Vilonia Beebe Takes Charge

by Kristin L. Gray

  Wednesday, Max day six, was an unofficial softball practice day as most of the team had left for vacation. I biked to the field and ran through a series of windmill pitching drills to nail mechanics. Coach and I worked on wrist snaps, half circles, full circles, and exploding off the mound. My arm was tuckered out, but a friendly game of pickup had started amongst my teammates, a couple of older girls, and Ransom and Rory’s team. I couldn’t shake those Willoughbys for nothing, but I’d never turned a boys-versus-girls game down. It’s unconstitutional. Spoiler: We lost, but I managed to strike out Ransom. I knew Rory wouldn’t let him forget it either.

  That afternoon, I fed Max and gave him a tour of my backyard. I might have played Chopsticks for him a dozen times on the piano. AC was, big surprise, at dance. A postcard came in the mail from my teammate Phoebe with a photograph of the ocean lapping a sandy beach sprinkled with colorful umbrellas. I wondered if my family would ever go on vacation again. Oh, I stopped by Best Friends, but a sign on the door said CLOSED. Weird.

  Thursday, Max day seven, it rained the entire day. Max and I had a Harry Potter movie marathon. AC was going to join us, but Neely said her dance instructor took her shopping and out for ice cream. I secretly hoped it was freezer burned.

  By Friday, I was going a little loco. Daddy took Leon fishing to get his mind off next week’s track tryouts, and Mama made us both PBJs for lunch and then went back to bed. Plus there was still no word on the puppies.

  After deleting my and Miss Bettina’s last chain of work e-mails, I sighed. The responsible thing would be to give Nana’s obituary another go. Nana couldn’t stand tardiness, and she’d be madder than a hornet to know we hadn’t run hers yet. Most obituaries posted within a couple of days of the deceased’s passing. Not forty-something days. And if I didn’t hurry, it’d soon be fifty-something. I stretched my arms out the way Coach taught me, cracked my knuckles, and began:

  Lola Mae Dorothy, 68, beloved mother and nana, went to her eternal home on Friday, March 4. Born to Forrest and Alice Susan Copeland on

  My fingers stopped their typing, and my eyes blurred. Forget it, I sniffled. It still stung and felt all raw, like when you fall and skin your palms and have to pluck out itty bits of gravel for days to come.

  Poodles. At least I’d tried. Which was more than Mama had done. Maybe it’d be easier if we wrote it together.

  I shut Mama’s laptop and slid off the bed. Sweeping my hair into an easy ponytail, I looked into the mirror and froze. All this being responsible had got to me. Bad.

  “Max, my freckles are gone!” I moved toward the glass and poked at my face. A steady lack of UV rays had wiped my forehead, my cheeks, even my small nose, which somehow usually hosted a galaxy of freckles, clean. “Max, imagine if you woke up one day with no scales. You’d feel naked.” And I did. Freckles had been my trademark. My body was experiencing a Vitamin D crisis. I needed sun.

  I carried Mama’s laptop downstairs and peeked in on her. Still snoozing. I clicked the door shut and set her computer on the coffee table. And because I didn’t want to leave Max all alone in my room, I moved him downstairs too. He was used to being around people at the library, and he looked right at home on the piano, next to a stack of magazines.

  Sigh. “See you, Max.” I tromped across the yard and knocked on the Nutters’ door.

  “Hey,” AC answered. She had on striped leggings, a skirt, and a new glittery shirt that said “Just Dance.” Her hair was even piled on top of her head in one of those messy buns. I’d look like a sequin-dipped Q-tip if I tried that stunt.

  “Hey back.” I tugged at my shrunken baseball tee.

  Her eyebrows shot up. “So. How’s your dog research coming?”

  “Slow. Wanna ride bikes or something? That is, if you don’t have dance.”

  A smile spread across her face. “Danced this morning. Let me ask Neely.”

  Neely/Mrs. Nutter/Ava Claire’s mom worked as a certified nail stylist at the Posh Palace, Howard County’s premier (and only) beauty salon. It was safe to say that AC had, hands down, the coolest nails at Howard County Elementary.

  AC returned with two green apples. “Hungry?”

  “Nah.”

  She handed me one anyway. “Neely insisted.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I took a bite, secretly thankful for the fresh fruit. It crunched sweet and crisp.

