“Sorry about that, Ella. He’s all brawn and no brain.”
“It’s okay,” I mumbled. I picked up my homework and set it on the dining room table, out of harm’s way. I didn’t want Chewy to think I was mad at him. I knelt down beside him and rubbed his ears. His back leg thumped up and down quickly.
“He does know I’m the one scratching his ears, right?” I said to Aunt Willa. His brown eyes stared at me and he cocked his head. He was cute, even if he was destructive.
“Who knows what that dog knows! I just keep him because I love him too much to get rid of him. Plus, he’s a great watchdog. I feel safe with him around. If he didn’t try to eat everything in sight, he’d be the perfect dog.”
“Is that why you named him Chewy?”
At the mention of his name, he turned around and slurped me in the face. I pushed him away in disgust and reached for the napkin next to Mom’s coffee cup to wipe dog saliva off my face.
“Yes. I have to be very careful about what I leave out. Thankfully, though, he’s never eaten one of my cameras.”
Dad reached over and scratched one of Chewy’s ears. He glanced at his watch. “It’s getting late Ella-vator. Time for you to get ready for bed.”
“Dad—you know I don’t like that nickname.”
He grinned. “I know, but you keep growing up. Get it—growing up, instead of going up?”
I smirked. “Yeah, I get it—except elevators go down, too.”
“Well, let’s hope you don’t start shrinking.” He winked.
“Can I please stay up longer? It’s Aunt Willa’s first night here.”
“And she’ll be here for a whole month. Off to bed.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.” I gave Chewy a goodnight pat on the head and stood.
“Goodnight, roomie,” said Aunt Willa. “I’ll try to be quiet when I come in. Chewy will be, too—I promise. He can be very stealthy when he needs to be.”
I stopped. “He’s sleeping in my room, too?”
“Yeah. When I first come back from long trips, he barks all night if he’s not near me.” She caressed his face between her hands. “Such a big baby. But don’t worry. He’ll sleep on the floor by my bed—it’ll be like he’s not even there.”
CHAPTER NINE
ANNEX
an·nex
verb ǎ-neks
—to take possession of something
My wacky Aunt Willa was right—it was like Chewy the stealth dog wasn’t even there on the floor … mainly because he wasn’t there at all! Chewy must have decided my mattress looked far more comfortable than his assigned spot of carpet. Somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, I woke up and realized I was no longer on my mattress—I was on the floor. I felt around for my pillow but instead my fingers landed on a wet nose. Squinting through the darkness, I saw Chewy’s humongous head had taken over my pillow.
Actually, Chewy had taken over my entire bed.
He had climbed onto the mattress and shoved me off!
Aunt Willa was right about two things: he could definitely be stealthy … and he snored.
I tugged on his collar. “Chewy,” I whispered.
He responded with a snort. Man, he had bad breath!
I pushed with both hands.
He probably weighed as much as I did if I was soaking wet, wearing a parka, and holding a bowling ball in each hand. He didn’t budge.
I climbed onto my mattress and laid down back-to-back with him. I braced my hands and feet against the desk and slowly straightened my arms and legs, hoping I could shove him off the other side.
No such luck.
Sighing, I stood and felt around the desk for my alarm. My fingertips found it. I snatched my pillow from under Chewy’s head and grabbed my blanket from the mattress. Apparently I would be sleeping in the living room.
On my way out, I tripped over one of Aunt Willa’s suitcases and fell against the doorknob. I was pretty sure there’d be a lovely bruise on my arm in the morning. I tossed the pillow on the sofa and curled up under my blanket.
I’d just drifted back to sleep when the alarm blared in my ears. I dragged my feet to my room and collected the school clothes I’d laid out the night before. Chewy was snoring away in my bed. I glared at him and kicked the mattress before walking into my bathroom to get ready. The mirror showed the unfortunate results of not enough sleep; dark circles surrounded my puffy eyes. Even my hair looked tired. It fell limp down my back. It was not the look I was going for. I quickly braided it, hoping I would somehow end up looking better than I felt.
