JOSIE AND I wanted a dog more than anything else on Earth. We wished for one every time we threw pennies in a fountain or watched the evening star drop behind the trees. At night, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed, Josie’d sneak out her bedroom window, and I’d sneak out mine, and we’d sit together on the roof and talk about dogs.
“You’re so dumb, Jake,” Josie would say. “Bulldogs are creepy.”
“Hah. Golden retrievers are creepy,” I’d say.
We had this ongoing argument about what our ideal dog would be. But it didn’t really matter—any dog would do, as long as it had a tail to wag and a friendly face.
Sure, Josie and I are twins, and we like each other and all that stuff. But we get sick of each other sometimes, too. If we had a dog, there’d always be somebody to hang out with, even when we wished we’d never heard the word “sibling.”
One summer night, as we sat together on the roof, Josie saw something. “What’s that?” She pointed down toward a dark shadow on our driveway. The moon was up, and everything looked either black or milky. At first all I saw was darkness. Then the shadow moved, and I thought I heard the jingle of metal.
“Did you see that? What is it?” Josie crouched
