I paw at the door.
“Zeus, what?”
I rake my toenails across the metal handle. Whimper.
“Zeus, we don’t have time for—oh! Is something in there, bud? My tuba?”
Madden shoots a look at Ashvi, who swings the door wide with a shove. I plow inside, pulling Madden behind me. A row of girls at the sink gasp and shout, “Hey!” “Get out of here!”
But I pull Madden to the far stall, the wide one, and to the chair that is squat and white and smells awfulawfulawful. (Honestly, humans. Indoors? You are animals.)
Wedged behind it, atop a rusty stain on the grubby tile floor, sits a tuba case.
“You found it, Zeus!” Ashvi says. “Good boy! Also, omigosh, so gross. But good boy!”
Madden snatches it, and he, Ashvi, and I run back to the lobby.
Madden flings the case open and frantically pieces the tuba together. Ashvi exhales, nods, smiles. She takes her flute from its case and lifts it to her chest.
“One minute,” Mrs. S says, but she’s smiling now, too. Her hand is on the door to the auditorium, ready to fling it open wide.
Madden gets his tuba assembled, stands erect, lifts his instrument to his chest . . .
. . . and sways.
He is deep in a dark, briny sea. His blood sugar has bottomed out.
★ 37 ★
Wide Life
Madden plunges into a deep, hollow, curling wave. A quickly crashing wave. The stress of performing, of losing his instrument, is causing this plummet to be worse—faster—than most. His vision clouds. His skin grows pale, clammy. Cold, shivery sweat dots his upper lip.
I nudge him. He nudges me back with his knee. “Not now, Zeus,” he whispers through gritted teeth. “We don’t have time for your shenanigans.”
Shenanigans? Dude, I’d douse you with cold spray from the garden hose if I could.
I lick his pants. Tug them with my teeth. They taste like dirty laundry. I don’t know the last time these black pants have been washed. Blech. But I keep at it.
I nudge and whimper and spin in circles. Madden blinks, gulps.
His eyes connect with mine.
Madden, you need sugar.
Then, dear sweet Dog above, it’s like he heard me: he nods.
There is no time here, now, to test his sugar levels with his plastic contraptions. He reaches into his pocket. Grabs a handful of gummies. Starts chewing.
But here’s the thing about human teeth. They’re dull as pebbles. He grinds and grinds, trying to gulp down sugar, but it’s not working fast enough. His sea grows taller, darker.
I have to do it. Madden is going to be so mad at me, but it’s the only way. I jerk the leash out of his hand, take a sniff of the air, and find the lieutenant nearby. I weave through the crowd until I locate her. Our eyes lock. The moment she sees me, she knows: Follow.
I lead her back to Madden. She sees him cold and clammy, sweating. Chewing.
“In we go, Page!” Mrs. S yells. She flings open the door, and the first few band members file into the darkened auditorium.
The lieutenant drops the bag she carries. Touches Madden lightly on the shoulders. “Madden, you need to sit down.”
Inside her bag is her bottle of orange juice from this morning. Madden hates orange juice. Has ever since he had to practice stabbing that orange with a needle. But it’s the only thing that will work fast enough. I paw at it. Whine.
More Page band members stream inside. It is almost our turn to walk.
Madden shakes his head. Mumbles around the mouthful of gummy goo. “I can’t, Mom. I’ve been practicing that duet for weeks! I want this. I want to win this. And I can’t let my band members down.”
They don’t see me pawing, whining. I’m not supposed to do this—a service dog is never supposed to do what I’m about to do—but I see no other way. So I do it. I let down my invisibility. I BARK, raw and loud.
They look my way. The lieutenant scoops up the orange juice, unscrews the top, hands it to Madden.
“If there’s anything I understand, it’s not letting your team down,” the lieutenant says. “Drink this. Hurry.”
The band is now halfway inside the auditorium. Madden’s part of the line begins to move; he walks toward the auditorium door. I am by his side, step for step. He tips back the orange juice, scowls. Shudders. Gulps. Swipes at his now-sticky face. “Ugh!”
But almost immediately, a ray of sun brightens his dull skin, beaming from behind his wall of seawater. He is swimming his way out of this curling wave.
