One day in May, during my junior year of high school, a dog with brown spots followed my mother home from a run. Or was it January? She always turned her headphones so loud the world was welcomed to sing along to Coldplay or Maroon Five with her. Somewhere behind the box of jump ropes and wiffle balls, the dog nestled itself, until my mother walked near and screamed. Its eyes, some pre-linguistic brown, yelled at her and she wrapped him in a blanket of the same color and brought him to the utility closet, or that hallway with a sink and the washing machine. When we came home, my sister and I, a yelp echoed through the door. The rug was curled up on the edges. Paw nails shadowed underneath. When we opened, he flew to the other side of the hallway, cowering behind a basket ficus. I took him for a walk the next morning before school and he shit watery green behind my neighbor's rose bushes. I didn't clean it up.
Four days later, my father kicked it out of the house after it peed on the leather couches downstairs. The dog never barked, except at my father's voice. It heard the anger, the hostility, the imminence we wouldn't.
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