The Six Rules of Maybe

as I called after him.
    I went after Zeus, who was racing in mad circles around the yards, crazy from everyone else’s fear and his own sudden release. His people were going fast, and so, he too, needed to go fast. He crossed the street and crossed back again, dashed through the Martinellis’ junipers around the Pete-Robbins’s Acura; he flew past Ally Pete-Robbins, and Jacob made an unsuccessful dive for hiscollar.
    He stopped on the sidewalk across the street. I didn’t want him going near that fire. You could feel the heat of it on your face. I tried to command his stillness with my voice, calling him sternly. He was panting. I had a chance. But then, his head turned suddenly toward the wide street beyond that fire, beyond the licking flames and the crackles and pops and the ash floating in the air. He ran.
    You could hear the sound of sirens coming. All I could do was the one thing I’d been asked to do by the man I loved, to help the one good dog I was responsible for, and I went after him.
    “Zeus!” I clapped madly. I could hear sirens coming closer now. I imagined a night of deception and of fleeing—Kevin Frink and Fiona Saint George heading off to some unreachable place in his Volkswagen, Juliet fleeing her marriage in Buddy Wilkes’s El Camino, Mom fleeing the stagnation of her life in Dean Neuhaus’s arms. And me fleeing, too, leaving my mistakes behind, mistakes now up in flames, running after Zeus as he rounded the corner far beyond the Pete-Robbins’s house.
    “Zeus, PLEASE!” I felt frantic now. I couldn’t get to him—he was always just beyond my grasp. I was worried he would be hit by one of the fire trucks or the ambulance, which I could hear approaching. Zeus had abandoned everything in his fear; his anxiety propelled him forward, forward, around, anywhere, in wild motion. We weren’t on our street anymore. I was in my robe in a stranger’s yard. My voice was hoarse from calling. Lights of houses went on, porch lights, too. I ran through the new bark and freshly seeded lawn of the house where the construction had been going on all summer. My chest was full of fire from running. Zeus was in another backyard and I didn’t know if I could keep up with him much longer.
    “Boy!” I pleaded. “Zeus!” The commotion on our street soundedlike a dim roar, but I could smell the destruction in the air, some dark blend of damage and charcoal and melting plastic. Zeus stopped and looked at me, too far for me to catch him, and when I started toward him, he took off again. I was crying now. “Zeus!” He ran two blocks over and disappeared. I called and called him.
    I was desperate for the sight of his butterscotch fur, his triangle ears. I was crying his name and could only see him gone forever, gone, could feel the loss of him, and my own failed responsibility to the man who loved him, whom I loved.
    The street was empty, just streetlights, and the faraway sound of the place where I lived, the moon so still and forever. He had vanished. No dog in sight. No beloved dog. Just a neighborhood at night.
    I bent over. All of it, the whole night, Hayden, that wrong kiss, my sister gone, my mother, Kevin Frink, and Zeus, Zeus, Zeus—it filled me and crushed down hard and I sobbed. Sobbed and sobbed, my chest wracking; I held my stomach. Mom had been so right. Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss. But safety called its own shots, and now I had destroyed things. The things that mattered most to me.
    Zeus was gone, and the loss of him felt like the worst thing, the worst. We hadn’t been careful enough. I hadn’t been. You have to be careful with the people you love. It’s the least they deserve.
    I wanted to look up and see him there, but that didn’t happen. There was just the gone-ness of him, and the empty street.
    I knelt on the sidewalk in my robe under the streetlight, my head in my hands, crying. That’s when I saw the big lumbering form of the Pleasure Way drive up. That’s when Mr. Martinelli opened the door and held out his hand and that’s when I got in. I sat down inthe real leather seat and rode with Mr. Martinelli up and down our streets, calling Zeus’s name through our open windows.

Chapter Twenty-four
    Juliet—
    Just that, on a crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it with my hand. I had the same longing, the desire to call a name and have whom you most wanted to see appear. Zeus had been gone