy when I ask her for a ride. She suggests I change my shirt and offers to curl my hair. I probably should have warned Levi. I probably should have canceled.
“I can’t believe I’m driving my only granddaughter and a boy.” She slaps the steering wheel as we head to his house. “Wait until I tell your uncle Paul.”
“Please don’t.” I can already imagine the lecture he’d give me about boys and dating. And this is not a date!
“I knew middle school would be good for you.”
“Nana, stop,” I warn her.
“I know, I know, you’re just friends.”
“We’re not even friends,” I say. “We’re partners on a project.”
She turns to me and smiles wide. “And that’s why you’re wearing your hair down.” She takes a strand in her fingers. “So pretty.”
“It’s because it’s wet.” I take the rubber band off my wrist and yank my hair into a ponytail.
Nana pulls into the driveway. Levi lives in a small, neat white house that’s decorated with purple flowers and large pumpkins. It belongs on the cover of a real estate magazine.
“You want me to beep the horn, or are you going to ring the doorbell?” she asks.
“Don’t beep.” I get out of the car, hoping Levi will appear before I get to the door. He doesn’t. Dogs bark from inside. I tap my toe 3 times and use my elbow to ring the doorbell.
Levi looks through the blinds before opening the door. I step back in case his killer guard dogs charge. But there’s only a woman standing behind him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“Hi, Lucy. I’m Gina. Nice to meet you.” She tilts her head and smiles when she talks. Gina has brown skin and black hair, like Levi. But his hair is curly on top, and her hair is supershort—almost like Uncle Paul’s military haircut. She’s wearing shorts, a tank top, and sneakers and is kind of sweaty. She’s tall and skinny and probably could be a model. Levi is tall and skinny, too, but he has at least 6 inches to go to catch up with her.
“Nice to meet you.” I wonder if Gina is his biological mom and what his other mom looks like. And who is his biological dad? Seems rude to ask—or even think about. Something Windy would have no problem bringing up.
I hear the car door close and turn to see Nana coming up the sidewalk.
“Hello,” she says as she steps onto the porch. “I’m Lucy’s nana, Barb.” She offers her hand to Gina.
“Hi. I’m Gina. Levi’s mother.”
Nana holds her hand out to Levi next. “Hi, Levi.”
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”
She turns to me and says, “What a polite young man.” I give her a warning look, begging her not to say anything else.
“Thank you for driving them,” Gina says. “I’m teaching a cardio class at 11 and another at 1. I could pick them up later.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nana says. “I’m happy to do it.” I cringe, waiting for her to say something about my lack of a social life, but thankfully she’s quiet.
Levi’s mom kisses his cheek and says good-bye. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed, because I look away.
We follow Nana back to the car. Levi gets in the back seat. I get in the front, taking my standard 3 tries to sit.
I usually don’t like Nana’s fast driving, but today I want her to push the car to its limits. Luckily, she keeps the conversation polite, and Levi doesn’t look too uncomfortable.
“I remember when this used to be a Pizza Hut,” Nana says as she stops in front of the shelter. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”
“They close at 5,” I say.
“We’re staying all day?” Levi asks.
“I am.”
He groans.
Noah’s behind the counter again. He’s talking to a family and waves to Levi and me as we drop off our volunteer permission forms.
“We will be in the office,” I say, like we’re old coworkers.
Levi holds the door for me. The dogs bark and jump inside their kennels. As we walk past, I look around for Cutie Pi but don’t see him.
We knock on the office door that’s marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. No one answers, so Levi opens it. All the papers are still on the desk. No one’s touched anything since we were here last time. I sit, stand, sit, stand, sit in the chair.
“What am I supposed to do?” Levi asks.
“You can help me enter these into the computer,” I say, patting the pile.
“No thanks.”
“You could—”
Something under the desk brushes against my leg. I shove back in the chair and knock into the metal cabinets.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“There is something under there!” I point. Whatever tried to snap off my leg is hidden in the shadows. My heart is thumping like when we ran the mile in gym class.
Levi rushes around the desk and drops to his knees. “It’s Cutie Pi!”
I relax. Slightly.
“Here, boy.” Levi lures him out with kissy sounds. The dog is shaking and keeps his tail between his back legs. I know how he feels.
“Now you have something to do.” I motion to Cutie Pi with my head. “Get him out of here.”
“Hey, Cutie Pi. Do you want to go for a walk?” Levi asks in a fake deep voice. “It sounds like I’m hitting on him.”
“Maybe we should call him Pi,” I suggest.
I double-check to make sure there’s nothing else living under the desk. Then I turn on the computer.
Claire comes in as I’m wiping the keyboard with Clorox.
“I heard you were here,” she says. “Thanks for coming in.”
“Can I take Pi for a walk?” Levi asks. The dog hides behind Levi’s legs. It’s hard to imagine he would enjoy a walk.
“Sure. But keep him away from the other dogs. We don’t have a vaccination record yet.”
Pi tilts his head like he is trying to understand what’s happening.
“Come on. It’s okay,” Levi assures the dog.
With Levi gone, Claire explains to me how to put the data into the computer. They use an old program that is similar to an address book.
“It’s pretty simple,” Claire says. She isn’t kidding. There are better ways to track the information, but this will work for now.
I enter adoption form after adoption form into Claire’s system. I also take the information I need and scribble it on a pad of paper. I could put it in a spreadsheet, but that would take away some of the fun. I collect each dog’s breed, age, color, weight, and gender, and the number of days it took to be adopted. Since the Pet Hut is a no-kill shelter, all the animals are eventually adopted. Including Barnaby, a dog that lived here for 103 days before finding a home. He might still be here if some anonymous donor hadn’t paid his $175 adoption fee. I don’t bother working on the cats. I’m only interested in the dogs for now.
