Free Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen D. Randle

front of the whole class—that it was his fault, and I was never going to get any satisfaction out of knowing he knew it.
    He was getting more human every minute.
    It was hours before I finally realized that Smitty had been making another statement. Of course even a halfway intelligent dog would act to avoid an uncomfortable situation, but still—it was like an affirmation of our very existence, that he shouldn't want to walk with us.
    If that's why he hadn't shown up this morning.

    “Well, I think we can assume he definitely is avoiding us,” Caulder said that night. We were on our way home from Tibbs's with my math. Smitty hadn't helped me; his mother hadn't been able to find him anywhere.
    “You better be able to explain this stuff to me, Caulder,” I warned him, meaning my math. “This is your fault.”
    He glared at me. “Oh, really,” he said.
    “Yes, really,” I told him. We turned in at my walk. “I have to hand in this stuff tomorrow, Caulder. The way my luck is running, Mrs. Shein will probably ask me to explain it at the board.”
    “Which you could do, if you wanted to,” he said. “If you'd stop whining and use half your brain.”
    “Which I could do, if I had anybody who could explain it to me. Which I would have if we'd just left Smitty alone in the first place.”
    “Oh. Now it comes out. She cares more about getting her grade in math than she does about helping another human being.”
    “Oh. Helping. ”
    “Yes. Helping.” Caulder had his nose stuck up in the air.
    “You're a real truck driver, you know that, Caulder? As long as you get where you think you're going, you don't care who you turn into roadkill.”
    He turned around and stared at me. “And what's that supposed to mean?”
    “You think you're Albert Schweitzer or somebody, but you're not. You'd probably cut down rain forests and call it 'Progress for Mankind.'”
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “You've been weird all day,” he said to me. “So, what's the problem?”
    “The problem is, you don't really care about Smitty.”
    His mouth fell open. “How can you say that to me? What do you mean I don't care about him? What do you want me to do? Die for him or something? I love him; you know I love him.”
    I folded my arms and took a breath. And then I looked him square in the face. “You don't hurt people you love.”
    His hands fell down to his sides. He looked away from me, and then he took a breath and he met my eyes. “You do if you have to.” He lifted his hands slightly and then dropped them again. “I don't want to hurt him,” he said. “Lord knows I don't.”
    We were standing on my front stoop, freezing, staring each other down.
    “You do what you have to do,” he said softly.
    “What you have to do,” I echoed.
    “You do your best,” he amended. Then he sighed and leaned back against the wall of my house. “Sometimes I get carried away,” he admitted. “But—” he looked up at me, “—I think maybe sometimes you run when it looks like it's going to cost you anything.”
    A little tongue of anger spurted up inside of me at that, not because he was criticizing me, but because I knew he was right. “This isn't about me,” I said.
    “This is about us,” he said wearily. “And maybe why we need each other. And maybe why he needs both of us, and not just me.”
    I still had my arms folded, but something in all that had sounded like reconciliation and suddenly I wasn't angry with him anymore.
    “What about my math?” I said.
    I saw him relax. “Don't worry about your math,” he said, making it sound dogged. “I'm not as useless as I make out.”
    Which turned out to be a good thing, as Caulder was the only help I was going to be getting for days to come.
    No Smitty in the morning, no Smitty at night. No matter how Caulder lay in wait, Smitty outguessed us, and I got yelled at more than once for being late to homeroom. The one time Smitty was late, the teacher didn't say a word to him. Caulder