Finding Danny

by Linzi Glass

  “Bree,” he said, giving me a hug. “I was just telling Steve here how proud of you I am. This is wonderful!”

  “She’s the greatest, sir. Wish there were more kids like her.” Steve flashed me a white smile.

  “Well, is the Davies family adopting a new dog today, Bree?” my dad asked cautiously.

  I felt a lump in my throat, as if I had swallowed a marble.

  “No, Dad. We’re not. I’m waiting for Danny.”

  Steve and my dad gave each other a look I definitely understood. It was one of pity. Something I never wanted from anyone. Before I had a chance to say anything back, there was a commotion outside. Loud voices could be heard as a van backed up to the entrance to the shelter.

  One of the volunteers came running over to Steve. “The press is here!”

  “Go find Rayleen,” Steve instructed the volunteer, who scurried through the back of the shelter. I text messaged Lulu quickly and told her to come out front.

  Steve, my dad, and I went outside. The crowd had gathered around the cameraman, who was trying to pan a shot of the huge banner and then get close-ups of people leaving with their newly adopted pets. There was a group blocking the news van, so I couldn’t tell which channel had decided to cover our event. But when the cameraman zoomed in on the reporter who had just begun speaking, I didn’t have to wonder which channel it was anymore. Lulu and Rayleen reached me simultaneously. I stood there with one of them on each side, unable to breathe or move as I watched the perfectly groomed woman in the all-too-familiar cream suit.

  “This is Colleen Davies with Channel Five reporting from the downtown Vox Street Animal Shelter, where a most special adoption day is happening inside.”

  I felt my dad put his arm on me from behind. “She wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” he said into my ear.

  Rayleen looked over and gave me a wink.

  “It’s your mom!” Lulu said.

  The world moved in slow motion, as if time somehow knew that this was a moment so precious to me that I needed to hold on to it second by second. Word by word. Frame by frame.

  The newsmom held up a picture of Danny, the same one that we had on the flyers, and the cameraman zoomed in close on his face as my mom continued.

  “This event was inspired by a dog named Danny, who was recently lost in Santa Monica. He has yet to be found, but in his young owner’s search to find him, she discovered the world of animal shelters.” My mom held my gaze for a second. “That young owner just happens to be my very own, very special twelve-year-old daughter, Bree.” My mom’s voice wavered, but being the professional reporter that she was, she quickly pulled herself together and continued. “The Humane Society of the United States estimates that more than three million dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters in the United States every year. This young girl decided that she could make a difference and try to help save some of the LA shelter dogs. In an interview yesterday with the shelter’s New Hope coordinator, Steve Samuels, I learned that the goal today was for all red listed dogs—meaning dogs set to be euthanized on Monday—to be adopted today, and Steve just sent me a quick message that the last of those twenty-eight dogs has just been adopted.” The cameraman zoomed in close on the young couple leaving with the overweight basset hound.

  The growing crowd applauded.

  Rayleen and Lulu each put their arms around me.

  “This is way better than a spa day!” Lulu whispered.

  “Told you your mama loved you,” Rayleen said, her voice breaking on the word “mama.” I knew how much she missed hers.

  “While Danny might never be found, he certainly has helped to save others,” my mom said as she wrapped up.

  The cameraman zoomed in close again on Danny’s picture and gave my mom the thumbs-up with his free hand before lowering his camera.

  The newsmom just stood there, her mic in one hand and the picture of Danny in the other. She looked small and lost suddenly as she turned to look at me, her eyes filled with tears.

  “Go to her, Bree,” my dad whispered.

  I ran to her and felt her soft blouse crush against me. I held on to her, neither of us caring that the dirt would ruin her suit and she’d have to change for the next shot.

  “I love you.” She stroked my hair.

  “I love you back,” I said, and really, truly meant it.

  “I’ve lost you for too long,” she whispered against my hair. “And now that I’ve got you back, I’m never, ever going to let you go again. Okay?”

  “Okay, Mom.” I held on to her even tighter. “Okay.”

  Rayleen let out one of her famous loud whistles while Steve, Lulu, and my dad applauded.

  The newsmom did change out of her now dirt-stained suit, but into something she normally wouldn’t wear on camera. She put on one of our “Underdogs to Top Dogs” Tshirts and interviewed me and Rayleen and a whole bunch of people who were adopting dogs, as well as a few of the staff and volunteers. She had great footage of Steve from the interview she had secretly done with him already. Sneaky Steve was his new nickname, but I loved him for it.

  At four o’clock, when the adoption event was over, the newsmom did one last take, standing in front of now empty cages, their doors swung wide open. “This is Colleen Davies from Channel Five leaving you with one last thought. Please give these deserving animals a chance and adopt from your local shelters.”

  My mom had to leave with her crew, and my dad was taking Lulu home. Lulu had convinced her parents to let her bring home the biting Chihuahua, who she had already named Taz.

  “Let’s hope he likes horses,” she said as she hugged me good-bye.

