What the Dog Saw

The vintage dad hat was everything. Well, almost everything. It was thrifted, slightly stained, and pulled down low enough that maybe—just maybe—nobody would notice the frizzy hair I'd spent forty-five minutes trying to tame. Fifteen-year-old me thought: *This is it. This is the vibe.*

I was saving up for Paramore tickets by walking dogs for neighbors' cash. $12 per furry beast, and Buster was my favorite—a golden retriever with zero chill and maximum enthusiasm. We had a system. I'd show up in the hat. He'd lose his mind. We'd walk, he'd sniff everything, I'd stress about braces and whether boys could somehow tell I still slept with a stuffed narwhal. (They can't. Probably.)

Tuesday was also spinach-salad day because my mom said I needed iron or something. I'd shove it down between walks, checking my reflection in parked car mirrors like a weirdo.

That day, though, Buster caught a squirrel scent and I was eating distractedly, spinach everywhere. He lunged. I stumbled. My hat—the personality, the vibe, the *entire brand*—caught on a branch and *yoink*. Gone. Floating toward the pond.

I scrambled after it, spinach probably wedged in my braces like green cement, hair exploding free in the humidity. Of course, *he* had to be there. Tyler, from English. The one I'd been low-key eyeing all semester.

I froze. Hair wild. Green teeth. No hat. Absolute catastrophe.

But Tyler just laughed—genuine, not mean—and waded in to grab my soaked hat before it sank. "Your dog has commitment issues," he said, tossing it to me.

"My dog has zero chill," I corrected, and then we both laughed, and I didn't even die a little.

That night, I hung the hat on my wall. Sometimes I wear it. Sometimes I don't. The dog saw everything, and it turned out that was fine.