When Mom’s car door slammed, I was awake in an instant. I tore through the house, into the garage, out the dog door, and into the backyard, so that nobody would know about my wonderful day inside the house. Ethan ran straight to the backyard to play with me. Mom went up the front walk, her shoes clicking.
“I missed you, Bailey! Did you have fun today?” the boy asked me, scratching under my chin.
“Ethan! Come and look at what Bailey did!”
At the sound of my name, said in such a stern voice, my ears fell.
Ethan and I went into the house, and I came up to Mom, wagging my tail as hard as I could so that she would be happy again. She was holding something in her hand—one of the shredded plastic bags I had left on the kitchen floor.
“The door to the garage was open. Look at this!” Mom said. “The cinnamon rolls, the potato chips, a loaf of bread, everything in the garbage … Bailey, you are a bad, bad dog.”
I hung my head. I hadn’t done anything wrong, surely, but I could tell that Mom was mad at me. Ethan was, too, especially after Mom told him to pick up all the bits of plastic off the floor.
“How in the world did he even get up on the counter? He must have jumped,” Mom said.
“You are a bad dog, a bad, bad, dog, Bailey,” Ethan told me again.
Smokey strolled into the kitchen, blinking his wide, dark eyes and leaping easily up onto the counter. And no one said a word to him! Mom even gave him a fresh bowl of cat food. Then she pushed a mop around on the floor, and the boy carried a bag of trash out to the garage.
“Bailey, that was bad,” the boy whispered to me again. Why was everybody still so upset? I looked up at Smokey, who was daintily picking at his dinner, away up on the counter where I couldn’t reach. He was a bad, bad cat, and nobody even seemed to know it.
“Bailey!” Mom shrieked from the living room.
I guessed she had found her shoes.
* * *
After that day, whenever I was left in the garage, I tried the doorknob again. But the door never opened a second time. I spent my days in the backyard, waiting for my boy. In the afternoons and on the days he didn’t have to go to school, we got to be together.
On many days, we also got to spend time with the other neighborhood kids. But I noticed that none of them ever went to knock on the door of Todd’s house. Sometimes I saw him walking down the street, but nobody called out to him. Most days he didn’t come up to the group of kids, either. He’d duck inside his house or head for the woods and the creek, alone.
Those times he did come over to the other kids, something strange would happen. The children grew quieter and more excited at the same time. There was a nervousness about them, and it made me nervous, too. Marshmallow seemed to feel the same way. She would stick close to Chelsea’s side whenever Todd was nearby.
Ethan didn’t go to Todd’s house anymore, but Todd still came to ours now and then, usually when Ethan and I were out in the yard together. One day he hurried up to the gate, calling Ethan’s name. “Come out! I got something,” he said.
Ethan went through the gate, and I went with him. Todd was carrying a bag, and he opened it up to let Ethan peek inside. “Eggs? What’s the big deal about a carton of eggs?” Ethan asked.
Todd grinned and nodded across the street, where a bunch of small girls were playing a hopping game, jumping over and around some chalked lines on the sidewalk.
“Let’s get them,” Todd said, grinning.
Ethan looked over at the girls and back at Todd. “What? You mean, like … throw the eggs?”
“Yeah! Of course!” Todd’s grin grew wider, and I could tell that his heart was beating faster.
“That’s…” Ethan hesitated. “No way, Todd. Geez. Linda’s over there!”
Linda’s dark pigtails flew as she jumped. She looked much happier than the last time I’d seen her, inside her house.
“So what?” Todd’s grin was fading. A sneer was taking his place. “She’s a little crybaby. Are you going to be a baby, too? What’s the big deal?”
Ethan shook his head. “I just don’t want to. You’re the one making a big deal.”
I didn’t like the surge of rage that came off Todd, the way a whoosh of steam and smell would come out of a pot in the kitchen when Mom lifted the lid. He snatched the carton of eggs out of the bag and took a step away from Ethan. Suddenly he threw the carton hard at Ethan’s feet.
