by AJ Stern
“Do you need more water?” I asked.
“I just drank some, silly!”
“When you break something you get very thirsty,” I told her.
“Really, is that a fact?” Magoo wanted to know.
“Oh,” I responded, looking down. “Well, maybe not a scientific fact,” I said.
“I’ll let you know if I want more water.”
“Okay, but if you need me to push you somewhere else really soon,” I told her, “I could do that, too.”
“Sounds like a deal,” she said.
I waited. And waited. And waited. But Magoo didn’t need to go anywhere. Then I got bored and decided to count how many rooms (including bathrooms and closets) Magoo had in her house.
When I went into Magoo’s room, she yelled, “The boxes are off-limits!”
“Okap,” I yelled back, even though I didn’t know what she was talking about.
But then I saw them. There were three very big cardboard boxes, one next to the other. I went over to look. One was filled with cloth and yarn, the next with buttons, and the next with socks and cotton! Because they were “off-limits,” I looked with my eyes and not with my hands, as my dad would say.
Next to the boxes was a bag. Its mouth was wide open. I stood over it and looked inside and you would not believe what was in it!
It was filled with a hospital amount of medical tape, Ace bandages, Band-Aids, and every single thing in the world that you could ever imagine or want. I didn’t know which bag I liked more, my dad’s briefcase or this one. I pulled it out and brought it with me into the living room to show everyone. It was not a box so it was okay that I looked with my hands.
“Look what I found!” I said.
Everyone looked at the bag.
“What is that?” my dad asked.
“It’s supplies for my leg,” Magoo explained.
“Frannie, where did you find that?” my dad asked in his I’m a little bit annoyed with you voice.
“It’s not a box!” I argued.
“Frannie,” continued my dad, “put that bag back immediately. You know you don’t go through other people’s personal belongings. You leave Magoo’s things alone, okay? The Ace bandages, the medical tape, the crutches, the wheelchair, it’s all off-limits. Do you understand? We need your help with the cats, not with the medical supplies.”
“Fine,” I grumped, and then dragged the bag back to Magoo’s room, sat on her bed, and waited to become unbored.
CHAPTER 8
After we cleaned all the dishes from dinner, we got to do whatever it was we wanted until bedtime. Magoo still had to work on her dolls because tomorrow was the big day with the fancy top store person. Now she had company, though. Elliott was working so hard on his sock doll, it was almost done! He was so good at it, I worried he might not want to be my secretary, after all.
“Frannie, would you like to start a new doll?” Magoo asked. “I can thread a needle if you need help.”
“That’s okay,” I told her.
Making sock dolls is fun but I needed to concentrate on showing Magoo how responsible and thoughtful I am Which is why I went looking again for something mintish to put on her pillow.
I still couldn’t find anything so I took a big jar of honey and put that on her pillow. The jelly from the day before was on her night table so I left it there.
Then I looked over and saw her crutches leaning up against her wall, looking very lonely. If Magoo wasn’t going to use them, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t. They were just going to waste lying there against the wall like that. And also they were probably going stale.
I tiptoed down the hall and saw my mom and dad talking in the kitchen while they drank tea. Magoo and Elliott were busy with their dolls. This was the absolute perfect time! No one would even see me use the crutches so they would never even know that I used them, which meant I could never get in trouble!
I tiptoed back to Magoo’s room and shut her door. As I walked toward the crutches, I heard a sound at the door. I opened it and there was Bark! He was always trying to tell everyone that he wanted me to be in charge of him instead of my dad. But no one understood this except for me because no one really understood Bark the way I did.I let him in the room and then I shut the door again.
The crutches were really tall. I wasn’t sure how my armpits would reach the top. That was when I decided to drag the crutches over to the bed. Then I stood on the bed and set the crutches in a ready position. I leaned over and placed my armpits on the cushiony top part. Then, when both armpits were in their seats, I stepped off the bed. But then something horrible happened. My feet did not touch the floor and I was swinging by my armpits from the crutches.
Bark came over to help me, but he knocked into the crutches, which slipped out from under me and I fell right on top of him. Bark yelped very loudly and leaped away, banging into the night table and knocking the picture frames and the jar of jelly to the floor. The crutches crashed into the wall and then plunked down to the floor next to them, and I landed on my butt with a bang . There were three million different crashes, which is why the door flew open and I saw the extremely worried faces of my mom, dad, and Elliott.
“Are you okay?” my mother asked as she ran to help me up on my feet.
As soon as I told her I was fine, my dad’s face filled with red, splotchy anger. Elliott put his hand over his mouth and my mom put her hands on her waist, which is what she does when she is about to yell at me. I Was in a worldwide canyon of trouble.
CHAPTER 9
After I fell off the crutches, my dad and mom had to think of an “appropriate” punishment for me. When they came back they told me that my punishment was that I could no longer go with my dad to pick up the fancy toy store woman.
“What about Elliott?” I asked.
“He’ll have to stay behind as well,” said my mother. EIIiott was really mad about this because he wanted to show her his doll and make her impresstified by his natural talents. I apologized to Elliott ten thousandteen times, but he went to bed mad.
