Read Push and Shove: The Ghost Bird Series: #6 (The Academy) for Free Online Page A

before. Now that we were doing something, it seemed easier to handle Kota by himself, and he wasn’t too bad. Why did I still feel nervous?
    Or maybe I wasn’t. What I thought was nervousness. I was more anxious. Excited. Anticipating what he might do next, because as much as my pulse quickened and my hands shook, I didn’t want to run like I used to. I wanted to stay next to him, even if I wasn’t sure of what I was doing.
    When Kota returned, I’d finished the race and started another. I started to lean back over to give him room, but he waved me off. “No,” he said. “Sit back.” He dropped a couple of bottles of polish on the ground, a bottle of nail polish remover, a package of cotton balls and a roll of paper towels.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, releasing the controller to gingerly move on the chair, unsure of where he wanted me.
    “I’ll fix your toes,” he said, as plainly as if he’d told me to do my homework. He dropped onto his knees in front of me, then stopped, tilting his head as if trying to figure out where to put himself.
    I knocked my knees together seeing him kneeling in front of me. I curled up into the bean bag chair and lost focus on the game and crashed the car. I couldn’t believe he was going to redo my toenails. I should have figured. Show Kota something broken...
    Max got up from his spot on the couch to stick his nose at Kota’s elbow.
    Kota waved him off. “Not now, Max. Go sit on the couch.”
    Max snuffed and padded back to the couch, climbing back onto it and curling up into the cushion.
    “Max knows the word ‘couch’?”
    “He knows a lot of things,” he said. He sat down on the floor, with his back against the beanbag chair. He picked up my calf, hung it over his shoulder. He bent his knees, and planted my foot on top of his thigh.
    He started with the bottle of nail polish remover. He doused a cotton ball with the liquid. He cupped his hand under my toes and pressed the cotton to my nails.
    “Like what?” I asked. I’d never seen Kota training Max to do things. “What can he do?”
    “Max,” he said, using a commanding tone and without looking up from what he was doing. “Light.”
    Max dropped down from the couch, and trailed over to the wall. He jumped, hitting the switch with his nose. The light flicked on overhead.
    “Neat,” I said.
    “Max,” Kota said. He tore a square of paper towel from the roll, crumpled it, and tossed it across the room to land on the floor. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the towel. “Throw it away.”
    Max padded over to the towel. He nosed it once, clipped the very edge with his mouth and picked it up off the floor. He wandered off with it hanging from his mouth and headed toward the kitchen.
    “He’ll throw it in the trash?” I asked.
    “He’s pretty clever,” Kota said. “He’s also great at security. He’ll scan the house to see who is at home and will report back to me if something’s wrong. If I say the right thing, he’ll sit in front of someone and guard.”
    “What if someone breaks into the house?”
    “If I’m not home,” he said, “Max could probably stop an entry. He’s had the training.”
    “He’d bite?”
    “He may bite a bad guy if provoked, on the leg or ankle. He’d probably knock them over and bark a lot.”
    Something nagged the back of my head after he said that, stirring a memory. “So if someone walked in, you could say something and he’d go jump on them?”
    “Of course,” Kota said, as he scrubbed at the corners of my toenails with a fresh bit of cotton ball to get the polish off. The acetone smell was burned my nose.
    I fiddled with the controller in my hand, eyeballing Kota. “So, he’d knock someone over and sit on them until you told him to get up?”
    Kota’s fingers slowed, making small circles against my toenail. The edges of his cheeks tinted. “Oops.”
    I dropped the controller, boosting myself to sit up slightly against the beanbag chair. “Kota? Did