Following Baxter

by Barbara Kerley

  When we got to the park, we walked around letting Baxter sniff wherever he wanted, as long as he wanted. Pretty soon Dad was there with three sandwiches that were so big, they might as well have been four. But that was good because there were four of us. We all took turns taking a bite of a sandwich and then breaking off a piece to feed Baxter.

  The whole time we ate, TJ told Dad about Spike. “When he crawls on your hand, you can feel his spikes on your skin!”

  I shuddered.

  “It’s awesome!” TJ said.

  “A dog and a cockroach.” Dad laughed. “Professor Reese is going to be an interesting neighbor.”

  “I know!” TJ said.

  “Especially because of Baxter!” I said. I held up the superbouncy ball. “Watch this!” I threw the ball superhard and made it bounce superhigh. But even though the ball superbounced all the way across the park, Baxter was able to track every bounce.

  “Wow!” Dad said.

  Soon, he was trying it. And when the other dogs at the dog park joined in—two little barky black ones and one with the cutest freckles on his nose—Baxter followed the bounce way better than they did and always got the ball first. “Baxter has some serious ball-handling skills!” Dad said.

  “Yep,” TJ agreed.

  “He’s King of the Bounce!” I said.

  It seemed pretty magical to me.

  After a while, Dad checked his watch and said, “I need to get back to the store.” So he took off.

  TJ said, “I have to go work on my short now. I only have ninety-two pictures. That’s only eleven point five seconds.” And he took off, too.

  So I took Baxter back to Professor Reese’s by myself.

  Professor Reese was by the kitchen door, watering the potted pink begonia. “How was the park?”

  “Great!”

  I unclipped Baxter’s leash. He flopped down in the cool grass.

  I wanted to flop down next to him, but I’d been gone from home so long, I figured I’d better go find a great opportunity to help Mom with something. If TJ was home and I wasn’t, she’d notice.

  I went in to the kitchen to put the ball and leash away and then came back out. “I have to go home now.”

  “Thank you for your help, Jordie.”

  “Sure!” I gave Baxter a big kiss on his nose, and his kiss back landed perfectly and only a little bit slobbery right on the tip of my chin. “Me and TJ will come over again tomorrow after school.”

  “Good.” She smiled. “Because I’m counting on my lab assistants to help me.”

  And that night, climbing into bed, I realized—by “lab assistants” she meant TJ and me.

  12

  The Baxter Station

  When I got to school on Monday, Megan ran up to me on the playground. “Guess what? My mom said I can come over after school today!”

  “Yay!” I was so excited I almost hopped. “I can’t wait for you to meet Baxter—he’s so much fun to cuddle, and his fur is so swirly and soft! You’ll love him!” We started running to the bars. “Oh, and guess what? Professor Reese said I can be her lab assistant!”

  “Cool!” Megan said.

  When we got to the bars, Megan plopped down her backpack. “So I read an article about cutting kids’ hair.” She climbed up next to Aisha to balance on the bar. “I guess some kids are scared of the shampoo part, so the article said to just use a spray bottle with water to get their hair wet.”

  “You cut kids’ hair?” Aisha asked.

  “Not yet,” Megan said. “But one day.”

  Me and Megan told her and Jasmine all about the vet/beauty parlor/day care, while Jasmine passed around a bag of oatmeal breakfast bars that she and her mom had baked the day before. When we were finished, Aisha said, “That sounds like so much fun! Can I work there?”

  “Sure!” Megan said.

  “I want to work there, too!” Jasmine said. “I can bake all the treats for the kids for snack time.”

  “Deal!” I popped the last bite of my breakfast bar into my mouth. Then I asked Aisha, “Do you want to work in the vet part or the beauty parlor part or the day care part?”

  “Um . . .” She hopped down from the bar. “Could I do art lessons for the kids?”

  “That’s a great idea!” I said, and I felt a little relieved because it looked like no one wanted to do the vet part but me, which meant that even with four of us, I’d still get to do all the animal stuff.

