Following Baxter

by Barbara Kerley

  The buzzing getting louder decided it for me. Baxter took off for the basement, and I followed him.

  As I came down the stairs, I saw Professor Reese sitting in front of the main computer: all the cables came out the back like it was the head of a big octopus, connecting to the console, the other computers, and what used to be a tanning bed.

  And what used to be a tanning bed was now vibrating, glowing with a red light.

  “Professor Reese?”

  She jerked in surprise and turned. “Jordie, you gave me such a fright!”

  “I knocked on the front door, but I guess you didn’t hear it.” (That wasn’t technically true, but if I had knocked, she wouldn’t have heard it over the buzzing, so it was sort of untechnically true.) “I came to walk Baxter. Like we talked about,” I reminded her, in case she was mad I’d just come into her house, like a lot of grown-ups would be in a situation like this. Only I didn’t think a lot of grown-ups would be in a situation like this—because what used to be a tanning bed had started vibrating like crazy.

  I walked down the rest of the stairs. “What are you doing?” And I had to raise my voice because it was getting noisy.

  “A system check,” she said as the buzzing got even louder.

  Baxter tucked his tail between his legs and scooted under one of the desks. The vibrating increased, and the buzzing got louder and louder until I practically had to yell, “Is it supposed to do that?”

  “I have no idea!” she yelled back. “This is the first time I’ve ever tried it with all the components hooked up together!”

  What used to be a tanning bed looked like it was going to vibrate itself into a pile of little pieces on the floor. The glowing got redder and redder. Professor Reese’s eyes got wider and wider. The buzzing grew so loud the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  All of a sudden there was a huge POP!

  When the POP popped, three things happened at the same time: Professor Reese jumped back in her seat, Baxter bolted up and bonked his head on the underside of the desk, and I screamed (just a little).

  My scream made Professor Reese scream, too, so all in all things were very exciting for a minute.

  Then one of the little computers went beep-beep-boop, and Baxter whipped his head around and booped back. What used to be a tanning bed wasn’t glowing or vibrating or buzzing anymore. It was just sitting there, still in one piece somehow.

  I walked a little closer (but not too close). “What is this thing?”

  “It’s part of the project I’m working on—but I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

  “Oh.”

  She walked over to the electronic console with lights and buttons, and pushed the big red one off.

  She turned to me. “Let’s take Baxter on a walk—I need to find my hat.”

  “Um . . . OK,” I said, thinking if I had just made a basement full of equipment, an old lady, a girl, and a shaggy dog practically blow up, I wouldn’t be wondering where my hat was. But maybe when you’re a physicist, that’s just a regular day at the office. “I have to get TJ first.” I hurried up the stairs. “Be right back!”

  I stuck the key back under the begonia and ran home.

  TJ was at his desk, working on his stop-motion short. He moved Caveman’s right leg a step forward.

  He took a picture.

  “Come on! It’s time for Baxter’s walk!”

  “In a minute.”

  TJ moved Caveman’s left leg a step forward.

  He took another picture.

  “If we don’t go now, she’ll leave without us!”

  I hurried into the kitchen and came back out with three Popsicles. TJ grabbed the only cherry one, of course, which meant Professor Reese and I were stuck with grape.

  Then we all set off to find Professor Reese’s hat.

  On the weekend, when we’d walked around the neighborhood, Baxter had stayed calmly at our sides. But now he charged ahead, pulling me down the street. I had to hold on to the leash with both hands, which meant TJ got to eat my Popsicle.

  “He’s galloping!” Professor Reese said.

  “He’s crazy!” TJ hurried behind me with a Popsicle stick in each fist.

  “Is he heading to where you think you lost your hat?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact,” Professor Reese huffed as we were all practically running by then, “he is. Interesting.”

  We practically ran a few more blocks until suddenly Baxter reached an intersection and stopped. He looked around.

  Professor Reese read the street sign. “Nineteenth Avenue.” She studied Baxter for a moment. “Hmm.” She started looking around, too. “Do either of you see my hat?”

