Dear Mr. Zusman,

I’m back from vacation and I had lots of fun. Enclosed, please find instant photographs of me furthering my education, as promised. Imam Adamou says “Hi” and your job sounds super hard. He sent you a prayer medallion, also enclosed. His mosque is in Boulmiougou.

I made six different lesson plans with geography and world history in them, but I’m not enclosing any of them because I don’t want to do them. Not yet, but maybe not ever. There is such a thing as over-planning. Ha ha.

Anyway, I don’t know if you know we have a dog now. She is Soup’s dog, but she got hit by a car and Miss Hyacinth put her back together. She looks really different now, see enclosed photo labelled “Samantha.”

I want to teach the kids about her, because if they see her around, they might be scared of her or hurt her. She’s a super nice dog and she likes coloured people! We thought maybe it was just the ones Miss Hyacinth fixed, but we introduced Bethany and it was fine, so we’re sure she’ll like you, too.

I need a couple days to coordinate with Soup, but is it all right if we drop by on the afternoon of the 30th (Tiw)? Another day is OK, too. Just let me know.

Sincerely,

M. D’Iver

P. S. We will bring sandwiches.

She sealed it in an envelope, addressed it, and put one of Calliope’s glitter stickers in place of a stamp. Seth didn’t get real mail service. She posted it with Erik.

He held up the envelope with a frown and said, “You could walk two blocks and tell him this stuff, Maggie. Or fly, and hold it in your feet.”

“No, Erik, that’s not aerodynamic.” She sighed. “Look, he was nice and he didn’t jump out and surprise me the minute I got home. I want to be nice too. It’s still really weird between us.”

Erik interrupted with a raised hand. “It’s… weird for me too! I just found out he was poor, like, a week ago.”

Maggie inclined her head. “Seriously?”

He wilted. “It felt more impressive.”

“He lives under a bridge!”

“Okay… I… know!”

“Soup and I didn’t know how hard magic season is for him and he was actually hiding that from us. So were you, because you know how it upsets him to have just you see him like that.”

“You got upset too,” Erik muttered, looking down.

“It felt like you guys didn’t trust me. You get that, right?”

There was also the attempted murder, but Seth and Erik didn’t remember that. She was having a really hard time maintaining a lie of omission around her two friends who also happened to be psychic. Seth was even worse. Erik had coping skills and some of his family was still alive. Sort of.

He nodded, but not with a level of upset that indicated she’d accidentally told him he almost killed a guy. Not that she trusted him to tell her if she had.

 “Sorry,” he said.

She pulled him by the hand and hugged him. “It’s okay. I’m not mad anymore. It’s just extra weird for me with Seth. Will you please take him the letter so I don’t show up with no warning?”

Erik took the letter.

Seth thanked him and put it in his pocket instead of reading it right away for the other kids, or asking about Maggie, so Erik guessed things really were weird. After excusing himself during lunch break, the teacher passed Erik a note on a torn scrap of yellow legal paper:

Tiw’s Day is fine! Please tell Maggie “thank you,” too!

Personally, Erik thought the smiley face was overkill, and it would just make Maggie more nervous. He conveyed the message and didn’t show her the note.

◈◈◈

Soup approved of the lesson plan, with a warning, “I can’t promise you guys I’ll be able to find her. She still has her own agenda, she’s just a little slower these days.”

“We could keep her at the house,” Erik said.

“No,” said Soup.

“We’ve got the photo, we can show them what she looks like,” Maggie said. “But it’s not exactly interactive. Erik, if we can’t find the dog, can I grab you and tell everyone how Hyacinth fixed you?”

“No,” said Erik.

Maggie gave a frustrated growl. “Come on! Not all of it. Just how you look different and sometimes you need extra stuff but it’s not like people should be scared of you. I know you don’t like the attention, but take a bullet for the cool dog!”

Erik planted his hands on his hips. “I like attention just fine. I’ll play violin for everyone all day. I’m just not gonna let you point at my weird head and pretend I’m a dog. Even a cool dog.”

“I’m not going to pretend… Actually, that’s not a terrible idea. Hang on.”

She considered it while Erik grew more and more irritated with her.

