“You know her phone number?”
“She said you’ve become quite popular at school, and she gave me a list of kids I could potentially invite.”
“I don’t want a big party, Mom,” I say, knowing that what I want doesn’t always get through to her. Like when I wanted a dog …
“Oh, it won’t be big. I just invited Lurena, Murphy, and Dmitri. I’m thinking we’ll have it the Saturday before your birthday. I’ll take care of everything. Don’t you worry.”
Don’t me worry? Lurena and Dmitri are coming. I’ll have only a week to de-doggify Fido.
Fido whined all through dinner. Afterward, I try to make it up to her by letting her out of her cage and playing with her for a while. I don’t play with her like she’s a dog. I can’t play with her like she’s a guinea pig, because I don’t know how.
She bites down on my pant leg and tries to tug me toward the front door.
“Guinea pigs don’t go on walks,” I say, but it doesn’t stop her.
I put her back in her cage.
She whines, and I gave her the Stony Stare. She keeps whining. She whines and whines and whines. So I go downstairs and sneak into my dad’s study.
12. Yes, I wore earplugs to bed that night.
They kept me awake as much as Fido did. Earplugs make my head feel like it’s suffocating. True, I don’t breathe through my ears, but air does pass through them. At some point during the night I took them out.
Fido’s whining got louder. I hoped Dad wore earplugs to bed.
I woke up exhausted.
“She didn’t stop whining, Rufus,” Dad says when I walk into the kitchen in the morning. “Did you keep her in her cage all night?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I lie. “I …”
I had to come up with another fib, which is the problem with telling them. They multiply. Like rabbits. Or guinea pigs.
“I fell asleep,” I say, which, of course, I didn’t. I couldn’t. “I was really tired. I mean, this week has been really strenuous.”
Strenuous was a word Mom used about my first day back: “Oh, honey, such a strenuous day for you!”
Dad buys it. My parents can be so easy to fool. I guess that’s because they trust me.
Ooh, that doesn’t feel good.
“Sorry she kept you awake,” I say.
After I eat my eggs and sausages, I go back to my room to feed Fido. She gets guinea pig pellets, whether she likes them or not. She tries to make a break for it when I open the cage door.
“Oh no, you don’t,” I say, shoving her back in. “You’re a guinea pig, and guinea pigs live in cages.”
She whimpers and gives me big, sad, puppy eyes.
“Stop that. You think I like this? You have to quit acting like something you’re not. You’re not a dog, okay? You’re a guinea pig. So act like one. Stop whining. Guinea pigs don’t whine.”
Or do they?
She sinks to the floor of her cage, sets her chin on her front paws, and gazes up at me like I’m the meanest pet owner in the universe. I feel like I am.
“Be good and when I get home I’ll take you out of your cage for a while. Okay?”
She takes a deep breath, which makes her puff up even fatter than usual, and lets it out. Then she starts whining again.
I know she won’t be quiet if I leave her in the cage all day, that she’ll drive Dad crazy and he’ll come up and let her out. So I look her in the eyes, and say, “I’ll let you out, but you have to stay in my room. You can’t run around the house. And you have to be quiet. Understand?”
I swear she nods.
I open the cage door, and she shoots out like a bullet—a chubby, furry bullet. She tears around the room, leaping and barking. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her so happy, not even with Buddy.
After a few laps around the room, she charges me. I’m squatting, so she nearly knocks me over. She is getting heavy. She licks my hands and my arms. She climbs up on my knees and licks my face.
“Stop it!” I say. “Down!”
She obeys instantly.
Oops. That was a command. This is hard.
“Be a good girl, okay? I’ll see you after school.”
Her tongue flops out, and her head starts bobbing.
I stand up and leave the room, shutting the door tightly behind me. I hear no whining, so I hobble downstairs.
Dad meets me at the front door.
“She stopped,” he says. “Good.”
“I let her out of her cage,” I say. “But I want her to stay in my room today.”
“Why?” Dad asks, suddenly suspicious.
