I go back inside with Noah, but when he puts his headset on and starts talking to whoever he is playing against on his video game, I know he won’t bother to check on me again for a while.

In the kitchen I quietly open the cabinet, sneaking out a can of Catniss’s food. The grinding sound of the can opener makes her come running. I turn the can upside down onto a plate, and the blob of can-shaped Oceanfish Delight fills the kitchen with a terrible fish-tank stink. Catniss starts meowing so loud I’m scared she is going to give me away, so I drop a spoonful of the mush into her bowl and whisper, “Shhh, this isn’t for you.”

Next, I fill a big bowl with water and, along with the plate of cat food, bring it out to the clearing where the dog came out of the woods. I call and whistle and watch and wait for what seems like forever. But she doesn’t come back.

Chapter 3

RESPONSIBILITY

All day long I keep my eyes on the backyard from the round window in my bedroom. I use my bird-watching binoculars to try to see deeper into the woods, just in case I can spot the dog somewhere out there. I take breaks to check my laptop, but Jude still hasn’t responded.

Come back, I think, throwing my thoughts to her as hard as I can.

At my desk, I take out my box of 132 colored pencils, which I received for my tenth birthday, and flip to a new page in my S. Hawkins sketchbook. Sometimes when I’m drawing, I feel like I’m in another place, almost like a dream, and time can pass all around me without me even knowing it.

Text bubble: The first earthling S. Hawkins meets is a furry creature like none she’s encountered before in all of her travels, but who is lost just like she is . . .

I always start with the eyes, whether they belong to a person, an alien, or even a dog. Gramps taught me that trick—he knows all about drawing because he used to draw political cartoons for the newspapers. He showed me a bunch that he had saved, and even though the colors had faded and I didn’t understand what most of them were about, I could still tell they were amazing.