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know, sorry I can’t help.”
    “Don’t worry about it – we’ll look after him!”
    “Rory, shut up,” I said.
    “I’m really sorry. I’ve gotta go. Nice meeting you!”
    “Hey – no – wait!”
    And just like that he jogged away. Crossing my arms, I eyed off the dog as the boys lavished it with attention, unaware of its more unseemly tendencies. I didn’t want to keep it here. But what was I supposed to do, shoo it away and let it get hit by a car? Get rabies and eat someone’s toddler?
    “Come on, dog,” I said, picking up the twine and giving it a pull. “We’re going inside.”
    ***

Chapter Five
    To put an end to the flood of texts, I was just setting up a conference call with Mads and Van in my room to relive the whole messy event when I heard the front door open downstairs. I stiffened. I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. Not since Dad got home and listened to my story and looked at the dog and said “hmm” and then “wait until your mother gets home” before heading into the kitchen to start dinner. Not long after that I prised the dog’s tongue off Bex’s face and told her not to play with it, then got it a bowl of water and left Rory and his pervy pals in charge of entertainment. He seemed pretty harmless, really. Aside from the leg-humping and the slobber all over the five-year-old’s face, he’d walked on a lead pretty well and sat on his tail on the kitchen floor, panting at me. He was actually kind of cute.
    But when a set of keys jingled and I heard the front door open, all hell broke loose. I was most definitely not the only one to hear the door open.
    There was a guttural bark, then the sound of claws scrabbling on the floorboards. There was a bump, a crash, another bark, and then a scream. It was my mom who screamed. Couldn’t really blame her. Something heavy hit the ground. I had an idea of what that was about.
    “Um, guys – I gotta go,” I said.
    “What?” Mads shrieked. “But you haven’t told us anything!”
    I disconnected and threw the phone on my bed before bolting out the door and down the stairs. Mads was going to kill me later, but I suspected she was going to have to get in line.
    When I got to the bottom of the stairs it was…yep. Just as I expected.
    Rory was standing over Mom who was twisted in a pathetic heap on the floor. Guess that was what I’d looked like. Rory’s friends stood in a pack in the living room doorway, gaping, their faces alternating between horror and delight, like they couldn’t decide which emotion to go with. Rory tried to pull the dog off Mom but he wouldn’t budge. I stepped around the cracked photo frame that was lying on the floor from the dog’s exuberant and unsteady gallop down the corridor, picked up the vase from the side table and pulled out the daisies and weeds Bex had picked as a present for Mom a couple of days ago, before dumping the water on the dog and my mom. The dog on my mom. He got off her and scurried down the hallway, as far from me and my torture device of uncomfortable wetness as he could get, running straight past Dad who strolled out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron with an amused expression on his face.
    Mom didn’t even bother counting to ten. “What the hell is that thing doing here? Whose is it? Where did it come from? Why is there a dog in my house ?”
     
    An hour later we sat around the dinner table in silence. Silence except for the dog in the backyard that was alternating between barking and howling because it had been locked outside, alone. Mom was in a filthy mood he’d disappeared into the study and I could hear she’d unfolded the treadmill and was giving it a good workout, but not even after a long run and hot shower did she seem any happier.
    “Right after work tomorrow, I’m taking that thing to the pound,” Mom said. Rory’s shoulders slumped.
    “But Mo-om!”
    Mom looked pointedly at Rory. “No buts. He’s not our dog. He’s probably lost and I bet his owners