Runt

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  Allison nodded. Henry was smart. And he had really pretty blue eyes.

  Henry balled up the wrapper from his sandwich and stuffed it back into his bag. “That’s it? Fifty-seven?”

  “Yup.” Allison really had no idea how many words you could make with the letters in the word tolerance but she made a mental note to go home and try it out.

  “Is lunch almost over?” Henry asked.

  The rest of their class seemed to be done eating and were engaging in various other activities—passing notes, emptying out the contents of Pixy Stix onto the table, carving their initials in the formica.

  “Hey, Allison.”

  Henry and Allison both looked up. It was never good to be noticed during lunch—or any other time for that matter, but particularly during lunch.

  “Hey, Allison. Smile.”

  There was some laughter coming from somewhere.

  “C’mon, smile.”

  Allison didn’t, but one of the girls, surrounded by other girls, at the far end of the table, snapped a picture with a tiny camera. It was Cynthia Conrad.

  “It’s my new sticky-film Polaroid. It’s so super cool,” Cynthia Conrad announced, though no one had asked her. “Just hope you didn’t break the lens.” That line seemed to elicit a round of wild giggles.

  “No good will come of that,” Henry whispered.

  “It’s just a picture. It can’t hurt me,” Allison said. She picked up her lunch tray. “C’mon. Let’s go outside.”

  “Don’t worry. She’ll get hers.”

  Allison dumped her trash into the garbage and dropped her tray on the conveyor belt that fed the dirty dishes back into the kitchen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody gets theirs, one way or another. One day or another. I have proof.”

  Allison laughed. “I wish I believed that. I wish I knew that one day someone would be really mean to Cynthia Conrad and she’d feel bad about how she treats other people.”

  “I didn’t say anyone was going to feel bad. I just said they’ll get theirs.”

  “Okay, so what’s your proof?” They walked outside. It was freezing.

  Henry spread his arms out wide. “Right there,” he said.

  Allison looked at the trees and let her eyes scan the playground. Most everyone was standing around with their arms wrapped around their bodies, trying to keep warm. A few boys were kicking a ball around on the grass.

  “Where?”

  “No, out there. Look past the playground and softball field. Look—there is life after middle school.”

  Allison laughed.

  “Besides, in another year nobody’s going to want a Polaroid. Cynthia will be using her super cool new camera as a paperweight. Within ten years everything’s going to be digital.”

  “Digital?” Allison asked. “What’s that?”

  THE ANSWERING VOICE II

  * * *

  My pant leg is covered with dog hair. I notice it as soon as I get to class. But what else is new?

  “You smell, Elizabeth,” Justin Benton says to me. Justin always tells me I smell.

  “So do you.” I sit down at my desk right behind his. He doesn’t smell, though, and I probably do. I probably do, but I’m so used to it I can’t even tell anymore. It’s in our clothes—anything made of natural fabric—jeans, sweatshirts. And hair. Hair really holds on to smells. I should just wear polyester and shave my head.

  Bet I’d be real popular then.

  “You stink like dog pee,” Justin stands up and leans over into my space just to say this. I swipe at him, but before I can knuckle him in the arm, he drops back down into his seat.

  “Dummy,” I say. It’s all I can think of.

  Anyway, he is a dummy because it isn’t pee. There’s no pee on me. It’s just the smell of all the animals in our house; all the dogs that come and go. All of them are housebroken. So it’s not pee.

  “Miss Robinson?” Hannah Montana raises her hand. Well, that’s just what I call her. She’s so stuck-up and she’s skinny like Miley Cyrus with a round face like hers.

  “Maggie?” Miss Robinson calls on her and I already know what she’s going to ask.

  “Can I move my seat?” This question is followed by a very low rumble of giggles, like a tiny wave set into motion by a bug scooting across a pond.

  Miss Robinson looks up from where she’s sitting behind her desk, presumably to assess the situation. Now, why would this girl want to move her seat? We have all just put our heads down to start this vocabulary test. It’s real quiet in the room (or at least it was) and for no apparent reason, out of the blue, Hannah Montana needs to change her seat.