  We sat on her front steps and ate until all we had left were cores and sticky fingers.

  “Heard from the general?”

  AC sighed. “Neely did. The usual. Sends his love. Can’t wait to be home.”

  I nodded, silent.

  “Hey, I want to see Max. How’s he doing?”

  “Fine.” I took one last bite.

  “What’d your parents say?”

  “Dad’s cool with it. Mama hasn’t said much. To be honest, I’m not sure she’s even seen him.”

  It was AC’s turn to grow silent. She plucked a seed from between her teeth and tossed it onto the grass. “See how far you can throw,” she said. “I’ll go first.”

  She chucked her apple core across the yard.

  I gripped mine in my left hand and threw with all I had. “Softball, AC. It pays to play.”

  I stood up and took off in a dead run, yelling over my shoulder. “Last one in’s a rotten egg!”

  We raced from her driveway to mine, laughing the whole way.

  “No fair! I’m wearing fancy shoes.” AC sprinted up behind me, out of breath and holding a silver sandal in each hand.

  “You have fancy shoes on every day.” I laughed. Even her sneakers were covered in rhinestones.

  “True.” Her brown eyes sparkled underneath her perfectly trimmed bangs. “Hey, look who’s home.” She jerked her thumb toward Daddy’s shop.

  “Yeah. Bet they’re cleaning. Let’s see what they caught.”

  AC slipped into her shoes, and we wound our way down the gravel drive to Daddy’s shop, a detached single-car garage big enough to house a fishing boat.

  “If it isn’t Frog and Toad.” Dad tipped his fishing cap in a mock salute.

  “Hi, Mr. B.” AC waved. “Nice hat.” She held her nose at the smell of fish, sweat, and bait.

  I stood on my tiptoes and peered inside the boat’s live well. “How many did you catch?”

  “Fourteen. Two brim. Twelve striped bass.” Dad reached into the well and pulled out a five-pound bass by its mouth.

  “And Leon?” I asked, guessing he had hit the shower.

  “Caught half.”

  I could do as well if not better, but I didn’t say a word.

  “I’m going in to get a drink of water now,” AC piped up. She looked queasy.

  I nodded, watching Daddy’s tanned arms hoist the cooler filled with ice and fish. He set it on the side of the boat, hopped out, and then carried the chest to his outdoor sink. AC hadn’t smelled anything yet. Cleaning fish was messy, stinky work, but I enjoyed sitting on the rusted-out metal stool next to Daddy as he slipped his blade behind the gills and slid it down the fish’s sides, removing the bones. Sometimes, he’d point the tip of his knife at the fish’s vital organs, naming each one—heart, liver, stomach. Every once in a while, if it was a she, eggs.

  “Run in with your friend. You can help clean ’em next time.” Dad slapped the first fish on the homemade butcher-block table, its shiny belly toward him, its slimy tail pointing left. The sign of a left-handed fisherman.

  Leon’s a righty. And Mama and Nana. But Daddy and I, we are lefties through and through.

  I pushed the door open into the kitchen. Ava Claire, seated at the dining table with a tall glass of ice water, stopped talking midsentence. Maybe Mama was up.

  Wrong.

  Miss Bettina was. I watched in horror as she unwrapped the last of Mama’s Little Debbie snack cakes. I knew it was the last, because I kept inventory. What I didn’t know was how she’d gotten in here, and more important, why. I’d sent the obituary. I knew I had.

  “Vilonia.” She said my n
ame like a teacher asking to see me after class. “I was hoping to find you.” She bit into Mama’s cake. A chocolate crumb fell onto the table.

  “Find me?” I pointed to myself and looked at AC. I knew from her sudden wide eyes and nail chewing—AC never bit her nails—that she had no clue what this meeting was about. That made two of us.

  “Yes.” Miss Bettina swallowed. She drummed her fat fingers across a manila envelope on the table and pressed her full lips into a tight line. She wasn’t one to choose her words. Great Danes. This could only mean one thing.

  She’d figured out my cover. And after all the work of trying to write in Mama’s best, most professional obituary voice . . . I gripped the back of the empty chair. I wouldn’t cry. I would not.

  Miss Bettina glanced at AC, then back to me. “The puppies,” she said.

  I released my death grip on the chair. “Yes?” I asked, scooting the chair out and sinking into its seat.