  All I saw were some apartment buildings, some trees, and a parking lot. “Your hat’s red, right?”

  But Baxter was taking off again, pulling me farther down the street.

  “Where are you going?” TJ ran after me.

  “Come back!” Professor Reese called. “It should be right here!”

  “That’s not what Baxter thinks!” The leash went up and down as he bounded ahead. We all just tried to keep up with him, TJ dropping plops of Popsicle slush as he ran.

  When we reached the intersection, I looked across the street. There was the red hat, sitting on top of a newspaper stand.

  “He found it!” I let Baxter pull me across the street.

  He rose up on his hind feet and thwumped his front paws down on the newspaper stand, one paw on each side of the hat. His tail wagged a million times a minute.

  Professor Reese puffed up to join us. “I thought we’d find it closer to Nineteenth.”

  TJ shrugged. “Maybe the wind blew it.”

  But there wasn’t a breath of wind. Every leaf was still.

  Professor Reese turned to Baxter and said, “How on earth did you do that?”

  7

  Study Butt-ies

  As we walked back to Professor Reese’s house, I asked, “Have there been any calls from the flyers we put up about Baxter?”

  “Nothing yet, dear,” Professor Reese answered.

  I thought, Yay! And I kept thinking it, the whole way home.

  When we got there, Mom was just getting out of the car. It was a great opportunity to show her how dependable I was being.

  “We just did Baxter’s walk, right on schedule,” I said.

  “Great!” Mom smiled.

  “Jordie and TJ were very helpful,” Professor Reese said. Then she turned to me. “Can you walk Baxter again tomorrow?”

  I looked at Mom and TJ, and they both nodded—Mom’s nod meaning, Yes, and TJ’s meaning, Ha-ha, you have to do my chores again.

  “I can walk Baxter every day for the rest of my life!” I said.

  The next morning, I ran to school to tell Megan all about dog walking Baxter. “Can you come over today to meet him?”

  “No. My mom said she has to look at my schedule.” Then she frowned. “She and Dad are mad at each other because the piano recital is on one of his weekends.”

  “Doesn’t he want to come?” I asked as we walked toward the classroom.

  “He does. But my grandma and grandpa just called last night and said they want to come, too. They’re flying in just for the recital. And since they are my mom’s parents, they always stay at Mom’s, not Dad’s.” She sighed. “So now Dad is mad because Mom wants me to stay home and spend time with them and not go to Dad’s at all that weekend.”

  “Can’t they switch weekends?”

  She shrugged. “Probably. If they change all the other stuff they already have planned. It’s just always so complicated.”

  I gave her a quick hug. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled.

  But even if Megan couldn’t come over right away, she’d be able to come over sometime. So all during math I tried to figure out—with Mrs. A. interrupting a million times—the fun things that me and Megan could do with Baxter that would cheer her up for sure. I couldn’t wait until recess to tell
her!

  But right as Mrs. A. was dismissing everyone, she said, “Jordie and Tyler, could you come here for a minute?”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Tyler protested, which is what he always says right after he does something.

  “You’re not in trouble,” Mrs. A. said. “You’ve been chosen for a special honor.”

  So me and Tyler went up to her desk to find out what it was.

  “This week we’re starting our Second-Grade Study Buddy program,” Mrs. A. said. For the next two weeks, instead of morning recess, two fifth-grade Buddies would go help in a second-grade classroom. “I’d like you to be our class’s first Buddies.”

  “Do I have to?” Tyler whined.

  But I thought, She chose me first!

  I knew exactly why I’d been chosen: my excellent people skills. She must have chosen me to balance out Tyler because he did not have excellent people skills, unless by “people skills” you mean making farting noises with your armpit or sticking girls’ pencils up your nose (the eraser end, not the pointy end)—in which case, he was ready for the Nobel People Prize.

  He complained up one hallway and down the other to the second-grade classrooms, but I couldn’t wait to get to Room Six. When we came in, the little kids were all smiley. The bulletin board said Welcome, Study Buddies with Jordie and Tyler beneath. There was even juice and cheese and crackers for a Welcome Study Buddies Party.

