Lila and Hadley Read online

“Not really.” Shelby sighs. “I think Pilot is … well, a little bit too much for them to handle.”

  And, as if on cue, I hear Shelby’s dad holler, “Pilot, no!” as Pilot bounds up the deck and then—without hesitation—leaps into the swimming pool with Shelby and me.

  We both squeal and move away as the fluffy black German shepherd surfaces and begins paddling around.

  “Dang it, Pilot,” Shelby says. “You know you ain’t supposed to get in the pool!”

  I struggle not to laugh as I say, “I think this might be why your daddy wants to call my sister.”

  “Maybe, but I can do it on my own! I know how to— Oh no. Here comes Lila.”

  “Huh?”

  I turn around and see Lila standing at the edge of the pool. She’s watching us—Shelby, Pilot, and me—like she’s debating what to do.

  I know I ought to tell her no, keep her from jumping in like Pilot has, but I’m curious to see what she’ll do.

  She looks directly at me, then, with only a second’s pause, leaps into the water.

  Pilot barks, like he’s showing his approval as he swims toward her.

  “We’re gonna have to clean the pool again after this,” Shelby whines. But then she starts laughing, and so do I.

  The dogs swim around us, splashing and playing. Lila even lets Shelby pet her for a minute before she paddles away after Pilot. It’s the most fun I’ve seen Lila have since I’ve known her.

  It’s the most fun I’ve had since I’ve known her.

  When we’re done, we gotta get Shelby’s daddy’s help pulling the dogs out, since they can’t climb up the ladder. And Shelby complains again about how dirty the pool is and how she’s gotta clean it now.

  But I think it was worth it.

  On Thursday evening, when Beth gets home from work, she tells me that Vanessa will be coming over tomorrow for dinner. She says it’s to check on Lila, but based on how giggly and nervous she gets when she tells me, I get the feeling it’s kinda a date, too. One I’ll be stuck in the middle of.

  “Are you supposed to be dating your boss?” I ask as I pick up both of our empty plates after dinner and take them to the sink. “Ain’t there a rule against it or something?”

  “She’s not actually my boss. I’m a freelancer. A contractor.”

  I turn on the faucet and begin rinsing off the dishes. “But didn’t you say she hired you?”

  “Technically, yes. She offered me a contract. But I work for myself. I’m my own boss. People hire me for my services. I don’t work for the dog rescue, but Vanessa has me under contract to help them with some training. So … no, Vanessa’s not my boss.”

  “So you’re allowed to date her.” I grab the dish soap and a sponge and start washing, eager to get the dishes clean before Beth’s phone starts ringing with Mama’s call.

  “I suppose some people would frown at it, but we’ve talked about it. And it’s something we’re both comfortable with. Especially since Right Choice isn’t my only client.” She stands up from the table and comes to lean against the fridge as she watches me wash the dishes. She folds her arms over her chest. “You know, you’re awful interested in my love life.”

  “Am not.”

  “Mmm-hmm. You could’ve fooled me, the way you always ask me questions about it. Any time I bring up Vanessa, you ask about us dating.”

  “Do not!”

  “Do so,” Beth says, and I can hear the laughter bubbling beneath her words.

  “Ugh. You’re so annoying!” I finish scrubbing her plate and shut off the water. “I’m never asking you about it again!” I declare as I storm off to my room. I can hear her laughing behind me as I go.

  But the next day, I get up early—well, before noon—and decide it’d be a good idea to give Lila a bath before we have company. Beth’s got a bunch of dog brushes and shampoo and stuff in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. I set all of it out on the counter, then go to the kitchen to grab a jar of peanut butter and a knife.

  “Hadley?” Mrs. McGraw asks as I trek through the house, gathering up supplies. “What are you up to?”

  “Gonna give Lila a bath.”

  “All right. To tell the truth, she could probably use one. But why do you have peanut butter in your hand?”

  I pretend I don’t hear her and run back to the bathroom to get started.

  By this point, I know Lila well enough to know she ain’t gonna make this easy on me. So I did my research and found the perfect way to keep her in the tub while I wash her.

