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Chapter 3

The dog's ears flopped along with my footsteps and he panted through the breeze, closing his gorgeous eyes and enjoying the ride down the trail back to the camp. He had a pretty thick coat of fur, and I wondered why his coat was so thick in the middle of summer.

"Guys, look at this fur. Don't dogs loss a lot of fur for summer? Like my dog at home has way less fur than he did in the middle of winter!" I noted to the rest of the gang.

"Yeah, that's what I was wondering. And he kind of looks like a Husky. D'you think his owner lost him?" Brooke piped up from the back.

Hazel; "But he doesn't have a collar."

Brooke shrugged, or at least looked like she was trying to shrug as we roughly made our way down the rocky path. "He could've slipped out of it."

I looked at the top of the dog's head, watching as his light fur shifted when he moved. "You think we should come up with a name?"

"Yeah, good idea! Okay, well, what do you think?" Hazel asked us.

They immediately started throwing out ideas; "Caleb? Too humanlike." "Happy? Too... Happy." "Scar? To scary sounding." "Fido?" "Shadow?" "Jack?" They kept spitting out ideas, and there were a few good ones, but none of them really caught our attention. For some reason we had all silently agreed that the puppy was mine, though whether it was because I found him or I was just the most forward, I didn't know.

"Aijet!" I said suddenly, remembering the name my grandmother calls me.

"What? Where'd you get that from?" Claire asked, surprised.

"My grandma calls me that sometimes. I don't know what it means, but it just sounds good, don't you think?"

Silence from the rest of the group.

"I just like how it's not common."

"Alright, whatever you say. Your dog.... Wait. I hear someone," Hazel dropped her voice.

I immediately stopped walking and clambered into the bushes, crashing through the ferns so I was out of sight of the group of people coming up the trail loudly.

"Stay there, we'll come back in a bit," Claire hissed, and they started up a noisy conversation while they continued lazily walking down the hill.

I ducked between the ferns, covering Aijet's snout lightly to stop him from barking or making any other dog noises.

Four people passed, laughing and playfully bumping into their partner; as soon as the two couples rounded the corner I stood, itchy from the heat and the tiny yellow fern seeds sticking to my still damp skin.

I quickly made my way down the trail, knowing if we got caught taking a "wild animal" home we would have to do community service for the next week.

I met the three others as they were coming back up to get me. "Okay, let's go. I'm dying of heat here and I'm covered in dog hair and fern!" I laughed and we marched back to civilization.

We had to take a few detours to finally get back to the cabin, which added a lot longer to the trip, but eventually we made it by noon.

"Do you think we should tell Kaylee?" Claire asked as our group of four burst into the cabin.

"I don't know, would she get us in trouble?" I set Aijet down on the empty bunk below mine and flopped onto the other side of the bed.

"Well, he's hurt, right? So wouldn't we just be able to say we saw he was hurt?"

"Yeah but they would keep him and then release him again."

Claire looked at me. "Are you planning on taking him home?"

I bit my lip. "I don't know. It probably wouldn't be an issue for my parents because we've actually been looking for a dog for a while now, but how am I gonna take him home-oh, stop!" I giggled as Aijet bounded across the bed and jumped on my lap, licking my face. "Ew, you've been licking your cut!"

He climbed off my lap as if he actually understood and sits next to me, patiently staring into my face with those amazing eyes. I rubbed back his tall, straight ears and he brushed against my side. He looked just like a Husky puppy.

"You can buy a bag from the store and keep him in it on the bus home." Brooke laughed from her bunk on top of Claire's on the other side of the room where she was taking her allergy pills. She laughed, "I can imagine you just carrying a bag onto the bus and it's moving around and stuff." She chuckled again through the pill in her lips and took a gulp of water.

I watched Aijet limp around the room, poking at everyone's bags and sniffing under the beds. "Yeah, that could work, I guess."

"I was kidding, but okay."

"Oh."

"Well in the meantime we should probably go buy some tape and stuff for his leg." Claire stood, towel wrapped around her hair.

"Where should we put him while we're gone?" I thought out loud.

"Just put him in the bathroom. No one's gonna come in since it's like the middle of the day."

I wrapped my damp towel around Aijet, keeping his injured leg tucked into the towel, and carried him into the small, square bathroom near the cabin door. For such a small animal, he was surprisingly heavy.

"How could he have even got here, if he was a stray?" I wondered, "I mean we're on an island."

"I don't know. We'll figure that out later. Let's go." Claire, who was always the to-the-point, get-things-done kind of person, headed towards the door and we all got to our feet and followed her.

Around ten minutes later we were back at the cabin, breathing heavily from the humid, suffocating air and the hill we had to climb. I went into the bathroom and brought out Aijet.

"Okay, who remembers how to wrap up a wound?" I asked. "Cause I wasn't really paying attention... As usual."

"Oh, I do!" Claire came over and sat down on the bed on the other side of Aijet, who immediately tried to jump up and lick her face on three feet. "Down, dog! Geez, we should give him a bath." She wrinkled her nose and carried him to the sink to wash off his paw before covering it with tape and gauze. She covered it with a clear plastic tape, wrapping it loosely as to not cut off circulation from his tiny paw.

"Alright, good as new!" Claire neatly placed the tape and gauze in her bag and watched as Aijet sniffed and licked the tape a few times before looking back up at me and just staring into my eyes.

"Now we just have to figure out what to do to keep him hidden," said Brooke. "But we should just put him in the shed up on the hill for now and enjoy our day. Sorry, bud." She looked at Aijet who was now watching her.

"Let's get going then."

After the long hike up to the tool shed by the gardens and back down, we decided to go canoeing again. We got our bags and identification lanyards and got a canoe, heading for the floating dock out across the lily pads.

I slathered sunscreen on just my shoulders as Claire and Brooke took their turn rowing; Hazel and I were rowing on the way back. The dock was fairly far away, but was in sight from the camp.

We got to the dock and I gripped the slippery edge, pulling the boat towards it. We were about to climb out and secure the canoe when all of a sudden a tremor went through the canoe, there was a thump, and the four of us were tipped into the water.