Smart Dog

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "I don't know," Mom admitted. "Sean whoever-it-was-that-used-to-own-our-dog-before-we-did."

  "Where?" Amy asked.

  "Two tables down in the blue sweater."

  "Everybody's sweaters are blue," Amy pointed out, though Sean Gorman's was a distinctive electric blue. "It's the dress code."

  Mom sounded exasperated. "The one that's really blue—that doesn't match anybody else's."

  At this point Amy ran out of clever questions with which to confuse the issue.

  Minneh leaned forward and said, "Amy, I bet she means Steven."

  Since there wasn't a Steven in their class, Amy said, "Oh. Right. Steven."

  "Steven?" Mom repeated. "Don't you think he looks like Sean?"

  "No," Amy said.

  "Not at all," Minneh added.

  Mom looked at Minneh. "I hadn't realized you'd met Sean."

  Minneh got a panicked look. She said, "I ... didn't ... but..."

  Amy said, "I described him to her."

  Minneh nodded her head. "And Sean's description didn't sound at all like how Steven looks."

  Mr. Tannen sneezed and their candle went out yet again. Mrs. Pudlyk glared, and Mr. Tannen whispered loudly to the people at the next table, "Borrow a light?"

  At least it got Mom off the subject of Sean.

  Finally, after Dana's mom set the end of her scarf on fire with her table's candle, and after Jennifer's grandfather dropped the container of glitter for the second time, and after Justin's mom had to be sent to the school nurse because she had bonded her fingers together with Super Glue, Sister Mary Grace said, "Oh, my, almost time for lunch! Let's clean up, then we'll have our egg fashion show, and by then the pizzas should have arrived. Then it's good-bye till after Easter." She sounded as though she was really looking forward to the good-bye part.

  So was Amy.

  The Easter Egg Parade

  After all the broken eggs and extinguished candle stubs and leftover bits of paper, felt, and feathers were gathered together to be thrown out, it was time for the Easter egg parade.

  One by one, alphabetically, each family displayed their eggs in the clear plastic containers Mrs. Pudlyk had provided so that the eggs could be seen yet carried with minimum risk of damage.

  Mrs. Pudlyk, Amy was fairly certain, would never again come to a school function. But she had a brave—if somewhat strained—smile as each family walked by.

  When Sister Mary Grace got to the G's, Amy managed to scrape her chair against the floor at the same moment Minneh coughed, both on the last word of Sister Mary Grace's announcement, "Betty Ann Gorman and her son, Sean."

  "Excuse me," Minneh whispered in a delicate little voice that contrasted with the whooping-cough bellow she'd just given.

  Mom clearly suspected Minneh's whole family was highly contagious, but at least she didn't seem to question the timing. Still, when the Gormans stopped in front of their table, Mom leaned closer for a better look at Sean. "Hi!" she said brightly.

  "'lo," Sean mumbled, pretending not to recognize her. In a bored but rapid monotone, he described his Ukrainian-style egg, with its stars, leaves, and windmills. He showed more enthusiasm for his second egg, which he'd decorated to look like a football.

  As Mrs. Gorman moved on to the next table, Amy said, softly, "Gee, that's really neat, Steven"—with just the slightest emphasis on Steven, to let Sean know, just in case.

  Sean caught on quickly. His voice was perfectly normal as he answered, "Thanks, Amy."

  Mom was peering closely at him. "You know," she said, "we saw your twin the other day."

  Perhaps Sean caught on a bit too quickly. Instead of realizing she simply meant they'd seen someone who looked remarkably like him, he assumed Amy had made up a story about his actually having a twin. "My twin," he repeated, nodding. "Yes. Sean."

  "You have a twin?" Mom asked in amazement.

  "Ahmmmm..." Sean said, confused now, stalling for time.

  "I didn't know you had a twin," Amy said, to let him know he was on his own for this story.

  "Yeah," Sean said. "Yeah, that's right. I'm Steven, and my brother—my twin brother—is Sean."

  "So he must be in a different class," Mom said. "Since Amy didn't know him." She thought about that for a half second. "Though it's odd—"

  "He goes to a different school," Sean interrupted. "My parents are divorced. So they split me and Sean up."

  "How sad!" Mom gasped.

  Just then Sean's mother, ready to move on from the next table, noticed how far behind he'd fallen and called, "Come on, Sean, you're holding things up."