“But look,” she said. “We’ll make it about you too. You can talk and the dog can’t. You’ll be the star!”

Even as she was saying it, Maggie hardly believed it. A metal dog was just more impressive. And you couldn’t pet Erik.

“We can do like a press conference, with Q and A,” she decided. That would dress it up at least a little. “We’ll call it… Meet Our Friends with Disabilities instead of Meet Samantha? Meet Our Cool Friends with Disabilities!”

“Uh-uh. Not doing it.”

“Top billing! Meet Erik Weitz, King of the Slingshot! Also, This Small Dog.”

“No.” 

“How about Meet Our Friends with Cool Modifications and we invite Ann’s friend Lola who helped you write the song?”

Erik had been shaking his head. He stopped. “Hang on. Lola?”

“We’ll tell everyone your eye gives you superpowers and Lola can do that thing with her fingers you were telling me about. It sounds awesome!”

“It’s horrifying,” Soup said.

Erik put up both hands. “Do not tell the whole neighbourhood I’m a superhero, Maggie. You give ‘em an excuse and they’re gonna follow me around trying to get me to climb up walls like Night Monkey. But I’ll let you point at me like a dog if Lola comes too.”

◈◈◈

Ann plugged a disme into the drugstore payphone.

“Lola, sweetheart? How are you? Oh, fine. Fine. Are you free on Tiw’s Day afternoon?” She laughed. “Oh, no. No. Well, maybe afterwards, but I need you for something else. It’s all a bit complicated. How do you feel about showing the neighbourhood children your brilliant arm so they won’t be afraid of a very nice dog with metal teeth?”

A pause.

“Lola, is this good laughing or bad laughing? It’s hard to tell over the phone.”

◈◈◈

Maggie tapped on the bedroom door and waited for them to stop talking before turning the knob. Their discussions could get pretty animated and she didn’t want to get hit in the face with a frustratingly unscientific book.

Cousin Violet (and Barnaby) just loved setting up hilarious situation-comedy-style entrances like that. You could almost hear the laugh track in this house sometimes.

She kept her head behind the door and said, “Hey, you guys? You have clothes on?”

The General gave an irritated click of her tongue. “We do other things, Magnificent. If you wish to be entirely secure, you have the option to wait until we say you can enter.”

“Minor emergency,” Maggie said, wincing. “Nobody is on fire!” she added quickly. “Nothing is on fire. Fire is not involved. At all. At the moment. It’s social.” She scurried inside and shut the door.

“A social emergency?” Sanaam said.

He was holding a thick book with coloured slips of notepaper springing out of it from all sides and appeared ragged and relieved. Could this perhaps be enough to distract a hyper-focused bird of prey?

He was beginning to feel a bit like that poor bastard who tried to steal fire from the gods, only she was after his brain. She wouldn’t even let him out to play with the baby’s new highchair. That poor little girl was going to forget him all over again.

“Will ice cream be served?” he asked with a smile. “Does it require a tie?”

Maggie shooed a hand at him. “I told Erik my favourite red marker was up here, and I think he bought it, but he might already be getting annoyed with me. Just let me say it.”

She took a deep breath. “We have Milo’s drafting paper in the dining room and we were writing down what we need to tell everyone about Samantha, so we don’t miss anything. But Erik wanted more dog information so he asked his uncle, whom he adores and thinks is smart, to help us.”

She gasped another. “Only I am pretty sure the guy who never pet a dog until a couple weeks ago does not know anything about dogs. Like, you shouldn’t feed them chocolate even if they love it, I am eighty-five-percent sure on that.”

Another breath. “So, do you guys know anything about dogs, and can you come down there and do something to correct this misinformation that Erik is expecting me to teach tomorrow? Without pissing off Erik because if he bails out, I don’t know what I’ll…”

“Has he been feeding that poor animal real chocolate?” the General said, advancing.

“I ‘unno.” Maggie staggered back a pace, a fatal error. The General brushed her aside.

Maggie trailed after her but couldn’t stop her. “Mom, that’s not an unreasonable hypothesis, but I don’t know. Maybe he read it in a magazine!” She stopped short in the bedroom doorway. She didn’t want Erik to see her. Maybe he’d forget she was there.

