Free Boys Are Dogs by Leslie Margolis Page A

was plenty tired but too excited to sleep. For the first time since I started going to Birchwood, I couldn’t wait until school.

chapter eight
boy-speak
    I got so caught up in studying I forgot to put Pepper in his kennel for the night. He woke me up at six thirty the next morning by jumping on my bed and licking my ear.
    “Oh, gross. Pepper, cut it out.” I rolled over and buried my head under my pillow. But he wouldn’t let up and pushed his wet nose into my neck.
    “It’s too early,” I groaned.
    Next he swatted my shoulder with one paw. I turned to face him and noticed something green caught on the fur near his collar. “What’s that?” I leaned closer to get a better look. Pepper was sporting a piece of lettuce on his neck. And he smelled like garbage.
    I threw off the covers, jumped out of bed, and ran downstairs. Turns out Pepper had tipped over the kitchen trash and had helped himself to everything inside. Remnants of last night’s dinner littered the entire room, along with banana peels, eggshells, chewed up paper towels, and stuff I didn’t even recognize.
    “Oh, Pepper, this is disgusting.”
    He wagged his tail, hard. He seemed completely unconcerned. Just like he did two days ago, when he stole one of mom’s used tissues out of the bathroom trash. I’ll never get used to the fact that the little guy actually enjoyed eating garbage—maybe even more than he liked his kibble. There wasn’t any point in scolding him, though. According to the dog-training book, dogs have short memories.

    So I cleaned up the mess before Mom and Dweeble found it. Then I led Pepper outside and got ready for school.
    After reviewing my notes in the car, I felt ready for English. Before Tobias could even think about bugging me, I stared him down.
    “What?” he asked.
    I looked him straight in the eye, because I figured it would be intimidating. I made sure to speak clearly and used few words, since his vocabulary might not be so great. “Don’t kick.”
    He looked at me like he thought I was nuts. “Geez, Spaz. What makes you think I was going to kick you?”
    Um, maybe because you spent all last week kicking me? I didn’t ask him out loud, though. This wasn’t a conversation. It was an order.
    “I’m just saying, don’t,” I replied. “And don’t call me Spaz. My name is Annabelle.”
    The dog-training book had instructions on how to teach Pepper his own name, but it didn’t cover teaching Pepper my name. And I couldn’t figure out how to reverse the lesson with Tobias, so I figured I’d just tell him.
    “Whatever,” Tobias mumbled.
    Pepper never talked back, but I guess I couldn’t expect a perfect translation.
    Mr. Beller called the class to attention, so I turned around. He collected our homework and I didn’t get kicked. He started talking about how we could expand our vocabulary by reading more and I still didn’t get kicked. Then he named three students who’d forgotten to turn in their homework on Monday. I wasn’t on his list but Tobias was. Oh, and I still didn’t get kicked.
    I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I didn’t want to get too comfortable. That had been my mistake yesterday. After one small victory, I’d let my guard down. Boys, like dogs, needed reinforcement. It wasn’t enough to teach Pepper to sit once. I had to remind him to do it over and over again. This meant my work was far from finished.
    Since I still had five more classes to get through, plus lunch, I tried to think in positive terms. Like, instead of having hours of potential torture ahead of me, I had that much more opportunity for boy training.
    It worked for a while. Then, as I walked to my locker to get my social studies book, some guy yelled, “Spaz!”
    It would have been easy to walk by and pretend that I didn’t hear, or didn’t know he was talking to me. That’s what I did yesterday. And that’s what I’d done all last week. But ignoring the problem wasn’t going to change anything.
    So