  “Not now, Maggie,” Miss Robinson says. She gives her an austere (that is one of our vocabulary words this week) look and Maggie knows that I know that Miss Robinson knows exactly why she wants to move away from me. Maggie wants everyone to laugh.

  “Now get back to your papers, everyone. Seventeen minutes left.” She says that, but Miss Robinson has never taken a test away from anyone who was still working. She’s nice like that. She’s kind of big and round but she’s got the prettiest face and the nicest smile. She always asks me about Mork and Mindy, and about Lola because she took one of our kittens last year, before she got this job teaching sixth grade and she was still a student teacher in the elementary school.

  I am not the last one finished with my test, but close. I am pretty sure I aced it, as vocabulary is my forte.

  All things considered and not considering Justin Benton or Hannah Montana, it’s an okay day, actually. Miss Robinson hands out our newly printed creative writing anthologies. It’s all our work from the last month, from our unit on poetry. They were all printed out and stapled together. Larissa Joyce got to do the cover. Everyone got to pick a name we wanted for our anthology then Miss Robinson put them on the board and we voted. I didn’t win. Mine was Write On! but I don’t think anyone got the play on words or else it might have won.

  Ethan won instead, so our class poetry anthology is called The Answering Voice. When I hold it in my hands I see how shiny the cover is and how heavy and beautiful the book is. The first thing I want to do is flip to my own poem, but I wait until I get home. I don’t even open it up.

  I wait the whole bus ride. It’s like lying in bed Christmas morning waiting for the sun to come up.

  Sadie is hunting, my mother tells me. We’ve got to keep her away from Mrs. Smallman’s bichons.

  Mrs. Smallman had left her three bichon frises for two weeks while she is on a cruise with Mr. Smallman. They are regulars and those three dogs know their way around our house. They even got in the car with my mom and me when we went out. In general they stuck close together. They are all girls, Winkie, Blinkie, and Nod, though I sure couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Where is she?”

  “Sadie?” My mother looks up from the TV.

  “What are you doing? Find her, Elizabeth. Hurry.”

  You’d think nobody would be able to lose a hundred- and-seventy-pound dog, but it takes me a while to find her. She is laying on the floor in the hall right outside the laundry room, blocking the whole exit, and sure enough Winkie, or Blinkie, or Nod is hiding behind the washer.

  “Outta here, Sadie,” I shout. I give her a little nudge with my foot but she doesn’t move. I say it louder and with a deeper voice. From experience, I’ve figured out that stubborn dogs will respond more to male voices. I think in general, the dads in their families are more alpha than the moms, so basically I am trying to sound like a dad.

  “Move it, Sadie!”

  Finally she struggles to her feet—her front legs, paws first, and then she lifts her whole back end. But she just stands there.

  “Let’s go, girl,” I say and she follows me into the kitchen. Dogs will always follow you into the kitchen. They know that’s where food comes from.

  We’ve never had a Saint Bernard here but I’m learning fast. They drool into their water bowls (at least Sadie does) a ton, e
very time they take a drink, so I have to bend down and change it every time. It’s like she’s just making sure any dog who tries to take a drink after her has to go thirsty or drink her spit. We have five water bowls lined up and it looks like she’s spit in four of them.

  Then I remember The Answering Voice. I haven’t shown my mother yet. I pull it out of my backpack, but first I sit down on the floor and run my hands over the cover. It’s in color and kind of bumpy like a real book. Larissa did a good job. She even made the title look like part of the picture, all swirly, but you can still read it.

  There is a table of contents.

  My poem is on page eleven.

  The page numbers are on the bottom right.

  There it is.

  Reincarnation

  It’s short, only three lines:

  Rain keeps me from school

  So I stayed home with the dogs

  I grew large white fangs

  It’s a haiku which is five, seven, five. Five syllables in the first line, then seven, and then five syllables in the last line. But nobody is going to know that. I love the way it looks on the page, all white around it. The letters dark and simple.

