“All the time, and he keeps saying no because Mom’s too busy and he’s about to be gone too much,” he mutters. “But I can take care of a dog. Charlie and me both can. We can walk to the store and buy food and we can walk the dog and we can sleep with the dog and we can do all of the things.”
“Like picking up dog poop?” Daphne asks.
“That too. We can do it.”
I want to believe him.
Simon probably wants to believe him.
And he’s still a thirteen-year-old boy.
As is his brother, whom I suspect just faked a bee attack to facilitate this attempted dognapping.
Which wouldn’t have worked, by the way.
There’s zero chance Digger would’ve made it to the end of the driveway without barking inside the car, even if they managed to hide him under a blanket or something.
He hates car rides.
He also smells like a dog.
Someone would’ve noticed in four seconds flat.
“Can you tell him?” Eddie says. “Can you tell my dad we’d take good care of a dog?”
“Have you tried showing your parents that you’re responsible enough for a dog? Do you help with the dishes? And the cooking? Do you keep your rooms picked up? Do you do your homework on time?”
I feel four hundred years old as the words leave my mouth.
The number of times I had to say these exact words to my brothers—it’s bringing back all of the feelings about being thrust into the parent role at nineteen.
My parents were amazing, and I was grateful that I could step in and let my brothers finish growing up here in Athena’s Rest, but the responsibility wasn’t without resentment that I wasn’t getting to experience college and a job away from home and the parties and the freedom.
And the time to figure out who I wanted to be.
What I wanted to do with my life.
So I wouldn’t be twenty-nine and still floundering, wondering what my purpose is.
“But a dog is different,” Eddie says.
My brothers said the same thing. It’s like reliving history.
“When I was your age, I wanted polar bears,” Daphne tells Eddie. “My parents wouldn’t let me have one either.”
He makes another teenager face at her. This one’syou’re stupid.“Nobody can keep a polar bear for a pet. They’d eat you.”
Daph puts one hand on her hip. “My parents had enough money to buy an entire zoo. They could’ve gotten me a polar bear. And a polar bear keeper. And I could’ve had a polar bear that didn’t eat me because I could’ve raised it from birth to love me.”
Eddie gapes at her while I swipe a hand over my face to hide a smile.
Footsteps pound behind us.
Eddie looks past Daph and me, and he cringes.
“What on earth—Edward Richard Kent, are you stealing a dog?”
I grab Simon by the arm before he can storm past me. “He wouldn’t have gotten away with it.”
