Paintings From the Cave by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen [Paulsen, Gary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780375897436
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Published: 2011-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

One place Jo felt safe was the library.

Everything about the library was good.

It was warm in the winter and cool in the summer and always dry and safe and Jo never felt the stares at the library. The Biologicals had never been there, might not have even known it existed, for all Jo knew.

She would go to check out books on Saturday afternoon and Wednesday evening. There was an overgrown lilac bush near the reading room windows and Mike and Carter and Betty would crawl under the lowest branches and wait. She kept glancing out the windows, checking that she could always see the dogs hidden under the bush.

Jo loved books. Not as much as her dogs, and in a different way, but pretty close. Every Saturday and Wednesday she’d pick out three books—novels, graphic novels, picture books, poetry, history, short stories, plays, mysteries, travel guides, equipment repair manuals, stories of aliens or myths or true crime. It didn’t matter what she read.

What did matter was that when she read, she could forget how ugly her life was.

She read aloud to the dogs when they were in the woods or in her room with the dresser pushed across the door. They usually fell asleep, but even if they didn’t pay attention, reading to them made the words go inside her the way the moonlight had gone into her, so that she felt-heard-smelled the words.

The day before, when Rose had been talking, Jo had seen the color of her words. She’d felt the hope in her voice. She’d tasted the loneliness in Rose’s sentences. She understood that Rose had been trying to tell her something, with the words she used and the ones she didn’t.

Still thinking about Rose, Jo checked out her books, gathered the dogs and headed home the short way, through the woods. She wasn’t surprised to see Rose sitting on a stump near the edge of the trees.

Waiting for them.

Mike barked a happy greeting, Carter bounded over and Betty tried to make Jo hurry.

“I hoped you’d all be here today,” Rose said.

“Betty’s eyes tip up. Yours tip down.”

“They do? I didn’t know that.”

“The dogs taught me to notice things.”

“That’s amazing.”

“Dogs are better—” Jo stopped.

“Go on. What were you going to say? Better than …?”

“Better than people.” Rose nodded and Jo went on. “Humans aren’t as smart as dogs. Even though they think they are. Even people who like dogs and have them as pets don’t always understand how smart dogs are and how much they know.”

“What do they know?”

“How to see, smell, run. They can do all those things better than humans.” Jo took a breath. “They feel more too. Dogs know how to love better than people.”

Both girls watched Mike settle his chin on one of Rose’s feet and close his eyes. Carter, lifting his front paws, rested them on Rose’s lap and stared into her face, and Betty rolled onto her back, presenting her tummy for Jo to scratch. Jo peeked up from Betty and saw Rose smiling at her.

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