by Lindsay Eyre
Georgie looked at Josh. “We could flush them down the toilet,” he said. “Then we could just give her the bowl.”
“No!” Josh said. He grabbed the bowl out of Georgie’s hands. “That would kill them.”
Georgie shrugged. “They’d be all right — they’re goldfish. They can swim.”
“Not in poop water,” Josh said. “The poop would make them die.”
“How do you know?” Georgie said. “Have you ever seen a goldfish die from poop water?”
“No,” Josh said. “Have you ever seen a goldfish live in poop water?”
“I don’t know,” Georgie said. “Maybe.”
It looked like this argument was going to take a while, so I stepped back into the house and slammed the door.
Miranda’s mother came into the room. “Oh, hello, Sylvie.”
“Hello, Mrs. Tan.” I leaned back against the door. Georgie and Josh were not going to get in this house unless I had a dead body.
Mrs. Tan was drying her hands on a towel. “Did the doorbell ring a few minutes ago?”
“Yes,” I said. “But they left.”
“Who?”
“Nobody,” I said as the doorbell rang again. “Oops,” I said. “That was probably me. I think my elbow just rang the doorbell.”
“Your elbow rang the doorbell from inside the house?” Mrs. Tan said.
I nodded and looked at her with enormous Disney princess eyes, the kind that make everybody start to sing. Then I silently begged her not to answer that door. Please, please, please, I told her in my mind.
But she pushed me aside anyway.
“Why, hello, Josh,” Mrs. Tan said. “Would you like to come in?”
Georgie was not there anymore, and Josh — who was looking at his feet as they shuffled from side to side — said, “Um, no. No, thank you. I just wanted to say that the fish are both all right. And Georgie is going to take them back to the pet store. He says he’s going to get something better for Miranda’s birthday.”
“Well!” Mrs. Tan said. “That’s interesting.”
“A better what?” I said. “A better pet?”
Josh nodded.
Oh no! I thought. “When is he going to the pet store?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Josh said. Then he turned and ran down the front walk and down the Tans’ driveway until he was gone.
“You know,” Mrs. Tan said, “I’m glad summer will be over soon.”
She wandered back into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the entryway. A dangly piece of hair was hanging in my face, making my nose itch, but I couldn’t even move to push it away. I couldn’t move at all. Georgie was going to get Miranda an even better pet.
Miranda walked into the room. “My aunt Ju just bought a live boa constrictor …” she began.
“I’ve got to go home,” I told her.
“You do?” Miranda said. “But why? I thought we could get out the collection. There are a few things we haven’t named, and I wanted to introduce the click beetles to the other specimens.”
I looked at Miranda seriously. I grabbed the top of her arm. “We’ll do all of that later. I promise. But I have something really important to do, something for your birthday. Something you will love. Just don’t answer the door or go anywhere, and don’t do anything without me.”
Then I opened the door and ran across the street to my house before she could ask why.
I called Josh’s house as soon as I got home.
“Hello?” Josh said.
“Hello,” I said briskly. I’d never called a boy before, and I thought I should probably be brisk. “This is Sylvie. I’m calling because you can’t play with Miranda today.”
“I can’t?”
“And Georgie can’t play with Miranda today either. Everyone’s too busy to play.”
“They are? Why?”
“Because Thursdays are busy days,” I said. “So you and Georgie had both better stay home.”
“Okay,” Josh said, though he didn’t sound so sure. “What are you doing today?”
“Things,” I said. “Do you know what kind of pet Georgie is getting Miranda?”
“No. But I’m going to the pet store with him tomorrow. Do you want to come?”
“No!” I said. Okay, shouted. Georgie didn’t even invite me to his party where there were billions of other kids. He’d never let me come to the pet store. “You?” he’d say right to my face. “No way.”
“Oh,” Josh said.
“Good-bye,” I said briskly.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
Next, I called my dad at work.
“Can you take me to the pet store to get Miranda a pet?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Sure — but wait! What did Mom say when you asked her?”
