Content Warning: This section includes discussions of animal euthanasia.

“I got my dog, Riley, exactly two months after my grandpa died. Grandpa lived with us and he was my best pal. To tell the truth, I think Mom let me get a dog so I’d start feeling better.”

Riley is connected to the central theme of Navigating Change. William’s mother hopes that the dog will help William heal after the death of his grandfather so the boy can begin to look forward to the future again.

“It was funny about the fishpond. While it lay there, waiting, it was as if Grandpa would come back and I’d see him standing in it, his glasses all muddy, his baseball cap so dirty you could hardly see what color it was.”

William has a challenging time letting go of the fishpond because it is one of his last remaining links to his grandfather. By keeping the pond as it is—even though it is an incomplete eyesore—William can imagine that he still lives in a happier past, which has his grandfather in it.

“Mom says there are things between them that can’t be fixed and they’re happier apart. But what about me? Am I supposed to be happier without a dad?”

At the beginning of the novel, William struggles with Seeing Both Sides of an Argument. His parents’ separation does not make sense to him because he thinks about it only in terms of his own feelings, and he doesn’t like his father’s absence. William cannot fully internalize the idea that his parents have their own feelings and needs as individuals.