The Story of Us by Deb Caletti Page B

habits. No matter what she was going through, all she needed was the easiest invitation to optimism—coffee, say—and she was in. She gave too much optimism to Jon Jakes and Vic Dennis. But once she ran out of it? It was gone for good, forever gone, and they were left wandering the wide, crowded halls of Sea-Tac, stepping over the carry-on bags of weary businessmen.
    Mom was back to her makeup now. Come to think of it, there was also a lipstick face.
    “The wedding?” It was a test.
    “Planning out the logistics today with Rebecca. Who will do what, where. Some cake guy Rebecca knows is coming tomorrow.”
    Relief. But then I had a nightmare vision—dogs, cake, some bad romantic comedy movie where the two inevitably merge in disaster.
    “Can you see it?” she said. “The dogs destroying some huge, fancy cake, like in the movies?”
    My mother had this creepy way of reading my mind, I swear. I decided to test her. You have a creepy way of reading my mind, I thought.
    But she only looked at me and smiled.
    “See you downstairs,” she said.
    Jupiter must have strolled out from my open door, hopped downstairs, and found Ben to let her out. I knew because Rabbit was in the middle of the hall, dragged like a carcass and then abandoned for smells of sausages. I was surprised to find her and Cruiser in the dining room, sitting stiffly next to each other there, looking formal and attentive as if they were at a job interview. Yeah, Ben had treats. He sat on the floor in front of them as Dan and Hailey and Amy watched. Everyone else was standing around in the living room talking, their syrup- and blueberry-streaked plates abandoned on that huge wood table. The ocean was all morning newness and sparkly beginnings outside those large windows.
    Ben opened his mouth dramatically, stretched his arms. “Aww.” He yawned. “Aww, awwww!” He yawned and yawned again, and I knew what he was trying to do. It was something I discovered one day. I don’t know why I thought of it, but it occurred to me to wonder if maybe you could make dogs yawn, same as you do people. So I tried it. I was on the old leather couch in our living room, and Jupiter was on the chair she wasn’t supposed to be on but was always on, and she was watching me while pretending to sleep. I saw her peeking. She always kept one eye on us; that was her job. I knelt up close to her. I yawned, and then she did too. I was so happy. I was thrilled . It was like a scientific discovery. I went andgot Ben, and we both tried it again to make sure it wasn’t a coincidence. It took some doing, but sure enough she yawned again, though maybe she was just bored with us people and our weird games. Sometimes my humans are very puzzling, she seemed to say. Still, the yawning discovery felt important. It said something significant about animals and humans, though who knew what.
    I lifted the foil from the plates on the table. Sausages. There they were. Pancakes. I sat in a chair, which was still warm from someone’s recently vacated butt. I hate that. My crankiness, there and then not there, was back again. More than just back —it was the nun on the Sound of Music hilltop, singing with cruel volume, its little arms flung out wide. It was childish, I know, but dog yawning was our thing.
    “They’re not going to do it,” Amy said. She sat on Dan’s knee, arms around his neck. She looked miraculously cured of her illness from the night before.
    “Tell ’em, Cricket. They don’t believe me,” Ben said.
    “Cruiser does all kinds of tricks,” Amy said.
    “He rules the total house,” Hailey said. Her lip was curled up again in disgust. It was possible this was a permanent condition, same as Mom’s tipped-up nose, say, or Janssen’s eyes that always looked a little sleepy.
    “Jupiter doesn’t do tricks,” I said. Jupiter was an independent thinker. We’d tried to teach her to shake a few times, but she just stared at us in firm refusal, as if she simply preferred not