  I use the knife to smear peanut butter all over the tiled wall of the tub, right across from the faucet. I’m halfway done before it occurs to me that maybe I ought to have run this idea past Beth, since it’s her house and her jar of peanut butter. But too late. When I’m done, I call Lila to me, and just as I’d hoped, she hops right in the tub and starts licking the peanut butter off the wall. That keeps her occupied for quite a while and gives me plenty of time to scrub her with dog shampoo and rinse her off.

  Half an hour later, Mrs. McGraw ain’t too pleased about the wet pit bull running through the house or me in my soaked clothes, but she does offer to help me dry Lila off.

  “You know,” she says, “this was a real nice thing for you to do today. Even if Lila is making an awful big mess. Beth will be so tickled you actually did this without her asking.”

  I just shrug. “It ain’t a big deal.”

  By dinnertime, when Vanessa shows up, Lila’s all dry and I’ve changed into a new pair of jeans and a dry T-shirt. And I gotta say, I’m pretty proud of my handiwork. Lila smells real nice once the wet-dog odor goes away.

  Not that Vanessa or Beth are paying much attention to what the dog smells like.

  From the minute Vanessa walks in—dressed in a white tank top and skinny jeans, rather than the work clothes I last saw her in—Beth can’t take her eyes off her. And I don’t think Vanessa minds too much, based on the way she grins at my sister every time Beth says anything to her.

  It’s kinda cute, I guess, but also pretty annoying, since I gotta sit through dinner with the both of them. I might as well not even be here.

  “Beth, this is delicious,” Vanessa says, taking a bite of her barbecue chicken sandwich before wiping her mouth on a napkin. “Do you like to cook?”

  “Sometimes,” Beth says. “But I don’t do it as much as I ought to.”

  “Did your mom teach you?”

  “A little bit, but honestly, Daddy was more the cook in our family. He was really good, and really enjoyed cooking, too. I remember Mama saying that once she realized how good he was in the kitchen, she knew she was gonna have to marry him.”

  “Smart woman,” Vanessa says. “My dad’s the cook in our family, too. Though Mom still tries. Tries being the key word there. She’s really bad at it.” She laughs, shaking her head. “If you ever meet her, don’t tell her I said that. She’d skin me alive.”

  “I’d love to meet your mother one day.”

  “And I’d love for you to meet her.”

  I clear my throat and drop the spoon I’d been eating my mashed potatoes with, letting it clatter onto my plate. Beth and Vanessa both turn to look at me.

  “I’m done eating,” I say, because I can’t handle being a third wheel much longer. “Can I be excused? I’ll do the dishes later.”

  “Uh—” Beth begins.

  But Vanessa says, “You know, I’m about done here, too. And I’d love to see what progress you’ve made with Lila. Why don’t you grab her and we’ll meet you in the living room in a minute?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  I take a handful of baby carrots from the fridge and call Lila into the living room with me.

  “Listen,” I whisper to her while, in the next room, Vanessa and Beth finish off their food. “Don’t be stubborn tonight, okay? Do what I ask, even though people will be watching. Don’t make me look silly. Please?”

  Lila just sniffs at the hand where I’m hiding her carrots. Her tail does wag, though, so
I’m gonna take that as an agreement.

  When the phone rings—Mama’s nightly call—Beth keeps it quick for once. And, a few minutes later, she and Vanessa are sitting next to each other on the sofa, watching quietly as I run through the different commands I’ve taught Lila.

  “Sit … Good! Lie down … Good girl. Stay … Good. Now, come!”

  Lila does it all as if Beth and Vanessa aren’t even there. When we’ve run through everything, I turn to look at our audience while Lila crunches on the last of the baby carrots.

  “I’m impressed,” Vanessa tells me. “Not surprised, though. I had a good feeling about pairing you two up. And my good feelings are rarely wrong.”

  “Hadley spends a lot of time with her,” Beth says. “She even took Lila to the dog park the other day.”

