He squinted down at my note. Then he grinned and said, “Ohhhhh, okay.”
“What?” Mama said.
I jabbed my heel into Toby’s foot and he hollered, “Owwww!”
Mama whirled around and snapped, “What’re y’all doing?”
I slapped my hand over the note and smiled at her. “Nothing.”
“Well, don’t y’all start that bickering back there,” she said. “Let’s go find us someplace to park.”
I glared at Toby. We hadn’t had that dog one whole day yet, and already he was acting all stupid around Mama. It would be a miracle if she didn’t find out what we had done.
But so far, it seemed like everything was working out good. I’d stolen Willy, no problem. I’d found a good place to keep him. And Mama had a job at a coffee shop that gave her free food. Now all I had to do was stash some of that food in my backpack for Willy.
I took out my notebook and wrote April 18 in my How to Steal a Dog notes. Then I wrote:
Step 5: Things to do after you have stolen the dog:
1. Be sure to act nice to him so he won’t be afraid.
2. Play with him some so he will like you.
3. Make sure you put him in a safe place where he won’t get wet if it rains.
4. Tie up the rope or string so he can’t run away.
5. Find him some food and water
Uh-oh. Water. I’d forgotten about that. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be a big problem. Still, I put a question mark beside that one so I would remember to figure it out.
That night it seemed like I hardly slept at all. A steady rain clattered on the roof and ran down the windows in streams. The inside of the car was so hot I had to crack my window, and then the rain splattered my face and made my pillow wet. I listened to the slow, even breathing of Mama and Toby and thought about Willy. I wondered if he was scared. Was he getting wet? Was he hungry?
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see his freckly face and those shiny black eyes. I could see him cock his head at me and wag his whole body the way he did.
“Don’t be scared, Willy,” I whispered into the still night air.
The car windows were so fogged up I couldn’t even see outside. I used my finger to write Willy on the foggy glass. I drew a heart around it, then wiped the window clean and turned my mind to “off.”
When I opened my eyes the next morning, I felt all fluttery and excited like on Christmas morning. Today was the day we would find the reward sign for Willy.
Mama made us use the water in the cooler to brush our teeth. While she was putting on her lipstick and stuff in the car, I filled an empty soda bottle with water and put it in my backpack. Then I checked to make sure I had the bag of food scraps for Willy. Yep, half a doughnut and some scrambled eggs.
I pulled Toby close and whispered, “We gotta look for the reward signs today, okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
I could hardly keep myself from grinning as we made our way through the streets of Darby on the way to school. I sat up straight and pressed my face against the window, searching every telephone pole we passed.
As we got closer to school, my excitement began to fade to disappointment. I guess in my heart I’d known it was probably too soon to find any signs. We’d only stolen that dog the day before. But in my mind, I had pictured signs on every pole. There they would be, up and down the streets of Darby. In big letters: REWARD. Then there would be a picture of Willy, cocking his head and staring out at the world through his furry black eye patch.
But what I saw outside the window that day was nothing like what I had seen in my mind. There wasn’t one single sign. None. Nowhere. I tried to swallow my disappointment and tell myself to be patient. The signs would be up after school, for sure.
“Y’all go straight on back to the car after school, okay?” Mama said, pulling over to the curb.
“We will,” I said.
“And stay there, Georgina.”
“We will.”
“And help Toby with his homework.”
I nodded and watched her drive away, then I grabbed Toby’s arm.
“Did you see any signs?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Dern.” I stamped my foot.
“Maybe that lady doesn’t care about Willy,” Toby said.
I shook my head. “No way. She cares,” I said. “Who wouldn’t care about a dog like that?”
Toby shrugged. “Maybe she hasn’t got any money,” he said.
“She owns that whole street, Toby,” I said.
A school bus had pulled up and kids came pouring out and rushing toward the front door of the school. Me and Toby pushed our way through and went inside.
“Listen,” I said. “Meet me at the flagpole after school. We got to take that food over to Willy. Then we can look for the reward signs. I bet they’ll be up by this afternoon.”
“Mama said we had to stay in the car,” Toby said.
I rolled my eyes. “She won’t even know what we do. She’ll be in the coffee shop.”
I watched Toby walk away from me as he headed toward his class. His clothes were all wrinkled and his hair was long and tangled. He was sure a pitiful sight. I wondered if that was how I looked.
When Mr. White asked me for the millionth time if I had given those letters to my parents, I lied again. I said I had, but Mama and Daddy were real busy working and all. I told him my daddy was going to call him any day now. Yeah, right, I thought. That was a good one.
I felt bad lying to Mr. White. He was the nicest teacher I’d ever had. He didn’t get mad when my science report had fried chicken grease on it. He hadn’t said one word when I didn’t have a costume for our play about the Boston Tea Party like all the other kids did. And he let me go to the nurse’s office, even when he knew I wasn’t one bit sick.
But when he asked me about those letters, what else could I do but lie?
Luanne didn’t hardly even talk to me all day. I was wearing the same clothes I had on yesterday, and I thought I saw her make a face when I walked into class that morning. I thought I saw Liza poke her at recess and point at me. I thought I heard my name every time I walked by kids giggling and whispering and all.
