This cone feels heavier and itchier than ever. I lie down.
Madden can go to state without me. I will be okay letting him out of my sight for a while, yes? I can do this for him and Ashvi. Ashvi? Her asking this hurts worse than walking on gravel. I can—
WHO AM I KIDDING? NO WAY CAN I ALLOW THAT TO HAPPEN! CURSE YOU, BAND! CURSE YOU, MUSIC!
Anger smells like the gritty exhaust fumes of a big bus. Madden breathes that out now. I look up at him with big, soft eyes—the ones humans can’t say no to—but he won’t even look at me. His words are clipped short as toenails. “And what do you think?”
Ashvi’s teeth grind like machinery. Her shoulders rise, then fall. “I just . . . I wonder . . . just in case . . . should I start practicing the duet with Jake?”
Her label up until now was perfect. This doesn’t feel perfect.
Madden grips my leash too tightly and tugs me away.
★ 34 ★
Staccato (It’s a Label I Learned in Band)
Madden twirls a brand-new fuzzy yellow tennis ball in his fingertips. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, smells as good as a brand-new fuzzy yellow tennis ball. It is the smell of joy.
He hurls the ball, and it sails across the sky like a tiny sun. I spring off my back legs like a jackrabbit. But this godforsaken cone blocks what I can see from the corners of my eyes, and the ball thwacks the side of the plastic, just below my left ear.
The ball bounces, rolls. I chase it. But this cone stops me from putting my face close enough to the ground to scoop up the ball in my teeth. I end up pushing the ball through the grass with the lip of the cone. The ball—the JOY—is just out of reach.
Staccato. It’s a label I learned in band. It means notes that are played sharply, distinctly, with a pause between each one. The notes are separate.
This ball and me? Staccato.
Madden sighs. Drops cross-legged onto the yard. Picks at the brown grass and tosses a handful into the wind.
I’m getting it wrong. I’m getting everything wrong. I can’t even pick up a ball! If my dad could see me now, he’d tuck his tail with disappointment. Not invisible. Not successful. Reassignment is as near as my whisker tips.
I’m “nailing” my mission, as Ashvi says, but I’m failing at everything else. I don’t know what that means; my mission is still my priority, right? But I will surely be reassigned, just as the lieutenant was.
I sit next to Madden. The ball sits far away from us. I feel like the sun is far away.
Madden drapes an arm over my shoulder, and the weight of it makes me feel lighter. Funny how that is.
“Zeus, can you start making better choices?”
This confuses me, because I feel like I’ve been making excellent choices. My choices focus on my mission: keeping Madden invisible. Invisible is safe. But still I nod. I . . . think so?
“Can you stop acting out in band, Zeus? Can you, boy?”
This question feels like an itch in a place I can’t reach with my back paw. I want to get a Whoossa good boy? from Madden. I want to make him happy. More than anything.
But my job is to help him. He must stop playing music. I see what the lieutenant sees: it’s too risky for him to play. The tuba is heavy and takes so much effort. It makes his blood go wild as wolves. Madden wants to play in the band, and I want him to stop. Dave’s words from the evaluation ring in my pointy ears: Zeus should be “wisely disobedient.”
I must always do what’s best for Madden. Even if it’s not what he wants. Even if it’s not easy.
“This is important to me, Zeus. I need you to stop hurting the band. The lieutenant—she won’t let me go to state without you. I know it. I need you, Z.”
My heart twists and frays like a tug-of-war towel. Because Madden says he needs me, but he needs me for music. This is exactly what he thinks Ashvi is doing; he thinks she’s only friends with him because of their duet. Now he’s doing the same thing to me—keeping me around so he can play the music he wants to play. Ironic is a fancy human word for wow, that hurts a lot.
The ball sits across the yard. Madden sits so close he’s leaning against me. But both are staccato.
Separate.
Detached.
Sharp.
At school the next day, we pass Ashvi in the hall. She pinks, gives us a half-hearted wave, and tries to make eye contact with Madden. He ignores her as if he’s a cat and she’s, well, any of the billions of things cats pretend to ignore. We pass by. I look back over my shoulder. Ashvi slumps against her locker, her scent like a bruised peach.
