Pet Disasters Page 5

  So far that meant that Dog’s name could be Drool. Or: Big Wet Tongue Now Trying to Lick Mason’s Face.

  Mason shoved Dog away.

  As soon as they got to Mason’s house, Dog bounded out of the car and followed Brody and Mason inside, as if he had lived with them forever.

  “Where should we put his food and water bowls? Where should we put his bed?” Brody asked Mason’s parents. Mason’s parents had bought all the things Dog would need at the store inside the animal shelter.

  “I’ll pay you back for everything,” Brody promised as Mason’s dad set Dog’s bowls on the floor in the kitchen, where Cat’s bowls had been. Dog’s bowls were bigger than Cat’s bowls. Everything about Dog was bigger.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Mason’s dad said. “We’re happy to take care of those costs. After all, he’s Mason’s dog, too.”

  No, he isn’t. Come to think of it, Cat hadn’t really been Mason’s cat, either. Brody was the one who had loved holding her. Even Hamster and Goldfish had really belonged more to Brody. Brody was the one who had made Hamster’s Halloween costume. Brody was the one who had sung the song and made the speech at Goldfish’s funeral.

  “Look, Dog, here’s where your water is!” Brody told Dog, pointing to the bowl he had just filled. Dog lapped at it thirstily. A dog that slobbered that much probably needed to refill his water supply constantly.

  “And here’s your food!” Brody poured some dry dog food into the matching bowl. Dog pounced on it. Mason couldn’t help noticing that Dog had very sharp teeth. In less than a minute, all the food was devoured.

  “Can we take him for a walk?” Brody asked Mason. Then, as if remembering that Dog was supposed to be his pet, he corrected himself. “It’s time to take him for a walk! Here, boy, come get your leash!”

  Dog ran up to Brody when he saw the leash in Brody’s hand. In his other home, wherever it had been, someone must have walked him. Someone must have loved him, too, or Dog wouldn’t be so trusting and friendly.

  Mason wondered why they had given Dog away. Someone like Mason knew right away that he wasn’t a pet person. But if the owner had been a pet person, why would a pet person have given up on Dog and taken him to the shelter? Maybe Dog’s owner had gotten too old to take care of him. Or maybe the owner had had to move to an apartment that didn’t allow pets. Mason did feel terrible thinking how sad Dog must have been on the day his owner took him to the shelter and said goodbye forever. But did that mean that now he, Mason, was stuck with Dog forever?

  Mason followed Brody and Dog outdoors. It was past suppertime, but they were eating late today because it had taken so long to fill out Dog’s adoption papers and buy all his things. The evening was cool and breezy, with long shadows slanting across the lawns.

  Dog walked remarkably well on his three legs. His gait was uneven, but he kept up a good pace, except when he found some reason to stop and sniff. There were lots of reasons to stop and sniff for a dog who had been living in a cage at a shelter. Every tree, every stretch of dirt, every flower garden, was a reason for Dog to stick his nose down to the ground and inhale its scent.

  Brody held the leash, glowing with pride, as if he had a hundred-watt lightbulb switched on inside him. Mason saw Brody looking at each car that drove by, to check if the people in it were noticing: See that boy there, Brody Baxter? He’s walking a dog!

  Every few feet, it seemed, Dog balanced awkwardly on his two left-side legs to lift his right back leg to pee. Mason got sort of used to the sight of it, even though the basic concept of peeing in public was definitely unappealing.

  Then, two blocks from home, Dog squatted, not to pee but to poop.

  “Now what do we do?” Mason asked Brody, in a strangled voice.

  “We pick it up in this plastic bag.” Brody waved the plastic newspaper bag Mason’s dad had handed to them before they headed out. But Brody seemed less sure of himself than when he had been tying the bandanna on Hamster or moving Cat from lap to sofa cushion.

  “We couldn’t just leave it here, could we?” Mason asked. Didn’t people sometimes pay money for manure, to have it spread on their lawn like fertilizer? Maybe somebody would like to get some special dog-manure fertilizer for free.

  But he already knew the answer to that question. Even Brody didn’t bother answering it.

