“I love it. I mean, you have a sky!”

“That’s my favorite part too,” she says, looking upward. “They painted it like that when I was little.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” I ask.

“My parents. Well, my mom mostly,” but Macy quickly changes the subject, striding across her room, saying, “Oh! Sadie, here, come meet Dango.”

I rush over to where she is standing. In the corner of her bedroom is a giant cage that seems big enough to hold a big dog, except it has two stories lined with shredded paper and aspen wood bedding, with miniature houses that look like they were built for gnomes, along with little tufts of hay scattered here and there. There’s a half-eaten lettuce leaf and a celery stalk sticking out of a little food bowl filled with green bunny food pellets. I look all over, but I don’t see the rabbit.

Macy opens a little door on the side of the cage and wiggles her fingers through the shredded papers, saying, “Hello, Dango? I’m home.”

That’s when I notice something familiar. On the wall, right outside of Dango’s cage, is a piece of paper, taped at the corners, almost like it’s a decoration for Dango’s home. It’s the origami bunny I drew for Macy.

And suddenly two bunny ears pop up from the roof of the gnome house, followed by a tiny high-pitched squeal. Dango hops—a blur of peach fur—toward Macy, in a way that reminds me of how a dog would greet their special human.

Macy picks Dango up and brings him to a soft rug in the middle of the room, where he stretches out to twice his original puffball size.

“He’s so big and adorable!” I say as he barrels toward me and stands up on his hind legs to sniff me before he lets me pet him. “And soft!”

“The softest,” Macy agrees, reaching over to scratch between Dango’s ears.

“I pictured him as so much smaller, but he’s the size of my cat!”

“He was so small when I first adopted him. When my grandma saw him for the first time, she said he looked like a little dumpling, except she said dango, ‘dumpling’ in Japanese,” she explains. “So we just started calling him that!”

Macy’s grandma comes in right then, carrying a big tray full of all kinds of snacks. Veggies and crackers and pickle spears, yogurt, and what look like little cookies or pastries.

“Thank you, Sobo,” Macy says.

“Work hard, girls.” As she leaves the room, we hear her say, “Don’t play with Dango and ignore your schoolwork.”

“We won’t,” Macy calls after her.