“Have you, or anyone else in this house, been feeding Samantha, the dog who has already had a near-death experience, chocolate?” bellowed the General. Because this delicate matter wasn’t delicate enough to require going downstairs or talking to people at a normal, polite volume.

“What, recently?” said Mordecai’s voice.

Maggie sat down at the desk and plopped her face in her hands. “Oh, gods.”

Sanaam patted her back. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about what to do anymore!”

“EVER!” said the General.

“I gave her two pieces of a Carrie’s Gold Bar, which she asked for! You expect me to monitor the nutritional requirements of an animal that wanders around all day feeding itself? You want me to follow her and offer her a sparkling water and a fruit salad?”

Sounds of a scuffle, and then a shuddering thud.

“OW!” Mordecai suddenly sounded a lot closer.

“NEVER, NEVER, EVER FEED A DOG GRAPES!”

“Hyacinth! The psycho in Room 202 has glued a fragile old man to the ceiling and is threatening him with fireballs!”

“Oh, there’s the fire,” Maggie muttered. “I knew we’d have fire eventually.”

Hyacinth’s voice very faintly said, “What’s Barnaby done now?”

“I mean, ME!”

“Don’t you DARE let that man down, Mr. Rose! I’m trying him for reckless endangerment and depraved indifference!”

More thuds and a mild explosion.

“She’s taking this really personally,” Maggie said.

“Well, your mother is a dog person, Mag-Pirate.”

“We’ve never had one dog. How is she a dog person?”

“Er.” He stuffed hands in his pockets and rocked subtly on his feet. “I suppose she just likes anything loyal that takes orders.”

Maggie pulled out the desk drawer. “I’m going to do another letter for Seth, in case we have to cancel tomorrow. Let me know if the house is burning down, Dad, will ya?”

Sanaam cupped a hand to his mouth and called out the door, “Play dead! Let her have your liver!”

◈◈◈

Erik regarded the dining room walls, which had been repapered with sheets torn from Milo’s drafting pad. He and Maggie had only done about five. Now there were twenty, and the whole room was a mass of red ink corrections, carets and notes. NEVER FEED A DOG GRAPES took up one entire sheet, like a message from a murderer in an absurdist horror comedy.

Mordecai was in the kitchen with an ice bag on his head. Erik was willing to forgive a few mild injuries, on account of his uncle had almost killed Samantha. He wouldn’t do that again!

“Your favourite red marker, huh, Maggie?”

She cringed. “I’m sorry, Erik. I didn’t mean this. Are you still gonna help me tomorrow?”

“Yeah. I mean, it kinda feels more important now. Dogs are way more complicated than you’d think and I don’t want her to die, so…” He shrugged. He peeled the page about the grapes off the wall and held it in front of him with a grin. “Can we take this one with us, or is it too scary?”

“I think we’d better make something we can hand out. With raisins and chocolate and the other stuff on it too. Could you help me make some apographs?”

“Not the writing part.”

“No. The copying part. I bet Mom’ll enchant the paper for us if we tell her what it’s for.”

He smiled. “You ask her.”

◈◈◈

“Hey, Dad?” Maggie had an envelope with a sticker on it.

“Oh.” Sanaam clicked Lucy’s new highchair out of “dance” mode and turned down the music, over her offended protest. “I thought Erik was all right with it, Mag-Pirate?”

“He is, but we’ve changed things up a lot and we’re bringing Lola with us and I’m worried. Stuff has a way of going sideways when we get involved. I at least want to warn him about the lady with the metal arm and the sense of humour, and we might not be able to find the dog. It’s dark and I’m scared if someone else takes it, they’ll get mugged. Could you? I’m sorry,” she added. “I know you’re having fun.”

He shook his head. “I think he works nights. What if he’s not there?”

“Just leave it. Nobody’s going to steal a letter.”

He took it from her.

She curled over and looked away. “I am going to screw this up so bad. I should’ve stuck to math and literacy, and let him drive. I didn’t have to make it this complicated.”

“I thought you liked complicated?” he said.

“I like fun. I’m willing to put up with complicated.”

“You have two fun people, a dog, and you’re bringing sandwiches, Mag-Pirate. It’s going to be fun no matter what happens!”