  My group was two girls: Maya, who peeked out at me from under her bangs, and Katie, who’d already finished her snack except for some crumbs stuck to her hands and chin, from where it looked like her juice box leaked.

  They were so cute—they loved me right away.

  My group was so excited to have a Study Buddy! Tyler’s group was excited, too, because the first assignment was to measure things with centimeter rulers, and his two kids—a boy named Logan and a girl named Chloe—were already having a sword fight.

  “Settle down,” Mrs. Wilson said, but then she went back to teaching the rest of the class. Soon Tyler was sword fighting, too.

  My group measured the length of a stapler (12 cm), the height of a book (31 cm), and the width of the computer monitor (41 cm). We even measured the diameter of my crackers (4.25 cm) before I ate them, which wasn’t part of the assignment. But Dad always says a little extra credit never hurt anyone, and I figured the decimal would look good in there.

  I was having so much fun with Katie and Maya that I decided me and Megan’s full-service salon should be a vet/beauty parlor/day care: when I gave the dogs a bath, the kids of the women getting their hair done could help scrub. It would be perfect because then their hands would be clean for lunch.

  Tyler’s group was having fun, too, but no one was measuring anything because they were so busy whapping one another’s arms with the rulers. And right about the time I heard him say, “I didn’t do anything!” I had a feeling that Tyler wasn’t going to be a very good Study Buddy.

  By the next morning, Tyler had changed “Study Buddies” to “Study Butt-ies.” He made butt jokes up one hallway and down the other, like:

  Tyler: Knock, knock.

  Me: Who’s there?

  Tyler: U. R. A.

  Me: U. R. A. who?

  Tyler: You are a butthead.

  Tyler: What do you call a guy whose face looks like a butt?

  Me:

  Tyler: “Buttface,” you butthead. What else would you call him?

  Tyler: What did one butthead do when the other butthead made a joke?

  Me: Shut up, Tyler.

  Tyler: Crack up. Get it?

  By the time we got to Room Six, I’d decided that Tyler was the butthead and also that I’d have to remember that last joke to tell TJ because he’d like it.

  When we went into Mrs. Wilson’s room, Katie and Maya were sitting at the table with the goldfish aquarium.

  “We’ve been talking this morning about how observations teach us about the world,” Mrs. Wilson explained. Me and Tyler were each supposed to help our group write down five observations about the fish.

  So Tyler sat down on one side of the table with Logan and Chloe, and I scooted in with Maya and Katie on the opposite side of the aquarium.

  “OK, first we need to observe the fish,” I said. Maya took turns peeking at the fish and then peeking at me. Katie just stuck her face up to the aquarium glass, her tongue working at a dried blob of something strawberry in the corner of her mouth.

  “Now we need to write down what the fish look like,” I said.

  Katie sat back in her chair. “Their eyes are round.”

  “Good.” I wrote it down. “What else?”

  “They’re orange,” Katie added. “They wiggle their tails.”

  I wrote all that down. Then I turned to Maya, because she hadn’t said anything yet. “What do you observe about the fish, Maya?”

  Her eyes got big. She turned and looked at the fish, and me and Katie waited.

  We waited some more.

  It was hard to wait because Maya was looking at the fish, but I didn’t know if that was the same thing as observing them and if that was supposed to take longer.

  Katie bounced up and down in her chair. Her hair was tangly, and one of the tangles had a big strawberry blob that stuck out and bounced up and down, too.

  Maya leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands on the tabletop. So I leaned down to look deep into the aquarium, too.

  I could see Tyler’s group through the glass, huddled around their paper. He wrote down their last observation, and they all laughed. Then Logan started sucking in his cheeks and puffing out his lips to make fishy lips.

  I looked over at Maya. She sat back and brought her hands up by her shoulders and wiggled her fingers.

  “They wiggle their arm fins?” I asked her.

  She smiled and nodded.

