A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk

dog. I love him, you know. He’s family. Even dead.”
    Mom nodded. “I understand.” And I figured she really did. Then she put her arms around me and gave me a hug. I let her, because even though I wasn’t worried about Dickie, I was a little worried she would remember I had snuck into her room and gotten into her stuff. Plus, the rock was making slurping sounds over there in my blood, and I didn’t think that was a good thing.
    “Come help me make dinner.” Mom stood up and walked over to my door. “After that, you can take Giorgio back where he belongs.”
    “Who?”
    “The head.”
    “Oh.” Great. It had a name. Maybe I could trick Jugg into carrying it this time. Or maybe I’d find a wheelbarrow to put it in. I sure didn’t want to touch Giorgio barehanded again. He bit.
    Still, what mattered was I wasn’t really in trouble. Even though I didn’t get to keep the head, I got to keep my dead dog. Things had worked out okay.
    I stood up and walked over to Dickie, then bent down and scratched behind his ears.
    “Who’s a good doggy?” I said.
    Suddenly, I knew I should scratch a little more to the left and maybe a little harder, and then a little bit to the right, and then stroke under his chin. So I did, even though I was hungry, and even though my back started hurting, and even though I didn’t want to do it any more.
    “Bad dog,” I said.
    Dickie just thumped his tail and licked my cheek with his swollen, purple tongue.
    Okay. Maybe this was a good thing for him, but so far it wasn’t so great for me. Back when he was alive and misbehaving, I would send him to his doghouse and shut the door. I wondered if I could make him go to his house now.
    “Go to your house,” I said.
    Dickie whimpered and I could feel how awful it was to be locked up in that dark little house. I knew how alone and sad it made him feel.
    Wow. I always thought I’d been a really good friend to Dickie. But maybe I hadn’t understood what it was like for him to be my pet.
    “I’m sorry, boy. I’ll try to be better this time, okay? No house.”
    He wagged his tail some more and stood. His bad legs looked a lot better, even though he was still a little flat in the middle.
    I patted his head one more time — because I wanted to, not because he wanted me to — and straightened up.
    “So, what do you want for dinner? Oh, wait. Do you need to eat anymore?”
    Dickie tipped his head to the side and his ears perked up. He yapped. Bones. I knew he didn’t need food, but he wanted to chew on a bone.
    Awesome.
    I found the box of raw hide chews in my closet and took Dickie out into the front yard to a patch of grass still warm from the setting sun. I gave him a raw hide and sat with him for a little while watching the daylight slowly fade into evening.
    “Boady,” Mom called through the kitchen window. “Dinner.”
    Great. I’d forgotten to help her make dinner. That meant I’d have to do the dishes by myself.
    “Be right there,” I yelled over my shoulder. I patted Dickie’s head one last time. “Gotta go, Boy. You gonna be okay here?”
    Dickie wasn’t chewing on the bone any more — wasn’t even moving any more. His ears stood straight up and his tail was stiff. He looked like an undead statue, staring across the street at Jugg’s yard. Then I saw his nose wiggle a tiny bit, like maybe he smelled something.
    “What?” I said. “What’s wrong?” I looked at the street then over at Jugg’s yard full of heads. I had the weirdest idea that maybe one of the heads was going to do something, like pull itself out of the ground and roll across the street to take back what’s-his-name I’d left on my bedroom floor.
    “What boy? The heads? Is it the heads?” Man, I hoped it wasn’t the heads.
    Dickie’s ears flicked back, then up again. That’s when I heard it — the thrum of a car engine veering off the main road and heading our way. Our neighborhood was pretty quiet so it was easy to know when a car was