It’s fibbing time again. Oh, dear.
“I want her to get some rest. She didn’t sleep all night.”
I’m getting better at lying.
Which worries me.
13. “Dude, I need you to train my guinea pig.”
This is what Dmitri says to me when I take a seat on Monday morning. We sit next to each other in class. Just my luck. “I bought a guinea pig, and I want you to train it to act like a dog.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I say. I wasn’t the one who trained Fido to act the way she does. In fact, I had spent the entire weekend trying to train her to act like a guinea pig and had gotten nowhere. I’m no animal trainer. “I told you, Fido was the way she was when we got her.”
“I know what you told me,” Dmitri snarls. “But I looked up Petopia online, and guess what? It doesn’t exist. You made it up because you don’t want anyone to have a guinea dog except you.”
I look at him, with his sharp nose and his sharp chin and his sharp tongue and his eyes shooting daggers at me. The kid’s face could cut you.
“No, I didn’t,” I say, and look away.
“Yes, you did,” he says loudly. “And you’re going to train my guinea pig to act like a dog … or else!”
The rest of the kids turn and look at us. Some whisper to one another.
Linus Axelbrig says, “Can you train my guinea pig, too, Rufus?”
Then Shireen Hourani says, “Mine, too!”
I hadn’t realized how popular guinea pigs were.
Everybody is firing me questions, asking for favors, giving me advice, making me offers. It all blends into the sound of a herd of squirrels chattering. Okay, not a herd, but what do you call a bunch of squirrels? A pack? A squad? A squadron? A squirrel squadron?
The squadron moves in closer. I don’t like it.
I need Murphy, but, of course, he’s late. I ask myself what he would do in this situation. Probably stand up on a chair and quiet everyone down with a big smile, then invent some wild story that would shut them up by making them laugh. And he’d have fun doing it, too.
Why is it so easy for Murphy to be relaxed and funny? Why doesn’t he freeze up when he’s talking to a group of people? How does he always know what to say?
Why can’t I be like him?
If I could be like him, maybe Fido being a guinea dog wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe it would be a good thing.
I mean, it is a good thing. I like that she acts like a dog. So does Murphy. So why does it have to change?
Because I can’t change. I can’t be like Murphy. I can’t love the attention. I can’t stand it.
Since I can’t be like him and charm chattering crowds, I stare at my feet and wait for him to show up. Or, if not him, Ms. Charp. She’s out of the room making copies.
The squirrels tighten around me. I can’t breathe. I might scream.
Instead, Lurena does. “There is too a Petopia!”
Everyone shuts up.
“His mom told me so,” Lurena says.
I’m not happy that she feels the need to tell everyone she knows my mom. It makes it seem as if she’s a close friend, not only of mine, but of my whole family. My mom may adore her and invite her over no matter what I say about it, but that does not make her my friend, or my sister.
Sister! What a dreadful, dreadful thought!
“She said she bought Fido there, then i
t disappeared.” She pauses to look around the room, before adding, “Into thin air.”
No one makes a sound.
“And she doesn’t lie,” Lurena goes on.
Unlike me.
“Rufus told me he didn’t train Fido, and I believe him. Besides, he wouldn’t have had time to. Fido was a guinea dog when Raquel bought her.”
I cringe. Did she really just call my mom by her first name? I know Murph calls my dad Art, but that’s because he’s my best friend. And a guy. What will people think Lurena is to me?
“There’s only one guinea dog in Rustbury, so don’t bother looking for another one,” she says. “And Roof can’t train your guinea pigs to act like dogs.” (Yeah, she called me Roof, like Murph does.) “So stop bothering him. Leave him alone.”
She glares into each squirrel’s eyes. She glares the longest into Dmitri’s. Her eyes look wild, like she’s a witch or a vampire or insane.
Some kids snicker. Dmitri laughs out loud.
“Dude, why does this freaky girl always fight your fights for you?”
A couple of boys snort. Which makes me angry. Which is weird.