★ 35 ★
I’m With the Band
Madden pushes numbers on his phone twelve times that night but huffs and hangs up before the screen lights. Thirteen times. Fourteen. He growls. On try fifteen, he sucks in a huge breath, punches in each one of the numbers, and pauses. I hear Ashvi’s voice—“Hello?”—and see her face pop up on the tiny blue screen.
Madden suddenly smells as confident as a newly tarred road. “Listen. You want to win state. I want to win state. So hear me out. I have an idea.”
The next day, I find myself in Madden’s bathroom, Ashvi’s colorful fingertips twiddling all around me. Each of her fingernails is painted a different shade, so I’m mesmerized watching them; it’s like being spun inside cotton candy. Sometimes she scratches me, and my tongue lolls out over my jaw. Her scritches are perfect, of course: strong and confident. They are so different from the odd, fingernail-less scritches from the lieutenant.
Ashvi loosens and gently lifts the cone over my head and ahhh. It’s like breathing full into my belly again. Humans often make this satisfied sigh when they peel sweaty socks off their feet; that sigh is how it feels to have that heavy chunk of plastic lifted off my neck.
“Are you sure about this?” Ashvi asks, holding a bright yellow paintbrush over my cone.
Madden nods once. “Yes. I think.” Hope and doubt, side by side.
Ashvi smiles like the flash of a dragonfly wing. “Glitter me.”
Madden hands her a tube filled with shiny golden star chips, and she sprinkles it over the drying yellow paint.
“Okay. Let’s make the tubes and valves.” Ashvi rolls up strips of yellow felt and binds them together with hot glue. It smells like burning hair. Then she twists and folds pieces of yellow construction paper to look like the buttons on a musical instrument. This creation gets attached together, then attached to my cone. All of it gets a coating of gold star chips. Glitter.
I get so excited about all the shiny, I sneeze—wachoo! A poof of gold blooms like a cloud and settles over everything in this bathroom. Gold sink, gold toilet. Fancy! Ashvi giggles sweet as lollipops. Madden swipes a hand over his hair and attempts a smile. I can practically hear him thinking about how the lieutenant is going to react to all these glitter chips.
“Did you get a new vest?” Ashvi asks. Madden nods and pulls a black vest out of a cardboard box, followed by a black leash.
Vest goes on. Leash gets clipped. New, fabulous cone slides over my head. The new creation, these twists of valves and tubes, gets pinned to my vest.
“Voilà!” Ashvi says. She turns her palms toward me. They sparkle, coated in glitter.
Madden tilts his head. His scent lightens slightly; it shifts from worried green onion to pleased green grass. He grins.
“This might just work, Ashvi. We might win now! Zeus, look!”
Madden tugs my new leash and I follow his command, turn. I spin, and there, in the glass, is the other dog, Glass Zeus. Madden always says that’s me. And today I want to believe him.
Because Glass Zeus looks like a musician.
I look like a musician!
I look like I’m part of the band!
Ashvi has turned my cone into a tuba. I fit right in—no obvious red vest, no bright blue leash, and a brand-new, shiny glitter tuba.
My chest puffs with pride. I lift my chin, turn, and look at Glass Zeus from another angle. I am definitely a musician. Wouldja get a load of that ha
ndsome fella? That is no mutt right there!
My heart swells, and it fills with music, a melody of strong, thumping joy, like a Sousa march.
But—oh!
I blink.
Music?
I’m not supposed to be a part of the music.
I’m supposed to stop it.
I am supposed to keep Madden invisible. Invisible = safe.
I’m supposed to thwart the outstanding.
How can I stop Madden from being outstanding, when I want it for myself, too?
We make our way downstairs, each of us with our instruments. The lieutenant looks up from her blue palm screen.
And she does something I’ve never heard her do before.
She laughs. A deep, hearty belly laugh.
Her laugh is like jazz, dipping and swaying, full of surprises. Chaos.
“Zeus, you look fantastic!” she says.
More handsome than a poodle on grooming day, if I do say so!
The lieutenant takes a swig of syrupy orange juice. Based on her pursed lips, she’s trying not to say something to Madden; it’s the same effect of a whining dog trying not to bark. Finally, she says, “How’s your blood sugar? Need any juice for the ride?”
