Jasper John Dooley, Left Behind (5 page)

After school Mom was waiting for Jasper. “Mom!” Jasper shouted as he ran out to meet her. “Mom! It's my turn! It's my turn!”

“Your turn for what?”

Ori caught up and told her. “Tomorrow it's Jasper's turn to bring Hammy home for the weekend!”

Then Jasper remembered. He put his hands over the big lump of Band-Aids under his shirt. “Nan's not here! She won't get to meet Hammy!”

“If we ask nicely, Ms. Tosh might let you keep him an extra day.”

“So she'll get to meet Hammy?”

“Hopefully,” Mom said. “And you'll be so busy with Hammy and building your ship that you won't notice she's gone. Jasper will be right over,” Mom told Ori. “I'm going to make you boys a snack.”

Jasper was so excited about looking after Hammy and about Nan coming back on Monday that he almost forgot to bring in the yogurt containers before going over to Ori's. He went out on the deck and snapped the lids on. Four more yogurt containers of air. He put them in the fridge. Now there were four yogurt containers filled with rain and eight yogurt containers filled with air for Nan when she got home.

Mom packed the snack for him to share with Ori.

“You're going over there every day. I don't want you eating all their food,” she said.

“I'm not eating all of it,” Jasper said. “I'm putting some of it behind my ears.”

Ori was already calling from across the alley and one house down. “Faster, Jasper! Faster!”

First they sat on the mountain of wood in Ori's backyard to eat their snack, which was apple slices and cheese bunnies. They counted out the cheese bunnies and divided them equally. One cheese bunny they broke in half. They didn't care about being fair with the apple slices.

Before Jasper had even finished his snack, Ori ordered him back to work.

“I'm not finished my cheese bunnies,” Jasper complained.

“It doesn't matter. You have to get to work on time. Those people we had to pay to come and do our renovation? They always got the lates. Sometimes they never even came. My dad was so mad.”

“I just want to finish my bunnies,” Jasper said.

“We'll never get this cruise ship finished,” Ori said.

“We might if you helped,” Jasper said.

“I'm helping! I'm the boss!”

“I mean if we had two people hammering,” Jasper said.

Ori started yelling. “I don't want to hammer! My dad hit his thumb with the hammer, and it turned black and almost fell off! Then we had to pay somebody!”

“My Nan is coming home on Monday!” Jasper yelled. “We have to get this ship done!”

“You'd better hurry,” Ori said.

By then Jasper had finished his bunnies so he jumped down from the mountain of wood and picked up the hammer. He looked at the plan taped to the garage, then at the wood outline of the cruise ship that wasn't nearly nailed together yet.

“Faster!” Ori called.

Jasper crouched and took a nail from the coffee can. He tapped it part way into the piece of wood. So far so good. But when he raised the hammer high to drive the nail in, the same thing happened again. That sneaky nail jumped out of the way! Jasper kept at it, but he hardly ever hit the nail. Meanwhile, Ori kept on yelling, “Faster! Faster!”

Jasper threw down the hammer. “I've got an idea,” he said. “Let's pay somebody to finish the ship. How much money do you have?”

Ori wasn't sure. He went inside to get his bank. He and Jasper emptied it on the mountain of wood and counted it out. There were eight dollars, seventeen pennies, three nickels and twelve dimes. “Wow,” Jasper said, sweeping it all into the hem of his shirt. “This will be a big help.”

“You're taking it all?” Ori asked.

“Yes. A cruise ship is expensive to build.”

“The thing is,” Ori said, “it's my wood. So you have to pay to build the ship.”

Jasper let the money fall from his shirt into the grass. “No fair!”

He stormed off across the alley and one house down.

Except at the very end, when Ms. Tosh gave Hammy to Jasper to take home, nothing happened at school the next day. Ori did whisper, “Faster!” when Jasper was trying to finish his math worksheet. And then Jasper wasn't fast enough and had to stay in at recess to get it done. Recess wasn't even enough time to finish the worksheet, not when Jasper spent half of it coloring his thumb black with a pen from Ms. Tosh's desk. And Jasper did march right up to Ori when he came in from recess and waggle his black thumb in Ori's face. Ori staggered over to his desk and put his head down. When Ms. Tosh noticed, she asked if he was all right. Ori said he felt sick and was going to throw up, so Ms. Tosh sent him home, which was too bad because then Ori couldn't walk home with Jasper and his mom and Hammy.

But other than that, nothing happened.

At the end of the day, Ms. Tosh gave Mom a bag of hamster food and some wood chips for the bottom of the cage. She gave Jasper the cage. “Now, Jasper. Make sure you don't feed Hammy too much. Because — look at him.”

“Hammy is hammy,” Jasper said.

“He sure is,” Ms. Tosh said. “Make sure he gets some exercise.”

Mom said, “Ms. Tosh, Jasper's Nan has been away. He misses her so much. Could he keep Hammy an extra day to surprise her when she gets back?”

Ms. Tosh said yes.

Jasper and Mom walked home with Hammy in his cage. Hammy looked out through the bars. He wiggled his nose. “He thinks he's on an airplane,” Jasper said. He walked three steps before asking, “Can I please get my own hamster?”

“We'll see,” Mom said. Then she asked where Ori was.

“He went home sick,” Jasper said.

“That's too bad. I hope it's not catching. You've been over there a lot.” Then she noticed Jasper's thumb. The ink he had colored it with had smeared all over his other fingers. “Jasper John Dooley, your hands are filthy!”

First thing when they got home, after he washed his hands, Jasper went around the house collecting cardboard tubes. He got tubes from paper towels. He got tubes from toilet paper. Mom let him unwind a roll of toilet paper just to get the tube out. Jasper put all the loose toilet paper in a box. The box was in the bathroom now. Mom said they had to use up that paper before they started a new roll.

