Twelve Years Ago
ELLIE
I was walking past my bedroom window when a flash of movement caught my eye.
And I was pretty sure it was…yup.
Sully was running across the street, barefoot.
And if I wasn’t mistaken, he was yelling.
Throwing up the windowpane, I stuck my head outside. It was a warm night in the middle of July, and humidity stuck to my skin, eager for something to cling to.
“Sawyer!” I shouted, but he shot past my house without stopping. He yelled a mumble of words to me, though, and I thought it sounded like—
“You lost your mom’s dog?!”
He hollered something back, but I couldn’t make it out, so I ran down the stairs, threw a pair of sneakers on, and raced out the front door, nearly smacking into Noah, who was running back from the direction Sully had disappeared, swearing beneath his breath.
“Shit, sorry,” he panted as he steadied me, both hands on my shoulders.
I looked around, searching for a flash of Sully’s blond hair. “Is everything okay?”
Noah shook his head and dropped his hands. “Mom’s new foster dog ran out the back door when Sully opened it to put the trash out. She bolted that way.” He pointed between my house and our neighbor’s. “I’m gonna get Theo to drive us around. I don’t know if Sully’s gonna catch her on foot.”
“What’s the dog look like?” I asked, even as Noah was beginning to turn back toward their house. “What’s her name?”
“Honey,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s a beagle puppy.”
I nodded and then ran back inside my house, beelining for the hot dogs I knew were in the fridge. “Mom!” I called while grabbing the whole package. “I’m going to help the Londons find their dog!”
I heard her say something about not staying out too late before I took off out the back door, looking left and right as I tried to decide which way to run.
Somewhere in the distance, Sully called after Honey, and I was about to head toward the sound of his voice when movement caught my eye.
Pausing, I turned toward my neighbor’s house instead. And sure enough, huddled beneath their deck was the hunched-over form of a black, tan, and white puppy. Brown, droopy eyes stared at me from the shadows, making my heart melt.
She was so small.
Crouching to her level, I ripped off one end of a hot dog and held it out to her. “Come here, Honey,” I cooed, trying to stay as calm as possible. “Come here, it’s okay.”
Honey stood, putting one tentative foot in front of the other, emerging slowly from the shadows. She was shy, but the hot dog seemed to entice her.
“That’s it.” I smiled. “Come on out, sweetie.”
Her ears flopped as she picked up her pace, trotting across the lawn toward me. I tossed the piece of hot dog into the grass, and she quickly gobbled it up before looking for more. When I held another piece out to her, she all but flew into my arms.
Laughing, I fed her a few more pieces while making sure I had a grip on her collar.
“Sawyer!” I yelled, and I knew when his own shouts ceased that he heard me. “Sawyer, I have her!”
He seemed to make it back to me in seconds, breaking through the line of trees in my backyard while huffing and puffing.
“Oh my God.” He dropped his hands to his knees as soon as he saw me sitting in the grass with Honey curled in my lap. “Thank fuck. Mom would have killed me. Where was she?”
I pointed to where I found her. “Under the McNallys’ deck.”
“Damn, and I ran right by it.” Sully shook his head, walked a bit closer, and then dropped into the grass a good fifteen feet away from me.
Looking down, I smiled at the form of the small, malnourished puppy curled between my legs. I wondered what her backstory was, where Mrs. London had found her. She seemed so sweet and young; I couldn’t imagine anyone giving her up.
“Adorable,” Sully murmured.
“Yeah, she is.”
“Hmm.” The grass rustled, and I spied him inching closer out of the corner of my eye, tentative-like. “Thank you for finding her so that I can live to see another day.”
“Do you think your mom would let me keep her?” I asked, still staring down at Honey’s cute little face and the way she wiggled her nose.
“Honestly, yeah. If you got your mom to agree to it.”
I sighed. “That’s not going to happen.”
“We always have dogs at our house,” Sully said encouragingly. “You should come over more, Eleanor.”
I glanced at him, the corner of my lips tugging up. “You’re so lucky.”
“Well, sometimes it’s loud. And chaotic. And smells like puppy pee.”
“Better than being quiet,” I countered.
“My dad might disagree.”
“Is she going to get adopted soon?”
Sully shrugged, but the corner of his mouth twitched as he watched me pet Honey. “Not totally sure. Mom hasn’t mentioned anything.”
“I hope you stay a little longer,” I whispered, leaning down to give her a kiss on top of her head. She popped up then, climbing up my chest to return the gesture. Laughing, I fell onto my back, trying to escape the puppy kisses as Honey began attacking my face.
Sully was no help. He sat there smiling. Watching.
“I’m glad she didn’t go into the woods,” I said, pointing to where he’d come running from—the thick mass of trees behind my house. “I’ve almost gotten lost in there, so I can only imagine she would.”
Sully’s brows drew together as I picked Honey up, putting her on my chest, where she curled into a ball. “What are you doing in the woods?”
I shrugged, suddenly feeling sheepish. “Sometimes being inside makes me feel…claustrophobic, you know?” He probably didn’t know.
Because being inside his house was a lot different than being in mine.
I decided to divert to a different topic.
“And I don’t know. Sometimes I think the trees hold magic. ”
He perked up. “Magic?”
I plucked absently at the grass. “Or I like to pretend they do.”
I liked to pretend a lot of things. I spent a large part of my childhood alone, my only company the worlds I created in my head.
Sometimes I tried to translate my imaginings onto my computer, but old technology made it hard, so then I began searching for a little fantasy in real life, despite knowing it was a lost cause.
“I guess sometimes I just like to pretend we live in a world where magic is real.”
“Maybe it is,” Sully said, oddly confident.
“It is in stories,” I acknowledged. “And they’re my favorite kind.”
“Really?” His knees were bent, bare feet planted flat on the ground.
He leaned forward, and I noticed the way his short-sleeved shirt stuck to his skin a little, likely from the humidity.
He wore jeans, which I thought was odd for how hot it was, but they were rolled at his ankles, as if he’d been wading in water. “Me, too.”
The grass tickled my ear as I turned my head to look at him better.
The earth was cool beneath me, the evening dew wetting my skin.
When I opened my mouth to ask him more, maybe about the stories he liked, wondering if they were ones I knew, or if he also had secret reasons to escape reality, he said, “Next time, come get me.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t wander in the woods alone. So if you want to search for Ents or just get out of the house, you know where to find me.”
“Ents?”
“Oh, Eleanor.” A lightning bug illuminated his face for a moment, making it glow. “You don’t know about Ents?”
“No,” I laughed.
“Well then, I know what we’re watching next time you’re over,” he said and lifted one shoulder casually. “Considering you like magic trees and all.”
“Okay, I’m in.”
I liked going over to the Londons’, so he didn’t need to do much to convince me. Especially if I got to visit Honey.
Which I did.
When I went over the following week to watch whatever movie he seemed certain I’d love, the beagle puppy was still there.
And she was there the next week, too, when he invited me to see the second movie (he’d been right; I loved the first one).
And when Sully and I sat on his mom’s rusty-red couch to watch the third and final film in the trilogy, Honey slept between us.
Honey never left Maple Street.
And for many years, I didn’t, either.