Shoot. I was hoping he’d forget to ask that question. Mom would never let me get a pet. Not for me and definitely not for someone else.
“Sylvie? Hello?”
“She’s too busy to talk about it,” I said. “ ’Cause she’s pregnant.”
“Maybe we should talk about this when I get home,” Dad said.
“Never mind,” I said, and I got off the phone superfast.
The trouble was, I’d already picked out a birthday present for Miranda — a make-your-own-candles-in-the-shapes-of-animals kit. If Georgie got Miranda something like a lizard, candles wouldn’t be too bad, because a lizard was a ho-hum kind of pet. But what if he bought her a kitten, or even worse, a brand-new puppy?
Candles were nothing but blobs of wax compared to a puppy.
I had to find out what Georgie was getting for Miranda.
* * *
My alarm went off the next morning at seven o’clock a.m. time. The twins were still asleep, Dad was in the shower, and Mom was standing in the kitchen, stretching her pregnant feet.
“I’m going to go outside,” I told her in an easygoing kind of voice. “To play and, you know, hang around.”
She nodded as if she heard me, but wasn’t paying any attention, which was exactly the kind of nod I was hoping for.
I grabbed a couple of muffins from the basket on the counter, put my binoculars around my neck, then snuck down the street to Georgie’s.
Georgie’s house is four houses down from my house on the opposite side of the street, and the good thing about it is the bushes. There are lots and lots of bushes around Georgie’s house, which means lots of places to hide. I chose an especially thick clump right next to his driveway.
The bushes needed to be thick. Georgie’s neighbor has a very scary dog named Dagger, who is only kept in his yard by an invisible electric fence, as if those count. Dagger didn’t seem to be outside right now, but if he saw me, his name would come true, and I would have to be buried next to Muffin.
Nothing was happening at Georgie’s. The garage door was not raising and the front door was not opening, so I laid on my back behind the bushes. If Dagger did escape, and he ran into Georgie’s yard, and he found me hiding in the bushes, and he got me, I knew what Georgie would write on my tombstone.
I yanked a leaf off the bush and tore it into little pieces. Miranda and I were different than most people. We didn’t want to dress tiny dolls in rubber clothes, or feed stuffed animals on the Internet like Savannah and Rita and Haley and those other girls at our school. We liked to draw dragons. Or play croquet with hard-boiled eggs, or dig trenches and fill them with baking powder and vinegar just to watch them explode. Georgie would never do any of those things. Georgie probably just watched TV or played video games when he wasn’t playing baseball.
Why would Miranda want to do that? What was wrong with what we did together?
I was waiting for red ants to come and eat me and end my horrible thoughts when I heard the sound of the garage door opening and a car engine starting.
I got out my binoculars and peered through the leaves of the bushes. Georgie and Georgie’s dad were in the car. Plus Josh, who must have slept over.
Hu
rry, I told them in my mind. Hurry to the pet store and hurry back, and when you return, say really loudly what pet you bought Miranda.
They did not hurry. They were gone for over two hours. When Georgie’s dad’s green station wagon finally pulled back into the driveway, I was nearly dead of heartstroke. But I brought my binoculars back into position just in time.
Josh got out first, with a heavy-looking bag hanging over his arm, probably full of pet food. Georgie hopped out next, holding a small, brown, unmarked container. Georgie’s dad got out last. His arms were empty.
Hooray! I thought. A boring lizard for sure!
But then the dad walked around to the trunk, opened it, reached inside, and pulled out an enormous box, and when I say enormous, I mean huge. Much bigger than a goldfish bowl. A leopard-sized box.
I listened with all the strength I had in my ears.
“Thanks, Dad,” Georgie said.
“Take them straight to your room,” Georgie’s dad said.
“Them?” I whispered as they went inside the house. Them was bad. Really bad. Them meant more than one. In that box could be two monstrous rabbits. Or four not-so-monstrous rabbits. Or there could be twenty regular-sized rabbits, stacked on top of one another.