Ethan jumped back, and I did, too, but I came forward again at once. Rich yellow yolks and slippery whites were oozing from the broken carton and sliding all over the driveway. Clearly, this was a job for me. I went to work.
“Crybaby,” I heard Todd mutter, but I was too busy licking to look up and watch him go.
Ethan rubbed my head for a minute and then went into our backyard. He came back with a hose and sprayed what was left of the broken eggs down the driveway and into the gutter. He picked up the remains of the carton and threw them in the garbage.
After that, Todd didn’t come over to our house anymore.
Not during the day, anyway. But once, after the snow and the cold weather came again, I was out in the backyard before bed, finding the right spot to use, when I smelled Todd on the other side of the fence. His smell was strong. He must have been there for quite a while. I let out a warning bark and was pretty pleased when I heard him turn around and run away.
11
I waited patiently for school to be over and done with. And finally it happened—the snow melted, the warm weather came, and one day Ethan jumped off the bus with extra excitement. A few days later, we were off to the farm.
The second that the car stopped, I leaped out, racing around the yard, quickly marking my territory in case any other dogs had gotten the wrong idea while I’d been gone. I greeted Flare and barked at the black cat in the barn and the ducks by the pond. They’d produced another batch of ducklings, although I could not imagine why. I raced into the woods, got a whiff of the skunk, and raced back out again. If she wanted to play, she knew where to find me.
I loved it at the farm, and I loved the happiness that poured out of Ethan when we were there. That second summer, there was one particular night Ethan was happier, more excited, and more anxious than usual. When it was bedtime, he didn’t head for the sleeping porch as he usually did. Mom and Grandpa and Grandma didn’t go upstairs, either. Instead, they all gathered in the living room. I stayed close. They might need my help.
Everybody stared at the television, although I couldn’t see or smell anything interesting in the small, flickering images. Ethan’s excitement spiraled up and up. Mom and Grandma and Grandpa were excited, too, and scared as well. Pretty soon I was going to have to bark, just to share in the feelings.
Then suddenly, all four of them yelled and cheered, and I did bark, and nobody told me not to do it inside the house. Then Ethan took me out into the yard, and we sat down and looked up at the moon.
“There’s a man up there right now, Bailey,” Ethan told me. “See the moon? Someday I’ll go there, too.”
He was so happy that I ran off and got a stick for him to throw for me. He laughed.
“Don’t worry, Bailey. I’ll take you with me when I go.”
Most days on the farm we did just what we had done the last year—fished in the pond or played Rescue Me, and wandered in the woods, and I did my tasting jobs in the kitchen. Sometimes Grandpa would drive into town, and he’d ask Ethan if he wanted to go. The boy would say yes, and I’d jump into the car with him.
Grandpa liked to go to a place where he sat in a chair and a man played with his hair. There were not enough other boys or dogs there, and Ethan would get bored. We’d wind up walking up and down the streets, looking at windows and hoping to find some friends for me to sniff.
The best place to find other dogs was in the park. There was a big grassy area, and a pond, although we never played Rescue Me there. One day we spotted an older boy and his dog. The dog was a female, short, black, and all business. When
I trotted up to sniff her, she didn’t even glance at me. Her eyes were on the thin plastic disk the boy was holding in his hand.
Then the boy threw it.
The dog raced and leaped and caught the disk before it even hit the ground. Pretty impressive, I suppose. If you like that sort of thing.
“What do you think, Bailey? Do you want to do that, boy?” Ethan asked, his eyes shining.
I found a stick to chew. I bet it tasted better than that plastic thing, anyway. When we got home, Ethan went right up to his room and got busy making something he called the flip.
“It’s like a cross between a boomerang, a Frisbee, and a baseball,” he told Grandpa when he was finished. “It will fly twice as far, because the ball gives it weight, see?”
I sniffed at the thing in his hand, which had been a perfectly good football before Ethan cut it up and asked Grandma to put some new stitches in it. “Come on, Bailey!” Ethan shouted, running outside. Grandpa and I followed.
