Brooke shrugs. “I told him to stop but he didn’t listen.”
Dad sighs, and I feel like this is all my fault even though I was in the shower when it happened. It’s my dog, though. “We have got to get this all cleaned up before Bayleigh sees it,” Dad says. “She will lose her mind over all this mud.”
It really is everywhere. The floor, the walls, the back door, and even on some of the kitchen cabinets. Mom really will lose her mind.
”Brooke, how could you be so careless?” I say.
”It’s not my fault your dog is so bad!” She’s in full on pre-teen mode right now as she storms off toward her bedroom.
”Wait, you need to help us clean this,” I say.
”No, it’s your dog’s fault not mine!”
”Fine,” I say, sounding more like a dad than a big brother. “If you don’t help us then you don’t get to take Arko out anymore.”
”Fine!” she screams, turning on her heel and stomping off to her bedroom.
”Sorry,” I mutter to my dad as we both begin cleaning up the mud. Arko will need a bath after this, but what’s more important is making sure Mom doesn’t see the mess. I tell Arko to lay down at the back door and stay there, which he obeys, luckily.
I’ll have to make up with my little sister later, but one thing is for sure now:
We need to get our own home, stat.
Chapter 9
Keanna
I finally get all cozy in this bed in Jett’s old room. It took a lot of pillow fluffing and shifting around, but I found a good spot and I put on one of my comfort TV shows. If I close my eyes and listen to the TV, I can almost pretend I’m back in my old bedroom and that this is just a regular day with nothing to stress about. At least until Jett bursts into our temporary bedroom looking like he’s about to scream. He’s also a little sweaty? This is weird. I sit up in bed and pause the TV.
“What’s going on?”
He draws in a deep breath and then exhales. “I don’t even feel like talking right now. I’ll just show you instead.”
”Does it have something to do with why you’re all sweaty?” I ask.
”It’s not sweat…it’s water from the hose outside.”
”Now I’m even more intrigued,” I say with a chuckle.
Jett leans out the door and says, “Arko!”
Our new furry family member races up the stairs and leaps into our bedroom, tail wagging. He brings the faint scent of shampoo and wet dog into the room, which is confirmed when he shoves his head in my hands and his fur is still damp.
”Did you get a bath, buddy?” I say, scratching his fur. “It’s a weird time to bathe the dog,” I tell Jett.
He sighs again. “Yep. I didn’t want to bathe the dog at night, in the dark, with random dog shampoo Park found in the gym’s lost and found box. But I had to.”
And then he tells me the whole sordid tale of Brooke letting Arko roll in the mud outside and track it over the house. Luckily his mom hasn’t found out yet. She’s a little obsessed with keeping the house clean, especially the kitchen. I love my husband but he’s not the best cleaner on earth, so I should probably go do a second cleaning pass down there to make sure he got all the mud scrubbed off.
“Maybe we should try to dial back letting Brooke take care of him,” I say.
Harper pops up in her bed. I thought she’d fallen asleep while I laid in my bed, watching TV, but she’s wide awake now.
“Yeah!” she says. “Arko is my dog, not Brooke’s!”
”Honey, she’s just trying to help.” Brooke is my husband’s little sister after all, I don’t want to paint her as a bad kid. It is a little weird that his sister is closer to Harper’s age than to our ages, but his parents were very young parents who decided to have a second child much later in life.
“I don’t care,” Harper says. Arko does a big stretch then walks over to her, ignoring his dog bed and climbing up into her mattress. This makes her giggle and snuggle against him. “You’re my dog, Arko.”