  I flip around to some of the other poems, mostly about summer and sunshine or someone’s favorite vacation. Or about all of the above. A lot of the poems rhyme, like Jessie Peterson’s:

  I love summer and summer loves me.

  The sun shines all day, even underneath the trees

  We love to go on vacation and sit at the beach all day

  Where there is nothing else to do but play, and play and play.

  I love summer and summer loves me.

  It’s best season of all with so much to do and see.

  That’s pretty bad but you know no one is going to tell her that. I’m sure not. She’s not my best friend. That’s something you’d only tell your best friend, to help her out. I don’t really have any one particular friend.

  Very carefully I close the anthology and stand up—or I am about to stand up—and show it to my mom. I notice Sadie is not standing next to me anymore but I don’t think anything of that until I hear my mother yelling, really yelling.

  To break up a dogfight you have to be really confident. You have to be unafraid to kick one of the dogs in the side, shout really loud, and let them both know you are in charge. Use a broom handle, anything. And my mother has always told me never to break up a dogfight. Never get in the mix. By the time I run into the den it’s over and there is blood all over the floor.

  “It’s Nod,” my mother says. “We’ve got to get her to the vet.”

  Sadie is sitting in the corner with guilt written all over her face.

  “And get the big cage out from the basement, Elizabeth.”

  I feel bad for Sadie. She didn’t mean it. For all she knows she’s here for good. For all she knows her mom and dad left her forever and this is where she’s got to stay, so she’s just trying to find her place.

  “Elizabeth, quick.”

  By the time we get back, it’s late and dark. My mother makes Sadie sleep in that crate all night. I can hear her whimpering from my bedroom. I try to shut my door but it almost sounds louder.

  “It’s okay, Sadie. I know you didn’t mean it.” I am kneeling next to her. She barely fits in there. I know she can’t turn around. Maybe she’s thirsty, so I bring her some water in a plastic dish, but she can’t get her snout out between the bars to drink. If I open the door, even just a little, she’ll push her way out and I’ll never get her back in.

  It turned out to be Blinkie, not Nod, that got into the fight. Now she has a big bite in her tongue. Lots of blood, the vet told us, but nothing we can do but let it heal. He gave us some antibiotics. My mother prayed all the way home that Mrs. Smallman doesn’t notice. The bleeding stopped and you can only see the wound when Blinkie opens up her mouth.

  Thank the Lord dogs can’t talk, my mother says.

  “It’s okay, Sadie,” I say. “Your mommy and daddy are coming back soon. And then you’ll be out of there.”

  Sadie cries, little breathing cries, all night.

  It isn’t until just before I fall back asleep, right there on the rug in the den, that I remember The Answering Voice. I never got to show my mom.

  Tomorrow.

  WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU

  * * *

  For five hundred years, the horses have run free on the outer banks of North Carolina. Since he was a baby, Ethan and his family have been renting a house with the Zingone family, on the beach in Corolla. Ethan’s father and Don Zingone had gone to college together in Virginia, and even though the two families both lived states away, they’d spent this week together on the outer banks for the last ten years. But never once, in all those boiling hot summer days, had Ethan seen a wild horse.

  “If the hurricane comes this way we’ll have to evacuate.” Jamie Zingone shook the Boggle cube.

  “No, we won’t,” Jamie’s little brother, Benjamin, said.

  “Oh, yes we will, and we might have to leave you behind,” Jamie answered his brother.

  Ethan lay with his feet stretched out over the arm of the couch, his head resting on the other end. He was staring up, watching the huge paddles of the ceiling fan turning slowly. Hanging clumps of dark dust threatened to fly off at any moment and land right on Jamie’s head. That’s the kind of summer it was.

  Benjamin asked again. “That would never happen, would it, Ethan?”

  Benjamin was seven. Ethan ten. Jamie Zingone was a year and a half older than that. The last thing Ethan needed was to have Jamie’s little brother thinking he had an ally in Ethan. It wouldn’t help Ethan’s status with Jamie at all.