  “I don’t think she liked that a whole lot, though,” I admit. I sit down on the floor so that Lila can come and lie down next to me, putting her big head in my lap. I scratch behind her ears. “She mostly just slept under a bench. But I met a girl there—Shelby—she’s got a really friendly dog that Lila gets along with. I think we’re gonna try and get them together to work on training stuff at the same time.”

  “That’s great,” Vanessa says.

  “You know, as fast as Lila’s been learning, it makes me wonder if she’s been trained before?” Beth says. “If whoever her last owner was had done some work with her. And she just didn’t want to do it anymore until Hadley came along and did some practice with her.”

  “Maybe,” Vanessa replies.

  “But why would anyone train a dog just to get rid of them?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” Beth admits. “But dogs end up in rescues for all sorts of reasons. It might not be as simple as all that. Most likely we’ll never know. But it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. Not to take away from all the work you’ve been doing, of course! You’ve still worked miracles with this dog, even if she might’ve known a few commands before.”

  “You really have,” Vanessa agrees. “Hmm. I know there’s still some things to be worked on, but at this rate, I bet we can have Lila adopted out by the end of the summer.”

  My stomach drops. “That … That soon?”

  “Sure. I don’t see why not.”

  But I can think of a lot of reasons why not.

  I’ve known from the start that Lila ain’t my dog, that I am only training her so she can find a permanent home. But somehow, for the last few weeks, that’s seemed like something real far away. So far away it was hardly worth considering.

  The end of the summer, though … that’s not far away. Not at all.

  I look down at Lila. Her eyes are open, and she’s staring back up at me. I try to imagine what it’d be like being here in Beth’s house without her. But the thought is so lonely I can’t take it.

  “Just give it a few more weeks of that good work you’ve been doing with her,” Vanessa continues, oblivious to the sadness washing through me, “and we’ll be able to put her picture up on the website. She’ll be in a good forever home in no time. And it’ll all be thanks to you, Hadley.”

  “Yeah,” I mumble, heart squeezing hard in my chest. “Thanks to me.”

  I feel like a real fool. Because somehow, I hadn’t realized that in helping Lila get better, I might be breaking my own heart.

  Beth must be able to guess how I’m feeling. She don’t say nothing while Vanessa’s here, but she comes knocking on my bedroom door later that night.

  “Hey,” she says, as she cracks the door open. “You still up?”

  “Yeah.”

  I’m lying on my bed with Lila curled up on the other side of me. We’re both under the covers, and she’s started hogging my pillow. I don’t fight her, though.

  “Good,” Beth says. “Y’all scoot over.”

  “Huh?”

  “Scoot.”

  She turns on the bedside lamp before giving my arm a light shove with her hand. I scoot over a little and push Lila a bit closer to the edge of the bed so I’ve got room. She gives an irritated huff before rolling onto her side so that her legs are stretched across me.

  Beth sits on the now empty side of the bed. For a second, I think she’s gonna try and talk to me about what Vanessa said, about Lila finding a real home. I think she’s gonna remind me that she never said we could keep a dog right now and that this was always the plan, and it’s best for Lila so I gotta be okay with it. I’ve got this whole annoying speech in my head that I’m sure my sister’s about to give me.

  But instead, she pulls out a book. I can’t read the title from here—the light is far too dim for my eyes—but I can hear the pages turning as she cracks the spine.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “A book.”

  I scowl at her. “I figured that. What book?”

  “One of my favorites. I stopped by that bookshop I told you about the other day and picked up a copy.” She leans back against the headboard and flips the pages a second before saying, “Here we go. The Giver by Lois Lowry. Chapter One—”

  “Beth, you ain’t gotta do this,” I tell her. “I don’t need you to read to me.”

  “I know,” Beth says. “Now shhh. Ahem. Chapter One …”

  I lie there quietly for about an hour, listening to Beth read. She’s not as theatrical about it as Mama always was. She don’t do the voices or anything like that. But it’s still a pretty interesting story, even without the sound effects.