  Sean whispered to Mom, "Poor Mother. She gets confused a lot since the divorce." To make sure Mom found that reasonable, he added, "Probably because of all the drinking she does on account of trying to forget about my father running off with his aerobics instructor." He mimed drinking from a bottle.

  Mom looked shocked but only said, "You poor thing."

  Sean nodded and continued on to the next table.

  Mr. Tannen leaned over the girls to say to Mom, "It's sad how many dysfunctional families there are these days."

  She probably would have agreed more wholeheartedly if he hadn't been scratching his rash and sniffling as he said it.

  When it was time for Amy and her mother to show off their eggs, Amy insisted that Mom go first. That way, Amy, walking behind, could bump into her and keep her moving. Which was exactly what she did at the Gormans' table.

  Mom ignored her. She rested her hand on Mrs. Gorman's and said, "I just wanted to tell you: If there's anything I can do—anything—you just let me know."

  "Thank you," Mrs. Gorman said slowly, warily, giving Mom much the same kind of look that Mom had been giving Mr. Tannen all morning.

  Wordlessly, Sean wiggled his eyebrows at Amy when he recognized the portrait of Sherlock on her egg.

  Mom moved on to the next group of people at the table—the Walker-Pudlyks. Behind her back, Amy saw Sean demonstrate for his mother the same drinking-from-a-bottle bit he had done at their table about her.

  Second to last in the parade to display their artwork were the Walker-Pudlyks. Kaitlyn's parents and grandfather hadn't even tried Ukrainian-style eggs. They'd concentrated on stickers and sequins. Kaitlyn, however, had spent the entire three hours working on one egg. And she'd worked alone, because Mrs. Pudlyk had been demonstrating for and helping other people. Kaitlyn's egg was entirely her own work.

  "Kaitlyn," Amy said, amazed at the steady detail of the tiny designs, "it's gorgeous. It's like you worked on a big egg and then shrunk it down to a perfect miniature. It really is art."

  "Thank you," Kaitlyn said, like a queen graciously accepting praise from her subjects.

  Last of all came Raymond Young. Raymond's father was either dead, or on a secret mission for the CIA, or in South America with thousands of dollars of his former employer's money—depending on which rumor you believed. His mother worked two jobs and hadn't made it yet to a school function, which was why Sister Mary Grace had sat with him.

  Starting with three eggs, Raymond had dropped one, then pressed too hard when penciling in his design on each of his other two. In exasperation, he'd thrown out all three, and Sister Mary Grace had donated one of her backup eggs. That now had a crack in it, too. Amy worried that Mrs. Pudlyk's plastic container was the only thing that held the egg together and that once Raymond returned it, the egg would be Humpty-Dumpty all over again.

  "Eggs," Raymond said, explaining his border of lopsided circles, "because that's what this is, an egg. Ladybug, because I like ladybugs. Star at the top, because that's easy to draw."

  "Very nice," Mom assured him.

  As Raymond reached the last table, the one with the Gormans and the Walker-Pudlyks, there was a knock on the door and a whiff of tomato sauce and cheese. The pizza had arrived. People started to get up, to form a line before the boxes were even set down. Mom, however—Amy saw with alarm—was about to zero in on the Gormans. "Minneh," Amy whispered from between cl
enched teeth.

  "Mrs. Prochenko," Minneh called urgently to distract her.

  Mom stopped.

  "Ahmmm," Minneh said. "My father and I really enjoyed meeting you, didn't we, Dad?"

  Without listening for Mom's reaction, Amy ran ahead to get in a word of warning to Sean. Sean was trying to convince his mother that he had never really liked pizza, and why didn't they leave—now—and have a nice lunch at home?

  Mrs. Gorman was obviously just waiting for him to stop talking so she could say, "Nonsense."

  Beyond the Gormans, Sister Mary Grace was thanking Kaitlyn's family for all their help. Raymond had just managed to get his egg—mostly in one piece—out of the container so he could return the container to Kaitlyn's grandmother. Only Amy was near enough and not talking to overhear when Kaitlyn leaned close to Raymond, pinched his cheek as though she were an adult and he a chubby toddler, and said—smiling sweetly—"You're so special, Raymond. You and your egg. Don't ever let anybody tell you differently."

  Raymond was not the quickest person in class and often misunderstood things. Let him misunderstand this, Amy wished now. Make him think she really means it.

