I wasn’t exactly thrilled to have a dog this close to me. His nose was twitching as he looked around, making a little snuffling sound. I could feel his heart pounding hard through his fluff, and he was panting. I seemed to remember from some nature documentary (or more likely, Psychic Vet Tech: Off the Leash) that when dogs did this when it wasn’t hot out, it was because they were stressed. I suddenly realized that he might be scared. He didn’t know me or Kat, after all, and we’d taken him out of his home and brought him to a loud place he didn’t understand. He no doubt could sense that the person holding him didn’t know what to do with dogs, and didn’t particularly like them.

For whatever reason, knowing that the dog was possibly as freaked out as I was actually made me feel better—like I wasn’t in this entirely alone. “Okay,” I said quietly to him, rubbing my thumb over his fluff. We’d already stopped at one station, and I didn’t want another one to pass before I figured out what to do here. “Okay, let’s figure this out.”

I had to do this in bite-size chunks. If I thought about everything that was happening, it would be too much. I’d learned this from my dad, before I could even remember learning it. My favorite place to do my homework—even in kindergarten, when we really didn’t have any—had always been wherever my dad was working. I’d pull up a chair next to him at the kitchen table or sprawl on the floor under his desk in his office. I’d tell him about my book report/science project/social studies paper, and he’d discuss what he was working on too. He’d tell me about how you had to build a legal case piece by piece, and how everything had to be airtight or the whole thing fell apart.

When I was particularly stressed about whatever homework I had, he’d calm me down by talking about how you just had to take everything one step at a time. That if he thought about his entire case at once—how much was at stake, how much he had to correctly argue—he’d never get past the first motion.

So he just took it step by step, only trying to control what he could. “How do you eat a whale, pumpkin?” he’d ask me, looking over his glasses.

“One bite at a time,” I’d always reply.

“Atta girl,” he’d say, giving me a wink.