2. It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the
lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its
side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not
running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The
points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because
the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I
could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork
into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident.
But I could not be certain about this.
I went through Mrs. Shears's gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and
knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm.
The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs. Shears, who was our friend. She
lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left.
Wellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles but a big
poodle. It had curly black fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath
the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken.
I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why.
3. My name is Christopher John Francis Boone. I know all the countries of the world
and their capital cities and every prime number up to 7,057.
Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture
and I knew that it meant "sad," which is what I felt when I found the dead dog.
Then she showed me this picture
and I knew that it meant "happy," like when I'm reading about the Apollo space
missions, or when I am still awake at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning and I can walk up and
down the street and pretend that I am the only person in the whole world.
Then she drew some other pictures
but I was unable to say what these meant.
I got Siobhan to draw lots of these faces and then write down next to them exactly
what they meant. I kept the piece of paper in my pocket and took it out when I didn't
understand what someone was saying. But it was very difficult to decide which of the
diagrams was most like the face they were making because people's faces move very quickly.
When I told Siobhan that I was doing this, she got out a pencil and another piece of
paper and said it probably made people feel very
and then she laughed. So I tore the original piece of paper up and threw it away. And
Siobhan apologized. And now if I don't know what someone is saying, I ask them what they
mean or I walk away.
5. I pulled the fork out of the dog and lifted him into my arms and hugged him. He was
leaking blood from the fork holes.
I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad,
cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithfu...

Show full text: 958,106 characters