Buster by Caleb Huett (ebook reader library txt) 📕

it up to her, or—what if I haven’t noticed other times, too?” He was back in the same mode from when he told the story, words spilling out like they were out of his control. For a kid who was usually so quiet, it was strange to watch—almost like he was fighting with himself, trying to stay under control and failing.

I couldn’t just let him stay in the bad circle. I put both paws on his stomach and bounced again, to get his attention.

He lifted his head up just a little, and his mouth dropped open the tiniest bit. “You’re supposed to notice anxiety, though, right? You stopped me because you could tell I was feeling anxiety.”

He took one more deep breath. “I don’t know. It’s confusing. I need to ask Dr. Jake.”

I could feel his heart rate falling, and his breathing going back to normal. He patted me a few more times, and I pulled my legs back down to the ground.

Tonio stood up and gave a big, long stretch-and-yawn, like I do after a good run—I guess being anxious can wear you out. “You’ve been stuck in here with me for a while, huh?” he said to me. “Mom’s right. We should go to the park.” My tail wagged. He held the treat out again, and my willpower was spent. I snapped it up immediately, and he laughed. “Good boy, Buster. Good boy!”

I followed him back up to his room and had to resist barking with excitement. Tonio was right: I was a good boy. And so was he! But being good was about to get a lot more difficult, for both of us.

“So let’s review.” Pronto checked his notes, typed onto a laptop modified for use with paws. “You were adopted by a human who was, by his own admission: a bully, a liar, and someone who made up problems out of nothing. Which part of that was I supposed to take as …” He clicked back in his notes. “Tonio being a ‘good boy,’ as you said?”

Buster felt his insides boiling at every word out of Pronto’s muzzle. “You don’t get it!” Buster barked. “You didn’t see him!”

Lasagna placed a paw on Buster’s. “He’s trying to make you mad,” the corgi explained quietly. “You don’t have to fetch just because he’s throwing.”

Pronto went on. “What we’re seeing is that he made his problems up, and you fell for it. You decided you needed to ‘save’ him, when the only person he needed saving from was himself.”

“What an interesting point, Pronto!” Lasagna proclaimed with a squeak and a cheerful tail wag. He tilted his head at Buster. “Was Tonio making up his own problems?”

“No!” Buster barked, frustrated.

“Okay.” Lasagna subtly twisted his front paws and twitched his ears in the Underspeak for trust me. “It does look like that, though, right? On the outside, it seems like Tonio is worrying about nothing.”

A small whine escaped between Buster’s teeth. “Yes, on the outside, it can look like Tonio is making things up.”

Lasagna tilted his head and swiveled an ear in a way that meant but.

Oh! Buster’s ears shot up and his tail stiffened. “But … the problems feel real to him. Anxiety is like …” He searched for a way to explain to all these dogs. “Anxiety is like if you smelled a cat, all the time, even if there had never been a cat anywhere near you. Your brain would always be yelling, Cat! Cat! Cat! Even though you knew there wasn’t one around. It’s like if there was a part of your brain that kept telling you, every second, that someone had thrown a Frisbee.” Buster nodded, and his tail started wagging on its own. He’d found it.

“You didn’t see anyone throw a Frisbee, and you know deep down there isn’t one, but every bone in your body is saying, Jump! Catch it! Find the Frisbee! Where did it go?!” He saw some dogs in the crowd nodding, understanding. “You might even get used to it! You might be totally sure, on a conscious level, that there’s no Frisbee. But then maybe you’re really tired, or you had a bad day, and your brain yells, FRISBEE! and before you have a chance to think about it, you’ve jumped up in the air to catch a Frisbee that doesn’t exist, and everyone is looking at you weird, like ‘Why did you just jump over nothing?’ ”

“I see.” Lasagna looked over at his opponent. “Does that make sense to you, Pronto?”

“Absolutely not.” The husky made a dramatic exasperated face. “Antonio is a child! He doesn’t have anything to worry about. And he’s certainly not chasing Frisbees.”

“Not an actual Frisbee!” Buster knew the other lawyer was only pretending to not understand. He hoped that telling more of the story would help convince the judge.

Bellville Square is the center of all life in Bellville, South Carolina. The center of Bellville Square is the Bellville Bell, which they named the town after. A long time ago, somebody branded the words ring, ring into the side of the bell, which looked neat but accidentally messed it up so it couldn’t really ring anymore. Now it’s just for display. I didn’t know all of this on our first trip to the dog park, but I thought I’d go ahead and warn the Court so you’d understand why everyone in Bellville says “ring, ring” all the time. It was extremely confusing at first.

“Ring, ring, Antonio! How are you this morning?” A woman in a plaid shirt and big jeans waved at us as we walked through the square toward the dog park. Tonio smiled.

“Ring, ring, Mrs. Chambers. I’m doing all right.”

“Looking forward to sixth grade?”

Tonio didn’t have time to look as horrified as he felt, because he was interrupted by a yell so loud, so sudden, that my whole body reacted.

“SOMEBODY STOP THAT DOG!”

I felt a