Dog Day Afterschool

by Tommy Greenwald

  “Animals belong with animals,” Shep said. “Including humans, of course.”

  “I guess,” I mumbled.

  Shep took a drink from the giant cup of coffee he always seemed to have in his hand. “You’re an apprentice animal trainer, I have faith that you’re going to figure it out!” He swallowed, let out a gentle belch, and smacked me on the back. “Welp, gotta go teach some fish how to swim.”

  “Seriously?”

  He grinned. “No.”

  As I put the toys in the giant bin and watched Abby play with Bruno (I couldn’t exactly say that Bruno was playing with Abby, but at least he was tolerating it), I realized something.

  If Daisy and I were going to stay best friends, then somehow Abby and Purrkins had to learn how to be best friends too.

  MY SISTER, MISTY, likes to watch these ridiculous TV shows where people have contests to see who can make the nicest or coolest dresses and shirts and stuff. It’s so boring, if you ask me. But that night after dinner, she was staring with intense fascination as some guy was trying to figure out how to make a pair of pants out of tree bark.

  “How can you watch this?” I said.

  “You’re totally not sophisticated enough to understand,” was her answer.

  So I decided to do what I often do in this situation.

  “MOM! DAD! MISTY’S HOGGING THE TV!”

  Misty sneered at me. “What, you want to watch one of those creaky old black-and-white police shows? What are you, an eighty-year-old man trapped in an eleven-year-old’s body?”

  She was referring to my fondness for a show called STOP! POLICE!, a crime-fighting show that, it’s true, is from about sixty years ago. But so what? Great storytelling never goes out of style.

  My parents came into the room, and they both had the same This is the last thing I need after a long day expression on their faces.

  My mom went first. “Jimmy, do you really have to watch STOP! POLICE! again tonight?”

  “Can’t you just watch it on the computer?” my dad chimed in.

  “No!” I said. “It’s so much better on the big screen! And besides, there’s a marathon on tonight! They’re showing all seventy-eight episodes in a row!”

  My parents looked at each other and sighed.

  FACT: Parents looking at each other and sighing = lecture coming.

  “Jimmy,” said my dad. “Mom and I both love how passionate you are about some things. It’s part of what makes you so special.”

  FACT: Parents telling you you’re special = never a good sign.

  My mom jumped in. “The thing is though, it’s not great when a passion becomes an obsession.”

  I didn’t take my eyes off the TV, even though the guy who made the tree pants was now making a hat out of leaves. “I don’t know what that means,” I said. “I just like one show. What’s so bad about that?”

  “Nothing!” said my dad. “But … when you combine it with your gang, and doing all these training exercises, and, well, you know, thinking that Abby has special crime-fighting capabilities—”

  “I don’t think, I know,” I corrected him.

  “You’re busy,” my dad said. “With schoolwork, and lacrosse, and after school at the shelter. It’s a lot. We just don’t want you to be spread too thin, that’s all.”

  “Are you asking me to give up the CrimeBiters?” I asked, in a not happening kind of way.

  “Of course not,” my mom said. “But maybe you guys could take a break for a few weeks? Just until the school year ends?”

  “Forget it.”

  My dad sat down on the arm of the couch. “You sure? You can pick it back up just as soon as summer comes.”

  I decided to change strategy. “Just so you guys know, my friends and I do a lot more than just CrimeBiters stuff. Like tomorrow after school, we’re tutoring Baxter because he’s failing math, and we have to help him pass the last test or else he might get left back.”

  “Oh, poor Baxter,” said my mom. My strategy worked—she wasn’t talking about the CrimeBiters anymore.

  Misty groaned. “Can you guys stop talking? This is, like, the part where they decide who’s Fashion Forward!”

  We all stared at Misty, who was glued to this absurd TV show. Then I looked at my parents.

  “And you say I’m obsessed?”

  THE NEXT DAY, I could tell right when I walked into math class that something was wrong. It wasn’t just that Ms. Owenby, who is almost always in a good mood (math makes her happy—go figure), was standing there with a grim expression.

