“He is invisible . . . kind of.”

Lexie screwed up her lips so they looked kind of like the red scrunchy she wore in her hair, then said, “No, it’s more than that. There’s something else about him that either you don’t know or you’re just not telling me.”

“Well, his mother either disappeared in Waldbaum’s supermarket or got chopped up by his father, who sent pieces to all fifty states. No one’s really sure which it is.”

“Hmm,” Lexie said. “That’s bound to have an effect on a person, either way.”

“He seems okay to me.”

“He’s very sweet,” Lexie added.

“Ripe is the word,” I said. “He’s gotta start wearing deodorant.”

The lights in the amphitheater started to dim, and the crowd began cheering for the band to start.

“Maybe you should walk the dogs,” Lexie said.

“Huh?”

“I said maybe you should walk the dogs, and Calvin should be my escort.”

I wasn’t expecting that. It hit me in a place I didn’t know was there. All I could think of was one of those medical shows. They’re operating on some poor slob, they accidentally nick an artery, and he starts gushing. “We got a bleeder!” the surgeon yells, and everybody comes rushing to the operating table. Nobody was rushing to me, though.

“Sure,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

The band began to play, and I quickly wiped away the tears I was bleeding, even though I knew she couldn’t see them.

Lexie confronted her grandfather the next morning, telling him she knew that he paid boys to hang around with her. I showed up at Crawley’s that afternoon, determined to quit before I got fired, but Crawley didn’t give me the satisfaction.

“You are a miserable failure,” the old man told me. “You couldn’t even keep our financial arrangement a secret.”

“She already knew,” I told him.

“How could she already know? What do you take me for, an idiot?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

He grunted, then threw a chew toy at Fortitude, who was gnawing on his shoe. The toy bounced off the dog’s nose, and she went for it, trotting off happily with the toy in her jaws.

“Apparently, whatever you did, it disgusted my granddaughter enough that she’d rather be with that Schwa kid than with you. You are hereby demoted to dog walker again.”

“Who said I’m doing anything for you anymore?”

“You did,” Crawley said calmly. “You accepted twelve weeks of community service.”

“Well, now I unaccept it.”

“Hmmph. Too bad,” Crawley said. “I was actually beginning to think you had some personal integrity.”

I grit my teeth. I don’t know why it mattered what he thought of me, but it did. He was right; I was a miserable failure—even at quitting.

“Do you want me to walk the dogs now or later?”