Notes From a Liar and Her Dog by Gennifer Choldenko Page B

about his pills. My dad will give them to him.” He touches Tashi lightly, the way you touch the frosting on a cake when you don’t want to leave a mark. Pistachio licks Harrison’s bitten-up fingernails.
    “You need to eat corn, Ant.”
    “What?”
    “You know, say you were wrong and you made a mistake.”
    “Oh. Crow. Eat crow, not corn.”
    Harrison crinkles up his nose. “Whatever.” Hescratches at his chest. “We’ll make a card. A very big card and…we need food.”
    “Food?”
    He nods. “If you want to change somebody’s mind, you got to bake them stuff. Pie, I think. And I’m going to draw the card. It’s going to be this big.” He puts his arms as wide as they will go. “You’re going to write the inside. This will take care of everything.”
    I smile at this. Harrison thinks he can fix anything. He thinks he’s Superman, behind all that hair.
    “What am I going to write?” I ask as I scratch Pistachio under his chin. He lifts his head so I can do a better job and rests his little jaw on my hand.
    “My dad will help us with the pie,” Harrison says, which doesn’t answer my question.
    He hands me a paper and one of his pencils. “Now get busy!” He shakes his finger at me. Harrison is never like this at school.
    I take the pencil and look at it. It’s all nicked up with teeth marks, but the end is sharpened to a fine point, just the way Harrison likes it.
    Harrison has a big stack of poster board. He runs his fingers over each piece, looking for bumps, creases, and wrinkles. Harrison is very particular about paper. When he settles on the piece he wants, he cuts the board in half with a razor blade and a ruler.
    “It has to be real skinny,” he explains to me. “Because I’m going to do a giraffe.”
    “What if I just write I’m sorry really tall to fill up the inside?”
    Harrison’s eyebrows slide up his brow. “I’m sorry is not enough,” he says.
    I sigh and begin writing while Harrison blocks in his giraffe. I love to watch him do this. He starts out by drawing a bunch of circles and squares that don’t look like a giraffe at all, but when he puts them all together they look exactly like a giraffe. It’s magic the way Harrison draws.
    I settle down and try to write something that Harrison will think is okay. I do the best I can. “Okay, I’m done.”
    “Good,” he says. “I need your help.”
    Harrison doesn’t let me help with his drawings very often. And when he does, I get the easy parts, like filling in bricks or blades of grass or sky. Even so, I can’t do as well as he does. But I love when he asks me to help. He doesn’t care if I do it perfect, either. He says drawings don’t look right if they’re too perfect.
    Now we are both lying on our bellies, drawing. Pistachio is curled up against my foot. Harrison is working on a leg and I’m doing clouds. I try to make them all light and swirly the way Harrison showed me, but mine don’t swirl right. They look heavy enough to fall out of the sky and knock the giraffe out cold.
    After we’ve been working for a while, Mr. Emerson knocks on the door frame. It’s open, but he still knocks. Something about this reminds me of how much I like the Emersons and then I get a little panicky inside. I shouldn’t get attached and I know it. If you get attached,then it hurts too much when you have to move away.
    “Come in,” Harrison says.
    “I’m taking banana nut bread out of the oven in ten minutes. You want to take a break and get a piece while it’s hot?”
    My mouth waters. I’m about to say yes, when Harrison says, “Not now. We’re busy.” I rap Harrison with my pencil. He ignores me.
    “You guys sure have been quiet up here. What are you working on?”
    “We’re making a giraffe card. And could you help with the pie?” Harrison squints through his crazy hair.
    His father just finished baking banana nut bread. He’s not going to want to bake a pie. “Maybe we could just bring her some banana