Guinea Dog 2

by Patrick Jennings

  I rush over to the bike and lift it with one hand. It’s light as a feather. It’s also too tall for me, which is how it’s supposed to be.

  I can’t believe it’s mine. I want to jump on it and take off on a long ride. And I want Fido running alongside me. And Murphy and Buddy, too.

  “It’s a shame you can’t ride it,” Mom says with a long face. “We bought it before you broke your foot.”

  And before we knew Fido was pregnant. Shoot. She can’t run alongside my bike.

  “It’s okay,” I lie. “Thanks. It’s glorious.”

  “Nice word choice,” she says, and hugs me. I don’t groan or sigh. That’s how glorious the bike is.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I gasp over her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry it’s not a dog,” he says.

  “I’ll trade you my dog for Fido,” Dmitri says.

  Before my dad can say, “No way,” I say, “No, thanks.” I wouldn’t want Mars even if Dad said yes. And I won’t ever trade Fido, for anything.

  Dmitri stuffs his phone in his pocket and moves toward my bike. “Since you can’t ride it, how about I take it for a spin?”

  I’d like to be polite and share and all, but the guy can’t take my bike for its first spin.

  This is an excellent opportunity for me to try out a good, strong no.

  Do I chicken out this time?

  “No,” I say. “Sorry, but I want to be the first to ride it.”

  “But you can’t.…”

  “Oh, he can ride it easy,” Murphy says. “I’ve seen him do it.”

  My mom’s mouth falls open.

  So does mine. Why is he squealing on me?

  “I’ll get the coatimundi tail,” he says, and bolts.

  “Wait. I’ll get the speedometer!” Dmitri yells, and runs after him.

  “Get the bike bell, too!” Lurena yells.

  When the gifts are all attached, I climb aboard my new bike, which isn’t easy. It’s tall for one thing. For another, one of my feet is wearing Frankenstein’s boot. I can’t swing it over the bike or put my weight on it.

  “Art? Is this okay?” Mom asks in a worried voice.

  I stop grappling with the bike and look at Dad. Come on, Art, I think. Back me up here. For once.

  “It’s fine,” he says.

  “Yes!” I say. Murph hoists me up, and I pedal away.

  29. The new bike is fast as lightning, if lightning goes sixteen miles an hour.

  That’s how fast I’m going, according to my new (Dmitri’s old) speedometer. Imagine how fast it’ll go when I’m not wearing the boot.

  I glance over my shoulder to see the long coatimundi tail streaming behind me. I wonder if it’s real. Nah. Coatimundis may be real, but that is definitely a fake coatimundi tail.

  “Coatimundi!” I yell, pumping my fist in the air. I ring the Fido bell. I feel all my worries disappear.

  What did I have to complain about anyway? So I broke my foot. So some kids wanted my pet guinea pig. So I was being pestered by a weird girl and a mean guy. So my guinea pig had a baby and I couldn’t decide who to give it to. So what?

  What’s more important right now is that I have the coolest guinea pig in the world—one that everyone wants—that this is my last day being ten, that I’m riding the best bike ever built. The foot will heal, the boot will come off, Fido will be herself again. It’ll just take a little time. Not much at all, really.

  When I turn the corner back onto our cul-de-sac, everyone starts running at me, everyone being Murphy, Lurena, Dmitri, Mom, and even Dad. Yeah, Art is running. Out in front is Fido, her tongue flapping in the wind.

  “Ruff!” she says.

  “Hey, girl!” I answer, slowing down so I don’t accidentally run her over. “How you doing? Feeling okay? You must! Look at you—you’re running! Look at me—I’m riding my new bike! Sweet, eh? Want to take a lap around the block with me?”

  Yeah, I’m talking to her like she’s a person. Or a dog. So what?

  “Rufus!” Mom and Lurena yell at the same time.

  They’re upset. I should have realized something was wrong, that they weren’t just running up to meet me. I mean, why would Dad be running if he didn’t have to?

  Are they trying to catch Fido? Maybe she shouldn’t be running so soon after giving birth.

