When Friendship Followed Me Home (3 page)

6

THE MICROCHIP

“His teeth are in decent shape, which means he was well cared for,” the veterinarian said.

“Then how'd he end up on the street?” I said.

The vet shrugged. “Maybe he was a companion animal for an elderly person. She dies, the family drops him at a shelter. From there, let's say he's adopted by people who had good intentions but no time to care for him. The dog gets dumped again. Or . . .”

“Or?”

“Maybe he's just lost. He has a microchip embedded in his skin. Look.” The doctor passed a scanner over the dog's shoulder. A phone number came up on the iPad screen. “That's his owner. There's an email address too.”

“Maybe he ran away,” I said. “She was probably treating him really rotten.”

“Traveler?” Mom said. “Think how you would feel if you lost your dog. Think about the dog most of all. It's in your
power to reunite him with the person who cared for him all these years.”

My power, huh? I wasn't feeling very powerful. I was feeling like I wanted to barf all over the vet's office.

• • •

We plunked down on the bench outside the veterinarian's and waited for Mom's sister, Jeanie. We were hitching a ride with her to the Bay Ridge mall. The website said you could bring your dog inside the pet supply store, except he wasn't really my dog now. I took out my phone, hit speaker and dialed.

Mom chucked her arm over my shoulder. “I'm proud of you,” she said.

The dog was snoring in my lap. Then came the voice.
The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.

Mom nudged me. “We're halfway home. There's still that email address, Traveler.”

“Mom—”

“Send it off, and we have a clear conscience we did everything we could.”

I tapped the email into my phone with a message to call our home number. I forced myself to hit send right as Aunt Jeanie pulled up. Her boyfriend Leo leaned out the window. “First a kid and now a dog, huh Tess? Better you than me.” He laughed like it was the best joke ever. He got out with Aunt Jeanie to help Mom into the car. She had a touch of the arthritis. “I'm
fine,”
she said. “You're such a gent, Leo, but I'm not an invalid—yet.”

“You'll outlast all of us, sweetheart,” Leo said.

“I certainly hope not. Ben, give your aunt a hug.”

Jeanie was nice and all, but when she hugged you, she pushed you away the slightest bit, like you'd better not mess up her makeup. She worked as a manager at Macy's, and she got a huge discount at the cosmetics counter. She was younger than Mom but looked older. The skin around her eyes wrinkled out like spiderwebs, probably because she was always squinting and scrunching up her forehead the way you do when you get worried. She came over to the apartment now and then. “Tell me about school, are you doing any sports, are boys really wearing their hair that long now?” She wasn't nasty or anything. More like she was just, I don't know, a little
nervous
being around me. Leo I didn't know so well. I'd see him holidays, for dinner or whatever. He was a little overfriendly, like he'd shake your hand all exaggerated and slap your shoulder and practically yell, “Hey, how the heck are ya?” Except he didn't wait for you to answer, and then he was running back to the TV to watch the game. I'd watch with him and I swear he'd say it fifty times, “Have some chips, champ. Put a little meat on those bones.” I always wanted to tell him that chips weren't made of meat. They were made of freaking
kale,
if Aunt Jeanie had her way. She was kind of a health food freak. I don't know. Leo was okay, I guess.

We got into the backseat of Aunt Jeanie's Mercedes. There was a sheet over it. “Will he stay back there, the dog?” Jeanie
said. “I can't have all that fur everywhere, Tess.”

“And good morning to you on this gorgeous Saturday, sister darling,” Mom said. She kissed Jeanie's cheek, then Leo's.

“Sorry,” Jeanie said. “It's just that I had the car vacuumed yesterday.”

“Babe, relax,” Leo said. He winked at me. “Right champ?”

The dog nudged my hand and put up his paw.

“He wants you to give him a high five,” Mom said.

I gave him a knuckle bump and he dove at my face and licked my lips.

“Whoever had him before trained him well,” Mom said.

“Totally. I really hope she's dead,” I said.

“Well, Traveler, I'm not particularly thrilled by that sentiment.”