We are at the door now, just about ready to go inside. He thrusts the empty bottle at his mom.
She glances at it, looks up at him with glassy, salty eyes. Nods. “I want to do a better job protecting you than I did your dad.” Her voice is whispery and wavery, like our rippling pond. “I just want you to live a long, healthy life, M.”
Madden inhales, swimming further into the sun. His face softens at her, soft as a perfect swirl of ice cream. “I can’t control how long my life is, Mom. But I can control how wide.”
And Madden and I turn and march inside, our tubas and our chins held high.
★ 38 ★
The Duet Becomes a Trio
We, the musicians from Page Middle School, shuffle into the cool, dark auditorium, down the long aisles, up the stairs, and onto the stage. It is a long walk, all trotting hearts and raw nerves. I hear whispers about my instrument on the way down the aisle: “Is that a dog?” “With a tuba?” “Oh my.”
I’d forgotten what being onstage under all these hot, bright lights feels like. It feels as obvious as a flea collar.
Music stands and chair legs scrape the wooden stage as we take our seats. Sheet music flutters, shuffles. The musicians squint into deep dark, seeking friendly parent faces. Nerves pop like bubble wrap into giggles and nudges. Mrs. Shadrick raises her hand, and all the shuffling and scraping silences.
Such power! She is business. Still.
“Whenever we want to improve something, we add music to it,” Mrs. Shadrick says into the dark. She’s not shouting, but the auditorium is so large and quiet, her voice is amplified. “And yet art and music are often the last to get funding in schools. Demand that your education system fund an excellent music program.”
Mrs. S smiles down at her notes. “But you know that. You’re here today. Thank you, parents, for supporting the arts, and for loving your kids through sounding really bad. Musicians have to blow their way through awful to get to awesome.”
There is laughter in the darkness. Mrs. S inhales. Tilts her chin into the light. “We are the Page Middle School musicians.”
Mrs. S lifts her hands palms up, and the students raise their instruments. Then there is this . . . pause . . . this rest, when the music hasn’t yet started, and the notes linger just on the edge of each musician’s breath. It is anticipation. It is expectation. That pause is filled with promise.
Mrs. S whips a wrist to her left, and the cymbals crash, roll. It is a command: Listen, Zeus. I sit taller. Tears prick my eyes.
The bass drum in back rumbles, then growls. The sound of mallet on drum feels like Earth itself, rolling through space. I think of the orbs that float from Madden’s ceiling. A shiver marches down my spine, the hairs standing on end.
The triangle zings like butterfly wings. The xylophone tiptoes in. And then the flutes skip along. The trombones slide up alongside this piece, wedge themselves in. The saxophones sneak up, creeping along like shadows, and pounce!
My every whisker, every tooth, every toenail listens to this music. Feels it. And it’s like the music hears me, too. Like it knows my emotions and it tickles them, gives them belly rubs and scratches and attaboys.
Jesus stands. It’s time for his trumpet solo. He arches his back, lifts his instrument, and wails. He crams every bit of himself through that tiny mouthpiece, through that bell, and out into a song. His trumpet tells my heart what to feel, my brain what to think, my stomach how to churn. It gets down
inside my gut and spins me around, leaving me dizzy and dancey.
My tail wags. Stop it, tail. But as always, tails don’t listen. They don’t have ears.
The band fades back in behind this solo like a pat of melting butter. The music dips and sways, a flag skipping on the wind. Then Madden and Ashvi stand.
Madden is as steady as Earth.
Ashvi begins playing. Her flute is a dragonfly, sleek and slivery, darting to and fro, her stained-glass wings just skimming the surface of the water. Her buzz is enough to stir a sleeping frog: Madden’s tuba. The frog is grumbly, grumpy from being awoken with such a rude buzz-by, but he bellows when he sees the dragon-fly. The frog chases the sleek needle of a bug from lily pad to lily pad, splashing and galumphing, long legs flapping, sleek skin shining. Together, they are SPRING.
My heart swells like the throat of the frog.
Uh-oh. NO, ZEUS, I command myself. NO!
I swallow the temptation to croak out a song.
