Gemini Summer by Iain Lawrence

was like a magnet for dogs. Once, he remembered, Beau had laughed and said,
No, Danny’s a magnet for fleas. The dogs just come along
. The memory felt both happy and sad.
    The dog reached the grass and nearly doubled its speed. At any time before “the accident,” Danny would have leapt up to meet it. He would have run over the grass, then dropped down in a crouch, and he and the dog would have greeted each other the same way, with their little bows and wriggles. Then he would have coaxed that dog into the house—not that it would have taken much coaxing. He would have fed it cheese from the fridge, and cold milk in a bowl. He would have called for his mother and told her, “Look. It must be a stray. Can I keep it?”
    But now he barely moved. And that was to turn the other way. He didn’t want the dog to come right up to him; he didn’t want to have to pet it and stroke it.
    He heard its claws on the concrete. He heard the swish of its tail, and the whine that it made. Then he felt its nose rubbing at his arm, and he jerked that arm away as though the nose had been fiery hot instead of cool and damp.
    “Go away,” he said.
    But the dog tried to jump up at him. It planted its forefeet in his lap and reached up for his shoulder. The claws scraped higher on his arm, and he felt the warm breaths puffing in his ear.
    “Go
away
!” he said again, and shoved the dog with his elbow.
    It fell away but was back in a moment. It clawed at him more frantically now. It muttered and mewled.
    “Buzz off!” said Danny.
    He was scared to touch the dog. He was scared of feeling happy when he shouldn’t, of forgetting about Beau as the grass and the sky had done. He got up and went into the house.
    He sat in the empty living room, hearing the dog claw at the door.
    His mother came in with a basket of laundry. He could smell sunshine and summer on the clothes, and knew she had just taken them down from the clothesline. She looked at him and asked, “What’s that noise at the door?”
    “It’s a dog,” said Danny.
    The curtains were drawn, but the windows were open, and the cloth sucked up against the frames. The door rattled, and the dog cried out.
    “Were you playing with it out there?” asked Mrs. River.
    “No,” said Danny, as though playing with a dog was a shameful idea.
    “Well, I’m sorry, but you can’t keep it,” she said.
    “I don’t
want
it,” said Danny. “I wish it would go away.” He raised his head and shouted at the door, “Buzz off, you stupid dog!”
    Mrs. River looked at him over her basket of laundry. The clothes were puffy and white, like a ball of cotton candy. “Danny,” she said, “why are you sitting in here and the dog is out there?”
    Danny shrugged. He wasn’t sure he really knew, and he was certain he couldn’t explain it.
    “Maybe you should walk it up from the Hollow,” said Mrs. River. “It might go home on its own.”
    “I don’t want to,” said Danny.
    The door rattled more loudly. The dog’s whines became howls. Danny folded his arms and scowled at the carpet.
    “Oh, Danny.” Mrs. River put down her basket. She sat beside him on the long sofa. “You can’t keep hoping that everything will go back to the way it was,” she said. “What’s done is done, and we have to go on. You wouldn’t be doing anything bad to Beau if you went and had some fun.” She touched his blond hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. “Isn’t that what he would want? Don’t you think he’d be sad to see how you are?”
    He was surprised that she’d come so near to what he was thinking. He had never imagined that Beau might be sad because he was sad himself. But he wasn’t sure, and he said, “It doesn’t matter.”
    “No, Danny, it
does
matter,” she said. “We’ve lost Beau. We’ve lost him forever. But I don’t want to lose you, too, and I am. I’m losing the happy little boy that I knew, and it breaks my heart.”
    The dog was still clawing at the door, up and