I work for 72 minutes before Levi and Pi finally come back.
“How’s it going?” Levi unclips Pi’s leash. The dog immediately pushes his way back under the desk.
“Fine.” I don’t want to be interrupted. Things are coming together. Correlation and causality. Things are making sense. I scribble another ratio on the pad of paper.
“What’s that?” Levi asks.
“Nothing.” I flip over the paper and send a pile of adoption forms sailing to the floor.
Levi snatches the pad of paper. “Looks like math. Like hard, gross math.”
“Hey!” I jump up. My chair slides back into a filing cabinet. “Give me that.”
“What are you working on?” He studies the sheet like he needs glasses. I grab for it, but Levi’s faster.
“Come on!”
“Tell me what you’re doing.” He holds the pad over his head, teasing me. I jump. I miss. I jump. I miss. Of course, I feel the need to try a 3rd time and fail again. I’m so angry my arms shake.
“Levi!” My voice cracks.
“I’m just playing—”
Barking erupts from between us before Levi can finish his thought. Pi growls at Levi. The fur on his back sticks up. All his teeth are showing.
“Whoa.” Levi steps back. He holds his hands out.
Pi quiets and walks to my right side. He sits, practically on my foot, and leans all his weight against my leg. I try to slide away, but Pi adjusts so he’s still touching me. Gross.
“I’m sorry,” Levi whispers.
“What got into the dog?” I imagine he’s got a trigger word that sets him off. I don’t want to make him mad like Levi did.
“I think he likes you.”
That doesn’t make any sense. And the feeling is not mutual. “What do I do?”
“Pet him.”
“No.” I look down at the stupid dog. He looks up, his head tilted. Our eyes meet in a corny cartoon way. He does have beautiful brown eyes that are thoughtful and sad. Not that I’d tell him that. Not that he understands English.
“Pet him,” Levi says again.
Pi’s tail thwacks the floor with a beat.
1-2-3-4.
1-2-3-4.
1-2-3-4.
“Lucy, rub his head. Scratch him behind the ears.”
“But dogs are so dirty.”
“You don’t have to lick him. Just pet him.”
Since both Levi and Pi seem determined for this to happen, I lower my right hand and, with the tips of my fingers, stroke Pi’s head 3 times. His eyes close. He pushes his head into my knee. These jeans are going right in the wash when I get home.
“You’re a good dog,” I say. I pet him some more, and I lose count of the number of times my hand moves back and forth.
“Here.” Levi hands me my paper with the calculations. “I don’t want your guard dog to attack again.”
“He didn’t attack. He gave you a warning.”
Levi sits on the edge of the desk. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing or not?”
“It’s statistics.” I squirt hand sanitizer in my palm and then walk around to Levi. My new sidekick follows me. “I’m working on a formula. There’s a pattern to how quickly a dog will be adopted. Like small dogs are adopted 1.75 times as fast as big dogs. Gray dogs find homes 2.2 times as quickly as black dogs. Dogs over the age of 8 take an average of 25 days to be adopted, which is over 2 times the average for all Pet Hut dogs. But this is all very preliminary. I need more numbers.” When I sit, stand, sit, stand, sit in the chair, Pi watches with his head tilted.
“How did you come up with all this?” Levi asks.
“It’s not that hard for me.” I drop the pad on the desk. Across the sheet are averages and standard deviations for the 107 dogs most recently adopted.
“I hate math.” His upper lip curls in disgust. “It bites. Math hates me, and I hate math.”
“I could help you,” I offer. “I’m kind of good with numbers.”
“Will you do my homework?”
“No.”
He picks up my calculations again and flips through the 4 pages. His eyes narrow. He shakes his head slightly.
“How good are you?” he asks.
“Really good.” Pi pushes his way back under the desk. I look at him instead of Levi.
“Really good?” He does air quotes around really good. “Don’t make me sing ‘liar, liar, pants on fire.’ I hate to sing.”
“Fine. I’m freaky-excellent-genius-good at math.”
“Seems you’re good with adjectives, too.”
I take a deep breath and tell him my story before I lose my nerve. I want someone to understand that I might not be normal, but this—the numbers, the OCD—is my normal.
“When I was 8 years old, I was struck by lightning. Part of my brain was injured, and I ended up with super number abilities.”
Levi’s eyes open wide. “Seriously?”
I can tell he doesn’t believe me. So I try to dazzle him by reciting pi to the 314th digit.
“I don’t know if you’re right,” he says.
“Trust me. I am.” Then I hand him the oversized plastic calculator Claire keeps on the desk. I tell him to quiz me. I add, subtract, multiply, divide all the numbers he throws at me. We play this game for over 10 minutes, which is plenty of time for me to worry that I’ve made a huge mistake in telling him my secret.
“Enough,” I finally say.
“You’re a freak.” He smiles, exposing the gap between his front teeth.
I shrug. I already knew that. “Don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die. Do you need me to pinkie-promise, too?” Which is his way of promising to keep quiet and sort of mocking me at the same time.
“And I was serious. If you ever need help with math, I could tutor you,” I offer.
“Gee, thanks, Mighty Math Genius.”
“Actually, I prefer Lightning Girl.” I touch my necklace. “And you can always go online if you don’t want to be seen with me.” I tell him about the MathWhiz website.
“Why wouldn’t I want to be seen with you?”
I shrug again. I’m not sure why I said that. The small office suddenly feels too warm.
“So, do you want to help me enter this stuff?” I ask.
“I don’t know if I’m qualified, Lightning Girl.”
“I’m qualified enough for both of us.” I point to the pile of forms on the floor. We spend the rest of the day entering adoption information into the computer and collecting my own sampling. A scraggly dog sleeps on my feet. Levi complains the whole time. It might be the best afternoon of my life.