I blink, and just beyond Madden, I see Jake. He’s sitting, of course. Not playing. But his fingers move along the buttons of his tuba the same as Madden’s, as if he were. Jake’s heart pulls toward the music, and suddenly, I understand.
Jake is invisible. He’s miserable. (And I don’t think humans made a mistake when they made those two labels rhyme. They are much the same.) All Jake wants is to feel special, too. To be seen. He wants to be the frog.
My throat swells again. I could just . . . sing.
NO, ZEUS!
And Beef? He’s wrong. He’s been wrong. I haven’t failed. I am not a failure! I’m very good at what I do: keeping Madden healthy. I’m just not good at being invisible.
I’m not good at being invisible.
And that’s when it happens: the shimmy starts in the very tip of my tail and works its way through my fur toward my wet nose, like fingernails scratching me backward, my hairs on end. It reaches my vocal cords, and I feel them warming with a soft, subtle whine. MMMmmmMMM. My tags jangle.
I can’t contain it.
Ashvi’s flute hits a high C, Madden’s tuba bottoms out with a low E, and I toss my nose into the air and hooooowllllll. AAAAAARRRoooOOOOO!
I don’t care what the others think. This duet needs to become a trio. I can feel it. My head tosses back—how-howw-hoOOOOOoowwllllll! My cone amplifies the sound—I have my very own instrument!
Madden smiles behind his mouthpiece, and that smile spins through his tuba and out into his music until the whole room can hear it: he is OUTSTANDING.
That is his label! Outstanding. It means all sorts of things, that label. And that’s okay. Better than okay. Aaaaaa-aaaa-OOOOOOoooooUTSTANDING!
The other Page musicians do their jazzy chaos thing, and riff off a few extra notes and tones to accentuate my addition. We are a chorus of bullfrogs and butterflies, rays of sun and swishing trees.
The piece winds down. Silence falls. It is still so hot, so bright here onstage. Then the audience explodes with tail-wagging applause.
Mrs. S raises her hands again, palms up. The Page Middle musicians stand. I stand. She folds her fingers down. The musicians all bend at the waist. It’s swirly confusing.
Madden slides his eyes my way. “Bow, Zeus,” he whispers from the corner of his mouth.
I follow Madden’s command. I drop the front half of my body into a deep bow. Tail high. Eyes closed.
The audience wags louder.
★ 39 ★
Not Just Another Pretty Face
We file out of the dark auditorium, and when we reach the lobby, Madden pales again. Sways. Before I can even give him a nudge, Mrs. S sees him, and she gently grabs his elbow and guides him to the front of the concession stand line.
“I got someone with diabetes here!” she shouts to the people behind the counter. “Get me some lemonade, please. Quickly!”
Madden’s scent is sprinkled with red pepper flakes of embarrassment. But he nods and accepts the help. HE ACCEPTS THE HELP. He leans over the counter himself and says, “One hot dog, too, please.”
Madden glances at his CGM monitor. He leans against the cool brick wall.
The lieutenant weaves through the crowd. Her brow is wrinkled like crinkly cardboard, and her whole scent is shouting, Are you okay, Madden? But she glances at me, and I give a reassuring look that says, If he weren’t okay, I’d let you know. And so she doesn’t ask. Somehow, she knows not to ask.
“You were phenomenal, Mad!” she says. She wraps her arms around him. She’s tall, and he’s skinny, and those arms almost wrap around him twice. “PopPop would say you got major chops, son!”
They both laugh. The lemonade and the hot dog appear, and Madden gulps the drink, face wincing with sour. He takes a couple quick bites of the hot dog, and I know he needs something to balance out all this sugar he’s taken in so quickly. The hot dog smells like heaven in a bun: salty, juicy, greasy. My nostrils quiver. I lick a drop of drool off my jowl.
Madden laughs. He squats and looks me in the eye. I hear the thrum of his heart: low and strong like his tuba. He then offers me the other half of the hot—
GULP!
It’s gone so fast I barely taste it, that hot dog. I hope it’s not made from actual dogs, because it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. But the scent lingers on my tongue, and I smile. Pant. I hope I burp a lot so I can taste it some more.