When Dad came home he asked, “Why is there a box of loose toilet paper in the bathroom?”

Jasper ran with the cage to show him Hammy.

“Wow,” Dad said. “That is one plump hamster.”

After Jasper finished joining all the cardboard tubes together with tape, he took Hammy out of his cage to get some exercise. He put him in one end of the long, long tube and quickly crawled around to the other end. “Come on, Hammy! Come on, boy!” he called down the tube.

Hammy came. He came halfway. Then he got stuck. Luckily, it was easy to rip the tube open. Hammy didn't seem too bothered. He looked at Jasper and wiggled his nose.

That night Hammy slept in Jasper's room. In the middle of the night, Jasper woke to a sound.
Whirr! Whirr! Whirr!
It was Hammy running around the wheel in his cage.
Whirr! Whirr! Whirr!
Jasper put his pillow over his head.

Whirr! Whirr! Whirr!

He asked, “Hammy? Are you going to do that all night?”

Whirr! Whirr! Whirr!

He said, “Hammy! Pipe down!”

Whirr! Whirr! Whirr!

Jasper got out of bed and took the wheel out of the cage.

When Jasper woke the next morning, he was worried. He was worried that there was a terrible disease you could get from looking at a black thumb. And he was worried that Hammy would be hammier on Tuesday because he had taken the exercise wheel out of Hammy's cage. Jasper was so so worried that he forgot to check if his Band-Aids had come off in the night.

He got up and put the wheel back. Hammy was sleeping in a ball in the corner of the cage. “There you go, Hammy,” Jasper told him. “You can run all you want now.”

Hammy kept on sleeping.

Jasper reached into the cage and put Hammy on the wheel. Hammy looked sleepily around. He wiggled his nose. When Jasper turned the wheel, Hammy climbed right off and went back to his little nest of wood shavings in the corner.

Jasper got an idea. He found some string and made a little leash, then lifted Hammy out of the cage and tied it around his tummy. Jasper didn't tie it very tightly. He didn't want to hurt Hammy. Then Jasper took Hammy to the kitchen where Mom was and set him on the floor.

“What are you doing with Hammy?” Mom asked.

“He's getting some exercise,” Jasper told her at exactly the moment Hammy slipped out of the leash and took off faster than he had ever run in his whole hammy life.

“Hammy!” Jasper screamed.

Mom and Dad and Jasper looked everywhere. They crawled on their hands and knees through the house, looking under the furniture and in every cupboard and closet. Jasper even checked his drawers.

“Hammy!” Mom called.

“Hammy!” Dad called.

“Come on, Hammy!” Jasper called. “Come on, boy!”

Dad found two sets of car keys that he had lost. Jasper found an armless action figure and some hockey cards. Mom found an earring and a lot of dirt. But they didn't find Hammy.

Hammy was really, truly gone.

“Don't worry,” Dad told Jasper. “He's around here somewhere.”

Mom said, “Let's lure him back with food. What special food do hamsters like to eat?”

“Macaroni?” Jasper said.

Mom said, “Let's start with cheese.”

She went to the fridge for some cheese, which she cut into tiny pieces. They made a cheese trail through the house. The trail started in the kitchen and went all the way to Jasper's room, ending right at Hammy's cage on the floor.

“Good,” Dad said. “Now I think we should get out of the kitchen. If we're here, Hammy won't leave his hiding place.”

Mom wanted to go to the garden center. She told Jasper, “Why don't you go over to Ori's and work on the ship?”

“No!” Jasper cried.

“You can come with me if you want. Or you can stay here and watch golf with Dad.”

Jasper went down to the den with Dad, but the little ball rolling across the grass and ducking in the hole reminded him of Hammy escaping. Where had Hammy gone? There wasn't a hole in the kitchen.

He pressed both hands over his Band-Aids. “I'm
pthththing
again. I need more Band-Aids.”

“You need to take those Band-Aids off,” Dad said.

“Never!” Jasper wailed.

“Shhh,” Dad said. “You'll scare Hammy.”

“If we don't get out of the house,” Jasper said, “Hammy will never come back.”

So Jasper and Dad went out for a walk. All their neighbors were outside enjoying the sunny Saturday. Dad waved and called to each of them, “Hamster on the loose!”

“I wish Nan was here,” Jasper said. “She would know what to do.”

“Nan would
not
know what to do,” Dad said. “Nan would run screaming as fast as she could.”

“What if Nan doesn't come back, either?” Jasper asked.

“Nan's coming back.”

They walked past the alley, around the corner, then down Ori's street. Ori's dad was in the yard mowing the lawn. He shut the mower off when he saw them and came to shake hands with Dad across the fence. Jasper noticed that his thumbnail
was black. It made him feel sick, and he clutched his Band-Aids again.

Ori's dad invited Jasper's dad inside to see the renovation. “Ori's in the backyard,” he said, ruffling Jasper's hair. “Go see what trouble he's getting up to.”

Jasper crept around the side of the house. Ori was working on the cruise ship by himself with his back turned. Jasper watched him tap a nail in until it could stand up by itself. Then he lifted the hammer with both hands. When he brought it down, he missed the nail completely. He wasn't even close.

“Ori,” Jasper called.

Ori looked over his shoulder. As soon as he saw Jasper, he leapt up and ran and hid behind the mountain of wood.

“I washed my thumb,” Jasper called, but Ori still wouldn't come out. Jasper felt a great gush of
pththth
. He buckled over, holding his Band-Aids tight. Then Dad called to him.

When Jasper and Dad got home again, they took off their shoes and tiptoed inside, down the hall and to the kitchen, without making any sound.

The cheese was gone, but Hammy wasn't in the cage.

“That is one smart hamster,” Dad said.