I slumped into the kitchen and grabbed a bagel. Dad took one look at me and let me have a sip of his coffee. I kissed him good-bye (Mom was still sleeping) and walked to school. As usual, Jolina and Lucille were waiting for me at the back gate. I put my hand up to stop them before they could say anything.
“Before you ask, I didn’t sleep well last night,” I grumbled. “Aunt Willa’s dog decided to take over my bed in the middle of the night. I had to move to the sofa.”
Lucille unzipped her backpack and offered me a couple gummy bears from the emergency stash she kept for me. “Aww, Ella. I’m sorry the dog commanded your bed.”
I gladly took them and gave her a smile. “Thanks.”
“I’m pretty sure you mean commandeered, not commanded,” said Jolina.
“Really?” Lucille shrugged. “I thought I got that word right.”
“No—commandeered means took over. Commanded means gave orders.”
I puffed my cheeks out. “Actually, commanded works just as good. Chewy ordered me off the bed with his big hairy body and yucky dog breath. And to make matters worse, when I finally did fall asleep, I had a math fair nightmare. Ms. Carpenter was dressed like a clown, pedaling a unicycle while juggling math books. And Jimmy hurled javelins shaped like snakes at possums, and Jean-Pierre handed out rulers and calculators for carnival prizes. Oh yeah, and Harry took bets on how many erasers he could fit in his nose—which oddly enough was the only realistic part of the whole dream.”
“That’s right!” Jolina said. “I remember last year when Harry did that. It was crazy how the paramedics used those fancy pliers to get the erasers out. How many did he get up his nose, anyway?”
I shrugged. “I can’t remember.”
Lucille laughed. She draped one arm over Jolina’s shoulders and the other over mine as we walked to our classroom. “Ella, you’re worrying about the math fair way too much. The four of us are going to put together a great display, and it will be just fine,” she said.
CHAPTER TEN
POSTHUMOUS
post·hu·mous
adjective pos-chǔ-mǔs
—coming or happening after death
The incident with the opossum and the kickball spread through the school faster than last year’s lice epidemic. Due to the opossum’s astonishing ability to catch one of Jimmy’s crazy leg balls, it achieved the popularity status of a prom queen, only with far less effort. Even Jonathan already knew about it.
All the boys respectfully referred to the opossum as Morty (short for rigor mortis). Lucille found some pictures of baby opossums online and brought them in to show us in class. They actually looked really cute, and we felt kinda bad Morty had died. We had no idea where Mr. Leeford had buried him, or even if he had buried him. (Harry said Morty could’ve gone to the Great Dumpster in the Sky.) Even so, Jimmy made a miniature tombstone for him out of Play-Doh, inscribed with MORTY, THE ONE WHO CAUGHT THE UN-CATCHABLE BALL, and kept it on his desk.
Coincidently, my own level of popularity had increased overnight simply because I was the one who “discovered” Morty in the first place. Discovered, stepped on. What’s the difference?
After school, Jonathan, Lucille, Jolina, and I all went to my house to work on our math fair project.
Mom brought out a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, along with glasses of lemonade, and set them down on the coffee table.
“Where’s Aunt Willa?” I sa
id.
“She’s here,” Mom said, “developing some photos.”
“I thought you needed a dark room to do that.”
“Yeah, you do. She’s using your bathroom.” She headed out of the room but then called back over her shoulder, “Use the hall bathroom from now on, okay?”
I sighed and rubbed my temple. “Okay.”
Jolina cocked her head. “Your aunt uses film?”
“She uses both a film and digital camera, but she likes film better. She says it’s ‘purer,’ whatever that means.”
Chewy barked and scratched at the back door.
“Go away, Chewy!” I said.
“Chewy? Is that short for Chewbacca?” asked Jonathan.
I held up one of Aunt Willa’s mangled shoes. “No.”