  I squeeze the brakes. They’re grabbier than my BMX’s. My back tire freezes and I go into a skid. The bike starts sliding out from under me. I put my foot down, but I’m so high up that I can’t reach the ground. I lose control. My foot hits the pavement first—the booted foot, the bad one—and gives. Twists. Hurts. My glorious new bike and I spill onto the street. The guinea pig bell rings.

  “RUFUS!” Mom shrieks.

  Fido reaches me first. She bites onto my shirtsleeve and tugs, like she’s trying to pick me up.

  “Hold on,” I say, as I try to push my bike off me. It doesn’t feel so light when it’s on you.

  Fido keeps tugging and whimpering as the others catch up.

  “Take it easy,” I tell her. “I’m a cripple, remember?”

  That’s when I notice she’s not looking at me. She’s looking up over my head. She’s not trying to help me up. She wants me to see something.

  “What is it, girl?” I ask, then look up—directly into the sun. I flinch.

  “It’s the pup!” Lurena says, appearing over me, pointing to the sky. “Up there!”

  “The pup is up?” I ask, sounding like Dr. Seuss: Up is the pup? The pup is UP!

  My mom lifts the bike and helps me to my feet. My bad foot aches. Did I rebreak it? Will I have to stay in bed, miss school, hang out with Fido and the pup …?

  Wait a minute. That doesn’t sound so bad.

  “Goodness!” Mom says, dusting me off. “You okay, sweetie?”

  “Never mind that. How’s my new bike? It’s not scratched, is it?”

  Lurena elbows me. Hard. She sure has bony elbows. “Will you look already? Up there! On the wire! Look!”

  “Take it easy. Sheesh. I’m looking.”

  All I see are trees and the sky above them. And the sun. I shield my eyes. I see the wire. It’s a power line, or a phone line maybe. Or is it a cable? I don’t know my wires. I see a small creature walking along the wire like it’s a tightrope. A squirrel, probably.

  No.

  Not a squirrel.

  Not unless it’s a squirrel with a white mohawk.

  30. Proof my life is weirder than weird.

  • My dad doesn’t like dogs.

  • My mom thinks a guinea pig is a good substitute for a dog.

  • My dog is a guinea pig.

  • A girl is my friend.

  • My friend thinks a squirrel is a great pet.

  • My guinea dog’s baby is a squirrel.

  • My guinea dog’s baby is a trapeze artist.

  “Isn’t it stupendous!” Lurena squeals as we watch the pup run down a tree trunk toward her whining mother, Fido, on the ground. “You wanted a dog, and I wanted a ground squirrel, and you got a guinea pig that acts like a dog, and she gave birth to a guinea pup that acts like a squirrel! Stupendous!”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  It is pretty stupendous. Hard to believe, actually. And kind of creepy. It’s another one of Murphy’s crazy stories come true. There really are hairy, clawed horror frogs, and coatimundis. The world we live in is filled with weird creatures.

  Lurena, for example.

  “I’m going to name her Queen Girlisaur!” she says.

  “Isn’t that kind of overkill? You know, queen and girly in the same name? A girly queen is sort of … what do you call it …?”

  “Redundant?” Dad pitches in.

  “I think it’s precious,” Mom says.

  Exactly. And who wants that?

  “What if it isn’t a girl?” Murphy asks.

  Lurena makes a deep-in-thought face, then says, “I’ll come up with a nickname.”

  “Queenie?” Mom suggests. “Or how about Girlie?”r />
  “How about Rocky?” Murph says.

  “Like the boxer?” Dmitri asks.

  Murph laughs. “No! The flying squirrel!”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I interrupt. “Who says you get the pup?”

  “Yeah!” Dmitri huffs. “Why should she get it? She’s already got two rodents. I should get it.”

  “You have pets, too,” Lurena says. “A guinea pig and the black puffball of death.”

  She must have heard me call Mars that.

  “Look, Roof, I want it,” Dmitri says with great seriousness. “Since you won’t help me get a guinea dog, or train my guinea pig to act like one, the least you could do is give me the guinea pig baby that acts like a squirrel. I’ll pay you. How much?”

  Lurena ignores him and sits down in the grass by the guinea pigs. The pup has found a nut somewhere and is holding it in her paws and gnawing it, squirrel-style. The only thing missing is the long bushy tail.

  “She’s eating solid food already,” Mom says.

