Guinea Dog

by Patrick Jennings

  “Well, since I won’t be going to Irondale tomorrow,” Mom said in a come-on-let’s-all-cheer-up voice, “how about we go on an outing instead? We could go to the river, to that spot we like. We haven’t been there in ages. We could pack a picnic lunch. Maybe go for a hike?”

  Dad shook his head. “I didn’t get enough work done this week.”

  “How about Sunday then?”

  “Maybe. I’m not promising anything.”

  “Sunday okay with you, Rufus?”

  “Kay-kay,” I said. This was the debut of my new “okay.”

  Dad scowled at me. Shot down again.

  “Sunday’s fine,” I said. “Count me in.”

  There was a knock on the front door the next morning, which was unusual because of the sign, but not unheard of. Not everybody reads signs, or obeys them if they do.

  I poked through the curtains in the living room and saw Lurena standing on the front porch. I had forgotten to call her. Well, I didn’t forget. I didn’t want to. I was afraid people would find out I called her. I suddenly wished I’d called her, though, because her coming over was way worse. I thought maybe I’d just ignore her, but she knocked again, louder, and I didn’t want my dad to get annoyed.

  “You didn’t call me back,” she said when I opened the door. “That was rude.”

  She was wearing a plaid skirt that touched her shoes, a pink blouse with puffy sleeves, and a vest. She was also wearing a very big hat with lots of fake flowers on it. I scanned the cul-de-sac for anyone who might know me.

  “I’m keeping Fido after all,” I whispered. “I have to go inside. Bye.” I started to shut the door.

  “Why?” she asked, slapping the door hard with her hand and pushing it open.

  “I just…do,” I grunted.

  We wrestled with the door.

  “Invite your friend in, Rufus,” Mom said behind me.

  Perfect.

  I relaxed my grip on the door and Lurena pushed her way in.

  “Thank you, Rufus’s mom!” she said, beaming.

  “Raquel,” Mom said, holding out her hand to shake.

  Lurena held out hers, and they shook.

  “Lurena Shraits,” Lurena said. “I’m in Rufus’s class at school.”

  I peeked my head outside, looking for witnesses to this disaster.

  “What is the matter with him?” I heard Mom whisper to her.

  “It’s okay, Raquel. It’s pretty typical behavior for boys his age.”

  Mom laughed. I didn’t. Instead, I put a secret, silent hex on Lurena’s tongue and brain.

  “Did you know Rufus didn’t call me back last night?”

  Mom laughed harder.

  I wondered if voodoo dolls really worked and how hard it was to make one.

  “I told him I would buy Fido from him,” Lurena went on. “You see, my hamster, Amherst, died, and my chinchilla, China C. Hill—the C. doesn’t stand for anything—needs a playmate, and Rufus said you bought his guinea pig for him because he couldn’t have a dog and he didn’t really want it and that your husband hates it.”

  The way Mom kept laughing, she must have thought everything out of Lurena’s mouth was hysterical, which was funny, because I sure didn’t.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want her,” I said, which was true.

  “Maybe not in those exact words,” Lurena said, rolling her eyes.

  “He’s decided to keep her, Lurena,” Mom said. “But I’ll let you two discuss the matter privately.” She looked quickly from Lurena to me with this scary, big smile, like she was hoping we’d get married one day, and I panicked.

  “No, Mom! Don’t go!”

  She pried my fingers off her arm, and said, “Now, you two have a nice chat while I do the breakfast dishes, okay?” Then she left me alone in the living room with a girl.

  “The sign’s gone,” Lurena said.

  “Sign?”

  “The one on the door. About no knocking. And the code.”

  “It is?”

  Dad must have removed it. Only he had that kind of authority. I wondered why he took it down. Was this part of his realizing he’d gone overboard since he started working at home?

  “Where’s Fido?” Lurena asked.

  “Upstairs in my bedr—” I couldn’t finish that word. Not to her. “I don’t want you to go up—you can’t see her right now.”

  “Can you bring her down?”