She swatted him on the arm. “Cut it out! Cousin Violet loves to mess with people who say stuff like that. You’re being a jinx.”

“I’m sorry. It will be an unmitigated disaster. We shall all perish.” He smiled. “There! Now she can mess with us by making it something other than that.”

“That’s still a lot of options,” she said pensively.

“Are you going to be all right, Maggie?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, but yeah. Eventually. Please take him the letter, though. Maybe I’ll sleep a little better.”

He nodded. “I’ll tell you a hilarious bedtime story about self-confidence when I get back.”

“What story is it?”

“I don’t know. But I’m sure I’ll come up with something by the time I get back, because I have self-confidence!”

She gave him a hug and a kiss. “When you can’t follow through on that, they call it ‘hubris,’” she told him with a smile.

◈◈◈

Sanaam could see a faint light under the bridge through a veil of fog. All the lights were faint. Strawberryfield by gaslight looked like one of those gorgeous paintings a science magazine picks apart decades later with speculation that the artist just had cataracts. Still, the one under the bridge was faint, bluish, and out of place. He suspected Seth had cast a foxfire.

He shook his head, scolding himself. Too many science magazines, no sense of whimsy. It could be… I don’t know. A fairy granting a wish.

Seth didn’t have a doorbell. Or a door. Sanaam didn’t feel right announcing himself with a shout. He approached without making any effort to be quiet, but the damp night muffled sound.

A male voice was speaking. He eventually made out the words.

“‘…what a dear little puppy it was!’ said Alice, as she le… lee-an… leant against a bu… buttercup to rest herself, and fa… feigned?”

“Fanned.”

“Fanned herself with one of the le… leaves: ‘I should have licked… liked te…. touch… teaching it tricks very much, if—if I’d only been the right size to do it!’”

Sanaam thought it wasn’t a bad wish-in-progress, as wishes went. Nevertheless, the light was a foxfire. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

The man gasped and slammed the book shut, looking up with a furious red blush.

“Oh!” Seth said “That’s quite all right. This is Captain Sadiq…”

“Now, now, that was never a rank, Seth. It’s just a job. Mister or Sanaam and no airs on the side, please.”

“Sanaam. A friend of mine.” Seth smiled. “He belongs to one of my other students.”

Sanaam gave a little bow. “Pleased.”

“This is…” Seth hesitated, debating whether an embarrassed early reader would prefer to remain anonymous.

“Jim.” He offered a hand to shake.

“Hi, Jim,” Sanaam said. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I have a letter for the teacher. I’ll just leave it and get out of your way.”

“Uh-uh.” He stood, tucked the book under his arm and tugged a slouch hat over his eyes. “I’ve got to get home. We’re almost done with it anyway.”

“We’ll finish and do Chapter Five tomorrow, if you have time?” Seth said.

The man nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. Yeah.” He scurried off into the fog.

“I’m sorry about that,” Sanaam said. “I hope I haven’t scared him away.”

“He was brave enough to ask for help, I think he’s brave enough to stick with it.” Now Seth offered a hand to shake. “It’s good to see you again! Is that more notes from Magnificent?”

Sanaam handed over the envelope. “She’s updated her lesson a bit to account for the fact that Soup might not be able to find the dog tomorrow, and she didn’t want to spring it on you. But she’s just worried and trying to cover all her bases.”

Seth examined the envelope and once again tucked it in his pocket for later. “Is she…” He looked away. “No. I know she’s still upset about what happened during the storm. Can you tell me how upset? She’ll smile and lie to my face and I’ll never be able to tell.” He held up his hands. “And I don’t mean that as an insult!”

Sanaam snickered. “I didn’t take it as one. She’s a little upset, but she still wants to be friends.”

“I do too. I never wanted her to see me that way. I-I suppose she must be embarrassed.”

“That’s not quite it,” Sanaam said. “Hey. Can I buy you a coffee somewhere and talk? Do you need to be here?”

“No, I was going to get on the bus when Jim was done with Chapter Four. I’m happy to have company.”

“What time do you need to be in?”

Seth smiled. “My hours are flexible!”