“How much money can you make on an invention like this?” Ethan asked eagerly.
“Let’s just see how she flies,” Grandpa said.
“Okay, ready, Bailey? Ready?”
I figured something was about to happen and stood alertly, my ears pricked to catch all sounds, my tail beating steadily. The boy cranked his arm back and flung the flip into the air, where it twisted and fell from the sky as if it had hit something.
I trotted over to sniff at it.
“Bring the flip, Bailey!” the boy called.
Gingerly, I picked the thing up. I remembered the short black dog chasing the plastic disk in the park and felt a little jealous. That disk had soared, and the dog had soared up to meet it. This thing—well, it didn’t soar.
I took it back over to where the boy was standing and spat it out.
“Not aerodynamic,” Grandpa was saying. “Too much resistance. It has to sort of slice through the air.”
“I just need to throw it right,” the boy insisted.
Grandpa went back inside, and for the next hour the boy threw the flip again. And again. And again.
I could sense frustration building in him, so after then tenth throw I left the flip where it had fallen and brought back a stick instead. I figured it would be more fun to throw, and it would definitely be more fun for me to catch.
“No, Bailey,” he said sadly. “The flip. Get the flip!”
I barked, wagging, trying to get him to see how much fun the stick would be if he just gave it a chance.
“Bailey! The flip!”
And then someone said, “Hi.” Ethan’s head jerked around. The person who had spoken was a girl, about Ethan’s age, I’d guess, standing next to a bicycle. I trotted over, wagging, and she patted my head.
In one hand she had a basket with something inside it that smelled sweet and dark and rich. I knew that smell; it was called chocolate. But I’d never been allowed to eat any. I sat down, trying hard to look as nice as possible, so she’d hand the basket over to me.
“What’s your name, girl?” she asked me.
“He’s a boy,” Ethan said. “His name is Bailey.”
I looked over at the boy, because he’d said my name. I noticed something odd about him. It was almost as if he were afraid, but not exactly, even though he’d taken half a step backward when he saw the girl. I looked back at the girl. I liked her and her chocolate smell. I wagged.
“I live down the road. My mom made some brownies for your family. Uh,” the girl said, gesturing at her basket with her free hand.
“Oh,” the boy said.
I kept my attention on the basket.
“So, um…,” the girl said.
“I’ll get my grandmother,” the boy said. He turned and walked inside the house, but I decided to stay with the basket. And the girl, of course.
“Hi, Bailey, are you a good dog? You’re a good dog,” the girl told me.
Good, but not good enough to get some chocolate, I discovered, even when I gave the basket a nudge with my nose so she’d get the hint. She just laughed and shook her head. Her hair was light-colored and long enough to wave back and forth when she did that. She, too, seemed the tiniest bit afraid. Of what? The only thing around here that might make anyone anxious was a poor starving dog who needed a treat.
“Hannah!” Grandma said, coming out of the house. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Hi, Mrs. Morgan.”
“Come in, come in. What have you got there?”
“My mom made some brownies.” I followed Hannah into the house.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” Grandma went on. “Ethan, you probably don’t remember, but you and Hannah used to play together when you were just babies. She’s a little more than a year younger than you.”
“I don’t remember,” Ethan said, kicking at the carpet.
He was still acting oddly. He didn’t seem to be in trouble, though, so I took on the duty of guarding Hannah’s basket. Grandma set it on a side table next to Grandpa, who was in a chair with a book. He looked at the basket over the top of his glasses and reached in.
“Do not spoil your dinner!” Grandma hissed at him. He snatched his hand back. I looked at him with sympathy, and he looked back at me the same way. Nobody ever let us have any fun.
For the next several minutes, Grandma did most of the talking, Ethan stood with his hands in his pockets, and Hannah sat on the couch and didn’t look at him. Nobody ate a treat. Finally, Ethan asked Hannah if she wanted to see the flip.
At the sound of that horrible word, I whipped my head around to stare at the boy in dismay. I thought we’d moved on. Could it be true that we weren’t done throwing that horrible thing around?
