Read Online Dog Crazy by Meg Donohue - Free Book Online

not fail. I slip my shaking fingers into her soft neck and begin again.
    One.
    Two.
    When I spot the curb ahead, I realize I’ve made it to the corner, about half a block away from Lourdes’s house. I immediately turn around and hurry back toward the gate. Giselle lopes along at my side.
    When the gate latch falls into place behind me, I double over, pressing my hands against my knees, and inhale deeply. After a couple of minutes, my head begins to clear, and I straighten. It actually worked! I hadn’t gone far, but for the first time in one hundred days I’d made it beyond the gate. It was a start.
    â€œWell,” I say to Giselle once we’re in my apartment. I’m scrubbing my hands under hot water and she’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom, watching me. “That was some adventure, kid.”
    Giselle is too polite to argue.
    â€œBaby steps,” I say. Then I try to translate: “Puppy steps.” But the translation doesn’t really work—a puppy would have bounded joyfully down that street instead of hobbling along like someone recently released from a full-body cast. A puppy would have kept going beyond the curb.
    There’s still a box of dog biscuits in a kitchen cabinet. I hold a treat out to Giselle, smoothing back her soft bouffant with my other hand, and she takes it delicately, her muzzle brushing my fingers like a light kiss. She trots over to the rug and bites the biscuit into pieces, letting chunks of it fall out of her mouth andonto the rug, and then licks up the pieces one at a time. Afterward, she snorts into the rug a few times, hunting for crumbs, and then looks up at me expectantly. When I don’t make a move toward the cabinet that holds the biscuit box, she stretches out her long legs in front of her, separating all of her claws, and yawns.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say. “Am I boring you already?” I feel punch-drunk, so adrenaline-addled that I’m almost giddy. I’d only been beyond the gate for a couple of minutes, but the length of time is beside the point. I’d done it. I’d felt anxious and breathless and my heart had raced, but the mushroom cloud of panic had never darkened the sky—or at least I’d never looked up to see it. That was important. I can’t push myself too far, too quickly. A full-blown panic attack would only make things worse. What I need is a series of short walks that go well enough to work as positive reinforcement—a foundation upon which I can build when I’m ready.
    Giselle rolls over on her side and looks up at me, thumping her feather duster of a tail against the rug.
    Two more walks, I decide. I’ll force myself to take two more walks today, each one longer than the last.
    I T WOULD BE easier if I didn’t live in a city of hills.
    Even as a kid, I wasn’t a fan of heights, a fear that I now see as a precursor to my current phobias. I was eight years old when I first realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother leave our house; I realize now it’s surely no coincidence that it was also the year I felt my first spell of vertigo. That year, my mother signed me up for a ballet class that took place in a fifth-floor studio just high enough to overlook the tops of threestreets of row houses and the flat expanse of the Delaware River in the distance. During the first class, I ran with all the other girls to the window to take in the view, but as I stood there touching the cool glass with my fingertips I felt my mouth go dry. I turned away, worried I was going to be sick, and spent the rest of class wondering why the floor kept wobbling. After watching me stumble around for a couple of sessions, my teacher decided I was unfocused and clumsy and stuck me, to my relief, in the back row of class, where I learned to keep my eyes trained on my classmates’ bright hair bows rather than the view that was multiplied in the