Dedication

Chapter 1: Defenseless

“Something’s wrong with that dog,” said Katie.

Amy stopped drawing and looked up from her iPad. She had been trying to ignore her little sister since Dad had gotten off the highway to avoid the accident a few miles up. The traffic had already been bad coming back from their weekend at the shore, and the crash ahead had only made things worse.

Katie had started talking about anything they passed, mostly to hear her own voice. Look, a motel. It says it has a pool. Someone threw a pizza box out of their window. There’s a rude word written on that stop sign. Amy had been doing a good job of avoiding her up until then, focusing instead on brainstorming for her science fair project.

But Katie got Amy’s attention this time. Dogs were her weak spot.

“Wrong how?” asked Amy.

Katie had her serious face on, her six-year-old brow knitted and her mouth pulled into a tight line. She pointed out the window, and Amy followed her finger to the dark shape sitting by the chain-link fence.

At first, Amy didn’t know quite what she was seeing … and then she felt a cold prickle up the back of her neck.

“Dad, pull over,” she said.

Her father glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Amy, how many times did I tell you to pee before we left—”

“They did something to its eyes!” she blurted out, louder than she meant to.

Dad frowned, and he and Mom finally looked out the window. “I give up,” he mumbled, and surprised Amy by pulling over to the shoulder.

“Be careful!” cried Mom, but Amy was already out of the car, jogging through the knee-high grass by the side of the road. The closer she got to the dog, the more she saw and the sicker she felt in her stomach. When she reached the fence it was tied to and knelt down beside the animal, she felt a gasp leave her mouth, and she thought she might cry.

It was a German shepherd, its fur as black and shiny as freshly laid tar. A rusty chain was looped tightly around its neck and clasped with a padlock; another lock held the makeshift leash to a stretch of chain-link fence that seemed to exist for no real reason. A blindfold made from a dirty rag was tied tight over the dog’s eyes, and a thick loop of duct tape had been wrapped around its muzzle, holding its mouth shut.

“Oh, you poor thing,” muttered Amy. She reached out and petted the dog’s neck; she expected it to flinch away, but the shepherd just let her stroke its fur and whined softly.

Behind her, she heard Mom, Dad, and Katie come walking up.

Mom made a noise in her throat. “Oh my … that’s so horrible. Look at that, Mitch. How could someone do this to a defenseless animal?”

“It’s pretty awful,” said Dad, though he quickly followed up with, “Amy, don’t touch that dog. He could be sick.”

Amy didn’t even think about that. Her mind was already racing, looking for a solution. Bit by bit, step by step, she worked out the problem, the parameters, and the answer. “We need water. To loosen the tape.” She looked back at Katie, who nodded and trotted back to the car.

“Whoa, now, hold on,” said Dad. “We don’t know whose dog this is. Somebody might come looking for him.”

“They taped his mouth shut, Dad,” Amy argued.

“Yeah, but even then—” Before he could finish, Katie was back with the bottle of water from their snack bag.

Amy shushed the dog as she reached around behind his head to untie the blindfold. The rag had been cinched so tight it looked painful, so Amy’s fingers had to work carefully at the knot. She noticed that the German shepherd didn’t even flinch when she finally slid the fabric off his face. This poor guy must have been through a lot.

Once the blindfold was off, Amy could see the dog’s eyes shining. To Amy, the dog looked scared, lost … and she wondered how he had gotten here.

The muzzle was harder with how the tape was looped around it. Amy took the water bottle and dribbled water onto the dog’s fur, trying to loosen the adhesive. Then her father brought out his Swiss Army knife and used the tiny scissors inside to cut the tape where it held the shepherd’s mouth shut. Then they poured more water on the dog’s nose and chin, and Amy pulled the last of the tape away. It was a traumatic process, she thought, but at least they’d gotten the dog free.

As soon as they pulled the last of the tape off, the dog barked and licked Amy’s face. She laughed with a bit of crying on the end, happy to have liberated the dog but sad that anyone would leave such a sweet, handsome animal in this state. The shepherd pulled at his chain, licking Amy’s hand and wagging his tail excitedly. Katie stepped toward him, and the minute she was in reach, the dog bathed the little girl’s face in kisses, making her giggle and wrap her arms around his neck.

“All right, well,” said Dad, trying to look stern through his smile, “that was very sweet of you, Amy. But now that his face is free, we should call a shelter and leave him.”

“Dad!” cried Amy, climbing to her feet. She felt stung—how could he just leave this poor guy here? “We have to take him somewhere. He could die out here!”

“We can’t just walk away with him, Amy. He’s chained to that fence,” said Dad.

“Don’t you have bolt cutters in your emergency kit?” Mom asked.