  It was that Mr. Klondike was standing right next to her.

  FACT: The six scariest words in the English language are “Please go to Mr. Klondike’s office.”

  Mr. Klondike is our vice-principal. That means he’s the adult in charge of punishment. If you do anything wrong, and I do mean anything, you will find yourself staring up at him in his super scary office, stammering out some sort of excuse.

  PROFILE

  Name: Mr. Klondike

  Age: I don’t know, and I don’t want to know

  Occupation: Vice-principal

  Interests: Scaring the daylights out of defenseless little children

  I guess what I’m trying to say is, Mr. Klondike is not the guy you want to see standing at the front of the classroom when you walk into math. His son Kermit is in our class, and even he scares the daylights out of me. Baxter used to be friends with him, back in Baxter’s mean bully days. That’s kind of all you really need to know about Kermit Klondike.

  We all quietly took our seats and waited. And waited, and waited some more. It seemed like Mr. Klondike just wanted to make us sweat for a few minutes before telling us why he was there. And it worked.

  “Class,” said Ms. Owenby, finally. “We have had a very disappointing development over the last twenty-four hours. Very disappointing, indeed. I will turn it over to Mr. Klondike to explain.”

  Mr. Klondike took his glasses off, cleaned them with his tie, put them back on, stroked his chin, took a sip of water, cleared his throat, and stared at us for a full minute. The guy could really terrify a room full of kids, that’s for sure.

  “We have had a breach,” he said. None of us knew what a breach was, but we were all pretty sure it wasn’t good. “A terrible breach of trust has been perpetrated upon this community.” Yes! I knew what perpetrated meant. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents that watching STOP! POLICE! had improved my vocabulary …

  But hold on a second. This was no time to be happy about anything. The hammer was about to fall.

  “Ms. Owenby has informed me that the answer sheet for her quiz from yesterday is missing. It was in her bottom desk drawer, and now it’s gone.” Mr. Klondike narrowed his eyes, exactly the way Hank Barlow (the hero of STOP! POLICE!) does when he’s about to arrest a criminal. “Her concern is that someone took it before she administered the quiz, in order to get all the answers right.”

  The whole class let out a silent gasp. Was Mr. Klondike saying what we thought he was saying? Was he actually suggesting that someone in the class stole the answer sheet?

  “That would be cheating, children,” he said, eliminating all doubt. “And it is perhaps the most serious offense a student can commit in school.”

  Holy smokes.

  “This is an unfortunate situation,” Ms. Owenby said. “Very unfortunate. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be corrected. Mr. Klondike has been gracious enough to offer the following: if whoever took the answer sheet goes quietly to his office at any point today and admits this terrible mistake, it will be resolved without punishment.”

  Mr. Klondike looked around the room as if trying to figure out right then and there who did it. “But if that doesn’t happen, and the student is later caught, there will be real consequences,” he said, with a scary gleam in his eye. “The perpetrator will be in serious trouble, and the punishment may include suspension, or even possible expulsion.”

  This time you could hear the gasp from the kids, loud a
nd clear. Mr. Klondike nodded slowly to no one in particular, then walked out of the classroom without another word. Ms. Owenby walked to the blackboard and picked up a piece of chalk, getting ready to start the lesson. “Well. Let’s put that behind us for now. I very much hope it is resolved quickly, so we can all move on.” She started to write a math problem on the board. “Who’s ready to get back to work?”

  Unlike most of Ms. Owenby’s questions, that was an easy one.

  The answer was no one.

  AT LUNCH, BAXTER, Daisy, Irwin, and I all sat down at our usual table and started eating. No one said a word. I think we were all still trying to absorb the news that someone in our grade was a thief and a cheater.

  The only person who was in a good mood was Daisy, who wasn’t in our math class. “Cheer up, you guys!” she said. “It’s not like one of you guys did it!”

  “Of course not,” I said. “It’s just the fact that someone would be so crazy is kind of hard to believe.”