When I woke up on Sunday, I went into the kitchen where my parents and Magoo were eating breakfast. Everyone was still upset with me because I only got a very soft “Good morning .” And not even one “How did you sleep?”
Elliott came out and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. When he opened them, he looked at me and said, “I’m still a little mad at you.”
That gave me a bad feeling, but I understood.
“Sorry, Elliott,” I said again.
“Okay, kids,” my dad said, clapping his hands together. “We have a very big morning upon us. Elliott and Frannie, we need to hop to it. I need the two of you to vacuum the floors and the couches. When I leave to pick up the top store woman, I need you to shut Hester, Lester, Esther, and Bark up tightly in the television room. Okay?”
We nodded.
“Mom is going to pick up some nice sandwiches for Magoo’s big meeting. While we’re gone, I want you to take care of Magoo. Wait on her hand and foot, okay? Whatever she needs or wants, you get it for her. Understand?”
At least we still had jobs to do. Which meant it wasn’t too late to show how responsible I was.
Then we got to work. Elliott and I held the long hose of the vacuum cleaner with all of our hands just to make it steady. It took forty million hours to get the cat hair off everything. Once we did that, we had to clean the entire floor!
When we were done, Elliott and I were out of all our breath. We took a little break, but soon our break turned boring since we couldn’t do anything because it might mess up the house.
When my parents left, Elliott and I rounded up all the animals and put them in the television room. It was really hard to get each cat in there because they meowed and slipped away every time we’d go to catch them. Once we got all three cats into the television room, Bark followed them and we shut the door very tightly behind us.
If you can even belieVe it, things got even boringer. Magoo said she was go
ing to do fifteen minutes of a very quiet exercise called meditation. That meant she was going to sit Very still in her meditation room and we had to be Very, Very quiet. Sitting still did not sound like exercise to me.
“You just need to be quiet for fifteen minutes. Do you think you can do that?” Magoo asked.
“Yes!” we told Magoo.
“You can keep the animals company and watch some television quietly. Okay?”
“We’ll be very quiet,” I told her. Then she crutched her way into the meditation room where She did an exercisethat was not an exercise at all.
Elliott and I went into the television room and roamed around for a good channel, which was not very hard to find since Magoo had onehundredthousand channels. We sat back on Magoo’s couch and watched a show on Animal Planet. Bark got up and walked over to Hester, Esther, and Lester, and plopped down next to them. That’s when I noticed he was walking funny .
“Elliott,” I loud-whispered so we didn’t break Magoo out of her meditation.
“What?”
“Bark is limping!”
“He is?”
“Yes! Look at the way he’s walking .”
Bark was now sitting, so I pulled him up to his feet but he just stood there. I pushed him toward Elliott and whisper-shouted, “Bark! Bark! Go to Elliott. Walk to Elliott!”
And after foreverteen and a day, he finally made it over to Elliott and then plopped himself down.
“Did you see it?”
Elliott shook his head no.
“Come on, Bark. Let’s take a walk and show Elliott how limpish you are.” Then I stood and walked around the room very slowly until Bark got up and followed me.
“See it, Elliott?”
“What’s it supposed to look like?” Elliott asked, staring at Bark’s legs.
“A limp. You know ...” And then I limped to show him what a limp looked like. Elliott scrunched up his face and got on all fours and watched very closely as Bark followed me some more.
“Are you sure, Frannie? I don’t see the limp.”
“Maybe we have to look closer.” Then I sat down next to Elliott and patted my lap until Bark came to me. I picked up his paw and showed Elliott.
“Do you see the limp now?” I asked him. He stared really hard at the paw.
“I ... I ... I’m not sure. Maybe.”
That’s when I understood that Elliott couldn’t see it because he wasn’t a dog veterinarian! But I was and that’s why I had to officially explain to Elliott what was the matter.
“He has a case of limp paw.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes, it could lead to broken paw.”
“Is that worse?”
“It’s what Magoo has, but on humans.”
“What do we do?”
“Well, since I’m almost a real veterinarian, but not yet, we should probably take him to the real one down the street.”
“But I don’t think we’re allowed to do that,” Elliott said.
“Well, how else are we supposed to learn how to fix him if we don’t go?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“How will you know how to be my secretary?”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
“And how in the worldwide of America will I learn how to fix such a bad case of limp paw if we don’t go right now so I can learn?”
Elliott scrunched his face up into a thinking expression.
“You’re probably right,” he said. “It does make sense. And parents like when you do learning experience type things.”
“Right,” I agreed.
“So maybe it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a fantastical idea!” I said, even though it was my idea and it’s almost like bragging but net quite to agree that your own idea is fantastical.
“We’ll take him to the veterinarian and by the time Magoo is done with her meditation, Bark will be fixed and we’ll be smarter about limp paw and secretary phones.”
“How do we get him there with a broken paw?” Elliott asked.
This was such a good question that I did not correct him that it was limp paw and not broken paw.