Dad rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Patricia. You really backed me up here.”

“I want to save the doggy,” said Katie, scratching the shepherd’s face. “Please, Daddy. Please.”

Amy folded her arms and stared at her father, waiting. Saying no to Amy was one thing, but once Katie got involved, he knew it was a losing battle. Dad stared back, flared his nostrils, and finally threw his arms up. “Fine. Give me a second.”

Amy knelt down beside the shepherd and scratched his neck. The dog panted and looked from Katie to Amy with his tongue lolling out, regarding them both. What a good dog, thought Amy. Strong, too, and brave. He hadn’t even yelped when she’d pulled some of his fur out. That was strange—maybe he’d had obedience training in his past, or had gotten tape on his face before. Or maybe he was just happy that someone like her had come along and saved him.

“Good boy, Rover,” Katie said with a laugh.

Amy scowled—typical Katie, naming the dog before Amy even had a chance. “Oh,” Amy said, trying to sound like she was joking, but letting her annoyance slip through, “the rest of us don’t get any say in his name?”

Katie looked perplexed, like she didn’t know where the name had come from. “I dunno,” she said hesitantly. “Don’t you think he looks like a Rover? We should call him that. Isn’t that right, Rover?”

Amy wanted to argue—Katie was the baby, so she always got her way, which really wasn’t fair—but something about the name felt right to her. The shepherd looked noble, obedient, like man’s best friend. A classic dog name suited him.

“Good boy, Rover,” said Amy. Rover barked and panted at her.

If Amy hadn’t known any better, she would have said the dog was smiling.

Chapter 2: Rover

They pulled over at a rest stop a few miles down the road, a concrete turnaround with a gas station and a Dairy Queen separated by a huge parking lot and a bank of picnic tables. Five or six other families sat eating ice cream and burgers. They all looked pretty tough to Amy, the fathers thickset and covered with stubble, wearing sleeveless shirts that showed tattoos, the moms never smiling, and snapping at their kids in sharp voices.

One girl about Amy’s age, thin and mean-eyed, glared at her as she passed. Without thinking, Amy put her iPad in the pocket on the back of Mom’s seat. Mom felt the movement, glanced back, and gave her a sympathetic smile.

“Nobody’s going to bother you here, Amy,” said Mom.

“I know,” said Amy, rolling her eyes.

“Just because someone’s a stranger doesn’t mean they’re bad,” Mom went on. “Good and bad are just constructs people use.”

Dad glanced at Mom and raised an eyebrow. He looked back at Amy and mouthed, Hide the iPad, then winked. She smiled and winked back.

Meanwhile, Katie couldn’t stop laughing and playing with Rover. The dog stood in the way-back and put his head over the backs of the girls’ seats, licking and nuzzling Katie. She kept giggling and pushing the dog away, but Amy could tell she wasn’t really trying that hard, and she would always let Rover win and give her an earful of nuzzles and licks.

“I’m going to look up some animal shelters in the area, see what I find,” said Dad. “You guys hang back and look after the dog.”

“Can we take Rover for a walk, Daddy?” asked Katie.

Dad sighed and shook his head. “I can’t believe you’ve already named him. This’ll end in tears. Yeah, sure, take him out for a breath of fresh air. I’ll see if we can get him a cup of water or something. Amy, you hanging back or you with me?”

“I’m with you,” she said. “I gotta use the bathroom anyway.”

They headed inside the gas station mini-mart, and Amy used the chemical-smelling, harshly lit restroom. When she came out, Dad was gone. She found him on a bench around the side of the building, hunched over his ringing phone. She felt a twinge of embarrassment—Dad preferred speakerphone, saying the phone got sweaty against his face, so he was always that guy having a loud conversation in public that everyone else could hear.

The phone clicked. “Robins County Animal Rescue,” chirped a voice. “This is Becca speaking. How can I help you?”

“Hi, my family and I found a stray dog,” said Dad. “It looks like he’s been pretty mistreated. We were wondering if we could bring him in.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” cooed the woman on the phone. “He might be better suited with a vet, though, as our medical facilities are limited. What are his injuries?”

“Not really injuries, exactly,” said Dad. “Someone taped his mouth shut and tied a blindfold over his eyes. We might have pulled a little hair out when we took the tape off. He was chained to a fence, but we cut through it to free him. We were worried he would starve out there on his own.”

Silence.

“Hello?” asked Dad.

“What’s the dog’s name?”

Amy felt the hair on her arms stand up. The woman’s voice had changed so quickly, it was as though a different person had picked up the phone. Instead of high-pitched, it was low and hoarse; instead of cheery, it was almost angry.