  Then the bell rang, and we all had to run to class. Mrs. A. was starting a language arts lesson on how to punctuate compound sentences, so I hurried to tell one last thing to Jasmine and Aisha—

  “Jordie.”

  About how me and TJ were now lab assistants—

  “Jordie . . .”

  “Shhh!” Jasmine hissed. She snuck a peek at Mrs. A.

  I thought, Exactly. If Mrs. A. would be quiet for a second, I could finish telling them about looking into the spectrometer. So I leaned in closer to whisper while Mrs. A. went on and on—

  “JORDIE.”

  —about the stupid comma in sentence number three.

  Mrs. A. was in an impatient mood, which made me wonder how come kids were the ones who got report cards with Needs Improvement on them (which of course I got because, as Dad always says, who doesn’t need to improve on stuff? Nobody, that’s who). But even though kids got report cards, teachers never did or maybe there would have been a Needs Improvement mark in the Patience column of Mrs. A.’s. Not that anyone ever asks me.

  She was impatient all morning. I was so happy when it was finally time to leave for Study Buddies.

  When me and Tyler got to Room Six, we walked over to the little table. Maya and Katie were sitting on one side, and Chloe and Logan were on the other side.

  Tyler gave them high fives, while Maya peeked out from under her bangs to give me a smile, and Katie jumped up to hug me. Whatever she’d had for snack was stuck all over. After she hugged me, the sticky was stuck on my arms, too.

  Me and Tyler sat down.

  On each side of the table was a worksheet, a small, empty box, and two bags—one filled with little marbles and one filled with big marbles.

  Mrs. Wilson came over to explain the assignment: our kids were supposed to predict if it would take more little marbles or more big marbles to fill up the empty box. Then we were supposed to see if we were right by filling the box first with little marbles and then again with big ones, counting how many marbles it took each time.

  The answer was so obvious that I was surprised by the assignment—of course it would take more little marbles than big marbles to fill up the same space. But Mrs. Wilson said the purpose of the assignment was to start thinking like scientists, predicting what we thought would happen and then experimenting to find out.

  We were supposed to write up our report on the worksheet. We had to fill out a section for WE PREDICT, WE DISCOVERED, and WE CONCLUDE.

  Mrs. Wilson finished explaining and went back to working with the class, leaving me with my group, Tyler with his group—and a whole bunch of marbles.

  My group got busy deciding what to write.

  But it wasn’t hard to PREDICT what would happen when Tyler and Logan and Chloe got busy: within a few minutes their bag of little marbles tipped over. All the marbles rolled across the tabletop and clattered to the floor.

  We DISCOVERED that it only takes Mrs. Wilson a few seconds to get from her chair across the room to the table where we were sitting. It didn’t take a genius to CONCLUDE that Tyler was in trouble. Again.

  But even though Tyler wasn’t having a good day, I was having a great one, and that was because Megan was finally coming over after school to meet Baxter!

  We blabbed the whole way home, with TJ tagging behind.

  We dumped our backpacks in the living room. “Let’s go get Baxter!” I said.

  But TJ said, “I want a snack.” He got out the crackers and the butter and started making his cracker stack—he makes a billion little cracker-butter sandwiches an
d stacks them on top of each other until it’s a cracker tower. Then he demolishes it like he’s Godzilla or King Kong or something. (There are crumbs everywhere, I swear.)

  I grabbed two string cheeses, which me and Megan ate in ten seconds. We hurried TJ while he stacked up his crackers and hurried him even louder while he ate them.

  When he was finally done, he grabbed a carrot from the refrigerator.

  “Since when do you eat carrots for snack?” I asked.

  “It’s for Spike.”

  We all ran over to Professor Reese’s. Baxter was waiting as we opened the door, his tail wagging so hard he practically fell over.

  TJ ran past him and down the stairs to see Spike, but Megan stayed with me, petting and patting Baxter, his nose cool and wet against our hands.

  “Aw!” she cried. “He’s so cute!”

  I was so happy that she thought Baxter was cute (though of course she would because everybody did). Megan scritched his neck and under his chin as Baxter wagged his tail. But then she looked up and said, “So what are we supposed to do now?”