  “I’ve seen other people do it,” Brody said. “You put the bag on your hand first, to make it into a glove, sort of, and then you just pick it up, and then you pull the bag off your hand, turning it inside out, and you tie it shut.”

  Brody slipped the bag onto his hand. Then he hesitated.

  “See?” Mason said. He meant, I told you it would be terrible having a dog.

  Brody reached his hand down toward the grass. Mason had to turn his head away. He felt himself gagging. Did people who had dogs really do this thing every single day?

  “What do we do with the bag now?” Mason asked.

  “We carry it home, and then we throw it away.”

  Mason tried not to look at the plastic bag, filled with the hideous brown lumpy substance, dangling from Brody’s hand. At least it was time to head back for supper. They wouldn’t have to carry the bag for miles and miles. Or, rather, Brody wouldn’t have to carry the bag for miles and miles. Mason had no intention of carrying it for so much as an inch.

  Mason was definitely glad that Dog was Brody’s dog.

  At dinner, Brody stayed to eat with Mason’s family. Dog had already had his supper, but he still stuck his enormous, greedy snout hopefully toward Mason’s plate. Apparently, Dog fancied some macaroni and cheese.

  Mason gave a strangled cry.

  “Here, Dog,” Brody said. “Leave Mason’s plate alone. You can have some of my Indonesian curried shrimp.” Brody was eating the same food that Mason’s parents were eating.

  “No, Brody,” Mason’s dad said. “Dog is not going to be allowed to beg at the table. Dog is not going to be allowed to eat people food.”

  Mason’s father spoke to Dog in a stern voice.

  “Dog! Down! Sit!”

  Mason enjoyed seeing Dog getting scolded.

  “He’s not very well-behaved, is he?” Mason commented, giving Dog his most withering look of disdain.

  “He’ll learn,” Mason’s dad said.

  Sure enough, Dog laid himself down under the table, his head by Brody’s feet and his huge, feathery tail by Mason’s feet. Every once in a while Dog wagged his tail, whacking Mason’s leg with a thump. Mason was surprised by the force with which a tail could be wagged.

  “Stop it, Dog!” Mason reprimanded. He looked over at his father to see if he was going to give Dog another satisfying scolding.

  But his dad defended Dog. “He’s just being friendly.”

  Well, it was probably better being whacked by Dog’s long tail than licked by Dog’s big tongue.

  After supper, Brody threw an old tennis ball for Dog in the backyard. Tennis lessons for Mason had been his parents’ bad idea the summer before. All those afternoons in the scorching July sun, and Mason had managed to return the ball a total of three times. Even his parents had concluded that maybe tennis wasn’t going to be his sport.

  Unlike Mason, Dog turned out to be excellent at returning a tennis ball. Dog picked up the tennis ball in his mouth, of course, so it got all covered with dog spit. Then Dog ran back to Brody and dropped the ball at his feet. Mason had to give Dog credit for his skill at retrieving. No matter how far Brody tossed the ball, Dog darted after it and snatched it up in record time.

  One time, Dog offered the ball to Mason. Mason refused to take it. The ball was so wet now you could practically wring it out and get a cup of water from the wringing.

  Brody’s parents and sisters came over and heard the story of Brody and Dog, told to them by Brody. Brody’s sisters were in middle school: Cammie was thirteen and Cara was eleven. Mason thought they were all right, as far as best friends’ older sisters went. Their most annoying habit was bursting into gales of
giggles at most things he said, even (or especially) things that Mason hadn’t meant to be funny.

  “Oh, Dog,” Cammie cooed, covering his head with kisses. Ugh!

  “Dog, let me pet you,” Cara coaxed, crowding in with kisses of her own.

  Even Brody’s mom seemed utterly smitten with Dog, praising his bright eyes and gentle manner. Only Brody’s dad kept his distance from Dog, because of his allergies. Mason, too, stood stiffly off to the side.

  “Don’t you like Dog, Mason?” Cammie asked.

  “I guess he’s okay,” Mason said. “I wouldn’t go so far as to use the word ‘like.’ ”

  Cammie and Cara exploded into giggles.

  “You didn’t let me finish my story!” Brody said. “Dog would have been put to sleep—killed!—if I hadn’t adopted him!”

  Cammie and Cara each gave Dog another huge hug.