So who cares, I told myself. I didn’t care about any of those kids anymore. Maybe not even Luanne. I found myself doing stuff I never would have done before we started living in a car. Stuff that I knew would make kids poke each other and laugh at me. Like, I took Melissa Gavin’s half-eaten granola bar out of the trash and put it in Willy’s food bag. And when Jake Samson called me a garbage picker, I just kept my mouth shut and went on back to my desk like I didn’t care.
After school I waited at the flagpole for Toby; then we headed off toward the old house to check on Willy. Toby kept whining about how his backpack was too heavy and his feet hurt and all, but I ignored him.
I found a plastic margarine tub on the side of the road and wiped the dirt off of it with the edge of my shirt.
“We can use this for Willy’s water bowl,” I said, tucking it into my backpack.
Toby kept saying, “Slow down,” as we made our way up the gravel road. He splashed right through the muddy puddles, not even caring that his shoes were getting soaked and his legs were covered with mud.
But I didn’t slow down. I was dying to get to Willy. I needed to see him. I sure hoped he was okay.
As soon as I rounded the corner of the house, I heard a little yip from the back porch. Then I saw Willy poke his head through the torn screen door, and my heart nearly leaped right out of me, I felt so glad to see him.
Right away, he started wagging his whole body like he was the happiest dog on earth.
“Hey there, fella,” I said, sitting on the top step of the porch and giving him a hug. He licked my face all over.
“Are you hungry?” I said. Before I could even open the bag of food, he was pushing at it with his whiskery nose.
“Here you go.” I opened the bag and let him gob
ble up the eggs and stuff inside.
“He sure was hungry,” Toby said.
I rubbed my hand down Willy’s back while he ate. He was a little wet and smelled kind of bad, but he seemed okay. I opened the soda bottle of water and poured some into the margarine tub.
Willy went to town lapping it up.
“We got to let him run a little bit,” I said.
“But what if he runs away?” Toby said.
“We’ll keep the leash on him, dummy.”
I untied the string from the doorknob. “Come on, Willy,” I said.
Me and Toby took turns running up and down the road. Willy ran right through puddles. Sometimes he’d stop and shake himself, sending sprays of muddy water all over me and Toby. Once in a while he stopped to take a good long drink from a puddle. But mostly he just ran and leaped and barked a happy kind of bark. We had to run real fast to keep up with him or else he was liable to bust that string right in two.
“There,” I said. “That ought to be enough.”
Willy sat in the road in front of me, panting. He lifted his doggy eyebrows and watched me, like he was waiting for something. I knelt down and scratched his ears.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re gonna be going home real soon.”
He stopped panting and perked his ears up. Then he put his paw on my knee.
“He sure is cute, ain’t he?” Toby said.
“He sure is.” I stroked Willy’s paw and felt a stab inside. Was it really, really wrong to do what I was doing—or was it just a little bit wrong?
I pushed Willy’s paw off my knee and stood up. I had to shut those thoughts right out of my head and keep just one thought and one thought only in there. I was doing this for Mama and Toby and me. To help us have a real place to live. Not a car. What was so wrong about that?
We took Willy back to the porch, and I tied the string around the doorknob again.
“Don’t worry, fella,” I said. “You’ll be home soon. I promise.”
I filled the margarine tub with water again and set it on the porch beside Willy.
“He needs a bed,” Toby said.
I looked at the crummy old back porch. Toby was right. The porch was damp and dirty and covered with sticks and leaves. I should have brought a towel or something to make a bed. I felt another stab inside. I was being mean to Willy, wasn’t I?
“We’ll bring something next time we come,” I said. But then I added, “If he’s still here.”
Toby frowned. “Why wouldn’t he be here?”
I sighed. It sure was tiring having to explain every dern little thing to Toby. “We’ll be taking him back home, you idiot. As soon as we find that reward sign.”
“Oh, yeah.”
I gave Willy one last pat on the head and made my way down the rotten porch steps. I wanted to look back, but I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of that little dog watching me walk away and leave him all alone.
I led the way through the bushes to the road. Behind us, I thought I heard Willy barking.
I don’t hear that, I told myself.
I’m not mean, I reminded myself.
This was a good idea and everything is going to turn out fine, I repeated in my head.
I guess I was hoping that if I said those things, then maybe they would be true.
12
“There’s one!” I raced across the street.
“Is it for Willy?” Toby called, darting across after me.
I squinted up at the sign nailed on the telephone pole.
“Nope.” I sat on the curb and put my chin in my hands. “Another cat.”
So far the only signs we’d seen since yesterday had been for lost cats and yard sales.
Toby sat down beside me. “Maybe we should look downtown,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t put any signs around here.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But that seems kind of dumb to me. I mean, wouldn’t you start in your own neighborhood?”
Me and Toby had been up and down Whitmore Road and nearly every street close by about a million times. There wasn’t one single sign for Willy. I just didn’t get it. Why wouldn’t that lady put up a sign?
