Buster by Caleb Huett (ebook reader library txt) 📕

combination of the two—but I had always stayed out of it. I just wanted to do a good job, maybe have an adventure every once in a while, do some good in the world.

On the other paw, I thought about Tonio. He needed someone, anyone, to really pay attention to him. Even someone like me.

I thought about the baby I’d saved in the fire. Dog Court wanted me to leave the baby there. Dog Court wanted us to let Mia fly across the country on her own. Dog Court wanted me to sit and stay. Dog Court didn’t want any of us to do anything! Maybe, I realized, I couldn’t do good without picking a side.

Tonio needed me to tell the truth, and Dog Court—all of you—wanted me to lie. To keep my head down and be a Good Dog. No matter what I did, I was making a choice. I wanted that choice to be one I could live with, and seeing the pain in his face, thinking about everything he was going through, the answer was obvious to me:

I needed to tell Tonio.

But how? I couldn’t talk, not like a human. And I had just spent a lot of time trying to convince him I wasn’t smart. I considered everything in Tonio’s room: his bed, his window, his art, the painting supplies, the …

Oh.

Oh.

I knew what would do it, for sure.

First, I had to help Tonio calm down long enough to get his attention. He stopped pacing and sat on the floor against one of his walls, hair pressed up against a painting of the Video Garden. I dipped into my psychiatric service dog training and flopped over onto his lap. I put pressure on his legs and licked at one of his hands to try to distract him from the panic attack.

The most important part of getting through it, like always, was patience. He petted me a little, and when he stopped I stood up and pushed on his stomach to remind him to breathe. He would be getting dizzy from his shallow breaths by now, which had the potential to scare him more—panic attacks try to convince him that he’s going to pass out completely, but he wasn’t going to. And even if he did, I was there to watch him and make sure he’d be okay.

Once that thought got stuck in his mind, and my physical reminders helped him get to deeper breaths, he calmed down over the next several minutes and moved out of panic into a calmer sadness. Now, while he recovered, I needed to make my move.

“What are you doing?” he asked, wiping his eyes with the bandanna. That really needs to be cleaned, I thought, but couldn’t worry about it that second, as I was busy pushing the cardboard wall over in front of him. “There aren’t any more treats in there.”

Treats weren’t my goal. Not this time. I stepped over to the side of his bed—he followed me with his eyes—and grabbed the little plastic box Tonio had put one of his Beamblade decks in. I trotted over to him and dropped the box in his lap.

“Why’re you giving me this, Buster?” He started to stand up. I shot a look at him and gave a small but serious huff-bark. No. “Uh, okay.”

Mia’s deck was still shuffled and her hand was still spread out on the floor from earlier, so I grabbed the deck and loose cards with my teeth and dragged them to the other side of the cardboard wall with the slot in it. Tonio and I could see each other over the top, which was exactly what I wanted—I wasn’t able to get the cards back into a perfect stack, but this was better because I didn’t have opposable thumbs, anyway.

“Buster, you’re acting really weird.” I pulled the seven-card hand one at a time and flipped them faceup in front of the wall so he couldn’t see what I had. He leaned over to look on my side of the cardboard. “Seven cards? That’s …” He shook his head. “Did I pass out? Is this a dream?”

I barked again. No.

“You want to play Beamblade?” His dubious look didn’t drop, but he opened his box of cards, shuffled them in his hands, then pulled seven of them from the top.

I barked again, wagging my tail. Yes.

Tonio closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.

“Okay. You can go first.” Tonio, being a human, was able to just hold his cards. “We need something to represent the Spirit Batteries, so …” He opened his little pouch of treats and placed six of them in two neat rows—three for each of us.

A trading card game was perfect: It required reading, critical thinking, math, an understanding of complicated rules, and an abstract understanding of what it meant to “win” and “lose.” Regular animals don’t think in those terms—but humans do, and so do we. This was the best way to convince him—and it was fun, too.

I had a Flaming Manabyte card in my hand (Manabytes are the energy you use to summon heroes and cast spells), so I pushed it through the slot so Tonio could see it. He built the playing field for us on his side, and turned the Manabyte card so it faced me. I needed a hero card to protect me, so I pushed through Flashlord, the Power Spark, who cost one Flaming Manabyte to summon.

Tonio shook his head. “That’s how you play the game. Yep.” He looked back at me, and I watched him to make sure he wasn’t freaking out. “Is this really happening?”

I hope this wasn’t the wrong choice, I thought. But the look on Tonio’s face—all fear and sadness gone, replaced with a sincere interest (and just a little confusion)—was worth it. This was a mystery for him to solve, and I knew he could do it.

Heroes can’t attack on the first turn, so I tapped the top of the cardboard to show