◈◈◈

There was a bodega with a coffee pot and indoor seating a little east of the bus stop on Violena. It was a weeknight, and they’d be open late.

They poured coffee in two cheap paper cups and took it to the counter to pay. When Seth saw instant hot chocolate packets, he asked if he might have one of them as well, but he did not pour himself a cup of hot water.

Sanaam added two prepackaged muffins to the repast. “You’re going to go out like Ichabod Crane if you don’t put on a little weight.”

“It’s been a while, but I don’t recall the Headless Horseman being annoyed at skinny schoolteachers in general, Sanaam.”

“Let’s just be safe. Are you saving it for later?” He indicated the hot chocolate.

“No, but you’re going to think it’s ridiculous.” Seth set the coffee cup on the wobbly card table, opened the hot chocolate packet, and poured the whole thing in. There were wooden stirrers in with the coffee things He employed one.

Sanaam laughed. “There’s your cream and sugar.”

Seth sat down and sipped his mixed drink. “I started doing it at the cafeteria in college. Their coffee was terrible. I was desperate.” He shrugged. “I got to like it.”

Sanaam sipped his own coffee and winced. “Maybe I should’ve bought one of those for myself.” He added a third and fourth sugar instead. “Alice in Wonderland, huh?”

“It’s hard to find books with simple language that are interesting to an adult. Alice isn’t too bad, except for the Jabberwocky.” Seth shook his head with a smile. “I just have to warn them a lot of it isn’t meant to make sense. Mr. Dodgson was a little annoyed with irrational numbers, so I’ve heard. You’d think after all we’ve done to the value of pi he’d get over himself. Does Maggie know about the drugs?”

“Oh,” Sanaam said.

“I know Erik does, you can’t keep anything from Erik. And Soup…” Seth put his face in his hands. “I didn’t want to say what I said, but I didn’t want to go back to your house. And I forgot where I was. Soup knows too. Does Maggie… Would she even tell you if they told her?”

“She keeps secrets well,” Sanaam said. He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “But we’ve been shut up together on a boat for a season, and she has told me a lot of stuff she’s worried about. That didn’t even crack the top forty. It’s a lot about trust and being left out. She keeps finding out about these upsetting things happening to the people she loves, and they didn’t go to her for help or give her a chance to fix it. She can’t quite accept that it’s because we love her and want to protect her and not because we think she’s useless, or that she really is useless.”

The sailor sighed. “I feel like we’re being carried along by these big swells, by these circumstances none of us can control. One of them knocked me flat on my butt recently, and I couldn’t even protect her from it. I had to clean it up after it happened, and I don’t think I did very well. The next one could throw one of us overboard, and I might not be able to do anything about that either.

“She wants to be up in the crow’s nest yelling at us to trim the sails. I want her below deck so she doesn’t die. She resents it, always has, but she begins to wonder where she really belongs.

“So do I.”

“They all want to grow up fast,” Seth said. “This world isn’t safe for children — we have failed to make this world safe for children — so they want to grow up as fast as they can. It isn’t that they don’t want to be protected. It’s that we can’t protect them. So… So we look like acolytes of some idiot religion, just going through the motions, when we try.

“You don’t start to think innocence has any value until you’ve left it behind. Then you look back over your shoulder and want to yell at the others, ‘Please, please, let me help you keep this thing a little while longer.’ But they don’t want it.” Seth shrugged and turned aside, holding his cup without drinking. “I don’t even know if they’re wrong. Maybe I’m just old and stupid and nostalgic for something I can’t use or even understand anymore.”

Sanaam shook his head. “It’s not wrong to want to protect them. They need protecting.” He laughed weakly. “We’re just not qualified.” He sipped coffee and had a bite of a muffin. He wasn’t sure if the dark flecks were meant to be blueberries or chocolate chips. “I don’t mean to put so much on you. I suppose most parents say that.”

“Oh, no, no, quite a few of them don’t care,” Seth said. “You’d be surprised. Your wife certainly was. She glued one of them to the ceiling. He took off. Sarah Cobb doesn’t have anyone at all now, and the terrifying thing is that’s better for her.” He drank chocolate coffee grimly. “She’s washing dishes illegally and sleeping in a restaurant kitchen. I can’t tell you which one, you must understand.”