  And the way she said it made me suddenly wonder if, now that she’d met Baxter and petted him, he wasn’t exciting to her anymore. What if she thought taking Baxter for a walk was a chore, like clearing the table or loading the dishwasher—the thing you had to do before you got to do the fun stuff?

  It had taken forever to convince TJ that Baxter was Fun! but it had never occurred to me that I’d have to convince Megan, too.

  “I got to choose his nice new collar at the pet store because his old collar was gross,” I told her. “Doesn’t the purple look pretty next to his silvery fur?”

  “That’s a great color on him,” Megan agreed.

  “I got to choose all the other stuff we got, too.” I showed her the pile, still in the pet store bag on the kitchen counter.

  “Oh!” Megan twisted the cap to the shampoo bottle and sniffed. “It smells nice.” She picked up the dog brush and felt the bristles. “It kind of looks like the stuff I’ll have at the beauty station of our vet/beauty parlor/day care!” She turned to me and smiled. “Let’s set it up!”

  “Great idea!” I said. “And instead of a beauty station, we can call it a Baxter Station!”

  There was a little empty table by the back door. Megan picked up the dog shampoo and the brush, and I grabbed everything else, and we laid it all out on the little table.

  Megan turned to Baxter. “Now let’s fix you up.” She brushed his neck and his back and even the fuzzy hairs on his long legs and then put the brush down. Then I picked it up and carefully brushed all the sticking-out hairs of his beard and sideburns and eyebrows.

  I could have brushed Baxter all day—making the swirls of his grays and silvers even swirlier and the crazy parts sticking out on his face even crazier. But when I handed the brush back to Megan, she just put it on the Baxter Station like she thought he was swirly and crazy enough.

  That made me worry because if Megan wasn’t here with me, she’d probably be doing something fancy like piano or ballet or horseback riding.

  I thought, What if hanging out with Baxter isn’t enough?

  She picked up the packet of dog treats. “Can we give him a treat?”

  “Sure!”

  So she gave him a treat, and then I gave him one, and he wagged his tail after both of them.

  I picked up the superbouncy ball. “I taught him how to play ball. Do you want to go over to the dog park? I can show you.”

  So we yelled for TJ, who came running up the stairs, and we all headed over to the park.

  Every time we threw the ball, it superbounced superfast, and so did Baxter. And even though there was a yellow Lab who tried to get the ball, Baxter always got it first.

  “He’s really good,” Megan said.

  “He’s King of the Bounce!” I agreed.

  I was happy because it looked like Megan was having Fun!

  Then her cell phone rang. She answered, “Hi, Mom . . . OK.” She shut her phone. “My mom’s coming in a minute. We have to go back to your house so I can get my backpack.”

  So we ran home to our front yard. Right as TJ went inside to work on his short, my mom drove up and got out of her car.

  Me and Megan told her all the things we’d done with Baxter. “We threw the superbouncy ball at the park!” I said.

  “And we set up the Baxter Station!” Megan added, and then we told her how we organized it.

  “Great!” Mom said. Then she smiled at Megan. “Do you want to stay for dinner, honey?”

  “I can’t. My mom’s coming in a minute.”

  “Oh well,” Mom said. “Next time.”

  “I’ll wait here with Baxter while you get your backpack,” I told Megan. “He can’t come inside the house.”

  So they went inside, and I sat down in the grass, Baxter plunking down next to me.

  The whole time Megan was gone, I worried if she’d had enough Fun! that she’d love hanging out with Baxter as much as I did.

  But right as she came back out, I suddenly realized what I needed to do. I stood up, and Baxter scrambled to his feet.

  “I need to show you one more thing,” I told Megan. “Come stand right here in front of Baxter.”

  So she came over.

  I reached over and tapped the top of her shoulder. “Up, Baxter,” I said.

  He reared up on his hind legs and planted his front paws on Megan’s shoulders, so fast and heavy it practically knocked her over. “Wow, he’s strong,” she said.