  “I think adopting Dog was the best thing I ever did, don’t you?” Brody asked them.

  It was true that saving Dog had been Brody’s idea. But Mason couldn’t help thinking: It also happened because I said yes.

  “Now you need to come home,” Brody’s mom told him. “It’s time for bath and bed. You have to get up early for art camp tomorrow.”

  “Can I sleep over at Mason’s with Dog?” Brody begged. “Just for tonight? And tomorrow night?”

  “For tonight,” his mother agreed. “Not tomorrow night. Tomorrow night we’re leaving on our camping trip, remember?”

  Brody looked as if he’d rather forget.

  Mason was glad Brody was staying for a sleepover. This way, Dog could sleep with Brody and wouldn’t be expecting to sleep with Mason. Brody could find out how much fun it was to sleep on a summer night buried under sixty pounds of hot, smelly dog.

  “Hey, Dog, let’s go in,” Brody said. He held open the door for Dog, and Dog bounded inside, Brody following after.

  Mason watched them go. If the dog was man’s best friend, did that mean that Dog was now Brody’s best friend? If so, what did that make Mason?

  8

  Mason and Brody didn’t have to make new bowls for Dog in art camp. Mrs. Gong gave them extra clay on Friday to add on to the bowls they had already made for Cat, showing them how to moisten the old clay so they could work with it more easily.

  Nora helped them roll longer clay snakes to place on top of the other ones. She was an excellent clay-snake roller. Brody sometimes rolled his too quickly, and then they got too thin in the middle and broke and had to be patched back together again. Mason didn’t like getting clay smushed onto his fingers, so he didn’t press hard enough, and his snakes stayed too fat. Nora’s snakes were just right. She probably had figured out the scientific way to roll them.

  “Why didn’t you do science camp?” Mason asked her as she placed another perfect snake on top of his bowl.

  Nora shrugged. “I like to make things.”

  “Why didn’t you do sports camp?” Brody asked Dunk, who was supposed to be smoothing out the clay on Wolf’s bowl but instead was gouging holes in it with his thumb.

  Dunk reddened. “Sports camp is dumb,” he said. “I did it last year, and it was dumb.”

  Nora was the one who guessed it first: “You got kicked out,” she said.

  Dunk’s face grew even redder, so Mason knew Nora was right. “It was dumb,” Dunk repeated.

  Mason laid his clay snake on top of Nora’s, but it was too short to go all the way around the bowl. Nora lifted it off and rolled it some more to get it exactly the right length.

  “How come you’re both making dog bowls?” Dunk asked. “I thought you two just had a stupid fish and a stupid cat. Did one of you get a dog?”

  “I did,” Brody said, just as Mason said, “I did.” Mason was getting a little tired of having Brody take credit for everything. If Dog had to live at Mason’s house, at least Mason should get some bragging rights regarding him, especially with Dunk, who thought dogs were the only pet worth having.

  “You both got dogs?”

  “We got the same dog,” Brody said. “We got him yesterday, from the shelter.”

  Mason hoped Brody wouldn’t blurt out that Dog was missing a leg, or tell the whole story about how Dog would have been killed if Brody hadn’t heroically and nobly acted to save him.

  “How can you both have the same dog?” Dunk asked.

  “He’s really my dog,” Brody explained. “He just lives at Mason’s house, because my dad is allergic. Right, Mason?”

  Mason didn’t answer. He busied himself working on his dog bowl. It wasn’t Dunk’s business whose dog Dog was.

  “I bet my dog can beat up your dog,” Dunk said.

  Mason didn’t answer that, either. It wasn’t a bet he felt like taking. It was a bet he’d probably lose.

  Finally, it was snack time, and Dunk wandered off to another table to bother somebody else.

  “Do you want to come over today and meet Dog?” Brody asked Nora. “Mason, can Nora come over today to meet Dog?”

  Mason had to think fast. He couldn’t just say no without giving any further explanation. That would be too strange.

  “I have to ask my mom,” he said.

  It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, in Mason’s opinion. Of course, if he did ask his mom, she would say yes, and be thrilled to say yes. Oh, Mason, we can have a little party!

  But he could also forget to ask her. Though Brody, being Brody, would remember.

