Snitch Read Online Free Page B

apartment.”
    â€œJosh—” Andrew said.
    But I didn’t want to listen to him, either. He was always making excuses for her. I pushed past both of them and left the apartment. I heard Andrew call my name, but I didn’t stop. I ran all the way down the stairs to the ground floor and out the door.
    â€œHey,” someone called. “Hey, look who it is.”
    I glanced over my shoulder. It was Travis. He was hanging out in the littlepark in front of my building with Daryl Matheson. Boy, it figured that those two knew each other. I kept right on going. I jumped on the first bus that came by.
    I got to the shelter nearly an hour early. Mr. Weller was already in the training room. The chairs for the group had been set out in a circle, but Mr. Weller wasn’t sitting there. He was sitting at a table on one side of the room. His briefcase was open on the floor beside him and he was reading a bunch of papers in file folders and making notes. He looked up when he saw me.
    â€œNice to see someone’s actually taking my advice, even if you appear to be taking it to the extreme,” he said, smiling. Boy, it was the first time I’d seen a smile that day. “Do me a favor?”
    I shrugged. Why not? I didn’t have anything else to do.
    â€œTake this down to Maggie.” He handed me a file folder. “You’ll find her in the dog area. You think you can find that on your own?”
    I nodded, even though I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. The shelter is pretty big, with lots of hallways going off in all directions. I followed the signs and got lost a couple of times. Finally I heard barking. I walked toward the sound and found Maggie sitting at a little table at one end of the long hallway in the dog area. There were dog kennels on both sides, and the dogs all started barking when they saw me coming. Or maybe when they smelled me.
    Maggie looked up and smiled. The second smile of the day.
    â€œBrian asked me to give this to you,” I said.
    She took the folder and thanked me.
    â€œWhy don’t you say hello to Sully while you’re here?” she said. She handed me something. A treat for the dog.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. I was going to see him soon enough. And I had no idea if he was going to listen to me today or if he was going to ignore me and everyone was going to end up laughing at me again.
    â€œHe’s lonely,” she said. “They’re all lonely. And dogs are social animals by nature. Go on.”
    I walked back down between the kennels until I came to Sully’s. He was standing right at the entrance, which was like a gate in a chain-link fence.
    â€œHey, Sully,” I said quietly. He wagged his tail. “Sit, boy.”
    To my complete astonishment, he dropped his butt down onto the ground.
    â€œGood boy,” I said. I slipped the treat through the gate into his mouth. He gulped it down and barked. Maybe I was wrong, but it sounded like a happy bark.

Chapter Seven
    I felt pretty good—until I got back to the training room. Travis was standing right outside the door.
    â€œHey, Gillick,” he said. “I see you’re on time for a change.”
    I ignored him and went into the room. Mr. Weller wasn’t there anymore.
    â€œI bet you’re surprised to see me here,” Travis said. He had followed me inside and was standing close to me. He liked tostand close to people. He thought it scared them. “Bet you thought you’d got away from me, right?”
    The best thing about getting out of the group home was getting away from Travis. He was a bully. He got kids into trouble all the time. He’d got me into trouble when I punched him out. The scar under his eye—that came from me. I wasn’t sorry though. He deserved it for the way he was always picking on this one kid named Jonathan. He was only in the group home because he kept running away from the foster homes they put him in.