The lieutenant laughs, too. “And Zeus, your performance was great! I think you’re as good at singing as you are at scent detection. Have you been practicing?”
Thank you. And, well, yes. I practice with Madden and Ashvi almost daily at the pond with my astounding barks.
Mrs. S smiles at me, and I gotta be honest: the three of them all looking at me with shiny up-smiles instead of shadowy down-frowns is maybe even better than a whoossa good boy?
“You know, at the beginning of the school year, I used to worry about Madden all the time,” Mrs. S says. The lieutenant blinks at her, and Madden’s eyebrows pull into a question mark. This is apparently new information.
“I used to be so concerned. Does he feel okay? Is band too much for him? Does he look off? But now that Zeus is with us, I don’t worry about him nearly as much. Zeus isn’t just a great singer. He’s very good at his job.”
But the best part of her saying this? Picture it: Beef is just behind her. He hears every word, too, based on the way his silly jowls droop into a deep scowl.
So I’m not just another pretty face? I say, and I wink at Beef.
Beef looks like he’s wearing one of those collars that stun you if you run out of the yard. He blinks. I decide to be the bigger dog.
It was good seeing you again, Beef. I hope you’re enjoying your assignment. I love mine.
I love mine? That’s the first time I’ve said that very most important of all human labels, LOVE, about Madden and the lieutenant. I smile at them. I love mine.
Madden hugs my neck, squeezing in around my awkward tuba. The lieutenant reaches down and scratches behind my ears. And here’s the thing: she has fingernails. Glorious, itchy-scratchy fingernails, like whatever had been causing her to gnaw at her own fingertips wasn’t making her do that now. She scratches, and I cock my head. It feels so splendid that I lean into the scratch, my right leg thumping the floor. She shakes her fingers, and a huge poof of Zeus fur floats off them.
“He is pretty good at this job, isn’t he?” the lieutenant says.
Madden adjusts my tuba, then scratches the secret spot juuuust under my chin that only he knows about. “He’s more than pretty good, Mom. He’s outstanding.”
A trophy is brassy and shiny, just like a musical instrument, although no one blows into it. Apparently, what you do with it: you hold it above your head and shriek. This seems odd to me, but humans make no sense whatsoever.
We, the members of the Page Middle band, hold the shiny brassy trophy over our heads, and we pose for pictures while the air explodes like mini bursts of lightning all around us. No one else seems to be frea
ked out by this unnatural indoor thunderstorm, however, so I just stand pert and alert, shackles raised.
“Hey, Zeus, get up here,” Jesus yells. “Right up front!”
And I do. I move to the front of the group with my tuba. Jesus scritches my neck—ahhhhh—and he smiles at me, then Madden. “Looks like it took four of us to win state, not three. Right, Z? Now, smile!”
I smile, and drool a bit when everyone yells “Cheeeese!” because CHEESE WHERE?!
The weird indoor lightning continues. Pop! Flash! “Cheeeese!” “Wooohoooo!”
The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack. Now that I’m in the band, I get it. I am with the band. I am part of the pack. And we’re both stronger because of it.
The band leans in. They smell like joy and music spit and hormones. They smile and whoop as they crowd around me.
Outstanding, visible me.
★ 40 ★
Superstar!
Superstar.
Super. To excel, to be the best. First in class.
Star. A heavenly body. Shines at night. You know, “Twinkle, twinkle . . . ?” We play it in band.
When Ashvi finds me in the chaos post-competition, that’s what she calls me: a superstar. “Zeus, look right here!” She waves a folded, colorful piece of paper at me, points. “Your name is in the band program! You’re a superstar!”
Superstar! That’s exactly what Dave promised I’d become, back at the Canine College graduation. And I did it! With the band, I did it.
Ashvi hugs my neck, and then she skips away, trailing my heart and Madden’s heart behind her like two colorful ribbons.
Madden shoots a look at Mrs. S, who shrugs.
“You put Zeus in the program?” he asks.
“Of course!” Mrs. S smiles at me, and I wink. “He’s our mascot.” Then she looks at Madden. “I’d like for you to audition for jazz band next year, okay?”
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