  “How do I know?” Ethan answered.

  He didn’t know, and to tell the truth he was a little scared about the darkening sky and the weather reports. After a full day at the beach, the parents were all up on the main floor where the kitchen was. The kids mostly stayed downstairs where the television was. Ethan felt bad for Benjamin, but what could he do?

  Yesterday Jamie and Benjamin’s mom made a run to the supermarket for groceries, and for some reason—maybe to have some influence over the selection of ice cream and cookies—all three boys went along. All three sat in the backseat; Jamie had one window seat, Ethan the other, and Benjamin, being the youngest, was stuck in the middle. At some point during the drive, Jamie gave Ethan the signal to push Benjamin as hard as he could.

  “Squeeze him,” Jamie ordered. He dug his shoulder and hip into his little brother. Ethan did the same, until Benjamin’s eyes sprung with tears. Until Jamie and Benjamin’s mother told them to stop. She glared at Ethan in particular, as if this behavior was more expected from an older brother.

  But wasn’t it obvious? If Ethan hadn’t joined in, next time Jamie would do it to him.

  Go along to get along, right?

  What choice did he have?

  But it all seemed to be forgotten at the beach today, even if Jamie was being especially mean to his brother right now, picking on his fear of the storm.

  “Well, I’m going to tell Mom.” Benjamin put down his Boggle pad and stood up. “And you’re going to get in trouble.”

  He did everything a kid brother should never do. He was literally asking for it, and he kept coming back for more. Jamie imitated his voice and told him to go ahead and tell his mommy how scared he was. Benjamin ran up the stairs.

  “You wanna play?” Jamie asked Ethan. He shook the Boggle cube again and started writing down his words. The weird thing was that when his little brother wasn’t around, Jamie was really pretty nice.

  “Sure.” Ethan rolled off the couch and sat cross-legged across from Jamie, just as a flash of lightning brightened the room, followed a few moments later by a loud clap of thunder and an immediate downpour of rain.

  “Wow, that is coming closer.” Jamie stood up. The rain was deafening.

  Both boys ran up the stairs. It was four in the afternoon and the sky was completely dark.
No one upstairs seemed worried.

  “Remember the summer it rained the whole week?” Jamie’s mom was saying.

  Ethan’s mom had a book in her lap but she wasn’t reading. “Yeah, until the very last day the sun came out, and we had to pack up and leave.” She looked over at Ethan. “You were just a baby. And Benjamin wasn’t even born yet.”

  “But I was a year later!” Benjamin shouted.

  “What a genius,” Jamie felt compelled to add.

  It always surprised Ethan that Jamie’s parents never said anything about the nasty comments and jokes Jamie made about his little brother.

  The two dads were standing in the kitchen, leaning on the counter watching the rain through the wide sliding glass doors. “We’ll have to ride this one out too.”

  “No fishing.”

  “Nope.”

  “Too early for a beer?”

  Jamie’s mom answered her husband. “Yes, too early.”

  Another flash of light and the boys all started counting.

  “Three one thousand.” Benjamin threw his hands up into the air. “It’s three miles away.”

  “Oh goody, Benjamin learned to count in nursery school this year.” For that remark, his mother gave Jamie a look, but that was the extent of it. It made Ethan glad he didn’t have an older brother.

  The two families made spaghetti and salad that night, watched a movie on pay-per-view, and then got ready for bed. The three boys slept in the same room, two sets of bunk beds. Jamie on top and Benjamin on the bottom. Ethan had chosen the bottom bunk as well by claiming the mattress was more comfortable.

  “Mommy,” Benjamin called out. The lights in the room were already turned off. Only a straight beam of white cut across the floor from the light in the hall bathroom. “Come and tuck me in.”

  “You’re such a baby.” Jamie leaned over his bunk and swatted at his brother.

  Their mother came in. Ethan could hear the bed creak as she sat down on the edge of Benjamin’s bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. They were in shadows but Ethan could hear every word.

  “Mom?” Benjamin whispered.