by Caleb Huett
Three: eating chocolate. This one’s risky, but basically foolproof—if a human catches you eating this pure poison, not only will they think you have fewer than zero brain cells to rub together, they will also be so nervous about the possibility of throw-up on their rug or expensive trips to the vet that they’ll forget whatever else they’re worried about, like whether or not you’ve been doing research on radioactive isotopes in a secret lab under their backyard.
It seemed like I’d have a few days where Tonio and Mia would spend all their time practicing Beamblade. We wouldn’t be leaving the house much.
It was time to get into some trouble.
First on my list was mail. I’d never met the person who delivered mail to the Pulaskis’ house before, but to work myself up to a good bark, I imagined a monster: fifteen feet tall with bright red eyes from all the caffeine they had to drink to get up so early; huge, muscular arms and giant hands to throw heavy boxes from the road to the door; a bag full of paper cuts and a truck full of secrets. Even imagining them was making the fur on my neck stand on end.
I’m gonna beat this monster, I thought when I heard someone approaching the door. I’m gonna bark so loud they SCREAM. Or at least go away … FOR A WHILE!
Tonio frowned at me as the doorbell rang. “What’s wrong with you, Buster? Your hair’s all weird.” I didn’t answer because I had to stay in the zone. This package is going BACK TO SENDER!
“Uh, I’m going to open the door now, okay?” I’m gonna scare them so bad they become an emailman! Snail mail? More like WAIL MAIL, from all the screaming they’re gonna do!!!
Tonio opened the door, revealing a smiling woman standing next to a probably three-year-old boy, both in post office uniforms. “Ring, ring,” the little boy mumbled bashfully. “I’m deli—devi—”
“Delivering,” the mailwoman suggested.
“Deliderving the mail today with my mom, because I want to be the best mailman ever when I grow up. Here is all of your letters!” He held a few pieces of junk mail out carefully, like they were precious and delicate.
This was the monster? I was supposed to bark at this? The boy was smaller than I was, and his mom was obviously very busy. Yelling at them could hurt his feelings and ruin their whole day! What if I scared this kid so bad he gave up on his dream of being the best mailman ever??
It didn’t matter. This was for Tonio. I couldn’t take care of him if I was stuck on The Farm, and so he had to believe I was an animal. A Good Dog wouldn’t know the difference between a monster mailman and an extremely cute, so sweet, aww, look, he said thank you and shook Tonio’s hand, and he gave me a treat, what a good boy, goodbye! Have a great day! You’re ALREADY the best mailman ev—
They were in their truck and driving away before I realized the door was shut and I’d missed my chance. Tonio scratched me behind the ears and headed back upstairs to draw while I laid down, pitifully, in front of the door.
So much for step one, I thought. But all was not lost! I still had two more chances.
“Blademasters—that’s us,” Tonio read from a starter guide Mr. Pulaski had given them, “lead their Heroes to battle on the Aethernet. Using a combination of hero, tech, and spell cards, each Blademaster seeks to drain all the other players’ Spirit Batteries.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “The lore of this game is all over the place. Plasmogast the Devourer’s card says he eats Spirit Batteries to survive, and so he’s a bad guy.” She spun around in Tonio’s desk chair. “Does that mean every Blademaster is a bad guy?”
Tonio shook his head. “Plasmogast eats the whole battery. Blademasters just take the energy, and they can be recharged later.”
“Of course. Obviously.” She opened one of the deck boxes and dumped cards out on the desk in a big pile. “When do I get to make my deck?”
“Well, first you have to know what kind of deck you want to make.”
“Whichever one is the strongest!”
“It doesn’t really work like that.” But I saw Tonio smile and make a note in his sketchbook—probably fire element deck? He was happy for the chance to really help someone.
Mia groaned and gestured for him to keep reading the guide.
Next up, I had to drink from the toilet. Obviously, water from a toilet isn’t exactly healthy, but it’s mostly survivable. The hard part of this one was definitely to get caught drinking—Tonio’s bathroom was down the hall from his room, closer to his parents’ room, and when he was working at his drawing table, he sometimes wouldn’t move until he had to go.
