Free Snitch by Norah McClintock Page A

Weller looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded and held out a hand, a signal to me that I should go right on in.
    There were three rows of chairs set up, each row with eight chairs in it. But when I counted, there were only fourteen people in the room, including Mr. Weller. Only one was a girl. She went right overto Mr. Weller the minute he came into the room, so I figured she was a helper. She was kind of cute.
    Scott went up to her and said something. She laughed. Scott could be so charming. At least, that’s the impression he liked to give. But I wasn’t buying it. Then Scott looked at the back of the room where I was standing. He grinned at me again. I gave him my frozen look, the one that said,
I don’t care
. But inside I knew I did care. I was going to get even with him if it was the last thing I did.

Chapter Two
    Mr. Weller told everyone to take a seat. Twelve of us did. I expected the girl to stay up front with Mr. Weller, and Scott to sit down with the rest of the guys. I was going to tell him to get lost if he tried to sit anywhere near me. But he didn’t. Scott stayed up front with Mr. Weller. The girl sat down with the rest of us. Another person had come into the room—amiddle-aged woman. She looked like a teacher or a librarian.
    â€œYou all know me,” Mr. Weller said. He told us—again—that we could just call him Brian. He told us that learning to train dogs would teach us a lot about ourselves. He said that dogs are like little kids—they respond well to patience and kindness, and they don’t respond well to anger. Then he introduced us to the woman. Her name was Maggie—“Just Maggie will do,” she said. She was the dog trainer. I still couldn’t figure out what Scott was doing up there.
    Then Maggie said, “And this is Scott. He’s my assistant.”
    I stared at Scott. He was standing up there, beaming at us all as if being an assistant dog trainer made him someone special. Maybe some of the guys in the room thought so too. But that’s because they didn’t know Scott like I did. They didn’t know what he had done.
    â€œIn a few minutes,” Maggie said, “you will be introduced to your animals. Butbefore we bring them in, you need to understand your responsibility.”
    A couple of guys groaned when they heard that word. Sometimes it seemed like the only word that adults knew. Andrew used it a lot. “I have responsibilities now, Josh,” he’d say. Or “One day you’ll be responsible for someone besides yourself. Then you’ll see what it’s like, Josh.” He made it sound like responsibility was a cranky old gorilla that you had to carry on your back forever.
    According to Maggie, it was up to us what happened to the dogs that were in the program with us. She said they all had serious behavior problems. She said that because of their problems, the animal shelter wasn’t able to put them up for adoption. We were going to work with them to help them overcome their problems. If we were successful, the dogs would be able to find real homes. If we failed … She shrugged and then she smiled and said she knew if we were patient and worked hard, we wouldn’t fail.
    After Maggie finished talking, she asked if there were any questions.
    No one put up a hand. No one said anything.
    If Maggie was disappointed that no one asked anything, she didn’t show it. She told us that the dogs in the program weren’t vicious. She said we shouldn’t be afraid of them. She told us how to greet a strange dog—don’t look them straight in the eyes the first time you met them (dogs see this as threatening), don’t smile at them (a dog sees this as baring your teeth, which, to dogs, is threatening), don’t rush directly to the dog (also threatening), don’t pat the dog on the head … I began to wish I was in a regular program. I understood guys with anger management