She tilts the bottle his way. Madden shudders. Scowls like he’s smelled rotten meat. “Mom. No. I hate OJ. You know that.”
The lieutenant burns with an apologetic scent. But she doesn’t say I’m sorry, and I don’t know why. Humans say I’m sorry only a fraction of the time when they smell like I’m sorry. “Let’s go. It’s about an hour’s drive to Princeton.”
The three of us pile in the back seat of the lieutenant’s truck, me perched between Madden and Ashvi. I can tell they are happy to have me between them by the way they slide their eyes at each other when the other one isn’t looking. It’s like sitting between two boxes of roly-poly marbles.
The truck grumbles for a long while, then stops. We pile out of the car at a school that smells quite a lot like our school, Page Middle. But it’s not. This school is much, much larger than ours. And the kids! They are everywhere. Swarms of them, like armies of ants. All of them carrying instruments. It’s bizarre, and it confuses my nose.
A large fellow mushrooms over a stool at the front door, clipboard in hand. He does a double take when he sees me, grins, then laughs. I lift my chin. The bell of my tuba sways.
“No pets, kids,” he says.
I shake my head, jangling my leash. I’m with the band.
“He’s a service dog,” the lieutenant says.
The dude narrows his eyes. “What’s he do?”
Ashvi steps forward. “It’s actually illegal to ask that.” I love her. A clog of kids toting black instrument cases has formed behind us.
But the lieutenant loudly states, “He’s a diabetic alert dog.” Madden shifts, burns like the scent of charred marshmallow over a fire.
“Oh yeah, I sees that now on this here list. Go on in, then.”
We walk inside, and everyone who spots me smiles, giggles, chuckles, points. I grin, my tongue loose and floppy. My tail wags.
“Hey, Zeus, nice getup!”
“Dude, is that your dog? Awesome!”
“Aw, look! He has a tuba!”
Jesus is filling a water bottle in the massive school lobby, and when he sees me, his face splits into a smile. “Hey, Zeus!” He holds a fist out to Madden, who pounds it with his own fist. “That costume is exceptional, dude.”
Unless I am mistaken (and let’s face it, I rarely am), exceptional is a fancy human word for PRACTICALLY OUTSTANDING.
My stomach tangles like the cord Madden uses to listen to his blue screen.
Practically outstanding. There’s that word again, and this time, it applies to me.
I am both overjoyed and saddened, and I’m tail-chasing confused by this mix of emotions. I’ve worked since I was a pup to blend in, to be an invisible helper, a quiet, loyal, service dog, just like the dogs in my bloodline. They have counted on me to be just like them—unseen and unheard—since I was a tiny pup. Stayed as invisible as a tail, I have. I’ve done everything by the commands, order by order. And yet here I am, being exceptional. One step away from outstanding.
This is a label I’m not supposed to have. A tag I’m not supposed to wear.
This will never do. I mutter, Me, exceptional?
Oh. My. Dog. Is that Zeus Zagnut Zealousness I see?
My full name. No one here knows my full name. I turn, but the bulky tuba—the cone—prevents me from seeing who said it.
I spin.
And there he stands, all towering four feet of him, a wall of muscle and bulk. I look up into the scruff of whiskers under his chin. (He always had great facial hair, drat him. He was born with a doggone mustache.)
Beef.
He wears a navy-blue vest with the symbols for K-9 Unit on the side. He is apparently here with the security team, helping keep these thousands of band kids safe.
We circle one another. Give each other’s hind end a sniff, a long sniff, a deeeeep sniff, trying to see who can outsniff the other, who can sniff the longest. Rude, yes. Obnoxious, absolutely. But I can’t let Beef win. I can sniff longer. And, hey—don’t judge. I’ve seen humans do this with handshakes.
At last we curl toward one another, face-to-face. My face to Beef’s chest, more accurately. His whiskers twitch. His left eyebrow cocks, then his right. Then he explodes into full-on laughter, barking and wheezing and gagging. His eyes water.
Is that—a CONE? Oh, Zeus, whatEVER have you been into?
He is laughing so hard, he doesn’t hear my reply: It’s a tuba.