  I wrote it down. “Can you think of something you like to do that the fish like to do, too?” I was thinking she’d say “swim” or maybe “eat,” and then we’d be done.

  So Maya observed the fish some more. Katie jiggled her legs, and the hair blob jiggled right along, and I watched Tyler’s group through the aquarium glass.

  Logan stuck his fishy face right in front of Chloe. She pushed him away.

  I heard the tiniest voice say, “They like to hide.”

  I turned and saw that Maya was pointing to one little fish hiding in the aquarium plants. “Good observation!” I wrote it down.

  But then Chloe started making a fishy face, too. She and Logan pushed each other more. And just as Mrs. Wilson looked over and said, “Tyler!” Chloe pushed Logan so hard, she knocked him against the table. I barely had time to pick up our assignment before a slosh of water slopped out of the aquarium onto the tabletop.

  The whole class watched as Mrs. Wilson hurried over.

  I held our paper out to her. “We’re done with our assignment.”

  She nodded. “Good.” But she didn’t take it because she was too busy picking up Tyler’s paper. She read it and frowned. Then she handed it to me. “Could you put them on my desk, please, Jordie? It’s a little wet over here.”

  I said good-bye to Maya and Katie and carried the papers over. Tyler had written:

  Fish are wet.

  Fish don’t talk.

  Fish are boring pets.

  Fish make bubbles from their mouth.

  They make bubbles out the other end, too.

  Mrs. Wilson said, “Jordie, could you tell Mrs. A. that Tyler will be late returning to class? We need to have a chat.” And by the way she was glaring at Tyler, I had a feeling she thought he really was a Study Butt-y.

  The rest of the day, I took sneaky looks at Tyler, once he got back to class, to see if he was upset about Mrs. Wilson’s chat. But he didn’t seem any different than before. And when me and TJ walked Baxter by the park after school, Tyler was shooting hoops, same as always.

  When we got back to Professor Reese’s house, we found her in her lab, making notes in a notebook. TJ
rolled around on the spinny chair. I snuggled Baxter on his bed (which Professor Reese had brought down to the lab) and told her about me and Tyler at Study Buddies. “I get why Mrs. A. chose me, but I can’t believe she chose Tyler—he’s like . . . I don’t know, the worst kid in the whole class.”

  She looked up from her notebook. “Did Mrs. A. say that?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “She didn’t need to say it out loud. Everybody just knows.”

  “Hmm. That’s a pretty big assumption.” Professor Reese turned back to her notebook.

  And just as I snuggled into the warm fur on Baxter’s fuzzy neck, she added, “You might want to think about that some more.”

  8

  A Really Good Home for Baxter

  When me and TJ got home from school the next day, I said, “Let’s get Baxter!”

  But TJ said, “I want a snack.”

  So after I paced around the kitchen, eating my string cheese and then pacing some more while TJ ate his string cheese (and then his other string cheese, his handful of crackers, his apple, and his bowl of cereal—seriously, I swear), we ran over there.

  Professor Reese wasn’t home from work yet, which meant I’d get another solo (if you didn’t count TJ) walk with Baxter. I liked the solo walks best because then it really did feel like Baxter was half my dog.

  We took off, Baxter sniffing everywhere. Everyone wanted to pet him, even Tyler shooting hoops at the park. And I said yes because it’s good to be generous with your dog.

  As we left the park, I asked TJ, “Do you know Tyler?”

  “Yeah, he’s in Video Club. He’s been helping me with my short. He’s nice.”

  “Tyler’s in Video Club? That Tyler right there?”

  TJ looked at me like, What’s wrong with you? “Yeah. That Tyler.”

  But I just shrugged because you could be nice and still be the worst kid in the whole class, couldn’t you?

  When we got back to Professor Reese’s house, she was home from work. We found her in the lab, putting a big map of Portland up on her bulletin board.

  She patted Baxter’s head. “How was your walk?”

  “Great!” I plopped down on Baxter’s bed and thumped it to call him over. “Have there been any calls for Baxter?”