  “The puppies have arrived.”

  Chapter Eight

  What puppies?” AC asked.

  “Mrs. Tooley’s.” I reached over and took a sip of her ice water. We were long past the fear of catching each other’s germs.

  “My sources tell me they were born three days ago.” Another bite of cake.

  “What? Three whole days?”

  “I’m sorry, Vilonia. I’ve told you everything I know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to run by work before my ballroom dancing class. It’s rumba night.” Miss Bettina crumpled the cake wrapper and stood. Her knees popped, and she mumbled something about old age. Age schmage. There was no excuse for her not knowing the facts. She ran a newspaper, for schnauzer’s sake. It was her job to report noteworthy information.

  “But every minute counts!” I blurted. “Someone else could swoop in and adopt one before me.”

  “Did your parents cave?” AC grabbed my arm and squealed. “You should have said something. Are you seriously getting a puppy?”

  “Shhh.” I shook off her arm and stood. AC drew back. I’d hurt her feelings, but I had no time to explain. The puppies were alive and available. “Miss Bettina, exactly how many people have you told about this?”

  Miss Bettina tucked the envelope under her arm. “The puppies?” she asked, all innocent. “Oh, I don’t know. I see so many people with my job . . . It’s impossible to know, really.” She waved her hand in the air to show just how fuzzy the numbers were. Ava Claire snorted.

  Miss Bettina pushed her thick frames up the bridge of her nose to answer her buzzing phone. Unbelievable. It was probably someone else wanting insider puppy information. My jaw clenched.

  Ava Claire carried her glass to the sink and dumped the water out.

  “AC, I’m sorry. I’ll explain later, okay?”

  “Thanks for the water,” she said, cool as ice. “Good-bye, Miss B.”

  “Bye, hon.” Miss Bettina paused her conversation. “Thanks for showing me in.” So that’s how she got inside.

  The door shut, and I dropped my head. It’s bad enough I lost my nana, now I’m losing my mama, quite possibly my maybe dog, and my best friend, too.

  Miss Bettina ended her call.

  “The paper needs me . . . would you see your mama gets this? It’s an out-of-towner.” Miss Bettina passed me the slender manila packet before she bulldozed her way across the living room to the front door.

  “Sure.” I trailed her slowly, turning over the envelope as I walked. One name was scrawled across the front in red ink. Janet.

  Halfway across the room, Miss Bettina stopped and frowned. “Vilonia. This goldfish has the fungus.”

  “What?” My heart stopped cold. I dropped the envelope onto the sofa and followed her pointer finger.

  “See?” she said, leaning over the glass bowl. “Fungus.”

  “I don’t—Max? Max! ” I ran to his fishbowl sitting on top of my piano and peered inside. Sure enough, Max had rolled onto his side, his top fin white-coated and flailing. He wasn’t floating, but he wasn’t swimming. He stared straight ahead.

  That’s fish for “Help!”

  I didn’t know fish could even catch fungi. Some fisherman’s daughter I was.

  “Miss Bettina, I’m terribly sorry, but you’ll have to come back another time.” I grabbed the strap of her workbag and half dragged her to the door. She stepped outside. I waved good-bye. Click. My fingers flicked the dead bolt.

  I zipped back and grabbed Max, fishbowl and all. With a backward glance to make sure Mama’s door was still closed, I ran out the side door. There was no time to leave a note. This was a matter of life or death.

  I set Max in my bike’s handlebar basket and sped off. Rounding the corner, I met a rock. Water sloshed out of the fishbowl, but I pressed on. Nothing would happen to Mr. Reyes’s fish. No, siree. Not on my watch.

  “Hang on, Max. We’re almost there.”

  Turning into the Best Friends Animal Clinic lot, I took the wheelchair access ramp up the walk and squealed to a stop right outside the door.

  “Make way,” I said to a lady exiting the clinic with a mini pinscher. “I’ve got a fish-mergency coming through!”

  Chapter Nine

  Miss Sogbottom hung up the phone. “Not another runaway hen.”

  “No, Miss Sogbottom. This one’s far worse.” I plopped Max’s fishbowl on the counter. The water splashed inside. I cupped my hand around my mouth and whispered, “It’s an attack of fungi.” I glanced over at Max before adding, “He’s really bad off. Do you think the doc can help?”