  “My dad’s working.” I pointed at his study door, but his BE SILENT OR ELSE! sign, with its headstone with R.I.P. carved into it, was gone, too. “We have to be quiet.”

  “Oh,” Lurena whispered. “Can I see your Scrabble tile collection?”

  “It’s up in my bedr—I mean, no. Not now. I’m…” Think fast, think fast. “I was just heading over to Murphy’s.”

  “Oh.” She looked a little dejected. Then she brightened up. “Can I come with?”

  What was the matter with this girl?

  “Are you friends with Murph?” I asked her.

  “Sure! I’ve known him since we were babies.”

  “We’re going to ride skateboards. You’re not really…dressed for that, are you, Lurena?”

  She looked down at her outfit and laughed. “Maybe not! I’ll run home and change and meet you over there. Kay-kay?”

  That was the nail in the coffin of my new “okay.”

  “I doubt we’ll be at his house long. We’ll probably head out right away. You know, riding.”

  “Where are you going to ride?”

  “We never know. Do you even own a skateboard, Lurena?”

  “No, but I have inline skates!”

  “Nice,” I said sarcastically.

  “Well, don’t worry about me! I’ll find you! Even if it takes me all day!”

  “Goodie.”

  She headed for the door. “Bye, Raquel!”

  Mom rushed into the room.

  Dad opened his door a crack, sighed, then slammed it.

  “Sorry, Rufus’s dad!” Lurena yelled in a whisper.

  “Oh, don’t worry about Mr. Grumpy,” Mom said, waving her hand in the direction of Dad’s study. “Are you going so soon?”

  “Just to get my skates. Me and Roof and Murphy are going riding!” She pretended to skate.

  “Fun!” Mom squealed.

  I closed my eyes and tried to convince myself I was having some terrible nightmare I could not wake myself up from. Then I opened my eyes. No such luck.

  Lurena was leaning over, whispering in Mom’s ear loud enough for me to hear, “I get the feeling this was probably the longest playdate Rufus has ever had alone with a girl since he was little.”

  Mom laughed.

  Playdate?

  Lurena and Mom shook hands again.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Raquel. You have a lovely home.”

  Kiss-up.

  “Thank you, Lurena. And the pleasure was all mine. You are welcome anytime.”

  Finally, Lurena left, and I resumed normal breathing. Then I punched my mom in the shoulder and ran to my room.

  17. I was tired of living in that freak house.

  I wanted to live in a normal house. A normal house was a house where…

  • the dad liked dogs.

  • the dad left the house when he went to work instead of staying home all day wearing a suit and fuzzy slippers.

  • the dad didn’t go on and on about his homemade salad dressings.

  • the mom knew the difference between dogs and South American rodents.

  • the mom didn’t wallpaper the ceilings.

  • the dad didn’t put a guinea pig in his son’s tree house.

  • a guinea pig slept in a cage on the daughter’s dresser, not at the foot of the son’s bed.

  • the son played Fetch, Tug-of-War, and Frisbee with his dog.

  • strange girls paying uninvited visits were not encouraged by the mom.

  But, of course, there was nothing I could do about it. Kids can’t pick up and move. The
y can’t choose where they want to live or who they want to live with. They can’t really choose anything. Everything requires permission. We’re given choices. Options.

  These are your options.

  That is not an option.

  A dog is not an option. A guinea pig is an option.

  You also have the option of a gecko.

  I asked my mom if I could go over to Murph’s and see what he was up to. She said it was okay with her if it was okay with Dad. Dad said it was okay if I was done with my chores. I wasn’t. So I did them. I carried the dirty clothes to the laundry room. I emptied the dishwasher. I took the garbage out. It was exhausting. Let me make a correction: everything requires permission and slave labor.

  I put Fido inside my backpack, hopped on my bike, and took off, my muscles aching from all the work. While I was doing my chores, Mom sewed up the hole Fido made in my bag, then reinforced the bottom with a piece of suede. I figured I’d bring Fido along for three reasons:

  • Because Dad needed to get some work done before we could go to the river.

  • Because Murph liked her.

  • Because Buddy did, too.

