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By Root 434 0

I was there. I howled for five nights straight. I scratched grooves into their front door and destroyed the back screen door. I chewed on water hoses and odd shoes, anything important. I cried from the porch as they ate their dinner and jumped on them when they came outside. If Francine were watching me that week, she would have been embarrassed. But like most humans, she would deny her role in my behavior. She wouldn’t see that spoiling me was the worst thing she could have done to me—because not only did it wipe out any chance of me becoming a confident, independent, beneficial member of a family, but it caused me such feelings of loneliness and isolation that I died from going cold turkey without her.

Your puppy will try anything to get stuff he shouldn’t have. Your job is to restrain from spoiling him. If you allow your dog to sleep in your bed, he will assume that he belongs there, and that’s just plain wrong.

The next few weeks were awkward, to be sure. It took only one serious temper tantrum—complete with swearing, book throwing, and plenty of high-pitched screaming with my fingers in my ears—to scare the crap out of both of them. My father tiptoed around as if I were a card-carrying pantyliner, and my mother hovered between being especially nice to me or playing vacant. Junior had an incurable dose of senioritis, a disease which made him skip classes and drive around with his friends listening to Led Zeppelin and inhaling nitrous oxide from a whipped cream can. We rarely saw him.

On the nights I came from Doctor Lambert’s office, my mother wouldn’t talk to me at all. The first night, she claimed a migraine and stayed in bed. After that, she just ignored me on Tuesday nights completely.

I spent part of my time reveling because I’d made her think twice about exploiting me, and part of my time feeling equally guilty, because I knew that it really wasn’t all her fault. What else could she do with a kid who was born with a secret mission? The doctor only knew part of the story, and my mother knew even less. No one had a clue what was really wrong with me, and no one ever would.

I went to see Doctor Lambert for the last time in March. Our usual Tuesday meetings had lasted for two months, twice his recommended time, since I wanted to see just how far my parents would take their pursuit of my secret. And looking back, I think I liked talking to him about my problems at home. I hadn’t been able to vent my frustrations in such detail for centuries.

Before Sadie and Alfred, there were other owners, other masters, and other canine parents, but none of them wanted me to go to college or expected much more than a growl at visitors and proper toilet training. Never had my past owners attempted to control me so much while choosing to remain losers. Sadie and Alfred were an exception. They were pushing me to achieve, and yet not doing a damn thing about their own situation. It seemed ridiculous.

Doctor Lambert got a glimpse at life with the Adams—their habits, their secrets, their war stories and, most importantly, their effect on me—and that was all. I never told him about my plans to dig up buried treasure or my vivid, violent daydreams. I never told him about the love I carried for a three-hundred-year-old dead man, either. During our last visit, he made me promise to tell my parents about my plans to travel for a year before college. That’s what we decided to call it. We figured “travel for a year before college” sounded sane enough.

I knew at some point in the week that I would have to sit my parents down at the kitchen table and tell them the great news. It felt horrible to get their hopes up, but I figured their desperate hopes shouldn’t be pinned on a teenage girl in the first place.

I arrived in the living room at eight. Both of them were staring at a rerun of The Cosby Show. I asked if they had a minute to spare, and pointed to the kitchen. We went in and sat down. My mother put the kettle on the stovetop and my father walked to the fridge and pulled out a beer, never meeting my eyes. (Patricia once told