Worse, he kept my water bowl in the kitchen very full, all the time. I could lap up just a little water and he was there, immediately, pouring more back in to keep it filled to the brim with that fresh, crisp life juice. Tonio was a good owner, and so I didn’t have a good excuse to drink out of the toilet unless I drank all that water first. I was trying to prove I was a dog, not get into real trouble—I couldn’t just spill it all over the floor for no reason!
While Tonio was distracted, I headed downstairs to work on drinking the water. I figured I’d come up with a plan to get Tonio’s attention after at least that step was done. Mrs. Pulaski was downstairs on the phone, and Tonio mostly had been avoiding her since their conversation in the truck, so I knew he wouldn’t come down and refill my water bowl anytime soon.
“Yes, thank you. It says here you’ve got a counselor who specializes in helping with school-related anxiety.” Mrs. Pulaski clicked around on her laptop. “I was wondering if you could tell me a little more about what that looks like.”
She’s really serious about Tonio switching schools, I thought.
The first few seconds of lapping up water were easy. I love water. I could drink water all day, I thought, until a few seconds later, when I really felt like I had had enough water for right now, and should come back later to drink the rest of the water.
No! I resolved. Why would a dumb dog drink toilet water when perfectly good bowl water was available? I have to appear desperate.
“So you have places he can go if he gets upset? And you’ll try to get him over his fear completely?”
Halfway through the bowl and I felt like I was drowning. Lap lap lap lap lap lap lap. The sound annoyed me, and I was the one making it! Three-quarters through and I had to take a break, dry off my tongue. Crying a little wouldn’t help get the water out, right? Probably not.
“No, I know that—I’m not saying I need a guarantee. But he’s been dealing with this for a while, and I want to find someone who can help him move past this.”
I powered through the last quarter of the bowl and sniffed at it while my stomach gurgled. Ugh. But it was empty, and now I just needed to take a few more gulps from the toilet bowl. No problem. My trip back upstairs was slow and sloshy, which gave me time to think of a plan.
In puppy school, they made it sound so easy, like humans were always standing around toilets waiting to catch us grabbing a sip, but I was beginning to realize the Big Three were easier barked than done. The more I considered, the more I thought the best option was to wait in the bathroom until Tonio had to go, and drink when I heard him coming down the hallway. He and Mia were debating over exactly what cards to put in their decks and were very much in the zone, which meant it might be a while. But I could handle it.
The tile of the bathroom was cold under my paws. I sniffed at the toilet—such a complicated series of scents, so much information about Tonio’s family. Mr. Pulaski was getting over a cold, Mrs. Pulaski had eaten a lot of Cheese Bobs, and Tonio was having stomach trouble. Tonio had a lot of stomach trouble, which is apparently common when you have anxiety.
No sign of Tonio after ten minutes, and I was starting to feel all that water I’d drunk. I’d have to go to the bathroom soon, but it could wait. If Tonio took me out, we’d go downstairs, and he’d see my water bowl and refill it. I wasn’t leaving until I drank from the toilet!
Fifteen minutes and nothing. I focused and in the other room could hear the quiet flipping o
f cards. Come on, Tonio!
Twenty minutes and I was getting desperate. I really needed to use the restroom, but this plan was important. The Big Three were foolproof, right? This would work, if Tonio would just come out of his room.
Flip, flip. “What about this one?”
Shuffle shuffle. “If you take out one of your other spells, yeah.”
I had overestimated my ability to hold it and now I was desperate to pee, in the house, and there was no way I was going to have an accident on the floor. How embarrassing!! There was only one choice: I had to use the toilet. Tonio wasn’t coming, anyway, and this way I’d be able to keep waiting until he did.
One quick jump onto the toilet. I balanced all four paws on the seat and did my business.
“What’s that noise? Buster?” Tonio had heard! Oh no. I tried to finish up fast and then, panicking, hit the flush lever on the toilet. He can’t see what I’ve done!