• • •

At the mall we picked out a leash and collar and this pet carrier backpack so you could take him with you on the train. It was like that diva girl's mesh backpack except sturdy. The little guy didn't mind the pack at all. The cashier dropped a chew stick in there and the dog hopped right in after it. The pack was half off, but it was still expensive. “Should we wait until we're sure he's ours?” I said.

“We'll give it to his owner, if it comes to that,” Mom said. “And if she doesn't want it, we'll have it for when we get another dog.”

“Another dog,” I said. “Sure.”

7

THE MOLD HORDE

“He's totally part Ewok,” Mold said.

“Teebo, right?” I said.

“More like Wicket. That's what you should call him.”

“How about Spidey?” I said. “Flash?”

“Wicket's cooler. Or Gandalf.”

“No way.”

“Potter?”

“No magicians,” I said.

“Dude, chill, no need to be racist about it. C'mere, little guy. Coffin, he is
awe
some. My sisters are going to flip.”

We climbed the stairs to his porch. I'd never been to his house but knew it from half a block away by the bent light saber in the driveway and the kiddie pool filled with green-brown water. The peekaboo window alongside the front door was patched with cardboard from a Dr Pepper box. Inside, barefoot kids ran all over the place.

“Mom, this is Coffin,” Chucky said. “He's my friend, sort of.”

“Hello Coffin.” She hugged me. She smelled like cookies, and she was a good hugger all right. I couldn't breathe.

“I
love
him,” this like four-year-old girl said. She had a peanut butter beard and jelly splotches on her nightgown. The dog went straight to licking the peanut butter off her lips. A horde of other girls in nightgowns joined in. Not in licking off the peanut butter. In cuddling the dog, I mean. One of them was crawling around with a loaded diaper. The dog found that terrifically interesting.

An old golden retriever limped into the swarm. The dogs sniffed each other's butts. The retriever lay down, and my dog—maybe—settled in next to her. Their tails beat the dust from the carpet. All of a sudden my dog jumped and begged me to pick him up.

A scrawny old cat came into the room, sat and licked its butt hole in front of everybody. Now I knew why I was having trouble breathing. The cat hair was all over Mrs. Mold's nightgown and everyone else's. Only certain kinds of dogs made my throat itch, but cats got me wheezing every time. And why was everybody in nightgowns at three in the afternoon?

“Ginger
loves
dogs,” Mrs. Mold said. “Ears, GinGin. Ears.”

The cat licked the wax out of the retriever's ears and the dog sighed happily.

“Ginger can clean Fuzzball's ears too, if you want,” Mrs. Mold said.

“I think his ears are totally okay,” I said. I left out the part about wasn't the cat's tongue just up its butt? Mrs. Mold took the dog out of my arms. The cat went straight at my dog's ear with her slimy tongue, and my dog stopped shivering and started thumping.

“That means he
loves
it,” one of the littler kids said. “The other way you know they're happy is they hump you.”

“It's true,” Chucky said.

“Stay for pizza, Coffin,” Mrs. Mold said.

“Do we have enough?” Chucky said.

“Yes,
Charles, we only have about a billion boxes in the cellar freezer.”

“Sorry, bud,” Chucky said, “it's just that living around here, I have resource allocation concerns. I acknowledge that I have a problem, and I'm dealing with it.”

I couldn't breathe but I was famished. Air or food?

We had burnt frozen pizza, and it was awesome.

8

THE UNDERWEAR THIEF

Monday morning I took the dog with me on my coupon delivery route. A lady in a housedress came out of nowhere and hit me with a broom when I left a pennysaver at her door in front of a sign that said
DO NOT LEAVE SALES MATERIALS OF ANY KIND
. My boss told me to ignore those signs especially. “Sorry ma'am, just following orders,” I said.

“See if you can follow them after I beat your brains in.” She swung the broom at my rear end.

That little dog rolled over at the lady's feet and wagged his crooked tail. The lady forgot about me and scratched the dog's belly. She was a whole different person now, like actually
nice.
She invited us in for a bagel, but I had to get to Health and Safety class, where Rayburn nailed me with spitballs. Avoiding him the rest of the day was no problem because, well, let's just put it this way: He wasn't in Honors. I ate lunch under the stairs.