“Let’s go back over to Whitmore Road one more time,” I said.
Toby skipped along beside me, humming. He didn’t seem one little bit worried. We’d had Willy for almost two whole days now and I was feeling worse by the hour. My dog-stealing plan had seemed so good when I’d first thought of it. Everything had gone just perfect in my head:
We steal the dog.
We find the sign.
We take the dog home.
We get the money.
The end.
But now things didn’t seem to be going so perfect.
When we got to Whitmore Road, I turned to Toby. “Remember,” I said, “act normal. Don’t look guilty or anything.”
“Okay.”
We strolled along the edge of the road, looking at fence posts, telephone poles, anything that might have a sign on it. And then we heard someone calling from behind us.
“W-i-l-l-y!”
Toby looked at me all wide-eyed. “What should we do?” he whispered.
Before I could answer, that fat lady was walking toward us.
“Hey,” she called to me and Toby.
“Uh, hey,” I said, and set a smile on my face.
Her shorts went swish, swish, swish as she walked. A bright pink T-shirt stretched over her big stomach. Even her feet were fat, bulging over the sides of her yellow flip-flops.
“Have y’all seen a dog?” she said. She was breathing hard and clutching her heart like she was going to fall over dead any minute.
“Nope!” Toby practically yelled.
I glared at him, then turned back to the lady. “What does it look like?” I said, squeezing my eyebrows together in a worried way.
“He’s about this big.” She held her hands up to show us. “He’s white, with a black eye patch. And his name is Willy.”
Then she started crying. Real hard. Like the way little kids cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said, swiping at tears. “I just can’t even imagine where he could be.”
“Maybe he ran away,” Toby said.
Before I could poke him, the lady said, “No, not Willy.” Her face crumpled up and she had another full-out crying spell.
I like to died when she did that. And then, as if I wasn’t feeling bad enough, she said, “What if something bad’s happened to him?”
Before I could stop myself, I said, “You want me and Toby to help you look for him?”
She sniffed and nodded. “Would you?”
“Sure.” I poked Toby. “Right, Toby?”
He nodded. “Yeah, right,” he said.
The lady smiled and pulled a tissue out of the pocket of her shorts. She blew her nose, then stuffed the tissue back in her pocket. Strands of damp hair clung to her splotchy red cheeks.
“Do y’all live around here?” she said.
Me and Toby looked at each other.
“Uh, sorta,” I said. “I mean, yeah, we live over that way.” I pointed in the direction of the street where our car was parked. That wasn’t lying, right?
“I live right there.” She pointed to her house. “I’ll show y’all Willy’s picture, okay?”
Me and Toby followed her up the walk to the house. At the door, she turned and said, “My name’s Carmella, by the way—Carmella Whitmore.”
“I’m Georgina,” I said. “That’s my brother, Toby.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, then disappeared into the darkness of the house.
I pushed my face against the screen and peered inside. My stomach did a flip-flop. I pressed my face closer to the screen to make sure I was seeing right. I was. The inside of that house wasn’t one little bit like I’d imagined it would be. Ever since I’d first laid eyes on 27 Whitmore Road, I’d pictured rooms with glittering crystal chandeliers and fancy furniture. I’d imagined a thick, silky ca
rpet covered with roses. And paintings on the walls. Those fancy kind with swirly gold frames like in museums. I’d even pictured a servant lady bringing in tea and cookies on a silver tray.
But what I saw when I peered through that door was a dark and dreary room filled to bursting with all kinds of junky stuff. Piles of newspapers and clothes, boxes and dishes. No chandeliers. No fancy furniture.
Carmella came out of a back room carrying a small silver picture frame.
“Here’s Willy,” she said, joining me and Toby on the porch and handing me the picture.
There was Willy, looking out at me from that silver frame, smiling his doggie smile.
“He sure is cute,” I made myself say, but my voice came out real quiet and shaky.
Carmella nodded and wiped at tears. “He’s the cutest dog you ever saw,” she said. “And smart? Talk about smart!”
She smiled down at the picture in my hand. “He can count. Can you believe that?”
“Really?” Toby said.
Carmella nodded. “Really. With his little paw. Like this.” She pawed the air with her hand.
“Maybe he got lost,” Toby said.
Carmella shook her head. “Maybe. But it’s just so unlike him. He knows this neighborhood real good. And everybody knows him.” She took the picture from me and dropped into a rocking chair.
“I can’t figure out how that front gate got open,” she said.
“Maybe the paperboy or something,” I said.
“Naw, he just flings it up here on the porch.” She looked out at the street. “I’ve driven everywhere I can think of. I called the animal control officer. I talked to all my neighbors. I just don’t know what else to do.” Then she started crying real hard again, and I had to look down at my feet. I could feel Toby fidgeting beside me.
“Why don’t you put up some signs?” I said.
Carmella looked up. “Signs?”
“Yeah, you know, lost-dog signs.”
“Well, stupid me,” she said. “Of course I should put up some signs.”
“Me and Toby can help,” I said. “Right, Toby?”
“Right.” Toby grinned at Carmella.
How to Steal a Dog Page 6