I don’t like spying. I only do it when I have to. When I have no other choice. When the ox is in the mire, like my dad says, because oxes are supposed to be in barns, not mires, so sometimes you have to rescue them. Sometimes you have no choice.
I didn’t know what Georgie had gotten for Miranda. I had to spy on him. I had no choice.
So I waited. I waited until I was certain he had taken the pets to his room. Then I waited a little bit longer. Then I waited a little bit more longer. Then I told myself if I was going to spy, I was just going to have to do it, and if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t do it at all.
With a tiny sigh, I got to my feet and snuck as sneakily as I could into Georgie’s backyard. Georgie’s house is long and flat, all on one level. It has six windows in the back like cars on a train. Spotting Georgie’s window was no problem. There was only one curtain with bats and baseballs on the fabric.
An extra-large metal bucket sat on the grass near the house. I lifted it up and dragged it through some bushes until it was right beneath Georgie’s window. Then I climbed on top and pressed my face to the glass, but it was no good. I couldn’t see a thing. I pushed my face harder against the window, rolling my head left and right. But still, I couldn’t see.
When I pushed on the side of Georgie’s window, I did not expect it to open. But it did. It slid over so easily, I could have moved it with my pinkie finger. I could have moved it with my pinkie toe.
The room did not smell good. The floor was covered with shirts and shorts and underwear, yuck, and who knows what else. Probably mushrooms. But I couldn’t see any pets.
Then I noticed something in the right-hand corner, closest to the window. It was brown on the bottom and brown on the top with glass in the middle. Like a tank.
I leaned forward through the window as much as I could. What sorts of animals did people keep in tanks besides fish? Snakes? Turtles? Not leopards, thank goodness.
What if Georgie had gotten Miranda a couple of sea turtles?
With shaking arms, I climbed through Georgie’s window. I would be swift, I told myself. I’d look at the tank and hop back out.
I dropped to the floor, looked at the tank, and fell to my knees with a gasp.
Ferrets. Georgie had gotten Miranda two ferrets.
Hunched over so I could see into the tank, I watched the two ferrets running around. One was dark with raccoonish eyes, and the other was white, like a cloud. Chewed-up paper lined the bottom of the tank, and there was a bowl for water and a bowl for food.
Ferrets are really expensive pets. I know this because my dad took me to the pet store once, and I asked if I could touch the ferrets. The pet store worker wouldn’t let me, because ferrets cost one hundred dollars. “You can’t pet one unless you’re buying one,” he said.
Miranda loved the ferrets at the pet store too.
“I got these for you,” Georgie would say to her. He’d be standing at her front door with his baseball uniform on.
She would squeal and give him a hug. “Thank you, Georgie,” she would say. “These are the best pets ever. This is the best present I’ve ever gotten. Sylvie’s presents aren’t nearly as good as this. Let’s be best friends forever.”
I rested my forehead against the glass. The white ferret pushed her whiskers and nose up against the glass to see me. She was clearly a girl. I named her Elizabeth in my head. The other ferret was probably a boy ferret. Those raccoony eyes looked like trouble. I decided to name him Albert.
I wanted so much to touch a real, live ferret just once, just for a minute. The house was quiet. Nobody was coming. The wire mesh on top of the tank came off easily. But when I twisted away to set it on the floor, Elizabeth, the white ferret, seized her chance and leaped from the cage. I turned back in time to see her tearing toward Georgie’s bed.
Sliding into bases is one of my baseball specialties, so I dove on my stomach to catch Elizabeth. Like I do when I’m trying to steal third. My hands caught her around the middle. Her fur was slippery, and I nearly lost hold of her, but I finally managed to pull her into my arms.
As I was hurrying back to the tank with Elizabeth, the raccoony ferret, Albert, leaped from the cage like a cheetah.
“Shoot!” I said. I made a grab for Albert, but Elizabeth squirmed so much, I needed both hands to hang on to her.
Elizabeth slipped into the tank, no problem, and I put the mesh thing back on top. But when I turned back to catch Albert, he was gone. Hidden in the mess of Georgie’s room.
