Listen! (9780062213358) Read Online Free Page B

Charley crosses her arms on her chest and looks him straight in the eye. “ This dog will give me something to do this summer, too.”
    She watches his face change. He has made up his mind. “All right. But if he shows the slightest sign of being dangerous, the deal’s off.”
    â€œMrs. Davis says he’s a sweetie. She’s right. You can see it in his eyes. He’s just scared of people.”
    â€œA scared dog is a dangerous dog.”
    â€œHow could he be dangerous? He won’t come close enough to a human being to bite.”
    â€œYou really think you can tame him?”
    â€œYes.” Charley puts more certainty in her voice than she feels. “Feeding him is a start.”
    Her father becomes all business now, settling into the mode that makes him most comfortable. “All right, then. You and Sarita can go pick up some supplies tomorrow. Training books. Food. Dish. Collar. Leash.” He ticks them off on his fingers.
    Charley thinks about the golden dog on a leash. “I don’t think we need a leash yet.”
    â€œCollar and leash,” he says again. “You’re going to need a way to control him.”
    She doesn’t argue.
    Her father comes over to kiss the top of her head and leaves her thinking about a dog who disappears into the woods when she so much as looks at him. Even so, she feels her heart lift. She turns off the television and the light over her bed and slides down under the covers. “Coyote,” she whispers. Where is he right now? She closes her eyes and an image comes into her mind of the dog, a pale shape in the darkness, curled on the flat, smooth ground of his place by the sweet gum tree across the lake. His nose is tucked under his tail. The woods are silent around him. As he has been every night for as long as he can remember, he is alone. But tonight he is not hungry. He sighs in his sleep, and Charley imagines him dreaming of the golden retriever he plays with every day. And of the human who fed him.
    It is pitch-black when Charley wakes from the nightmare, breathing hard. For a moment she thinks she is back in the hospital. But it is too dark for that. Home, then. Her own room. She hopes she didn’t scream.
    Dad hates it when she wakes him in the night. He never knows what to do, what to say. Once, a long time ago now—back near the beginning—she thought she saw the shine of tears on his cheeks as he sat on the edge of her bed, patting her awkwardly, and she felt herself go cold all over. She needs him not to cry. Never to cry. “Only a dream,” he was saying. “Only a dream.” She knew as well as he did that there were worse things than dreams.
    When she had the nightmare in the hospital, the nurses stopped coming when she screamed, it happened so often. It wasn’t worth interrupting whatever else they were doing at that hour. She checks her alarm clock. Three eighteen, the glowing numbers say.
    She puts her hands on her belly and takes a long, slow breath, feeling her belly rise as she breathes. Then she counts to four as she lets the air out slowly, steadily. She does this again, three times, four times. It is the most useful thing Tony the physical terrorist taught her. The breathing smoothes out the sharp edges of panic whenever the nightmare comes. It works. Always. What it doesn’t do is keep the nightmare from coming back. Familiar as it is by now, every time feels like the first time. And real—absolutely real. There is no way to know it is a dream until the panic shoves her up and out of sleep.
    She is running through a huge, bright, indoor place, full of people dragging suitcases, carrying boxes or small children. It has to be an airport, but not Charlotte/Douglas. There is nothing she recognizes. It is full of carts that beep and beep to move people out of the way as they roar past. She keeps having to dodge the carts, every one full of people who glare at her as if she