After school I ran home. I'd set up my phone with the
camera on time lapse to see what the dog got up to. Here's what he did all day after Mom went to work: Nothing, except he got into my laundry basket and grabbed hold of my underpants. He made a pillow of them in the hallway and sighed, eyes on the door the whole time, until—and this was crazy—he went insane scratching at the door five minutes before I even put the key in, like he had ESP that I was on my way home.

I checked my email. Still no word from the dog's previous owner. She was dead for sure. I was feeling really, really terrific about everything.

• • •

“You got a dog, right?” Mrs. Lorentz said.

“How do you know these things?” I said. I turned around so she could see the dog through the mesh panel of the backpack.

“You don't swamp the online reservation system with requests for dog training books when you adopt a ferret. Come around back here and let me see.”

I went behind the main desk, put the backpack on the floor, and unzipped it.

“I want to eat him,” Mrs. Lorentz said.

“Why?”

She scooped him up. “Hel
lo,
you little wombat.” The dog attacked her with a kiss. I mean he like totally Frenched her. “His eyes,” she said. “They remind me of our little guy
Harry. We lost him in June. He was old. Died in his sleep in my daughter's arms. You can't wish for a better good-bye-for-a-while than that, right?”

“Good-bye-for-a-while,” I said. “Sure.”

An old man came to the counter to return a laptop. His book bag said:
READING MAKES YOU LIVE LONGER. JUST LOOK AT ME.

Mrs. Lorentz put the dog into my backpack. She nodded to a stack on the counter. “Those are yours, Ben.” On top of the dog training books was
Feathers.
When I turned to put the books into the backpack, the dog was gone.

9

RETURN OF THE RAINBOW GIRL

The little mutt trotted to the back of the library where the diva was camped out. She wore a yellow beret, fluorescent pink nail polish and a tangerine scarf. The only thing not popping bright about her was her skin, which was really pale. She had bags under her eyes too, like she stayed up the whole night reading all those books I saw in her backpack last time. The dog climbed into her lap. “It's criminal, his adorableness,” she said. “What's his name?”

“Not sure yet,” I said. “I've only had him three days.”

She'd spread her books out all over the table that was previously mine until she took over the entire freaking thing. One was a copy of
Feathers.
Crazy-colored sticky notes marked off the pages.

“You're her,” I said. “Mrs. Lorentz's daughter.” The book was in my hand,
Feathers,
the library copy. “I'm almost done reading it.”

“Some books change the way you see the world, and then there's the one that changes the way you breathe. How are you loving it?”

“You know, totally.”

“Then you may sit,” she said. She gave the dog a belly scratch. “I love how his tongue sticks out the side of his mouth.”

“How come I've never seen you around here before?” I said.

“I just started homeschooling. I work in my apartment until lunch, but after that I get totally stir-crazy. Besides, you have seen me before.”

“You mean on Friday when you made me hold the door for you the whole time you texted your friend back?”

“Before that, and sorry for being preoccupied. I was in the middle of a pretty important exchange. You really don't remember me?”

It took me a little while to remember that I actually had met her. The oversized beret covering her head threw me off, but she was the girl with the loopy light brown hair from last winter break. “You helped me check out my books while Mrs. Lorentz was on the phone,” I said.

“Who admits to having read
I, Robot
and then
renews
it?”

“You look—”

“Different,” she said. “Look closer. See?” She had practically no eyebrows. “The chemotherapy is actually working.
My latest bloods and scans are looking pretty decent. Bad numbers down, good ones up. I'm totally going to kick this thing's butt, you know?”

“I know,” I said, like an idiot, like I knew anything about her except she made me feel the way I did when I saw the dog following me but afraid to follow me. It was like when Darth Vader chops off Luke Skywalker's hand. Vader will let Luke live if he joins the dark side, but Luke doesn't. He doesn't submit to Vader's light saber either. He freaking jumps into a reactor. The Force is with him, though, and he falls into a garbage chute, and after that Leia rescues him, and he gets a totally cool bionic hand. Yeah, this girl was tough like that.