  My bed really ain’t big enough for two girls and a pit bull, but squished there, between Beth and Lila, I’m able to pretend—just for a minute—that everything’s gonna be okay. That I could be happy here, with my sister and Lila. That the end of summer is a long way off, and I ain’t gotta think about Lila going anywhere anytime soon. I’m able to tell myself I ain’t got nothing to worry about.

  For a minute, I think I understood why Mama lied, why she’d said things were gonna be okay even when they weren’t.

  Because right now, trying to believe my own lie is a whole lot easier than facing the truth.

  As we near the end of July, Shelby calls me almost every day. Sometimes she just wants to chat. Other times she asks if we can meet up and take our dogs for a walk or swim at her house again. I always say yes. Ain’t like I got anything better to do.

  She likes to talk a lot. Sometimes when we’re walking, she’ll go on for a long while about a book or a movie she watched, or tell me about the trouble her siblings get into. I don’t mind. It’s kinda nice to just listen and not be expected to answer all the time. And when she does ask me questions, she seems real interested in the answer, even if I don’t say a whole lot.

  She never brings up my cane or how sometimes it’s obvious I can’t see things.

  So, eventually, I do it for her.

  “You know I’m blind, right?”

  I blurt it out on one of our walks around the neighborhood. Lila and Pilot are on their leashes, walking in front of Shelby and me. Lila’s really warmed up to Pilot. She gets all excited when she first sees him, and she don’t even seem to mind when he jumps all over her or sniffs her butt. Dogs are so weird. Anyway, she’s even started sparing a tail wag or two for Shelby, who seems real pleased by this, considering how Lila ignored her the first day they met.

  Shelby was in midsentence, talking about some TV show her little brother made her watch, when I interrupted her. I feel bad for a second, knowing cutting her off like that was rude, but she don’t seem bothered about it as she turns her head to look at me fully.

  “Yeah,” she says after a second. “I figured.”

  “Not completely blind,” I explain. “Not yet. Maybe not ever. But it will get worse, doctors say. I used to be able to see all right but now … Well, now I gotta use this thing.” I tap the cane on the concrete as we make our way down the sidewalk, past a little grocery store. “So yeah. I’m … legally blind is what they call it. I can still see, but not … not real well.”

  Shelby nods. “Okay.�
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  “You … You ain’t said anything about it.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “I know, but …”

  “I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you’d bring it up,” she says. “And now you have, so … do you wanna talk about it?”

  “No,” I say quickly, and then, “Maybe? I don’t really know. I didn’t wanna talk about it for a while because … because I thought talking about it made it more real, and I didn’t want it to be. That’s stupid, though. And now I got this cane, and that makes it feel more real, too.” I shake my head. “I guess … I guess I just don’t know what to say. Other than that it sucks. And it’s … kinda scary. My mobility teacher—the lady who’s teaching me to use this cane—says it’ll be easier once I know how to do all the stuff she’s teaching me. And just things like walking around like this have gotten a bit easier, I suppose. But … still.” I look down at the sidewalk. My cane sweeps, scratching across the concrete in time with my steps. I barely notice any sort of ache in my wrist now. And I haven’t jabbed myself in the belly with the end in a few days. “I’m sorry,” I mutter.

  “For what?” Shelby asks.

  “Going on and on about this. I know it ain’t fun to hear.”

  “I don’t mind,” she says. “I can’t say if things will get easier or better or whatever, because I ain’t been in your shoes before. Closest I got is an uncle who’s completely blind.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He was in the military. Lost his sight in an explosion, I think.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “He had a hard time with it at first. Was just real angry that it happened. But he’s doing all right now. He’s got one of those dogs that helps him out—a guide dog, I think he called it. She’s real cute. He ended up going to culinary school and is a chef at a fancy restaurant in Lexington now.”

  “How does he read recipes?”

  “He has them made in Braille. Or he has this thing on his phone so it’ll read out stuff to him. It’s in a kinda robot voice, but he don’t seem to mind that.”

  “How does he use the oven or the stove? How does he measure stuff?” I ask as a dozen other questions run through my mind. I can barely see a lot of that kinda stuff now, and I ain’t completely blind yet.