  “Some people don’t know any better,” Daisy said. “Some people get scared, or they panic, and then the next thing you know they’re doing something they would never ordinarily do.”

  “And once it’s done, there’s no taking it back,” I added. “You’re kind of stuck.”

  “At least Mr. Klondike said he wouldn’t punish the kid if he turned himself in,” Irwin said. “That’s pretty nice of him. I didn’t realize he was actually capable of being nice.”

  “Neither did I,” I said.

  Daisy popped a cracker into her mouth. “Well, all I know is, I feel sorry for the person who did it,” she said. “They probably wish they’d never done it, and now the choice is to either pray you don’t get caught, or go down to the scariest room ever invented—Mr. Klondike’s office.”

  “The poor kid,” Irwin and I said at the same time. Then he said, “I sure wouldn’t want to be him right now.”

  “I wish I knew who it was,” I added. “I’d tell them to go to Mr. Klondike’s office for sure.”

  “Absolutely!” Daisy said.

  Irwin chomped on his eggplant sandwich (he had very weird taste in food). “You have to be pretty desperate to do something like that,” he said. “I mean, who would risk getting thrown out of school just to pass one stinking quiz?”

  “The only possible reason for doing something like that is if you were in danger of flunking the whole class,” I said. “That’s how desperate you’d have to be.”

  Irwin looked at me. I looked at him. We both looked at Daisy.

  Then all three of us looked at Baxter.

  I think we all realized at the same time that he hadn’t said anything the whole time we’d been sitting there. Not to mention the fact that Baxter was in danger of flunking the whole class. And just might be desperate and crazy enough to do something like this.

  Baxter, who was sitting there with one hand on his chin and the other hand trying to stab a noodle with his fork, looked up and saw the three of us staring at him.

  “What?”

  We all sat there, none of us sure what to say. Finally, Daisy said, “You’re being so quiet.”

  “Well, I don’t really have a whole lot to say,” Baxter mumbled. “You guys seem to have it all covered anyway.”

  “Who do you think stole the answer sheet?” Irwin asked. “Like, do you have any guesses or anything?”

  “No, I don’t have any guesses.” It was clear Baxter didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, he didn’t really want to talk about anything related to math, if he could help it. But there was just something a little off about the whole thing, and before I knew it, I blurted out the question on everyone’s mind.

  “You definitely didn’t have anything to do with it, right, Bax?”

  I thought maybe if I used his nickname—Bax—that he would take the question in the friendly, non-accusatory manner in which it was intended.

  He didn’t.

  “Are you kidding me right now?” he said, raising his voice. “Are you kidding me? Do you actually think I would do something so stupid, not to mention illegal?”

  “Of course not,” I stammered.

  “No way,” Irwin added.

  “That’s crazy,” Daisy joined in.

  “Although you did finish the quiz really fast,” Irwin added, because he couldn’t help himself.

  Baxter stood up so fast he almost knocked his chair over. “You know something? You guys have never really trusted me. I can tell. You still think I’m the dumb, mean bully I was when you first met me. That’s who I’ll always be to you, no matter what.” He picked up his tray. “Well, not anymore. I’m done with all this. And no—I DIDN’T TAKE THE FREAKIN’ ANSWER SHEET. I FINISHED THE QUIZ FAST BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW ANY OF THE ANSWERS. HAPPY NOW?”

  He said the last few sentences so loud that every head in the place turned in our direction. I saw Mr. Klondike’s son Kermit, who was three tables over, elbow one of his bully buddies in the ribs and say, “Losers.”

  As Baxter stormed away, Daisy, Irwin, and I sat there in silence. After a few seconds, Daisy sighed.

  “Well, there’s only one way to get Baxter to forgive us for thinking he might have stolen the answers,” she said.

  I looked at her. “What’s that?”

  Daisy flashed her determined Daisy face.

  “Find out who did.”