  My idea was that the four of us—Murph, Buddy, me, and Fido—would ride way out past the field around the electrical substation to the woods and go dirt biking. There’s a lot of wicked dips and curves and stuff there. I like it better than the skate park, and really nobody goes there but me and Murph.

  When I got to his house, I knocked on the door—something, by the way, that Murph’s dad has never had a problem with. His mom answered.

  “Hi, Rufus!” she said with a nice smile. “It’s so good to see you. Come on in. Murph’s up in his room.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  That’s what I meant when I said normal. It was okay to knock on the door. The mom answers and lets you in without a lot of embarrassing talk. The house was normal, too. It wasn’t a mess, but it wasn’t superclean like ours always had to be. It looked like people actually lived in it and touched things and stuff. There was a little TV in the kitchen and a big one with a flat screen in the living room, which was usually on even if no one was watching it. Our living room TV was an old box set that we kept in the closet and rolled out on a cart for Family Viewing Time. Honest.

  I walked up the stairs and past Murph’s little sister’s room. A.G. was sitting on the floor reading a book, and I noticed she had socks on her hands.

  “Stay back,” she said. “I have pox.”

  “I already had chicken pox,” I said.

  “So did I. This isn’t chicken pox. I believe it’s turkey pox, but no one will back me up. The socks are so I won’t scratch. Have you had turkey pox?”

  “Yes,” I lied, and walked on. Annoying little sisters are normal, too, I guess, but A.G. was spoiling my dream house.

  Murphy’s door was closed. I opened it quietly and peeked in. He was in his room, sitting at his desk, writing. His desk was this really cool tiltable drawing table with a lamp clamped to it. His walls were wallpapered, too, but with pictures he cut out of magazines and newspapers and printed off the Internet—pictures he put up himself, that is. His room was never messy because his mom cleaned it every day. She didn’t have a job outside the house. She stayed home and took care of her house and kids. Murph’s dad was a foot doctor, so he worked at a doctor’s office and at the hospital and made tons of money. He had a workshop in the backyard with power tools and drove a Jeep, not a hybrid, and he had one of those cool Ninja motorcycles. His mom drove a silver minivan. This was Normal House U.S.A.

  “’Sup?” I asked.

  Murph jumped a little, then shot a quick glance over his shoulder. He flipped whatever it was he was writing, then whipped around, a big, fake grin on his face. Something was wrong.

  “Why, ’ello, Rufus, ole chum!” he said with a pretty lame British accent. “Thanks for poppin’ by-ee.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong? Why, whatever are you natterin’ on about, mate?”

  “What’s that you were writing?”

  Mischief flashed in his eyes—you really had to know him like I did to see it—and he suddenly gave up both the British accent and the chipper act.

  “There’s no hiding anything from you, is there?” he said glumly. “It’s my…my…well, Roof, it’s my last will and testament.”

  “So you’re dying?”

  He pretended to be overcome with emotion, then shielded his eyes with his arm. His chin quivered. Oh, he was good.

  It was a total crock, of course. Not one of his better crocks, either. I mean, his mom was smiling when she let me in.

  “Dude,” I said with lots of fake sympathy, “what izzz it? What have you got? Or what’s got you, that is?”

  I had high expectations. Murph was no slouch when it came to making stuff up.

  “Anas—” he said, then broke off coughing. “Anas tossicus.”

  I shook my head. “What’s that?”

  “The ducks, man. The ducks. At the lake. Surely you remember.”

  “The poisonous ones?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you…attack one?”

  “Accidentally.”

  “How does that happen, exactly?”

  “I rode my board into a flock of them. They were sleeping on the path. I didn’t see them. Whammo! Quack, quack, quack. Envenomization.”

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” I said, shaking my head with great fake concern. “I should go down and offer your mom my condolences.”

  “No,” he said, reaching out a hand to stop me. “She…she doesn’t know yet. I just can’t bring myself to tell her. She does love me so…”

  He set his hand on my shoulder and stared deeply into my eyes, and if I didn’t know him the way I did, I probably would have believed he was scared and sick and worried that his poor mom would be grief-stricken. He’s that good an actor.