Hooo boy, Zeus. I knew you’d go and make a fool of yourself in the real world. I just didn’t realize how spectacularly you’d fail. A CONE! He paws at his face and sneezes, he’s laughing so hard. I am so glad my human took this ridiculous side gig today. I got to see Zeus Zagnut Zealousness, in a CONE!
This isn’t ridiculous, I mutter, this is band. But I don’t think he hears me. I drop into a sit. My whole life is so out of tune right now.
Word on the wind is that you’re about to be re-assigned, Beef says. All the dogs from Canine College are talking about it.
All the dogs? I gulp. Of course they are. Dogs are terrible at keeping secrets. We can’t lie; our hearts are too pure. If Beef asked one of the dogs still in school how my evaluation went when he went back for his evaluation . . .
Yep. Beef knows.
He leans over me, growls into my pointy ear. Everyone at Canine College thought you were so special. But I knew better. You were always too practical to be exceptional. I knew you’d fail. It’ll happen. That reassignment—it’ll happen.
“Come, Beef!”
Beef stiffens, turns, trots away behind his human.
My throat tightens, and tears prick my eyes. This day cannot get any worse.
Madden sways next to me, his blood steely and dark. “I—I can’t find my instrument.”
Ashvi shakes her head. “What?”
“My tuba. It’s gone.”
★ 36 ★
I Smell Tuba
Your tuba can’t be gone,” Ashvi says, scurrying and looking under and around things. “It was right here. Right next to my flute.”
“I know,” Madden says, gulping. His blood isn’t dangerous, not yet, but it’s falling so fast, it’s like watching the ocean recede and swell, recede and swell. “But it’s not there now.”
Mrs. Shadrick’s jaw tightens. “You need to find it quickly, Madden. We’re on in ten minutes. If you can’t find it, I’ll need to ask Jake to perform the duet with Ashvi.”
All three sets of eyes slide toward me. I didn’t do it this time, I promise!
Madden and Ashvi scurry around like mice, asking others if they’ve seen an extra tuba lying around.
“Oh, hon,” says one band mom. She sweeps her hand over the massive lobby, over a maze of black instrument cases. Thousands of them. “Good luck finding that in here.”
; I can find it, I murmur. I say it because I know they can’t hear me.
“Five minutes!” Mrs. S shouts. “We go on in five minutes! Line up, Page band!”
And I can. I can find it. I know this. All I have to do is open my nostrils and breathe. I can find anything of Madden’s. His scent is my whole purpose.
But should I?
I’ve spent every moment since meeting Madden trying to destroy the thing that makes him outstanding: music. I’ve failed over and over again. And here is my chance to keep him under the radar. Invisible. Safe.
We could head home. Have a quiet afternoon of chasing ducks and throwing pebbles into ponds. It’d be so easy.
The Page band lines up at the auditorium door, their instruments out of their cases and lifted to their chests, ready to walk in as one. Madden and Ashvi aren’t with them. My shoulders droop. This cone—my tuba—is heavier than ever.
I’ve been told my whole life that being invisible is a noble goal. I’ve tried doing it. Worked hard at it, harder than anyone. Disappear, Zeus. And then today, suddenly, I wasn’t invisible. I was part of something bigger than myself. I was part of the band.
And I loved it.
I loved feeling special. Unique. And yet a part of something bigger than just me.
The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Dave said that when I graduated. And now I think I understand. That is how it feels to be in band.
Madden’s heart races like a drumroll. I can’t look him in the eyes; they are filled with pain and panic. His scent is fiery, smoky, smoldering.
“Three minutes, Page!”
That’s it. I close my eyes, flare my nostrils, inhale deeply—
—and sort through all the scents lingering nearby: Salami. Wax off a cheese wheel. An apple core in a bin.Used Kleenex. Hair products and deodorant and makeup and toothpaste. Nervous sweat from a thousand middle school performers. SO MUCH INSTRUMENT SPIT.
Then I find it. I smell tuba. Madden’s tuba. I labeled it Beef. That’s not exactly right.
I tug Madden’s pants leg, and he instinctively picks up the leash he dropped several minutes ago. I puuulllll him toward a door. On it is a picture of a woman in a dress. Behind it is . . . human smell. The worst kind.
Zeus, Dog of Chaos Page 14