“That was the email I got when you were starring in the role of aggrieved doorman,” she said. “The old thumbs-up from the doc. Yeah. I'm one of the lucky ones. The side effects from the chemo aren't totally awful, other than I get tired for a few days after. And of course the, like, hair thing.” She nodded, and that got me nodding, despite the fact I was totally confused. It just made zero sense. You don't take medicine that makes your hair fall out unless you're
really
sick, and she was my age.

“Anyway, it's just hair,” she said. “And it grows back, just so you know.”

“You still look totally beautiful, though,” I said. Sometimes I want to punch myself in the mouth, except it would hurt and just make me look even stupider. “Sorry, I have this problem
sometimes where I forget not to say what I'm thinking.”

“How is that a problem, and why would you ever apologize for saying I'm totally hot?”

“Excuse me,
beautiful
I said.”

“That's twice now.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, just for a second. “Thanks,” she said. Her fingers were cold and covered in sparkly gel ink. So was the top page of her spiral notebook, with the prettiest script, starbursts instead of dots over her
j
's and
i
's. “I'm writing a novella,” she said.

“Seriously?”

She made her face overly serious. “I'm afraid so. You're not a writer?”

“I'm twelve.”

“Then what are you waiting for? My mom thinks you're really cool, by the way.”

“She's totally wink-worthy,” I said.

“Ex
cuse
me?”

“No, like on Facebook, you know? The wink? I'd totally send her the hugest one.”

“Ew.” She packed up her books.

“I'm getting the feeling the wink doesn't mean what I think it means,” I said.

She tapped up this blog about Facebook etiquette and appropriate use of emoticons. Here's what it said:

;o)
also known as “the wink,” is totally okay from your boyfriend, totally
not
in most other cases, and totally
ick
from the creep who thinks you're hot when he's so not.

“Wow,” I said.

“Yah.” She wasn't too tired that day, the way she was marching for the exit.

I leashed the dog and scooped up the books Mrs. Lorentz left at the main desk for me and shoved them into the backpack.

“Why'd she storm out like that?” Mrs. Lorentz said.

“No
idea.” I couldn't even look at her.

The dog and I caught up with the Rainbow Girl on the side street. She was heading for the boardwalk. “You'll never guess what I thought the wink meant,” I said.

“I don't want to know,” she said.

“Anyway, I didn't think it meant what it
means.”

“I know,” she said. “I overreacted. I do that. It's just one of the many facets that make up the intricate gem that is my persona.” She picked up the pace and huffed and puffed as she walked ahead.

“So homeschool, huh?” I said, trying to keep up. The dog nipped at our heels. “Sounds awesome.”

“I can't wait to get back to
school
school,” she said. “Ever hear of Beekman 26?”

“That's the arts school, right?”

“It's paradise. I'm there just as soon as I'm back to a
hundred and eleven percent. That'll be the start of next quarter, definitely. Till then it's me and Dad at the kitchen table. A hundred and eleven's my favorite number, by the way. It's the atomic number of roentgenium. You can't find it in nature. You have to conjure it up in the lab, but it has the same properties as silver and gold. You probably knew that, being a sci-fi geek.”

“A hundred and eleven's also the magic constant for the smallest magic square using the number one and prime numbers. Here, check it out.” I grabbed her gel pen from behind her ear and wrote on my palm like this:

“Add those numbers vertically, horizontally or diagonally, and they equal a hundred and eleven,” I said.

She grabbed my hand and added and nodded. “How do you know this?” she said. “You're like genius-level smart, aren't you? Like smart enough where I'll have to hate you for being smarter than me—than I am?”

“No,”
I said. “You're totally smarter.”

“All right then. In general, anyway. But clearly not in math. So annoying. I hate being a stereotype. You know, girl equals math dummy. Except I'm not. I was better than all the boys at school, if only to make them mad.”

“I'm not mad.”

“Why would you be? You don't go to my school.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, go on. I'm feeling better about you now, about our comparative intelligences. Please, continue.”

“I got this book for Christmas once,” I said. “It was like a math puzzle book.” I held up my palm. “It's not like I thought this up myself or anything.”

“Who said you did? Anyway, I'll need a copy of it.” She pressed her palm on mine and the ink transferred to hers.

“It's backward,” I said.