  Buddy strolled in then and right away sniffed out Fido in my bag.

  “Have you got your guinea pig in there?” Murph said, cheering up. “Take her out!”

  I obeyed, and while he and Buddy were fooling around with her, I snatched Murphy’s piece of paper. It was not a will, of course. It was just a math handout from school.

  “Hey!” Murphy said when he saw what I was doing. “Hand that over!”

  He made a grab for it. I held it out of reach.

  Buddy barked at me. Fido barked at Buddy.

  “Go in the other room, Buddy,” Murph said.

  Buddy obeyed. Such a good dog! Fido followed after him.

  “Be good!” I called after her.

  Murph gave me a strange look.

  “It’s not a will, Murph,” I said. “It’s homework.”

  He shrugged.

  “What are you doing inside on a Saturday morning doing math, Murph?”

  He shrugged again. (Like I said, we shrugged a lot lately.)

  “This is old math homework, dude,” I said. “Like, months-ago homework. Why are you doing it now? And don’t you dare shrug again.”

  “Ms. Charp lost mine so I’ve got to redo it,” he said.

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “She can’t do that! It’s her fault.”

  “Yeah, tell her that.”

  I squinted at him. This was more acting.

  “Tell me what’s going on, dude,” I said. “I mean, are we friends or what?”

  “Of course we’re friends! What a question!”

  I give him the Stony Stare. I wasn’t putting up with any more of his goofing around.

  “Why so serious, Roof?”

  Stony Stare.

  “Right. Fine. I’m flunking. Happy?”

  “Flunking?” The word didn’t make any sense coming out of Murphy Molloy’s mouth. “Flunking what?”

  “What do you think, smart guy?”

  I shrugged. “Math?”

  “Try again.”

  I shrugged again.

  “Try the fifth grade.”
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  “Yeah, right.” He’s always joking.

  “I’m not joking this time.”

  I squinted at him. If he was acting, he was acting his heart out. No giveaway gestures or sounds. He looked dead serious.

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it, Mr. Boy Who Cried Wolf?” I said. “It’s hard to tell when you’re serious, because you joke around so much.”

  “He’s not joking.” This was his mom. She was standing in the doorway behind me. I guess she was eavesdropping. Parents live to eavesdrop. “He just won’t do his work. Nor can he seem to ever get to school on time.”

  “That’s Roof’s fault,” Murph said, nudging me with his shoulder.

  I started to object, but his mom groaned, so I knew I didn’t need to.

  “I believe it’s the other way around,” she said.

  “I tell you, he’s a bad influence, Ma,” Murph said. “I was a good kid till he came along, him and his rodent.”

  “You met Rufus in kindergarten, Smurph. You’re lucky to have him. No telling what kind of trouble you’d be in if he didn’t keep an eye on you.”

  Me keep an eye on Murph? Everybody does that. Everybody just watches him. And laughs. And admires. And gives him free passes.

  Not anymore, I guess.

  “You got it all wrong, Ma. He always makes me late with his fooling around. And he steals my homework, too. He’s a bad kid, Ma. Real bad. A juvenile delinquent.” He started to laugh. “With a guinea pig.” He lost it.

  I didn’t think he was being particularly funny.

  His mom reached out and pinched his arm.

  “Ow!” he howled. “That’s child abuse! Roof, you’re a witness!”

  “You think you can laugh your way out of anything, but I don’t think you’ll laugh when you end up repeating fifth grade.” She wasn’t kidding around. “You’d do yourself a big favor to stop joking around and take a page out of Roof’s book. He’s a good solid student and a true-blue friend. You could learn a lot from him.”

  What?! Was she nuts? One day in our classroom would have changed her mind about that.

  “You’re right, Ma,” Murph said. “Rufus, will you be my mentor?”

  His mom groaned again, then smiled, then giggled despite herself.

  “Cute guinea pig, Roof,” she said. “I like the hairdo.”

  And she left the room. Yet another free pass for the Smurph.