“Um, hi,” I called into the empty, quiet space, just in case there was someone there who wasn’t expecting two teenagers from Connecticut to barge in and start judging their apartment. “We’re… friends of Mallory’s? We’re here to drop something off?” We both waited in silence for another minute, but still, nobody emerged and Brad seemed to be MIA, so I walked farther into the apartment, Stevie following me, the door slamming shut behind us.
“Okay,” I said, as Stevie put the red wallet on the kitchen counter and set the keys next to it. “Do you think we need to leave a note or something?”
“Probably not,” Stevie said. “I mean, it’s not like Mallory’s roommate won’t be looking for it.” She set her clutch down on the counter and took a step farther into the kitchen, peering around.
“What?”
“I was just wondering. You know that stereotype about people who live in New York turning their ovens into closets?”
“They what?”
“To save space, and because they don’t cook. I was just curious.…” She pulled open the oven door and seemed disappointed when it was just an oven and not filled with shoes or sweaters. She turned to me, looking affronted. “It appears that Sex and the City has been lying to me.”
I laughed. “Well, maybe Brad is a big cook or something.” A second later I heard a scrabbling sound, and my blood ran cold. “Did you hear that?”
Stevie had also turned pale. “Do you think it’s a mouse?”
I would sometimes see mice darting across our yard back home, but we lived in the woods, practically. You didn’t mind seeing or hearing critters there, because it was their territory. But now, I wanted to crawl out of my skin, and I understood why in movies, when people saw mice, they were always shrieking and jumping on chairs. “Or maybe a rat,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “It sounded loud.”
Stevie shuddered. “Oh my god.” She froze as the sound got louder—and a second later, a white-and-tan blur ran out of the room with the door cracked open. “What is that?” Stevie asked, her voice panicky.
“It’s a dog,” I said as I realized it was. I laughed with relief as I understood that the scrabbling sound was just the dog’s nails on the apartment floors. The dog was small, definitely not more than ten pounds, and low to the ground. It was running around the apartment, only stopping to jump up and spin in a circle, and then start running again. It was very fluffy—it looked like a Pomeranian, though it was moving a little too fast for me to tell.
“Oh,” Stevie said, now backing up against the kitchen counters, not looking thrilled by this information. “That’s—good.”
“Come here, bud,” I said, bending down to try and pet it. The dog stopped mid-twirl and ran up to me. It did not seem to mind at all that it had never seen us before, and practically threw itself at me, licking my face aggressively along with happy little yipping sounds. “Hi,” I said, scratching him—I could see it was a him—behind his ears. This dog seemed to be 90 percent fluff, like if he got wet he would be a fraction of the size. I looked at the tag swinging from his blue leather collar. BRAD was engraved on one side, with a phone number on the back. “Well, that’s one mystery solved,” I said, straightening up, as the dog—Brad—started running in circles around my legs.
“What?” Stevie asked, not moving from where she was still pressed against the counter. For someone who really tried to pretend she wasn’t afraid of dogs, she wasn’t doing a great job of it.
“That’s Brad,” I said, pointing to the dog. He immediately stopped running and sat, like he was showing us just how well he knew his name.
“That’s Brad?” Stevie said, then frowned. “I guess now that does make a little more sense—that he would cry when we left.”
“You might want to tell Mallory that she should use a few more specifics when talking about her dog.”
“Seriously,” Stevie said. “Also, Brad? For a dog’s name?”
“And this dog really doesn’t look like a Brad.” Maybe unable to contain himself after hearing his name so many times, Brad jumped up and ran over to Stevie, who cautiously put her hand down.
“Nice doggie,” she said, giving Brad a very unconvincing head pat. “Good… boy.” She straightened up and brushed her hands off. “We should probably get going.”
I glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was only a little after five, so I had a feeling this was more about getting away from the dog and less about our timeline. But we still wanted to go to the Drama Book Shop and get something to eat—and getting to the Echo Theater early might be a good idea. There hadn’t been online ticketing for the show, and what if it sold out?
“Good call,” I said. I bent down and smooshed Brad’s fluff down, giving him a back and neck scratch—it was honestly hard to tell where any of his body actually was, as the floof was all-encompassing. “And you’re a good boy, aren’t you? Hmm?” I must have hit a good spot under his collar, because his back leg started thumping. “Yes, you are!”
“All right,” Stevie said, looking down at her phone. “So, weirdly, because of traffic, to get to the bookstore, it’s like a twenty-minute car ride, a twenty-minute subway ride, or twenty minutes on foot.”
“So maybe we should just walk?”
“I think we should walk.”
Brad suddenly bolted, running full speed back into the bedroom where he’d come from. “Okay, bye,” I called, trying not to be hurt. Clearly, what Mallory had said about him crying when we left was not true.
“Ready?”
“Yep,” I said. Stevie opened the door, just as Brad returned, but now carrying a leash in his mouth that dragged on the floor behind him. “What’s—” I started, but didn’t get to finish, because the dog kept going, running straight out the open door.
“Oh my god,” Stevie said, and then we both ran after him.
“Brad,” I called, and I looked down the stairs to see, in a panic, that he was already two floors down, on a step looking up at me. “Stay, okay, buddy? Just—stay.”
“Do you think it’s because we said ‘walk’?” Stevie asked. The second she said this, Brad leaped up and started running down the stairs again, the leash thumping down the steps behind him. “Sorry!” she yelled as we both chased after him.
“C’mere, pup,” I said, and Brad stopped on the third-floor landing and looked at me, his whole back half waggling from side to side, the long blue leash clenched in his teeth. “Here, bud,” I said, making my voice sound as excited as possible as I edged toward him, just trying not to make any sudden movements that would get him to take off again. The last thing I wanted was for the front door to somehow be open and for this tiny dog to go running out into the streets of Manhattan. The thought of it was actually making me feel sick. “That’s right,” I said, moving closer to the dog, and closer still. “We’ll just be… very gentle… and…” I reached out and grabbed his collar, then let out a long breath, now that I had the dog again.