Clothes and papers got in my way as I crawled around the floor.
“Albert!” I said very, very softly. “Oh, Albert! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
Albert did not come out. Albert did not move.
“I can see you,” I told him, even though I couldn’t. “So you might as well just come here.”
Oh, please, don’t be hiding under Georgie’s bed, I thought.
Suddenly, without warning, Albert tore out from beneath a clothes pile and jumped at my nose. I screamed, but Albert didn’t try to eat me. He just landed in front of me with a “Let’s play!” look on his ferret face.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. Albert froze, still as an icicle.
“Jorge?” came a voice from the hallway. “Jorge? Are you all right?”
I clamped my hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream again. It was Georgie’s grandma. She grew up in Guatemala and she always called him “Jorge.” She was a big woman who I thought seemed really nice, even though she was related to Georgie. But she didn’t sound nice now. She sounded mad.
I grabbed frozen Albert and ran for the window. Without even a grunt, I climbed over the windowsill, stepped onto the bucket, and crouched on the ground.
“It’s all right,” I whispered to Albert, who was quivering in my hands. “As soon as she leaves, I’ll put you back in Georgie’s room and shut the window so you can’t get out.” His little face looked up at me. His nose trembled. I patted his long, skinny back so he wouldn’t be so nervous. “I didn’t mean to take you,” I told him. “The grandma was coming and I couldn’t think.”
His whiskers twitched.
“Well, I didn’t,” I said.
“¡Ah, este hijo!” It was Georgie’s grandma. She sounded close, like she was by the window. “This boy’s room. ¡Mira! And he’s supposed to tell me when he leaves.” She sighed a tired sigh. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to shut and lock this window, I’d be rich. ¡Cuándo aprenderá!”
There was a slam and a click above me. The kind of click that means something is now locked.
I looked down at Albert. He looked up at me. “What am I going to do?” I said.
I had no choice but to sneak back home with Albert. Georgie’s grandma had said he had
gone somewhere, and I wasn’t going to walk around to the front of the house, ring the doorbell, and say, “Oops. I might have accidentally taken this ferret out of Georgie’s room. Here you go.” And I couldn’t just leave Albert outside for Dagger to eat him.
Sneaking back home was much scarier than sneaking over to Georgie’s. First, I had to hide Albert underneath my shirt with his nose poking through the neck so he could breathe. Then I had to tiptoe across the street like nothing big was going on. Then I had to walk all the way down to my house without attracting attention.
I was almost to my front porch when I heard two words of doom: “Hey, Scruggs!” I paused on the grass, one foot on a sprinkler head, both hands on Albert. It was Georgie.
“You should go over to Miranda’s,” he called.
Without turning my body, I looked over my shoulder and said, “Why?”
“To see the gerbils I got her at the pet store.”
“Gerbils?” I whispered. What did he mean, gerbils? He couldn’t mean gerbils! I could not move a muscle. I couldn’t even blink an eyelid. “Gerbils?” I said so he could hear me.
“Gerbils,” Georgie said, emphasizing the “s.” “Four of them. You can do science experiments with gerbils.”
“Really good ones,” Josh said.
“Don’t you mean ferrets?” I said, gripping Albert tighter.
“Ferrets?” Georgie said. “Nah, I have ferrets. Ferrets are awesome, but they cost too much money to give for a present, so I got her gerbils.”
“Gerbils,” I said to myself. Georgie hadn’t gotten Miranda ferrets. He’d gotten her gerbils. Which meant that Albert belonged to Georgie. Which meant that I had accidentally taken Georgie’s pet.
Turn around, I told myself. Turn around and tell Georgie what happened. Tell him you sort of accidentally found yourself in his room, and you sort of accidentally took his ferret.
“Miranda said you would really like the gerbils,” Josh said. “Cause you’re really kind to animals.”
I loosened my grip on Albert. I took lots of deep breaths. You can do this, I told myself. You can tell him the truth.