  “So maybe next week?” Nora asked.

  “Next week!” Brody answered happily.

  The block before Mason’s house, Brody started running. So Mason ran, too. He generally disliked running—all that show of eagerness—but he didn’t want Brody to get home ahead of him.

  Dog came running to the door to meet them. He wasn’t just wagging his tail; he was wagging his whole self. Brody threw his arms around Dog. Mason didn’t hug Dog, but he patted him awkwardly. What was he supposed to do, stand there and hurt Dog’s feelings?

  It was too hot for going outside; it was even hot enough that Mason’s mother had turned on the air-conditioning. So they all watched TV together for a while, Dog dozing at their feet as they sat on the family-room couch. Mason tried to imagine Nora there, watching TV with them.

  Dog looked like a completely contented animal. Brody looked like a completely contented boy. For the moment, Mason felt almost contented himself. So far, it hadn’t been too terrible having Dog as a pet, except for the part when he had watched Brody collect Dog’s dog poop. It had been sort of fun watching Dog run after the tennis ball. Mason wished there were some way he could try throwing the ball for Dog without getting spit all over his hands. Maybe somebody should invent a spitproof dog ball and make a million dollars.

  Brody reached down and patted Dog’s silky golden fur. Dog didn’t purr the way Cat had, but even in his sleep, his tail gave one feeble thump. Mason reached down and gave Dog a little pat, too.

  The trouble with being friends with Brody was that however content you were, Brody was more content. However happy you were—not that Mason was usually all that happy—Brody was even happier.

  Sometimes it could get on your nerves.

  “I have an idea,” Mason said.

  Brody wasn’t the only one who had ideas. Mason could have ideas, too.

  “Let’s turn on the sprinkler in the backyard and see if Dog likes it.”

  Brody leaped to his feet. Instantly awake, Dog jumped up, too, and raced outside after them. The sprinkler was already set up on the one patch of lawn that didn’t get covered by the automatic sprinkler system. Mason turned it on—it was his sprinkler—and then he set an example for Dog by running through it. Brody followed, and then Dog got the idea.

  Half an hour later, they were all completely soaked. Probably they should have changed into swimsuits first. Freezing, Mason threw himself down on a dry stretch of grass in the sun.

  Brody kept on running through the sprinkler spray. Dog kept running after him.

  “D
og!” Mason called, just to see what Dog would do. “Hey, Dog!”

  Dog hesitated. He looked over at Mason, then he looked over at Brody.

  “Here, Dog!” Purely as an experiment, Mason patted the grass next to him.

  Dog came bounding over to join him. Dog shook himself dry—making Mason even wetter—and then lay down right next to Mason. Unfortunately, Mason had forgotten how much he didn’t like the smell of wet dog, not that he had ever smelled it before. He found himself wondering what wet skunk would smell like, and if it could smell any worse.

  A minute later, Brody plopped himself down on the grass, too. The three of them lay in a row, one boy on each side of Dog, and Dog in the middle.

  “I have another idea,” Brody said after a few minutes had gone by and Mason was finally starting to feel thawed again. “Do you think if we asked your mom, she’d drive us to the grocery store and we could get a bone for Dog? I heard they give out free bones in the meat department.”

  Mason had to admit this was an excellent idea.

  “We can ask her,” he said. They found her upstairs working on her computer in her home office, surrounded by piles of knitting magazines, baskets of yarn, and heaps of knitted afghans, sweaters, hats, mittens, and anything else that could possibly be knitted.

  “Mason! Brody! How did you boys get so wet?” But she didn’t sound angry. Mason knew she was always relieved when he got involved in any outdoor activity.

  She agreed to take them to the store, once they had changed into dry clothes. Brody borrowed shorts and a T-shirt from Mason. The shorts hung past Brody’s knees, and the T-shirt looked almost like a dress, but Brody didn’t seem to mind.

  Dog came along for the ride, climbing over Brody to stick his head out the open window.

  At the grocery store, the boys waited outside the entrance with Dog while Mason’s mother went inside to the meat department.

  Brody patted Dog.

  Mason patted Dog, too.

  Dog licked Brody’s hand.

  Dog licked Mason’s hand, too.