“It's perfect,” she said. “My mom. She was right. You're cool. You've redeemed yourself, and from a
very
deep hole.”

“Your dad. He's taking off work to be your tutor?”

“He works nights mostly. You're really twelve? You look older.”

“Seriously? Thanks.”

“You're hilarious.”

“How much older?”

“Twelve and a half,” she said.

“You're like thirteen, right?”

“Am. You're freaking hysterical.”

“Why?”

“Oh my gosh, stop making me laugh.”

“But you're not laughing.”

“Do you have any money on you?” she said. “Buy me a Reese's and I'll forget that whole thing back at the library entirely.”

“What, that I wanted to send your mom the wink?”

“Why are you reminding me?”

• • •

I bought a three-pack and we sat on a boardwalk bench. She nibbled the candy. “Sweet Cheez Whiz, that's good,” she said. “This dog's very existence is preposterous. He's sho goofy I want to shmoosh him and munch him up into a biwwion widdiw peeshes of fwuff. Gonna eachou! How do you not have a name for this little freak? I love the way he looks at you.”

“And how's that?”

“Constantly,” she said. “You should get him certified as a therapy dog. That way he could come into the library, and nobody can give us dirty looks.”

“You mean like a Seeing Eye dog?”

“Exactly not. Are you blind? There's this thing where kids who have a hard time reading, read to dogs. The dog doesn't judge the kid when he mispronounces a word or whatever. The dog's just completely psyched the kid is giving him all this attention. The kid feels like, whoa, this dog is totally
listening to me, I must be reading pretty great. The more confident the kid gets, the better he reads. I swear, it's a real program. They do it in schools and libraries and jails and stuff. I think your little guy here could do it. Look at him listening to us. To me anyway. I talk a lot.”

“Really?”

“Do you mean ‘really' as in, do I think your guy could do it, or really I talk a lot?”

“That he could do it.”

“Liar. Your eyes are open too wide and you're looking away.” Any guy who thinks he's smarter than a girl is an idiot. But this girl was as smart as my mom, which was
totally
scary. “Read to Rufus, it's called, where the dog listens to the kid,” she said. “I read about it in the education section of the paper. I'm going to be an English teacher by day and a novelist by night. You?”

I shrugged. “Waterslide tester?”

“That's the last thing I would've expected you or anybody to say. Okay, I am now officially falling in like with you. That is so freaking awesome. You are my hero.” I think that's what she said. Things got fuzzy after
falling in like with you.
“Stop jackhammering your leg,” she said. “It's spectacularly annoying.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Don't feel compelled to say anything at all. I know, I'm bossy.”

“I'm not saying anything at all.”

“Flip,” she said. “That's what you should call him.”

“Why?”

“Because that's his name. Watch. Flip. See? He cocked his head.”

“He cocks it no matter what you say to him,” I said.

“Flip Flip Flip Flip Flip.”

The little dog licked the Rainbow Girl's lips and she smiled the most awesome smile, like in the picture of Mom's partner Laura. Not pushing it, just real. Then she pushed up from the bench and headed off. “Gotta go study. Dad's dropping an algebra test on me first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Beats what I have, a quiz on chapters one through five of
To Kill a
freaking
Mockingbird.”

“What, you expect them to let you analyze
Starship Troopers
in English? At least you love
Feathers,
which means there's hope for you. Look into the therapy dog certification. Maybe I'll help you get that Read to Rufus thing going at the library. My mom would be totally into it.”

We were backpedaling away from each other, and we had to shout now. “Hey, I'm sorry about your dog,” I said.

“We're adopting a new one as soon as I'm a hundred and eleven percent.”

“What's your name anyway?”

“Halley, like the comet.”

“Wow.”

“Yup.”

“I'm, like, Ben, just so you know.”

“I, like, know. Mom told me, plus it's on your library card, duh.”

“What's it about, your novella?”

She spun around once and skipped and smiled. “I don't know you well enough to tell you yet!”

“Does that mean you'll be at the library tomorrow after school?”

“I have a doctor's appointment! We look like idiots, hollering as we're backing away from each other! You're about to backpedal into an old man in a wheelchair! Ben?”