Dad noticed, too, sitting back and giving his phone a stink eye. “The dog didn’t have any tags or a collar. Listen, we don’t know who—”

“What is the dog’s name?”

Amy took a step back. The woman had practically yelled. Dad’s mouth hung open for a moment.

“I mean, my daughter started calling him Rover,” said Dad. “But that’s just something she made up—”

A click. The screen flashed CALL ENDED. Dad sat back, looking puzzled … and then finally noticed Amy out of the corner of his eye. The two of them shared a confused expression.

“Super weird, right?” said Dad with a little laugh.

Amy nodded, trying to smile back at him, to make it a strange moment and not a scary one. But something about it made her uncomfortable. The woman’s voice had a tone she only heard in grown-ups when there was a serious emergency, like when Mom had gotten bitten by a snake on their Phoenix trip four years ago. There was fear in her voice—real, genuine fear.

Dad must have sensed the vibe, too, because he fished in his pocket and pulled out a twenty. “Here’s some money,” he said. “Go get some ice cream for everyone.”

Amy took the money and headed back around the side of the building … but a tall shape blocked her path. It was the girl from the picnic table who’d given Amy that hard stare as they’d driven in. She was thin and rangy, maybe a year older than Amy, in cutoffs and a Supreme shirt. She folded her arms and stared down at Amy with a smile.

“Couldn’t help but overhear you got some ice-cream money,” said the girl softly.

Amy suddenly felt very small and helpless. She clenched her hand around Dad’s twenty dollars and turned around … but another girl blocked her path. She was shorter, but looked no less mean. Amy turned back to the tall girl, whose smile had grown into a grin.

“Doesn’t need to be a problem,” said the tall girl. “You just share the wealth and everything’s fine. Make a peep and I bust your nose. Simple as that.”

Amy’s throat tightened. She felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes, and cursed herself for almost crying like a baby. She wished she were tougher, one of the big solid kids on her school softball team who could shove a girl like this aside. But no, she was a science kid, a nerd at heart who’d never even thought about throwing a punch. So much for Mom’s Good and bad are constructs speech. Here, the best-case scenario was forking over her money and walking away crying like the weak little idiot she was—

Whuff.

All their heads turned. Rover sat on the asphalt to Amy’s left, eyeing the tall girl. For a second, Amy was scared the dog might bite them. But Rover didn’t growl or crouch low the way dogs do when they attack. He just stared calmly at the tall girl, and waited.

“What … what’s wrong with that dog?” asked the girl. Amy noticed that she was staring back at Rover with wide eyes and quivering lips. The color slowly drained out of the girl’s face, and she stepped away from Amy, putting her back against the wall of the store.

“Are you okay?” asked Amy, suddenly feeling scared for the girl. Maybe she had some sort of deathly allergy to dogs.

The tall girl opened her mouth as if to speak—but instead, she lurched forward and vomited across the concrete. All at once, people were yelling, crying out “Ew” and “Whoa,” and the girl’s parents were running over, asking if she was okay. The second girl backed away, looking like she might cry.

Amy bolted back toward Mom and Katie.

Rover trotted at her side with the blank look still on his face.

Chapter 3: Leader of the Pack

“You okay, kiddo?” asked Mom, putting a hand on Amy’s shoulder as they unloaded sandy towels and duffel bags from the back of the car.

“I’m fine,” Amy said, giving her a tight smile. Mom smiled back and seemed to buy it. Amy wouldn’t let her see how shaken she really was; that would only start a lot of worrying and arguing and long talks about how sometimes these things happened. Amy knew she had a habit of getting scared of things—the attic, failing in school, all sorts of stuff made her anxious—so she tried to play this off like no big deal.

Still, she kept replaying the scene in her mind. There was something about the look on that girl’s face, and how quickly she’d thrown up, that was unsettling. Somehow, Amy thought it would’ve been less scary if Rover had growled at them.

Rover stood on the lawn with Katie now. The little girl clapped and laughed at the dog, even as he stood calmly watching them unpack.

“Katie, don’t get too attached,” called Dad as he came back out of the house. “The minute we find a shelter with an opening, that dog is gone.”

“But, Dad, look!” Katie said. “Rover, sit!” Rover sat. “Rover, lie down!” The dog lay down, head up, attentively looking at Katie. Katie clapped again, excited. “Rover, roll over!” Rover rolled around onto his back and then back onto his belly. “Rover, speak!” Rover barked softly.

Amy couldn’t help but be impressed. There obviously had been some training in this dog’s past.

She brought her armful of bags and towels inside and immediately heard yipping and toenails clattering on the floor. Before she could even step into their foyer, Stormy, the family labradoodle, came rushing over to Amy and began leaping around excitedly at her feet.

