Page 33 of The Goode Girls of Maple Lane
CAMERON:Yes please!!!
EVERETT:Good. See you then. Now get some sleep you maniac!
I’m grinning as I pocket my phone. Apparently, the best I can do isn’t bad at all.
Chapter Twelve
On Friday, when I’m home after classes, Aggie’s been out, and I refuse to cram in schoolwork all afternoon, we work on one of the key mobility exercises Sam and Sariah talked us through, with the end goal of enabling Aggie to stand up on her own. She can sit up from lying down but after years of disuse, her back legs aren’t as strong as her front legs. We’ve been practicing for weeks, initially with me helping to lift her back end once she starts to rise, usually using the harness. Later, we added a small, padded step she can perch her backside on so she doesn’t have as far to go to reach a standing position. I tempt her with toys, treats, or a spoonful of peanut butter, standing just out of reach. She tries to lift herself. She has the idea, shereallywants to nail it, and she’s so much stronger now than she was when I first brought her home, but she’s still struggling, rocking backward and forward but eventually dropping back down.
“You’re doingsogreat!” I encourage as I help her up and then return her to the step so she can try again on her own. “You go at your own pace, baby. You’ll get there. I can tell.”
She blinks at me like she’s not so certain, but after a few seconds, she tries again.
We’re on our tenth or eleventh attempt when there’s a knock at my door. I’d assume it’s Everett but it’s a little after two right now and he’s at work. He said he’d do his damnedest to leave his office right at five so we could have our date night, but I bet he sticks around for at least another hour.
I open the door to find Khalil in the mid-November version of his cycling gear, which means he’s swapped his shorts for leggings and added a fleece and a reflective raincoat. I’m sure he has clothes that aren’t made of high-tech fabrics, but I’ve never seen them. He’s also soaked from the rain that’s pelting outside right now, with his hair dripping and his sneakers squelching.
“Do you have ten minutes?” he asks. “Or, maybe more like twenty?”
“Sure, of course.” I step back to give him room to enter. “I also have towels.”
“Ack! Sorry. I got excited.” He pats at his head while I toss him a towel from the toppling stack beside my laundry hamper. Once I realized Aggie liked to lie down in puddles—of both the water and mud varieties—I stocked up on heavily discounted seasonal beach towels, leaving us with a colorful selection depicting SpongeBob SquarePants, Disney Princesses, and the slightly more appropriatePAW Patrol. By pure chance, Khalil gets Elsa fromFrozen.
“What’s up?” I ask as he towels off his hair and greets a tail-wagging Aggie with a vigorous scratch between her ears thatalmostexcites her enough to lift her bum off the step.
“I showed everyone in my lab your account.” He rummages in the zippered kangaroo pocket on his rain jacket. “They all became instant mega-fans and wanted to do something fun for Aggie. We got to talking about how she loves to play ball, even though she can’tchase it yet. We’ve been doing a lot of work with movement sensors and triggers, and, well, we want you to try this.” He holds up a ball he’s taken from his pocket. It’s about the size of a tennis ball, bright orange, and made of thick rubber with four or five grooves circling the circumference.
“Is that...” I swallow an incredulous breath and try again. “Is that a robotic ball?”
He rotates it in his hand, giving it a loose inspection. “We call it prototype Q.”
“Meaning there was a prototype A through P?”
“Oh yeah.” He nods emphatically. “This was a process.”
“I bet.” I watch, still flabbergasted, as he digs in his pocket again and takes out a small zip-top bag from which he removes what he explains is the ball’s sensor, which he attaches to Aggie’s collar near her ID tag. She licks his face and neck with no restraint whatsoever while he’s kneeling in front of her, and he gracefully submits to the saliva-fest without complaint.
“Still working on standing, huh?” He taps the side of the step.
“Working on it. She’s getting close. It’ll come.”
“With the two of you working together, I have no doubt.”
I smile in gratitude, which Khalil accepts with a smile of his own, and it strikes me in that simple exchange how much he feels like a friend now, and not only because he got a whole team of geniuses to make my dog a special toy, but because he knows how Aggie’s recovery is going and that I’m struggling with my life plan. I know his grandmother taught him how to cook, and that she’s in Jadra, Lebanon, where he and his sister visit her every summer. I also know he loves Billie Eilish. He knows I’m trying to love NeilDiamond. These bits and pieces of our lives we share are more than conversation. They’re tiny doors we open as we let each other look inside.
That’s no small thing, I think. And then I pack the thought away so I can focus on my dog, and prototype Q, and my growing curiosity about what will happen next.
Once Khalil has both the sensor and ball activated, he opens my door and sets the ball near the threshold so it will be free to roll into the hall since there’s so little unobstructed space in my apartment. I hoist Aggie off the step and support her back end as she takes a few shaky steps toward the ball. When her nose gets close enough to sniff it, it rolls about a foot away.
Her head jerks back in surprise that quickly morphs into delight as her tail wags and she stumbles toward the ball again. It holds still until she’s close, but as her nose nears, it rolls away again, and when it bumps into a wall, it course corrects and rolls a few more feet down the hall.
Aggie looks at me, at the ball, at Khalil, and back at me, like she’s not sure what to do.
“Does it keep rolling out of her reach?” I ask, still impressed, but as confused as she is.
Khalil folds his arms across his chest and tips his chin toward the ball. “Wait for it.”
After about twenty seconds, when Aggie doesn’t go after the ball, it lets out a funny electronic giggling noise that makes her head cock to the side as she renews her interest. When she stalks toward it, curious but wary as she inches her nose closer, it lights up this time, its grooves strobing for a few seconds before goingdark again. As Aggie continues interacting with it, it also jiggles, whistles, darts side to side, and slowly rolls toward her, stopping at her feet.