  “Yes,” Lurena says. “Guinea pig pups often eat solid food right away. But they keep on nursing, too.”

  It does seem pretty obvious that the pup is perfect for Lurena, and vice versa. And I don’t care how much money Dmitri offers me, he’s not getting her. He’s mean. Period.

  But how will I explain to everyone at school that I gave the second coolest guinea pig ever to a girl? Especially an annoying, dorky, pushy girl like Lurena. A girl who barges into your house without being invited. A girl who barges into your life without being invited, and won’t leave. A girl who wears clothes about three hundreds years out of style. A girl who carries rodents around in her bike basket.

  It won’t matter how I explain it.

  So I won’t. Who says I have to? Just because people want something from me doesn’t mean I have to give it to them.

  “No,” I say to Dmitri. “Lurena gets the pup.”

  Lurena smiles. Murphy does, too. He gets why I’m making this decision.

  Dmitri does not smile.

  “No?” he repeats, shocked. And angry. “What do you mean ‘No’?”

  “Don’t you know what no means, Dmitri?” Lurena asks teasingly. “Why, it means no.”

  Dmitri snarls at her like a wild animal. A wolverine, maybe. Or Mars. Then he turns back to me.

  “Look, I said I’d pay you for her. I’ll buy her from you. Name your price. I can afford it.”

  He means his dad can afford it.

  Then he makes an offer. A handsome one.

  I say nothing. I said no, and I meant it.

  He makes more offers.

  I keep saying nothing. No was my final word on the subject. Saying it was not as awful as I thought it would be. It actually felt pretty good, like when you find you can lift something you thought was too heavy for you.

  I wish I’d said it all week when everyone was getting in my face, making demands, prying into my personal business. From now on I’m not going to not say it when I want to say it. I’ll start tomorrow, at school.

  The pizza delivery guy arrives, breaking the tension. We all head back to the house, to the picnic table in the backyard. Dad ordered my favorite pizza: sausage with extra sausage. It’s Fido’s favorite, too. She begs, and I feed her a sausage circle. Half of it hangs out of her mouth.

  “I guess it wasn’t table scraps that made her fat after all,” Dad says.

  “Guess not,” I say.

  “Still, you shouldn’t feed her people food,” Lurena says. “Especially meat. Guinea pigs are vegetarian.”

  Right then Queenie waddles up to her mom and licks her snout.

  “No!” Lurena says. “Don’t eat that, Queen Girlisaur! Don’t! Oh, Rufus! Do you see what you’ve done?”

  But Queen Girlisaur doesn’t eat the sausage. She wants to nurse.

  For a while nobody talks. We just scarf down the pizza, which is one of the greatest inventions of all time.

  Lurena removed all the sausage from her slice, by the way. She’s vegetarian, too. This doesn’t ruin it—cheese pizza is still better than almost every other food—but it does bring its stupendousness down a couple notches.

  As we eat, I think about how Lurena will be taking the pup home with her. Not right away, of course. Not till Queenie’s weaned. I’m sure Lurena will bring her back a lot to visit her mom. Who knows, maybe sometimes I’ll even bring Fido over to her house.…

  No. I won’t be doing that.

  It hits me that Lurena adopting the pup makes us sort of related. The more I think about this, I realize being related will be better than being friends. It’s a connection based on our pets. We’ll be like family, and no one gets to choose their family. We all just get who we get. It’s not strange for a boy to have to spend time with a girl in his family—a sister, or a girl cousin—even if he totally despises her. I don’t despise the adoptive mother of my guinea pig’s baby. But I don’t exactly like her, either. There have been times when I haven’t minded her so much. When she stood up for me, for example. Though I also dislike her when she does that.

  It’s complicated.

  31. I’m too young to be a grandpa.

  Murphy elbows me, and says it again.

  “Come on, Grandpa! Let’s Frizz it up! Fido, too!”

  Fido hears her name, and gets up on her feet, ready to play.

  “She just had a baby,” I say. “She can’t jump.”

  “I’ll throw low.”

  “What about my foot?”

  It still hurts, though I didn’t break it again. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not.

  “My throws will be strikes. You won’t even have to move.”