“Hi, Stormy, yes, I see you, hello,” she said as she walked to the basement door. Once she’d tossed the dirty laundry down the stairs, she knelt and gave the dog some love, scratching her ears and chin. “Did Mrs. Ward take good care of you while we were gone? Huh, good girl? Huh?” The sweet, excitable dog ducked Amy’s hand, then immediately shoved her head under it. Amy loved that about her—she tried to play like she could escape Amy’s grasp, when really all she wanted was scratches. Amy wondered where Coop and Hutch, the family cats, were hiding; odds were good they were either sitting directly on Amy’s pillow or up in the attic hunting mice.

“Your father might be right,” Mom said as she came up behind Amy and tossed her own tote bag of vacation laundry down the stairs. “We’ve already got a bit of a zoo in this house. Not sure we have room for another dog.”

“Tell that to Katie,” Amy groaned, giving Stormy the full treatment—hindquarter scratches, belly rubs, pets on the face that the dog pretended to snap at but made deep groaning noises over. “She’s the one getting really attached to him.”

“He is a handsome dog,” said Mom.

“And we wouldn’t even need to train him,” added Amy quickly.

“Aha, so it’s Katie we have to worry about,” said Mom with a smirk. “Nice try, pal.”

“I’m just saying,” Amy said with a fake-innocent shrug. “It might be nice to give this dog a home. After however long he was trapped on the side of the road, maybe he could use a night in a warm house with loving people.”

Mom tried to look stern, but Amy could see she was winning.

Finally, Amy’s mother shook her head and sighed. “I can’t understand what kind of evil person would do that to a dog,” she said. “And especially one so well trained and sweet.”

Amy nodded. Whoever had chained Rover at the side of the road must have wanted him out of their life pretty bad to give up a dog who was so responsive to commands. Why waste your time teaching a dog to roll over if you’re only going to leave him stranded with his mouth taped shut?

“In here, boy!” Katie led Rover into the house, gripping him by a hunk of hair on the back of his neck. If the dog minded, he made no show of it.

“Rover, come meet everyone,” said Katie, pointing over to where Amy crouched. “This is Stormy, our other dog. She’s a sweetheart.”

From her spot on her back, Stormy sniffed the air. Suddenly, the dog tensed under Amy’s palm so fast, Amy yanked her hand back with a gasp.

Stormy’s eyes locked on Rover, and a low whine rose from her throat. Amy flinched at the sound; it was like nothing she’d ever heard before, strained and piercing, almost like silverware being scraped across a plate. When Amy tried to pet the dog’s back, she felt that every muscle beneath her pelt shook with tension. The hair on the nape of her neck stood straight up.

Rover, for his part, stood there with his tongue hanging out, staring calmly back at her.

“Easy, Stormy,” Amy cooed. “It’s just another dog, he’s not going to hurt—”

Stormy leapt to her feet and barked her head off, her voice cracking in panic. With each bark, she lunged slightly forward—but then recoiled ever so slightly backward. Katie threw her arms around Rover’s neck and Amy backed off from the family dog, agitated by the noise. Stormy had barked at other dogs in the past, sure, but never like this. Amy had heard this bark only once before, when they’d run into a bear on a family hike a couple of years ago.

Rover took a step forward, and Stormy turned and hightailed it out of the room. The doggy door at the kitchen’s back entrance sounded like the flapping of some huge bird as she barreled through it and out into their backyard.

“Whoa!” said Katie. “Is Stormy okay?”

“Oh, it’s fine, honey,” said Mom. “It’s just alpha dominance, and Stormy’s not too happy about it.”

“What’s al-pha dom-i-nance?” asked Katie, pronouncing each syllable.

Amy blinked, and finally regained her composure. “It’s when a dog shows the other dogs in the area that he or she is the one in charge, claiming control of the space,” she said. “Rover’s a bigger dog, and a male, so Stormy might be afraid of him.”

“Aw,” said Katie, squeezing Rover even tighter. “Rover’s not trying to steal Stormy’s house from her! He just needs somewhere to stay. Come, Rover, you can stay in my room for now.”

“Now, wait a second, Katie, we never agreed on that—” But Mom had barely spoken when Rover and Katie turned and walked upstairs, Katie’s giggles trailing down the stairs as she and the dog trotted up to her bedroom.

Mom watched them go. When she turned back to Amy, a confused look sat across her face.

“That was weird,” Mom said with a little laugh that wasn’t very funny. “It looked like that dog was leading your sister up there, not the other way around.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Amy, rising to her feet. “It’s like he already owns the place.”

Chapter 4: Clean Bill of Health

Marguerite was asking Amy a question, but Amy barely registered it. Her eyes hurt from pushing them so far to the left. She wished she could read lips.

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