  AFTER MY AFTER-SCHOOL snack, I put Abby on the leash and we went across the street to Daisy’s house, to help Baxter with his math. Daisy and Irwin were already there, and we were all wearing our CrimeBiters sweatshirts. We were all set to go, except there was one thing missing: Baxter.

  We were all pretty certain he wasn’t going to show up: I think he’d rather fail that test and stay back than face the so-called friends who had betrayed him.

  “The answer-sheet mystery is definitely a solvable case,” I said, even though I had no idea how to solve it. We were sitting in Daisy’s backyard, with Abby snoozing under a tree. Daisy had suggested we all stay outside, so Abby and Purrkins wouldn’t have to run into each other. I agreed, although I remembered my conversation with Shep, and I was still determined to make Abby and Purrkins friends. How hard could it be?

  FACT: Trying to get a cat and a dog to be friends is very, very hard.

  “I agree,” Daisy said. “It’s totally solvable. We just need to do a little detective work.”

  “That’s our specialty,” I agreed.

  “I have an idea!” Irwin said. “Tomorrow, at recess, we can start a conversation about it. Like we’re trying to figure out who the thief is. Then we look around and see if anyone is listening to us, and acting nervous or suspicious in some way.”

  I was skeptical. “Wait, so you think someone is just going to hear us talking about it and say, ‘Oh, I’m the person you’re looking for?’”

  “No, silly,” said Daisy. “They would never admit it. But they might do something that indicates guilt.”

  Irwin snickered at me. “Don’t you know that from all the police shows you watch?” I immediately felt embarrassed, because he was right—I should have known.

  “I have another idea,” I said, trying to save face. “What if one of us pretends to admit it, and then we all look around to see who seems to be in a particularly good mood, and we’ll know that that’s the person that did it, because they’re so happy that someone else is confessing?”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” Irwin said.

  “No it’s not!” I said back.

  We both looked at Daisy.

  “It is pretty terrible,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said, “we’ll try Irwin’s idea, but it better work. We just need to figure out what Abby should do.”

  “What does Abby have to do with it?” Irwin asked. “We’re doing our detective work at school. Last I checked, dogs don’t go to school.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” I said, trying to think. “But later on, we might end up at the person’s house when we try to catch them. We’ll need Abby then.”
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br />   Irwin snorted. “That’s a stretch, but whatever.”

  “Purrkins can come too,” I added.

  Daisy scrunched up her nose. “Purrkins? Why?”

  “We may need extra help with this one.”

  Judging by the expressions on Daisy’s and Irwin’s faces, that was my second terrible idea in the last two minutes. I was on a roll.

  “Okay, fine, maybe that’s dumb,” I admitted. “I just want them to be friends, is that so bad? Shep said they just need to spend a little time together and they’ll be fine.”

  “You want me to go get Purrkins?” Daisy asked. “Try it now?”

  “Or we can bring Abby into your house,” I said. “Whichever’s better.”

  “I prefer to not watch this,” offered Irwin.

  “I’ll be right back,” Daisy said. She went to get the cat, leaving Irwin and me sitting there on her back porch.

  Irwin sat there for a second, fidgeting around, before saying, “Are we absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure that Baxter didn’t steal that answer sheet?”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious right now? He barely even took the quiz!”

  “I’m just saying!” Irwin’s eyes darted back and forth. “Maybe he stole it but then, like, lost it or something. We can’t be sure.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Baxter was super insulted that we even thought that for a second. And I don’t blame him.”

  “Okay,” mumbled Irwin, but he didn’t seem totally convinced.

  “Here we are!” sang Daisy, as she came outside. Just like the day before, she was holding Purrkins in her hand, but this time, the cat didn’t look nervous at all. This time, she looked tough—like, You’re in my house now.

  Abby took one look at her and scampered under my chair.

  “Abby?” I said. “Whatcha doing down there?” I peered down and saw her shaking like a leaf.

  Whoa.

  FACT: Trembling with fear is bad for a crime-fighting vampire dog’s reputation.

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Irwin crowed. “She’s totally scared of Purrkins!” Then, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time, he added, “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”