Cyrus was just a baby when his firefighting, football star dad found him on the steps of the Northfield firehouse. But growing up surrounded by heroes didn’t make Cyrus brave like the firefighters who helped raise him. Instead, he’s as skittish as the stray dog who turns up on the firehouse steps eleven years later, parks his head on Cyrus’s shoulder, and earns the perfect name—Parker. Except Cyrus’s dad has a strict, no-pet-no-way rule. With football tryouts around the corner, and his dad’s legendary reputation to live up to, a dog would only be a distraction. But a distraction is exactly what Cyrus wants: from the fact that he’s the only sixth grader who can’t read a whole book by himself, from the way his two best friends are treating the new kid in class, just for being different. Cyrus feels as out of place as the stray dog who captured his heart. But if fitting in means pretending to be someone he’s not, maybe this is the year Cyrus can decide to be his own kind of normal.