“Freaky? That’s the pot calling the kettle black,” Lurena says.
This gets puzzled expressions from everyone, including me.
“What?” Dmitri asks, and laughs harder. It reminds me of the way villains laugh in movies when they have the superhero tied up and they’re explaining their evil plans to take over the world. Dmitri would play a good movie villain. Or even a real one.
Where the heck is Ms. Charp anyway? Is it really okay for a teacher to leave her classroom unattended while a riot is going on?
Suddenly, without meaning to, I stand up. Too fast. I knock my desk over and it hits the floor. It seems, even to me, that I’m standing up to Dmitri, for Lurena. Which I’m not. I’m just clumsy.
Everyone is staring at me, waiting to see what I’ll do next. Slap Dmitri’s face with a glove, maybe. I don’t have a glove, or a clue what to do next.
“Sorry,” Ms. Charp says as she finally hustles into the room and drops a tall stack of papers on her desk. “Long line in the copy room.”
Everyone sits down. Everyone except Lurena and me. She helps me lift my desk. Then we sit down.
The bell rings. Murphy breezes in—just in time to be officially late—and blurts out, “So did everyone hear about the hairy frogs with claws!”
14. Ten reasons a rodent can’t replace a dog.
1. People with pet rodents will think you have something in common.
2. People with pet rodents will want you to train them. (Their rodents, I mean.)
3. Some of these rodent lovers will be girls.
4. Some of these rodent lovers will be bullies.
5. They will all pay way too much attention to you.
6. They may come to your house uninvited.
7. Rodents look like rodents, even if they fetch.
8. Rodents smell like rodents.
9. Rodents are rodents.
10. Rodents aren’t dogs.
This is what I’m thinking as I make my way down the hall after the final bell. I look at the floor, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone. I also have orange earplugs that I swiped from my dad’s stash stuffed into my ears. I point to them if someone comes up to me, and mouth, Can’t hear you.
One of these people is Lurena, who wants to get Fido and Sharmet together after school. Like for a playdate. A playdate for rodents.
Can’t hear you, I mouth.
At the car, Dad asks me a question, but I can’t hear it.
“What?” I yell.
He taps his ear.
“Oh!” I yell, and take out the earplugs.
“Is she with you?” he asks immediately. Kind of urgently. He seems worried. Which scares me. And confuses me.
“Lurena?” I ask. She’s the only “she” who comes to mind, probably because I just saw her.
“I didn’t hear her anymore,” Dad says, “so I went up to your room to see if she was okay. And she wasn’t there.”
And I get who the “she” is. I feel prickles on the back of my neck.
“She’s probably just hiding.”
“No,” he says, and puts the car in gear. It rolls silently forward. “I searched your room. You really should clean it someday. Some of the things I found still haunt me.”
I knew that was coming. He doesn’t call my room the Dump for nothing.
“I’ll look for her when I get home.”
“Be my guest, but I’m telling you, she isn’t in your room.”
“Then you must have let her out.”
“No,” he says, “I did not.”
He seems more annoyed now than worried, and I’m annoyed and worried, and I sure wish he’d drive faster than the speed limit for once.
He doesn’t. He comes to a full and complete stop at every stop sign and looks in all directions before proceeding into the intersection. This is what he has told me all drivers should do, and most do not.
It takes a full and complete eon to get home.
If it weren’t for the medical boot, I would bolt from the car to the house and zoom up the steps to my room. Instead, I struggle to get out of the car and speed-hobble to the house. This takes another eon.
When at last I’m in my room, I call, “Here, Fido! Here, girl! Come, Fido! Come!”
I know I’m using commands, but this is an emergency.
She doesn’t come.
“Speak!” I say. It’s worth a try. “Speak, Fido!”
She doesn’t.
