Tanya had not been expecting this question. She considered her options. “Your real dad,” she said. She leaned down and scratched the dog on the top of his head. The dog’s ear twitched.

“Bruno,” Ross said.

“Dallas,” Tanya said.

“No. The dog.”

“Bruno.” The dog lifted his head when she said his name. His eyes were cloudy with disease, but his tail wagged slowly.

“We’re going for a walk,” Ross said, pulling up on the leash and wrapping it around his hand. “Do you want to come?”

“Okay,” said Tanya, even though she wasn’t sure if a child his age should be out walking a dog by himself. Victor Street was a dead-end, on a point of land that the Kaministiquia River wrapped around like a snake. They walked in silence towards the end of the point. That way was all downhill, so it was easy, and beautiful – the Nor’Wester Mountains on the horizon, surrounded by acres and acres of boreal forest. But that meant they would be going uphill on the way back. Tanya would have preferred to start with the hard part.

Finally Ross said, “Do you want to know what my favourite constellation is?” Tanya nodded. “Draco. It means dragon. Dragons are all the guardians of ancient treasure, right? And Draco used to be the guardian of the pole star, but then the earth moved. So now it’s a dragon with nothing to guard.” He was quiet for a moment. “It’s kind of hard to see.”

“Where is it?” Tanya asked. “At nighttime, I mean.”

Ross pointed up to the sky. They both stopped walking and tilted their heads back. Tanya didn’t know if he was pointing at the exact location of the constellation in the sky, or just the sky in general. Maybe he thought she didn’t know that was where the stars were. But it was kind of cool to picture a dragon up there.

“What’s your favourite constellation?” Ross asked as they started walking again.

“I don’t have one, I don’t think. I have a favourite rock, though.”

“What is it?”

“Shale,” Tanya said, suddenly self-conscious. She had never told anyone about her favourite rock before. “It’s a fine-grained clastic sedimentary rock formed through compaction.”

“Oh,” Ross said, sounding disappointed. “Does it do anything special?”

She thought about it. “Sometimes there’s fossils in it.”

“Cool.” The dog stopped and squatted to poop on the side of the road, balancing awkwardly on two of his three legs. Ross handed Tanya the leash to hold while he pulled a roll of pink bags with little white hearts on them out of his pocket and ripped one off, then bent over and picked up the poop. “Do you want to carry this?” he asked, holding the bag out to her.

“No, thanks.”

“Okay, then you can walk Bruno.”