Sanaam appeared more concerned with the person in front of him than a cold and hungry little girl. “Seth, are you doing all right?”

Seth knew this was a loaded question and “I’m fine” wasn’t going to cut it under the circumstances. Maggie’s father thought he was recovering, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. “Oh, you know,” he said airily. “One day at a time.” That was the sort of thing they wanted you to say.

“If you ever need anything… I know I’m never here, but Hyacinth would be happy to…”

“…lock me in her basement for a week?” But he said it with a smile. Ha, ha. Oh, that funny Hyacinth whom I would totally trust to help me so you don’t have to worry about this or keep prying. “It’s all right, Sanaam. I know I’m not working without a net. It helps a lot. I just have a cynical moment sometimes.” …every moment since the winter of 1369. Perhaps earlier.

“I think you can be forgiven more than a moment, with everything you’re dealing with,” Sanaam said. “I’m amazed, and I’m grateful you’re willing to help care for my daughter on top of it all. It’s not that I don’t care — about you or her. I just can’t be here when she needs me, so she outsources. She has very discerning taste in spare parents, you should be flattered.”

The large man smiled warmly. Seth felt a little of that guarded cynicism melt away.

“I — Well, I’m doing my best.”

“You know, we’re both making this bigger than it is,” Sanaam said. “We’re grown men with grown worries, but she’s got different priorities. She doesn’t want to mess up her dog lesson, and she doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of someone she loves and respects.

“She knows things about you that you don’t want her to know, and she knows you don’t want her to know. You’re not comfortable talking about it, and she’s not comfortable talking about it, so she was looking for a graceful way to continue things like normal. She decided to distract you with a cool dog of her acquaintance and try a little sleight of hand, but she’s afraid she won’t be able to pull it off.”

He cocked his thumb back over his shoulder. “She’s back home rehearsing how to pick your pocket and run off with your same old friendship clutched in her hot little hand right now.”

“I’d give it to her if she asked,” Seth said. “Should I just sit her down in private and let her know I don’t want things to change either? I’ll go home with you and do it right now…”

Sanaam pushed him back down with a hand. “No. No. That’s not how my little thief operates. If you let on that you caught her with her hand on your wallet, she’ll drop it and run. Let her be in control of the situation.” He laughed. “No matter how wild it gets.”

“I have every confidence in her. I only went to college and taught prep school. She lives with Hyacinth.”

◈◈◈

Sanaam said goodbye to Seth at the bus stop. It was only a short walk home from there, in near pitch darkness with loose cobbles underfoot. He made it to the porch with minimal injuries, and was just about to push open the door when he remembered.

“Damn it, I forgot to make up a hilarious story about self-confidence.” He tipped his head back and said it properly, “Curse my hubris!”

Hyacinth popped her head out of the doorway and looked past him. “Is Barnaby out here?”

◈◈◈

Seth leaned against the gaslamp and held the letter up, hoping to find enough light to read.

Dear Seth — 

I’m sorry. I don’t have a lot of time. We’re still going to come tomorrow (Tiw), but Soup isn’t sure he’ll be able to find Samantha. I don’t know if he’s been by and mentioned it. I’m bringing backup, don’t worry. Erik said he’d stand in for the dog so I can teach people how to say hi to a dog and his friend Lola is going to come too. She has a metal arm and she can help us talk about mergers and stuff. I haven’t met her yet, Erik says she’s really fun. You’ll love her. (She’s not a kid, I hope that’s okay.) We also have some cards we made with stuff you shouldn’t feed a dog, and we’ll hand those out.

Let my dad know if you need any changes or send someone by the house, I guess, but I hope none of this is a big deal.

See you soon,

Maggie

As he folded it to return it to the envelope, he saw she had written on the flap: I didn’t forget the sandwiches! We have sandwich stuff all ready to go! I remembered your favourite!!

He put both letter and envelope back in his pocket. After a few minutes spent standing awkwardly at the bus stop, he turned and started walking back to school. He’d need a decent night’s sleep for tomorrow, and he didn’t feel right working with Maggie’s letter watching him. She deserved better.