“We might as well get started,” Lucille said. She picked up a sandwich and took a bite.
I flopped onto the sofa. “This project is math un-fair.”
“Hey, you said you were going to have a good attitude about this,” Jolina reminded me.
Jonathan leaned over the back of my dad’s favorite chair. “What’s wrong? I think the math fair sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, I’d rather do this than take a test, that’s for sure,” said Lucille.
“You’d rather do what than take a test?” Aunt Willa came into the room, trailing a strong smell of vinegar behind her and wearing a pair of safety goggles on top of her head.
“Hi, Aunt Willa,” I said. I wrinkled my nose and sniffed the air.
“Good afternoon, sweetie,” she said, joining me on the sofa. “Sorry about the chemical smell. I’ve been developing some photos.”
“I can tell.”
Lucille turned to her. “We have to do a math fair at school and it’s worth two test grades. Most of us here think it’ll be fun, but one person”—she pointed at me—“is being a party pooper.”
Aunt Willa feigned surprised. “No!” she gasped.
I rolled my eyes, but the others laughed.
“We get to make posters and displays, and the day of the fair we’ll get to walk around checking out all the entries. It beats sitting at our desks all day,” said Jolina, reaching for a sandwich.
I sighed. “At least that part will be fun. I just wish we’d been assigned anything but time conversions. I’m always forgetting how to do those.”
“Well,” Aunt Willa said, “maybe the math fair will help with that.”
“Maybe. Crazier things have happened lately,” I muttered. I grabbed a glass of lemonade and took a gulp.
“I have a great idea for the display,” Jonathan said. He cleared his throat. “We could put Morty on our poster.”
Lemonade shot out my mouth and nose and I started coughing.
“Ewww!” said Jolina, immediately putting down her sandwich.
Aunt Willa jumped up and ran to the kitchen. She returned seconds later with a roll of paper towels. “Who’s Morty?”
“He’s the possum I told you about.” I took the towels from her and turned to Jonathan. “Number one, we don’t know where he’s buried. Number two, don’t you think attaching a dead animal to our poster is kind of gross? And number three, what does Morty have to do with time conversions?”
“No, no, no … I don’t mean we actually put him on our poster,” Jonathan said. “What I mean is, how cool would it be to list different animals from a mouse to an elephant or something big and show how long it takes for rigor mortis to wear off of each one? We could make a chart showing the hours, then do the math and convert everything to minutes, and then to seconds.” He paused to catch his breath. “It would be like a memorial to Morty. I know you may think it sounds kinda gross but—”
“Kinda gross?” Jolina squawked. “It sounds outright disgusting. I am absolutely not going to do that.”
Being more of a science person than a math person, I had been truly fascinated by Ms. Carpenter’s mini-science lesson on rigor mortis. And now that the image of Morty (flies and all) duct-taped to our poster board was out of my head, I focused on what Jonathan was saying.
Maybe I wanted to hang onto my newfound popularity. Maybe Morty really had become an instant legend to us students and I thought we owed him some sort of memorial. Most likely, I was desperate to get a good grade in math. For whatever reason, I was willing to try anything, and I found myself liking the Morty-on-the-poster idea.
“Hold on, Jolina. Calm down. I think Jonathan has a good idea,” I said, soaking up the spewed lemonade on the carpet with the paper towels.
“You know,” Aunt Willa chimed in, “last year in California, a truck carrying 1,600 pounds of saltwater bass to market got in a three-way crash. There’s a group of people who want to have a memorial made for the fish that died.”
“But if they were on their way to market, they were going to be killed anyway, right?” Jonathan said.
“Hey, I didn’t say it made any sense,” Aunt Willa replied and headed back down the hall.
“At least this idea does make sense,” Jonathan said.
Lucille nodded. “Yeah, everyone knows about Morty, and half the school thinks he’s some sort of hero for making the un-catchable catch.”