  Miss Sogbottom looked at me and blew a giant bubble from her wad of gum. I watched, mesmerized, as the elastic pink bubble eclipsed first her mouth, then her nose, before finally stopping underneath her purple-lined eyes. I opened my mouth to inquire again about Max, but Miss Sogbottom reached up first and poked one of her long fake fingernails into the balloon of gum. The bubble burst all over her nose. Under different circumstances, I would have laughed. But this fishy situation meant life or death, a tank or a toilet. I think Miss Sogbottom sensed my urgency, because she peeled the gum off her face and dropped it into her mouth with a shrug. “Let’s ask.”

  The receptionist padded down the hall in her scrubs and plastic clogs and stopped midway to make sure I was coming. I picked up Max and followed her into exam room number two.

  “Dr. Kieklack will be in shortly.”

  “Thank you,” I said, setting Max’s bowl on the exam table. “Before you go, can you tell me about the puppies that were born a few days ago?”

  “Puppies?” She tilted her chin.

  “I heard Mrs. Tooley’s dog had puppies.”

  Miss Sogbottom frowned. “Oh, right. So sad.”

  I sucked in a breath and let it out. “You mean about Mrs. Tooley?”

  “Well, yes. But Mr. Tooley doesn’t want the puppies now that his wife’s gone, so we must place them, find them homes, as soon as they’ve weaned.”

  “So they’re okay? They’re alive?” I clasped my hands together while my heart performed somersaults inside my chest. “I heard they were premature.”

  She squinted at me through her bedazzled glasses. “No, they were term.”

  Good old Miss Bettina, I thought. She would milk anything for a good story.

  “But one is smaller than the rest. Mom won’t have anything to do with him.” Miss Sogbottom shook her head. “He’s—” She glanced into the hall, like maybe she had better things to do than gossip about new pups.

  “He’s . . . ,” I prompted, placing my hands over the top of Max’s bowl so he couldn’t hear.

  “He’s pretty sick,” she continued. “Dr. Kieklack took him home overnight to feed him and keep a close eye on him.” The front door chimed. “Foster care is coming later today. Sometime before closing.”

  Jack Russells. This did not sound good. I wanted to cry right then and there, but I had to stay strong . . . for Max, of course.

  “May I see him?”

  A voice snapped from near the front desk. “Hello
? Does anyone work here?”

  Miss Sogbottom sighed and fiddled with a suddenly annoying earring. It was then I realized her earrings were shaped like tiny paw prints. I knew I liked her. “See me before you go, and good luck with the fish.” She turned on her heel and left with her ponytail swinging behind her.

  I leaned over and peered into the water. Max didn’t look too good. White cotton-looking fluffs stuck to his fins and body. If Dr. Kieklack could help those pups, he could help Max, too.

  “Hang in there, Max,” I whispered. “Help is on the way.”

  Help, a.k.a. Dr. Kieklack, appeared. He wore his usual—cowboy boots, a white lab coat with Best Friends Animal Clinic stitched over the chest pocket, and a bow tie. Today’s had navy polka dots. I had a lot of respect for Dr. Kieklack. Not only did he mix boots with a bowtie, he knew everything there was to know about animals, from what to give a box turtle with indigestion to helping a Jersey cow calve.

  “Hello, Vilonia. Who do you have with you today?”

  “This is Max.” I stepped aside to give Dr. Kieklack a better look. “He’s the library—I mean, he’s my pet goldfish.” Dr. Kieklack arched an eyebrow. “I won him last week,” I added real fast, “and now he’s growing white fluff.” I pressed my lips together. I hated lying about Max, but Howard County wasn’t some bustling metropolis. Everyone knew everybody and word traveled fast. I couldn’t risk Mr. Reyes hearing his fish was at the vet.

  Dr. Kieklack bent over the fishbowl like one of those bendy straws and nodded. “I see.”

  “Miss Bettina said he’d caught fungus.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts. “I didn’t know fish could catch that.”

  Dr. Kieklack smiled and straightened. “Unfortunately, they can. Especially if they have a fresh wound. Sometimes they can scrape themselves on decorative objects, such as this shell, or even pick up a parasite. But don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s difficult to see an injury until it gets infected. That’s why careful maintenance is important.”