The three of us went out into the yard. Ethan showed Hannah the flip, but when he threw it, it still fell to the ground like a dead bird.
“I need to make some design changes to it,” Ethan said.
I walked over to the flip but didn’t pick it up, hoping the boy would decide to end the embarrassment once and for all.
Hannah stayed for a while. She went over to the pond to have a look at those stupid ducks, petted Flare on the nose, and took a couple of turns with the flip. Then she got on her bicycle, and as she steered down the driveway, I trotted beside her. The boy whistled for me and I returned at a dead run.
Something told me we’d be seeing that girl again. Maybe she’d bring the basket back with her, too.
12
Later that summer, the packing began again. Mom walked from room to room, but Ethan stayed on his bed, reading a book. I followed Mom for a bit as she put things in the car, and then came back to check on Ethan, confused. He put down his book and we both went outside.
Grandma and Grandpa had come out to the car, too. Ethan and I stood next to it as they both got inside.
“I’ll navigate,” Grandpa said.
“You’ll fall asleep before we cross the county line,” Grandma replied.
Mom wrapped the boy up in her arms. “Now, Ethan. You are a big boy. You be good. You call if you have any problems.”
Ethan squirmed under his mother’s hug. “I know,” he said.
“We’ll be back in two days. You need anything, you can ask Mr. Huntley next door. I made you a casserole.”
“I know!” Ethan said.
“Bailey, you take good care of Ethan, hear?”
I wagged my tail. Were we going for a car ride or what?
“I stayed by myself all the time when I was his age,” Grandpa said. “This will be good for him.”
I could feel worry and hesitation in Mom, but she let go of Ethan and got behind the wheel. “I love you, Ethan,” she said.
Ethan mumbled something, kicking at the dirt.
The car rolled off down the driveway, and Ethan and I solemnly watched until it was out of sight. Then …
“Come on, Bailey!” Ethan shouted.
Everything was suddenly more fun. The boy ate some lunch, and when he was done we played Clean the Plate. We wen
t into the barn, and he climbed up on the rafters while I barked, and when he jumped off into a pile of hay, I tackled him. An inky shadow from the corner told me the cat was watching all of this, but when I trotted over to see what she was doing, she slunk away and vanished.
When the afternoon grew late, the boy gave Flare a bucketful of food, and we went back into the kitchen. He got some chicken out of the refrigerator and then, to my surprise, he took the plate into the living room. I followed him and watched with interest as he switched on the television and settled down in a chair, his plate on his lap. This was new! And it got even better when the boy tossed me bits of succulent chicken skin while he ate.
After we played Clean the Plate (twice in one day!), I decided to see just how much the rules had changed. I put a paw up on Grandpa’s chair. The boy didn’t say anything. I jumped up and looked over at the boy again. He glanced at me, smiled, and returned his eyes to the television.
After a bit, I heard the telephone ring, and I opened one eye to watch the boy get up to answer it. I heard him say, “Bed,” but after he hung up the phone, he didn’t go to the sleeping porch. He went back to his chair and the television, so I curled up a little tighter in mine.
I was in a solid sleep when a sudden sense of something wrong woke me with a jolt. I picked up my head. The boy was sitting stiffly upright, his head cocked.
“Did you hear a noise?” he whispered.
This seemed serious.
I got off the chair, stretched, shook, and looked at Ethan expectantly. What did he want me to do? When he didn’t move, I went over to his chair. He touched my head, and his fear leaped from his skin. “Bailey,” he whispered.
I wasn’t at all sure what was happening, but I knew there was a threat somewhere. I prepared myself to face it, feeling the fur rising on my back and a growl forming in my throat.
Slowly, the boy stood up and took hold of my collar. I stayed close by him, on high alert, as we walked upstairs to Mom’s room.
I could smell Mom strongly here, her sweat, the flowery soap she liked to use, her gentleness. Once the door was closed behind Ethan, I could feel him relax a little. So I did, too. He let go of my collar and looked around the room.