  They stood eye to eye, with his crazy silver eyebrows standing straight up and his black lips open, panting dog breath. “If you stand eye to eye with Baxter, then he understands what you are saying,” I told her. “You just ask him something and then nod.”

  I walked around to stand behind her, so he could see eye to eye with me, too. “You want Megan to come over again, don’t you, Baxter?”

  I nodded, and he nodded back.

  “You do?” she asked. Then she nodded.

  I held my breath—because I’d never tried it with anyone else before, and I didn’t know if it would work.

  Baxter looked into my eyes. He looked back at Megan, who was still nodding.

  He nodded, too.

  “Yay!” Megan cheered. “I love him!”

  He dropped back to the ground, and she gave him a big hug.

  “So you want to come over again tomorrow?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I don’t think I can. I have lessons all week. Then my grandparents fly in on Friday morning, and I’m staying home from school to spend time with them—my mom and dad worked out the schedule.” She rolled her eyes. “The recital is on Saturday.”

  “Oh. Are you excited?”

  She shrugged. “Sort of.” Then her mom drove up. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

  She climbed into the car and gave me and Baxter a little wave through the car window. She was still hugging her backpack to her chest as they drove away.

  13

  Spike Takes a Hike

  When me and TJ got to the lab the next afternoon, we found Professor Reese on her hands and knees, crawling around the lab. “Watch where you step,” she called out. “Spike is missing!”

  “He’s not in his tank?” TJ said.

  “When I came down to feed him this afternoon, I discovered that the lid was off.”

  TJ’s eyes widened. “I must have forgotten to put the lid back on yesterday after I gave him his carrot! I’m sorry!”

  Professor Reese sat back on her heels. “It’s not your fault, TJ. I didn’t check on him last night, and he’s my pet.” She looked around the lab. “I know cockroaches are good climbers. He could be anywhere.”

  TJ dropped to his hands and knees and started crawling around the floor, too, looking under furniture. I checked the tops of all the desks, behind all the computer monitors, and underneath each keyboard. And Baxter sniffed everywhere.

  “Be careful as you move things around,” Professor Reese sai
d as she slid the books off the bottom shelf of the bookshelf, handful by handful, to check behind them. “Cockroaches can fit into very small spaces.”

  I knelt down by Baxter. “We need to find Spike, OK?”

  I nodded, and he nodded back.

  I started peeking under the small cracks beneath things and between things, and Baxter stuck his nose next to mine. But even though he was magical about finding hats, he wasn’t as magical when it came to cockroaches, so we all just crawled around.

  “Let’s take a break for a minute and think this through.” Professor Reese stood and leaned up against a desk to rest. “I’m guessing he’s still in the lab. Maybe instead of trying to find him, we could coax him to come to us.”

  “Here, Spike! Here, Spikey Spikey Spikey!” TJ called. “Come here, boy!”

  Professor Reese smiled. “I don’t think we can call him like we call Baxter. But we could put out some apple slices. I think he’ll come looking for something to eat.”

  “Yeah, he’s probably hungry by now!” TJ said.

  So me and TJ ran upstairs and cut an apple into slices and put them on a bunch of little plates. We carried the plates downstairs and stuck them all over the lab.

  “How about we get to work,” Professor Reese said. “I bet Spike will be eating an apple slice by the time we get back.”

  “OK!” TJ looked happier.

  “Good!” Professor Reese’s eyes got all sparkly. “I thought up a different approach to our experiment that I want to try.”

  “Yay!” I said, and I wondered if maybe when you are a scientist, starting a new experiment feels like your birthday right before you get to open your presents.

  Professor Reese’s eyes kept sparkling as she explained her plan:

  At exactly 3:00 p.m., me and TJ would teleport the hat, and Professor Reese would be waiting at the spot where the hat was supposed to land. She wanted to see if she could see, taste, hear, touch, or smell anything that would help her figure out how Baxter always knew where the hat actually did land. “It’s a good thing I have lab assistants,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own.” Which meant we really were helping her—she wasn’t just pretending like some grown-ups do when they say what a big help you were, but you know you really weren’t.