We were both stumpified as to how to get Bark to the veterinarian. We harrumphed our faces and scratched our heads until, finally, I knew exactly how to get him there.
I motioned to the corner where Magoo’s wheelchair was folded up. Elliott got up and, almost like he was a professional wheelchair opener, he unfolded it perfectly !
Then we tried very hard to get Bark to jump in and sit. He was not the easiest dog in the world to steer. First we just got his front paws on before he jumped off. Then we got his back paws on before he went skidding off. He was just as slippy as the cats! And that’s when I got a genius-al idea!
I held up one finger to Elliott, which meant, waitone minute! Then, I ran into the living room where we left Magoo’s medical bag and I took out the biggest Ace bandage ever.
We decided that the only way Bark would sit in the chair was if Elliott sat on it first.
“Wait!” Elliott whisper-shouted before he got in. “I want to bring my sock doll so I can finish it while we wait!” He went to the couch, grabbed the sock doll and the thread, and stuck them in his front pocket. Then he got into the wheelchair and we managed to get Bark onto his lap and I wound and wound and wound the Ace bandage all around them. Then I wheeled them out the front door and onto the sidewalk. I very carefully shut the front door behind us. It wasn’t until we were halfway down the block that I realized I forgot to write a note. It was okay, though. We’d certainly be back before Dad and the top store lady got home.
I pushed Elliott and Bark down the sidewalk and people smiled and waved at us. Bark was having a great time. Then we rounded the corner and saw a lot more people with their animals waving at us and smiling. Waking a dog was really fun!
When we got to the veterinarian’s office, we had to ring a little bell that sounded like a bird chirping. Then we were buzzed in. It was too hard to hold the door open and push the chair through at the same time so someone in the waiting room had to come out and help us.
I wanted to tell the secretary that we were here, but there wasn’t anyone sitting at the front desk.
The waiting room was filled with so many people and animals, it looked like a circus! But I knew it was worth it for me to wait. Once we saw the doctor and he agreed that Bark had limp paw, my family would be so impresstified, they would forget all about the crutch incident. Everyone would see what a natural I was with dogs, and they would let me quit school to become a Veterinarian!
CHAPTER 10
Since there were no seats left in the waiting room, I wheeled Bark and Elliott to the corner near a plant. Then I tried to memorize every detail of the veterinarian’s office so I could copy it at my practice veterinarian’s office at home.
A teenage boy holding a soda can looked over at us.
“Cool wheelchair,” he said.
Elliott and I looked at each other and smiled. We never really had teenagers talk to us ever. And we never had one tell us we were cool.
“Thanks,” I said. “He can’t walk because of his limp paw,” I explained.
“Totally cool,” said the teenage boy.
What a good day this was turning out to be!
“It’s not so comfortable,” Elliott said to the teenager. He and Bark were still Ace bandaged into the wheelchair. He looked up at me. “Can we get out?”
“I guess so,” I said. I untied the back end of the Ace bandage and unwound and unwound. Then, when it was totally unwound, the front door opened and a woman with two dogs came into the office. I giggled a little on the inside of my brain because the dogs looked exactly like each other.
I guess Bark loves dogs that look exactly like each other because that was when he jumped out of Elliott’s lap and raced right for the door. The dogs got very scared, even though I know for a scientific fact that Bark just wanted to play with them.
Suddenl
y, a Shriekish type of sound came from each of the dogs at exactly the same time. Their owner pulled back on the leashes, but Bark went barreling right toward them! On the way, he knocked into the other animals and also the people sitting there waiting to see the veterinarian.
A woman had her newspaper knocked out of her hands. The teenage boy who had talked to us got his soda knocked out of his hand, and the brown liquid landed in splats all over his jeans.
Rabbits and cats pawed and scratched at their cages and we could hear loud flapping bird wings and a Millionteen squawk-squawk-squawks. It sounded like a big waiting room storm. Elliott and I stood there stumpified for one second. Then I figured out that since we were the ones Bark came with, we were the ones who had to find him and stop the hurricane of craziosity.
“Bark!” I yelled, and then went to look down the hall where I heard even more squawking and barking and meowing and even human voices yelling, “Where’s the dog’s owner?” “Has anyone seen my rabbit?” “Here, kitty, kitty.” “Someone’s going to pay for this!”
I was in so much trouble!
Finally, Bark ran out of one room and across the hall into another. Elliott and I ran toward that room and as soon as we got there, Bark ran out and into another. He was being really wild and running so fast we couldn’t catch him. Then Bark ran into a room and Elliott and I stopped in our tracks when we heard the clanking sound of tools being dropped and things crashing to the floor. It was not the best moment of the world, andthat is net an opinion.
A doctor ran out of his doctor room and shouted, “What on earth is going on?! Who is responsible for this animal?”
Elliott and I didn’t know what to do because we weren’t really responsible for Bark although at thisvery exact moment in time we probably scientifically were. So, finally, I raised my hand very slowly and in a very quiet mouse voice, I said, “I am.”