I search my bed first, then I start piling stuff from the floor onto it: dirty clothes, comic books, shoes, empty chip bags, dried gum, pebbles, a pinecone, a Frisbee, a pink rubber ball with guinea-pig-tooth marks in it, wadded-up notebook paper, a foam football with guinea-pig-tooth marks in it, Scrabble tiles, a corn cob, a sticky sucker stick with guinea-pig-tooth marks in it, and a moldy, stiff PBJ with guinea-pig-tooth marks in it. I don’t see how any of this could haunt someone. My dad can be like Murphy: an exaggerator.
After everything is off the floor, I dig out all the stuff from under the bed, then all the stuff from under my dresser. I pile it all onto the heap, which is now up to my chin.
My dad appears in the doorway behind me. “Any luck?”
I shake my head. “She must have sneaked out when you opened the door.”
He looks offended. “I was exceedingly careful not to let that happen. Exceedingly.”
“Did anyone else come in here? Mom, maybe?”
“She’s been at work all day.”
“Then how did Fido get out?” I yell. Much too loud.
He taps his foot and Stony-Stares me.
“Sorry,” I say, and take a breath. “Did you search the whole house?”
“Yes.”
“So what are you saying? That she got out of the house?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He’s acting calm. Acting. I can tell he’s worried about this. He has been since I got into the car. He doesn’t want me to know he’s worried, so he’s pretending to be annoyed, haunted, and insulted. This is classic Dad. He knows if I know he’s worried, I will freak out, which I’m kind of doing anyway. That’s because I know he’s worried.
This is getting me nowhere.
“I’ll search the house again, if that’s okay,” I say. I get the feeling he wasn’t very thorough, but I don’t want to say so. He already got upset when I suggested he hadn’t searched my room thoroughly.
“Suit yourself,” he says.
“Did you check the garage?” It’s connected to the house, with a door into the kitchen. Maybe it got left open.
“Yes. She isn’t in there. By the way, why is her doghouse in there?”
“Why does it matter?” I scream.
I’m in no mood to concoct a fib. I know Fido was upset with me for putting her doghouse away, for not playing with her, for keeping her in the cage, for treating her like a rode
nt (which she is), but it suddenly occurs to me that maybe she was upset enough to …
“I’m sorry I’m screaming!” I scream. “But will you just help me find her?!”
15. I turn the house upside down.
No Fido.
Dad flashes me an I-told-you-so look.
We search the yard, the bushes, under the porch. No Fido.
I walk out to the curb in front of our house and lean on my crutches, scanning the cul-de-sac. She could be anywhere. Hiding in a neighbor’s hedge. Or in a garden. Or under someone else’s porch. Or anywhere in the whole wide world.
Could she really have run away? Was she that upset? Did she feel I no longer wanted her? No longer liked her? No longer loved her?
Is it possible to love a rodent?
Do I?
Mom’s hybrid turns the corner and pulls into the driveway. I hobble over to it.
“Your dad called,” she says, as she climbs out of her car. “I take it by your long face you haven’t found her.”
“They let you leave work just because our pet guinea pig is missing?”
“No, honey,” she says, placing her hand on my shoulder. “I waited till my shift was over at five.”
“Is it already five?” I shriek.
“I’m sure we’ll find her,” she says, and gives me a hug.
I like it, but I’d rather she didn’t do it out here in the open.
I wriggle free. “Do you think she ran away from home?”
She smiles. “Of course not. Why would she? She’s happy here. She loves you. You take good care of her.”
My heart sinks. “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t.”
She tries to hug me again, but I twist away and get snarled in my crutches. Mom props me back up.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “She’ll turn up. You’ll see.”
I want to tell her that I had been trying to untrain Fido, to treat her like a guinea pig (which she is), but I decide to keep my mouth shut and see if she’s right about Fido’s showing up. My gut tells me she isn’t, that Fido won’t be back.
Because of my gut, I can’t eat my dinner. Which is unusual. I usually eat seconds, sometimes thirds. After the dishes are done, I go out to the backyard and call Fido till Dad says I have to come in. Then I call her from my bedroom window till Dad says I have to be quiet.
Guinea Dog 2 Page 4