Tonio pushed the door open wide as the toilet was finishing its flush cycle, and I was hopping off and trying to look innocent.
“Did you just flush the toilet?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze—I was too embarrassed. After a second with no answer, he patted his leg for me to follow, and we went back to his room.
Two failures. One more chance to prove I was just a boring dog.
“So cards are based on the five Beamblade Elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Gravity. They each have a different color that’s on all the cards.” Tonio continued to insist that they should go over all the rules before they started to play, and Mia was protesting this method by getting bored and asking unrelated questions.
“Why don’t you ever show these in art class?” She held up a handful of Tonio’s card drawings. “I had no idea you were so good.”
“Those are just copies.” Tonio flipped over a few of his dad’s cards to illustrate the different elements. “And I don’t want to look like I’m too far ahead.”
That got a big grin from Mia, who pointed a card at him in accusation. “You know you’re better than the rest of the class!”
“That’s not true,” Tonio sputtered, embarrassed. “I can only draw what I see. So, each of the elements has a different play style, and you can also do a combination of—”
“Why is that bad?”
“Doing combo decks? I guess it’s not, if you know how to balance—”
“You know what I meant!” she snapped. Tonio gulped.
“The people who draw Beamblade cards draw all kinds of things that aren’t real. I’m not really creative like they are.” He shrugged. “Squirrels are boring.”
“If you say so.” Mia pointed at the Beateor spell, which the card described as a “musical missile.” “I want to do those cards. The red ones.”
Tonio smiled to himself, his guess confirmed. “Those use Scorched Manabytes, and they’re all about strong attacks.”
Mia immediately began searching through Mr. Pulaski’s boxes for all the red cards. “What about you?”
Tonio’s hand hovered over the four remaining cards. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I like all of them.”
“Well, what do the other ones do?”
“Green uses Buried Manabytes, and it’s all about growing over time, and defending. Blue is, like, the spooky one. Its Manabytes are called Drowned, and there are zombies and ghosts and stuff, ways to get cards back that you’ve already used. Yellow is Windswept, and they’re all about a ton of tiny, fast creatures and spells. Grays are called Suspended Manabytes, and …” He picked up Principia, the Galaxy’s Reflection. “I think I’ll do these.”
“Great!” Mia spread out all the red cards she’d found, in a big fan on the carpet. “Let’s find the good ones.”
Last on the list was eating chocolate. I couldn’t actually eat it, but I had to look like I was going to eat it, just in time for Tonio to swoop in, save me, and convince himself I was nothing more than an adorable four-legged best friend.
I knew there had to be chocolate in the house somewhere—Mrs. Pulaski loved all kinds of snack food, so I knew I could find a bar of chocolate. Or at least some baking chocolate. Or hot chocolate powder. Or something!!
I sniffed around at the doorway to the kitchen (with my farsmelled nose it was easier to search the kitchen from there than digging around in the cupboards) and realized, to my dismay, that the only chocolate smell in the entire kitchen was leftover Halloween candy from the year before, still stuck in a jack-o’-lantern at the back of the highest shelf in the pantry. It would be tough to get to, and the candy would be disgusting by now.
I don’t have to eat it, I reminded myself. Just pretend like I’m going to. I balanced on my hind legs and grabbed the pantry door’s handle with my teeth—it folded open easily with a tug. My nose was overwhelmed with all the smells—Cheese Bobs and Pretzel Bobs, cans of beans and tuna and Noodle Hoops, that half-eaten box of Bug Bites, all kinds of breakfast cereal, and more different flavors of potato chip than I even knew existed. (Flaming hot lobster? Really?) My tongue fell out of my mouth on its own, dripping with hunger. What am I looking for again? Oh, right. Chocolate.