  But even if Kaitlyn's energetic brightness wasn't obvious enough, she added, "And I don't believe for a minute that story about your father running away from home to get away from you."

  Amy's mind went blank at the viciousness of the attack. For a long moment Raymond looked at the egg in his hand. Then he closed his fist on it. He flipped his hand over, letting the pieces drop into the garbage can, brushed off the remaining sticky bits of shell, and walked back to his seat without a word.

  Why? Amy thought. What possible pleasure could Kaitlyn get from saying such a hurtful thing to someone like Raymond, who could not defend himself? It was like intentionally poking a baby. Or like kicking a dog. A poor, helpless dog.

  "You miserable little wretch," Amy said to Kaitlyn. She started in a whisper because that was all she could manage, but got louder with each word. "You may have made the prettiest egg, but you're a nasty, ugly person." While no one seemed to have heard Kaitlyn, everybody seemed to hear her. The room instantly fell silent, and everyone was gaping at her.

  "Amy!" she heard Mom gasp.

  "Amy!" Sister Mary Grace echoed, no doubt embarrassed in front of Kaitlyn's family after they had gone out of their way to be nice to her class. "Please explain what this is all about."

  Raymond was watching. Did he realize she had jumped in to defend him? Would he appreciate knowing that someone had overheard him being humiliated? How could she explain without repeating in front of everyone what Kaitlyn had said and making Raymond feel even worse?

  "Someday somebody's got to teach you a lesson," Amy told Kaitlyn. She stamped her feet all the way back to her place at her own table.

  Behind her, she heard Kaitlyn say, "Oh, dear! I think she was just a little bit jealous of my egg."

  Amy closed her eyes and concentrated on not crying and on not strangling Kaitlyn.

  Picnic

  "Amy."

  Amy felt Minneh lean over her, but she kept her eyes closed.

  "Sherlock is fine," Minneh whispered, obviously thinking that Amy was just overly worried about him. "And I asked my mother if I could have a friend spend the night tonight, and she said yes, if it's OK with your mother, and then you'll see."

  Amy felt Minneh straighten, then Mom's voice said, "Amy, what was that all about?" Then, more sharply, "Amy."

  Amy opened her eyes and saw Mom and Sister Mary Grace. Mr. Tannen was motioning Minneh to leave them alone together. Other people were working very hard at ignoring them. "It isn't fair," Amy said. "Everyone thinks Kaitlyn is so wonderful, but she isn't." Mom started to protest, but Amy continued without giving her a chance. "She says mean things and nobody ever notices."

  "She told you your egg was very nice," Mom pointed out.

  "She didn't mean it," Amy protested, which wasn't the point, but she didn't know what else to say.

  "I can't believe you'd embarrass me like this," Mom said. "Why are you behaving this way?"

  Sister Mary Grace put a hand on Mom's arm. "Normally Amy behaves very well," she said. "Sometimes, too many things happen at once and overwhelm us." She looked sympathetically at Amy.

  It's not fair, Amy thought. None of it was fair. Kaitlyn. Dr. Boden. Life. It's not fair.

  "And it's not fair"—Amy jumped, hearing Sister Mary Grace speak out loud the words she'd just been saying in her mind, then Sister Mary Grace finished—"to say, 'Everyone this...' and 'Nobody that ...' Sometimes people notice things you don't think they do. But still: You cannot lash out at people. Do you understand?"

  "I think so," Amy said, though uncertainly. Then, even more uncertainly, she thought, Sister Mary Grace doesn't think Kaitlyn is wonderful?

  Sister Mary Grace told Mom, "I think we can forgive one uncharacteristic outburst, don't you?"

  Mom nodded, but slowly.

  Amy wondered if that would last only as long as Sister Mary Grace was there. She had the feeling she was about to find out, just as one of the parents exclaimed, "Yes, a picnic!"

  Immediately two or three others agreed that a picnic was a fine idea.

  "Oh," Sister Mary Grace called over as people started to pick up the food to bring outdoors, "that's so much work, to get the tables and chairs out..."

  Someone's mother said, "We just need one of the small tables, to hold the pizza and the drinks. There's plenty of room for sitting in the playground. And look—here's Bill, fresh and strong and just in time to carry the table."

  The man who'd just entered said, "I had a morning meeting that I thought would never end. Have I missed everything?"

  "No, you're just in time to move this table," the pushy mother said.