“Maybe we could compromise.” I looked to Jonathan and Lucille for support. “What about instead of doing time conversions on how long an animal’s been dead, we focus on how long they live? We’ll pick different animals, find out their average life spans, and do time conversions on that.”
“Give me an example,” Jolina said suspiciously.
Jonathan, seeing his chance to convince her about the memorial, jumped in. “Okay, well, let’s say a possum, on average, lives two years. We’d do the math showing two years equals twenty-four months, or one hundred four weeks, and then break that down even more into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.”
My mouth fell open in amazement at the speed Jonathan figured out how many weeks were in two years. Jolina had been telling me time conversions were easy, but everything was easy to her, so her opinion didn’t really count. But Jonathan had just spit those numbers out faster than I could punch them into a calculator.
Lucille added her vote to the group. “Remember, Ms. Carpenter said creativity and originality are a big part of our grade. Let’s face it, Jolina, this would make for a very interesting display. No one else would have anything even close to it.”
Well, that sealed the deal. Jolina was as crazy about her grades as I was about order and cleanliness. In fact, the only time I’d ever seen her cry was when she got a B+ on a spelling test.
“Okay, fine.” She tossed her hands up in surrender.
We spent the next hour coming up with a list of twelve different animals to compare. When it came time to divide them, Jolina took over.
“We’ll each pick an animal and keep taking turns until we all have three animals to work with,” she said.
Lucille nodded. “Good idea. I say Jonathan should go first since it was his idea to do this.”
I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer that he would pick a huge animal. The way I saw it, the bigger the animal, the longer it probably lived—which meant less math. I planned on picking the smallest animals possible. Even though I usually want nothing to do with spiders, a black widow spider was on the list, and I wanted it. Anything that gets eaten by its mate can’t have that long of a life span.
“I’ll take the elephant for my first pick,” said Jonathan.
“And I’ll take the camel,” Jolina said.
A sigh escaped my lips. Two big animals were off the list.
“I want the boa constrictor,” said Lucille.
Drat! Along with the black widow, I also wanted the snake and box turtle.
Jolina kept track of everyone’s picks, writing them down in her notebook.
She looked expectantly at me.
“The black widow,” I said.
She raised her brow in surprise. “Really? You hate spiders.”
“I’ve got my reasons.”
I didn’t know much about tortoises except they were related to turtles, and turtles were smallish, so the Galapagos land tortoise must be small, right? With logic like that, how could I go wrong?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HYDROPLANE
hy·dro·plane
verb hɪ-drǒ-playn
—to slide uncontrollably on a wet surface
Friday night, Lucille invited Jolina and me to a sleepover at her house. I loved going to Lucille’s house because her mom was a way better cook than mine. Meatloaf was never served at Lucille’s house.
Never.
I was also looking forward to not having to fight Chewy over my mattress and to finally getting a good night’s sleep.
With my duffle bag slung over my shoulder and my pillow tucked under my arm, I headed down the street. I stopped at Jolina’s house first and waited while she got her stuff together.
“Don’t forget your makeup,” I reminded her.
“It’s already packed.”
Lucille’s mom didn’t let her wear makeup so Jolina always brought hers. Mrs. O’Reilly said we could play with it, but not wear it outside.
We walked down to Lucille’s and started with makeovers right away. When Lucille had finished mine, I looked in the mirror. She was great with hair, but I understood why her mom wasn’t ready for her to start wearing makeup. Thanks to her, I looked like a circus clown.
Mrs. O’Reilly popped her head into Lucille’s room. “Girls, dinner will be ready in—oh my. How … colorful you look, Ella.”
Lucille looked pleased. “Thanks, Mom.” She turned to me. “I told you it didn’t look bad.”
I kept quiet and looked back at Mrs. O’Reilly.
“What time did you say dinner was?” I asked, feeling my cheeks redden under all the rouge.
Mrs. O’Reilly shook her head as though to clear her vision. “I’d say in about ten minutes. Are you hungry for some manicotti?”
Dead Possums Are Fair Game Page 4