He pulled out what looked like a book wrapped in paper towels. I took it from him and unwrapped it. My Diary was printed in peeling gold foil on its dark green cover.
“Is this yours?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t, because the last thing I needed was to read a thirteen-year-old boy’s diary.
He looked horrified for a moment.
“Of course not. I think it was Tish’s.”
The book felt warm in my hands, and I wiped my palm on my jeans.
“How did you get it?”
Seth looked away. He sighed. He squinted at the dogs, who were playing some tennis-ball game in the middle of the yard.
“Seth?”
“I found it in Baxter’s bed,” he said.
“What? How?”
“Please don’t tell anyone, Clyde. Especially Vi, or Nana Rose . . . or my mother.”
“Okay. What’s going on?”
“I was trying to get Baxter to lie down. He paced around the house the whole time that people were here from the funeral. I brought him up to my room and tried to get him onto his bed. He refused to even go near it.”
“So, you sat on it and felt the book?”
“No.” He looked at the dogs again, then the house, then back to the diary I held in my hand.
“It was as clear as anything. He said the bed was too lumpy.”
“Who said?”
“Baxter.”
I felt my jaw drop.
“You think you heard Baxter talk? Oh, Seth.” I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but he dodged away.
“I didn’t hear him talk. I sort of felt what he was saying, in my head.”
Seth was such a normal kid that I thought he had escaped. But then I thought of the way the two worst-behaved dogs I knew were obedience champions when he was around.
“When you checked the bed you found this book?” I tried to focus on the more concrete aspect of his story while I figured out how to deal with his Doctor Doolittle confession.
Seth nodded. “I felt something hard, so I cut open the seam and dug around inside. I found the book. I didn’t read much of it; it seems like it’s from when she was a kid.”
I flipped the book open and looked at the date: 1975. Tish would have been around twelve at the time. Why would she hide a diary from when she was twelve?
“I don’t know what to do, Clyde. I kind of like knowing what the dogs think, but I thought it was just a general sense. Today it was different. Today I heard real words in my head.” His eyes were big.
“Vi has been able to get messages from animals for years. Maybe you should talk to her.”
His head shook violently from side to side.
“No. I don’t want them to know about it. I don’t think Vi can really hear them; I think she just makes it all up based on a feeling she gets. I don’t want my mom to know. She’ll think I’m a freak.”
I laughed. “Your mother grew up here. She won’t think you’re a freak. . . .” I stopped when I noticed his expression. It was one of a wise teacher waiting for his stupid student to figure things out.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She always says she hopes Sophie and I get a ‘useful’ talent, if any at all.”
“‘Useful’ being the one she has—predicting the stock market?”
“You have to admit it’s better than talking to cats or telling people they’ll find love during far-off travels.”
I couldn’t really argue with him. I had felt the same way growing up. The kids eventually realized I knew things about them they’d rather keep to themselves. No one feels comfortable around a person who knows when there will be a pop quiz, or who pulled the fire alarm in a deserted hallway.
“Have you had any more . . . messages? From Baxter?”
“No. Not as clear as that one. He’s sad that Tish is gone, but he likes being here with Tuffy.”
“Okay. Let me think about this. There must be a way to stop the messages. Do you want to stop communicating with them?”
Seth shrugged and watched the dogs. “No, I kind of like it. But, it’s just so . . . freaky. What would you do?”
I sighed and put my hand on his back. “I’m still trying to figure that out.”
*
I took the diary up to my room after sneaking past the dining room, where my parents and Vi were still rehashing the funeral and the will.
I wasn’t sure what I expected, but there were no secret codes, no notes hidden under the liner papers, no invisible ink. After the shock of that letter from Mac, I had a new vision of Tish as a superspy. I was embarrassed to find myself holding pages up to the heat of a lightbulb to see if anything developed.