  “I want to Frizz it up, too,” Dmitri says, running away backward. “Frizz me a strike, Murph!”

  “Did I just hear a car pull into the driveway?” Dad interrupts. “Your ride home, Dmitri, perhaps?”

  Am I wrong or does Dad sound happy about this?

  A horn honks.

  “Aw, man,” Dmitri says. He glares at me. “I got to go. Look, dude. I want that guinea pig baby. You can’t give it to that freak. Understand?”

  I say nothing. I’ve already given him my answer.

  The horn honks again, longer and louder this time.

  “I want it!” he says over his shoulder.

  I have no further comment.

  He’s gone. We hear the car door open and close, then the car drives away.

  “He didn’t even say thank you,” Lurena says. “Or good-bye.” She shakes her head. “I don’t care for that boy.”

  “I’m sure he has good points,” Mom says, but not very convincingly. Which says a lot about Dmitri. Mom finds good points in everyone. In everything.

  Murphy laughs. “Sometimes I guess it’s the less the merrier!”

  Wow. He’s really growing up.

  “You’re going to get more attention once Dmitri tells everyone about the guinea squirrel, you know,” he says.

  I shrug. He’s right, but I don’t care. Right now I don’t, anyway. And when they come at me at school, I’ll try real hard not to care then, either. I don’t have to give anyone anything I don’t want to. Including my attention.

  “It’s Frizz time!” Murph says.

  He runs away from the table with the Frisbee. I hobble and wince. He floats me a perfect strike: between my knees and my chest and within arm’s reach. I catch it.

  “I want in!” Lurena says, skipping out onto the grass. “Throw it here, Rufus!”

  Must she ruin everything?

  I look at Murph. He smiles. I look at Mom. She’s smiling. I look at Dad. Stony Stare.

  I sigh and throw the disc to Lurena. Hard, and with plenty of spin. Let’s see her catch that.

  The throw is pretty high, and hooks sharply.

  Lurena chases after it, yelling, “I got it! I got it!”

  But she doesn’t get it.

  Fido does.

  She didn’t catch it, of course. She’s not jumping yet. She waited t
ill it came down, then fetched it. She didn’t bring it to Lurena. She dragged it to me.

  “That’s my good girl!” I say, taking it from her. I scratch her mohawked head. She pants.

  “Throw it again,” Lurena says. “Only this time to me!”

  I throw it, but lose my balance this time and fall over. The Frisbee shoots almost straight up, then slices back down, and lands high in a tree. And stays there.

  “I guess Fido can’t fetch that one!” Murph laughs.

  “No, but look!” Lurena squeals. “Queen Girlisaur can!”

  Fido’s pup races up the tree trunk, then starts leaping from branch to branch.

  “Oh, my stars!” Mom gasps.

  When the pup reaches the Frisbee, she nudges it with her nose till it drops from the tree and onto the grass.

  Her mom zooms over and gathers it up.

  “Thanks,” I say after she brings it to me.

  “Like mom, like daughter!” Lurena says, then laughs like it’s the funniest thing anyone has ever said in the history of time.

  My mom laughs, too, but no one else. It must be one of those things that’s funny only to girls.

  Fido sits at my feet, staring up at me, like she’s waiting for something.

  “What is it, girl?” I ask. “Do you want something?”

  She gives a quick bark, then runs across the lawn to the garage. She scratches at the door.

  “She wants something in the garage,” Lurena says, brilliantly.

  I know what it is. I’m the one who put it in there.

  “Okay, Fido,” I say. “I’ll get it.”

  She stops scratching and starts barking happy barks.

  Such a good dog.

  Patrick Jennings is the author of many popular novels for middle-schoolers, including Guinea Dog, Lucky Cap, Invasion of the Dognappers, We Can’t All Be Rattlesnakes, and Faith and the Electric Dogs. He won the 2012–2013 Kansas William Allen White Children’s Book Award and the 2011 Washington State Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award for Guinea Dog, which was also nominated for the following state lists: Massachusetts 2012–2013 Children’s Book Award Master List, Colorado 2011–2012 Children’s Book Award, New Hampshire 2011–2012 Great Stone Face Book Award, and Washington State 2014 Sasquatch Award. He lives in a small seaport town in Washington State.