  "Who's that?" Mom asked Amy as Sister Mary Grace rushed away from them to help clear the table.

  "Sean's father," Amy said, recognizing him from field trips. She suddenly realized what she'd said. She added, hoping she sounded nonchalant, "I guess. Because he's Steven's father, too."

  "Hmpf!" Mom said.

  All the pizza boxes and jugs of fruit juice had already been taken. Mr. Gorman began folding the small table's legs.

  "Come, Amy," Mom said, heading for the door.

  Amy took a deep breath and hoped for the best.

  Mr. Gorman smiled at them as they whisked by.

  "Beast," Mom snarled at him.

  Amy didn't dare hesitate to see his reaction. The most she could do now was to stick close to her mother to try to keep her from offering any more sympathy to Mrs. Gorman.

  But as soon as they stepped outside, Sean and Minneh came running up calling, "Amy! Amy!"

  And following them—for a moment she was thrilled, but then her heart sank—was Sherlock. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be safely away, hiding in Minneh's garage. Had Dr. Boden tracked him there? Had he tracked him here?

  She looked up and down the street but saw no sign of him or his car.

  "Oh, look!" Mom said. "Steven and Minneh found your dog."

  Kaitlyn came running up, too. But she, obviously, wasn't looking for Amy. "Sister Mary Grace! Sister Mary Grace!"

  "Yes, Kaitlyn?" Sister Mary Grace said.

  "Look." Kaitlyn pointed. "Amy's dog is here. You said he wasn't allowed to come back, and Amy brought him anyway."

  "Kaitlyn, dear," Sister Mary Grace said, "you really must learn to mind your own business and to stop tattling."

  Amy felt as though she'd waited all her life to hear this. But much as she longed to hear more, she had to get to Sherlock.

  Sherlock knew enough to run to the far end of the playground, leading Amy, Sean, and Minneh away from the cluster of picnicking adults. When he stopped, Amy threw herself to her knees and flung her arms around his neck. "Oh, Sherlock!" she said. "I've missed you, and I'm glad to see you, but you shouldn't have come. How will I ever explain to Mom that we can't bring you home? And we can't: Dr. Boden was there last night."
/>   Sherlock scratched with his back leg, making his collar jingle, and looked at Minneh.

  There wasn't time for complicated secrecy. "Oh," Amy said in exasperation, "it's all right. Minneh's got to learn eventually. Minneh, Sherlock can talk."

  "Speak, Sherlock," Minneh said, obviously expecting a bark.

  Sherlock said, "I had to leave the garage when Minneh and her father came in to get the truck to drive to school this morning."

  Minneh's mouth dropped open.

  Sherlock continued, "The people from the college must have seen that I wasn't at your house anymore, and they must have been looking around the neighborhood, because all of a sudden I noticed that Dr. Schieber was following me."

  All three children looked up, even Minneh, who hadn't yet gotten around to closing her mouth. Across the street was a well-dressed woman who looked older than Mom but younger than Sister Mary Grace. 'That woman?" Amy asked. "She's a doctor, too? Like Dr. Boden?"

  "Actually," Sherlock said, "Dr. Schieber is the head of the department—she's Dr. Boden's boss."

  "Oh boy," Sean muttered.

  Sherlock said, "Amy, this isn't working. I'm only getting you deeper and deeper in trouble. But I couldn't leave without saying good-bye."

  "Good-bye?" Amy squealed. "Where are you going?"

  "I don't know," Sherlock admitted. "But I'm going to start running, and I'm going to try to find places Dr. Schieber can't follow with her car. I won't be able to come back, Amy, because they'll be watching you."

  "But how will you get along?" Amy cried. "You've never been out in the world; there's all sorts of things you don't know, smart as you are. Who'll feed you? Where will you go to stay out of the weather?"

  But she knew he was right.

  She only wasted time by denying it.

  She took a shaky breath. Later. Later she could worry about her broken heart. She said, "You know to stay away from Animal Control, and you must be careful of streets, too; lots of dogs get hit by cars—"

  "Yikes," Minneh interrupted, finally getting her mouth to do something more than hang open, "the doc's headed this way."

  "Go to kids," Amy told Sherlock, frantic to fit in last-second instructions, to delay—even for a few moments—what was coming. "Don't trust grown-ups; trust kids. They can't help you as much, but they're less likely to turn you in."