Tonio’s mom was back in her office and Tonio was upstairs with Mia, so they didn’t hear me push a chair from the dining room table to the pantry’s open door. I leaned back onto my hind legs and flopped my chin down on the highest shelf. All the forgotten snacks made their way up here—veggie straws that must have been too healthy for Mrs. Pulaski, a whole box of orange StarChews (the worst kind, obviously), and my prize, abandoned in a plastic pumpkin.
Even on my tippy-paws, I couldn’t quite reach the jack-o’-lantern all the way in the back. I braced both front paws on the shelf and pushed up with my chin, wriggling until I got my back paws on one of the lower shelves, a little higher than the chair. I pushed my neck forward and snagged the pumpkin’s handle in my teeth.
A few quick tugs pulled the pumpkin to the edge of the shelf, but I wasn’t going to be able to hold on to it and climb down. I chewed gently on the plastic handle, thinking, when I heard footsteps running down the stairs—Tonio! I had to put the chair back!
“Buster? Are you down there?”
One more jerk of my neck and the pumpkin went tumbling to the ground, sending StarChews, Crunchsquish pops, Sour Power Blasts, and fun-sized Beantangle chocolate twists sliding across the floor. I threw myself down after them and put both front paws on the chair, pushing hard with my back legs to get it to the table.
Tonio’s footsteps turned the corner right when I made it—but I’d turned the chair around on the way there, and now the back was up against the table. It’ll have to do. I flipped around and looked for a Beantangle chocolate twist—there!—scooped it into my mouth and held it gently between my teeth so the logo was clearly visible.
Tonio looked around at the mess of candy all over the floor, the backward chair, and me. I posed with my chin up, ears folded, tail between my legs to look perfectly embarrassed. You caught me! I tried to say with my eyes. Now save me from my very dangerous decision to eat poison!
But nothing happened. Tonio just put his hands on his hips and tilted his head. “Are you going to eat that, or what?”
This was not what I’d expected.
“Go ahead. Eat it!”
I don’t know what Tonio was thinking, but he had me trapped. If I really tried to eat it, he’d probably stop me, so I needed to commit and bite down on the wrapper. But what if he didn’t stop me? Even a little bit of chocolate could mean a really bad time for me. I wasn’t sure I could risk it.
The front door clicked unlocked, and Mr. Pulaski carried a handful of boxes inside. He pushed past Tonio into the kitchen, set the boxes down on the counter, then looked down at me.
“I brought you some more—oh, geez! Tonio, he can’t eat chocolate.” Mr. Pulaski leaned down, grabbed the wrapper from my mouth, then started throwing candies back in the jack-o’-lantern.
Tonio stared me down from under his curls. “I know.”
“Okay.” Tonio was still staring directly at me. “And you’re right. I think I do need to watch him better.” He grabbed my leash from a peg by the door and clipped it to my collar. “Come, Buster!” Mia joined us downstairs, and we headed out for a walk around the square together, my tail between my legs. I tried to sniff poles for too long and tangle up his legs with the leash enough times to seem annoying and normal, but I had a sinking feeling he wasn’t fooled at all.
After our walk, the gaming continued. Tonio made it very clear I wasn’t to leave his sight, so I watched as he and Mia played.
Mia’s hand slammed down on the cardboard playmat. Tonio had drawn little rectangles for where all the different cards should go at different times, and she’d placed a new one in the Battle Server spot. “I use all my Manabytes for MIGHTAS, THE GOLDEN BARBARIAN!” She boomed his name proudly. “He’s got cool bracelets.”
“You don’t have enough Manabytes,” Tonio pointed out. “You need three.”
“Auughhhhhguughhhh. Okay, let me think.” Mia put Mightas back in her hand. It lasted long enough that Tonio felt like he needed to fill the silence.
“Do you ever feel like dogs might be … like, smart?”
Oh no.
Mia shrugged. “Well, yeah. Dogs are super smart.”
“I mean human smart.”
“Are you trying to distract me? It won’t work! I’m going to—” She flipped through the cards in her hand. “I’m about to totally win.” She raised a card in the air triumphantly, then huffed and put it back in her hand. “I can’t do anything else. Your turn.”