  All of us who were left cleaned up, and then it was time to get Neptune and take him to his new home. Rayleen put a brand-new collar on him with a tag that had both mine and Martha’s phone numbers. She fastened a leather leash to his choke chain and, after saying our good-byes, we walked through the entrance to the outside.

  “Wait!” Rayleen stopped at the threshold. “Put your right paw out first.” She positioned Neptune’s right paw out the door. “Gotta start out on the right foot, big boy.” He looked up at her with a slightly bewildered look but did what she wanted.

  It was almost unbelievable to watch the transformation in Neptune the moment he was out of the shelter. His tail started wagging as soon as he breathed in fresh air. He sat looking over my shoulder and drooling on my neck all the way back to Santa Monica.

  I text messaged Ashton while we were driving. Great Day. All red listed dogs adopted plus eighteen more. Watch Channel Five news at six. My mom covered the event. Hope u feel better.

  I knew today was a day I would never forget, and it had been wonderful in almost every way. The shelter dogs had found new owners and lucky people now had loyal, loving pets. And my mom and I were on the way to being the way we always should have been.

  But there was a hole inside me that could not be filled. A member of our family was still absent.

  Danny.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Look, he’s smelling the roses!” Martha said as we all watched Neptune prance around the backyard. It had been love at first sight, with Neptune giving Martha big doggy kisses as she knelt down beside him and put her arms around his neck. It was like he had always belonged there.

  Once we had shown Neptune where his doggy bowls and bed were, we’d taken him outside. Rayleen had to stop Neptune from jumping on Martha since she was so small and he was so big, but she quickly corrected that problem with a spray bottle filled with water.

  “You spray him quickly in the face once, pretty soon he’ll just see the bottle and not jump,” Rayleen explained.

  “He is one gorgeous animal,” Martha marveled as Neptune stretched out on the patio in the sun. He had spent the past hour racing around the garden and catching the ball that we had bought for him. Martha had cooked a big pot of chicken, yams, and rice for him, and he had gobbled it down ravenously. Rayleen and I had brought him a big meat bone to che
w on, and Martha had walked to the Montana Avenue pet store and bought him expensive dog treats. Exhausted, happy, and full, he lay sleeping in the sun.

  “Tim would have loved him.” Martha sighed. “He always wanted a big dog, but I always said no. Now I have the very thing he always wanted.”

  “Don’t you fret about past regrets. That’s what my mama always said.” Rayleen patted her on the arm.

  “You’re right.” Martha nodded. “There’s a saying that goes, ‘Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.’”

  “The gift today is Neptune,” I said.

  Neptune yawned and looked up at us at the sound of his name. His amber eyes took us all in. It had been a group effort of three—Martha, Rayleen, and me—and now here he was, stretched out in a beautiful backyard, starting his peaceful new life.

  “The new man of the house.” Martha smiled, gazing at him in wonderment. “Lazy, but very handsome.”

  We all laughed.

  My cell phone rang just as we were heading indoors for some tea and sandwiches that Martha had made for us. It was my home number and I hoped my mom and dad weren’t angry because I had been at Martha’s much longer than I had told them.

  “Bree, come home now!” my mom yelled.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “No, you don’t understand.” She sounded like she was having a hard time catching her breath. “We got a call at the station. Bree, I think Danny’s been found!”

  “No, Mom. I get emails all the time. They just look—”

  “Bree! What’s Martha’s address again? Dad and I are getting in the car now. We’ve got to get to Sherman Oaks.”

  “Sherman Oaks? That’s miles from here!”

  “Bree, the address!”

  I told her the house number and hung up the phone. I felt numb. I wouldn’t allow myself to get my hopes up again like I had so many times in the past few weeks, from Martha’s call about Danny’s collar to chasing Clay down the alleyways believing it was him and clicking on picture after picture of dogs that weren’t Danny. I couldn’t let myself do it again.

  “What’s wrong, sweet pea?” Rayleen asked.

  I sat down on the couch in a daze.

  “You’re white as a sheet,” Martha said with concern.

  “My mom just called.” I could barely get the words out. “She says Danny’s been found.”

  Martha let out a hoot. “Well you should be jumping up and down for joy, young lady.”

  Rayleen sat down next to me and took my hand in hers.

  “Bree, look at me.” I turned and held her steady gaze. “I know you don’t trust that it’s really him, and I understand.” She squeezed my fingers tight. “But it is, sweet pea. I promise.”

  I heard my dad’s Range Rover honking outside and I jumped up quickly and raced out the door before even saying good-bye.

  “Call when you have him!” Rayleen yelled after me.

  I jumped into the backseat and my dad put the car into a screeching reverse.

  “What happened?” I asked, barely able to get the words past the tightness in my chest.

  As we raced along Sunset Boulevard toward the 405 freeway, my mom filled me in.

  “The station got a phone call right after the segment aired at six o’clock. A man called saying that after seeing the picture of Danny on the news, he was sure it was the injured dog he and his wife had found lying on the side of the road on Mulholland Drive a few weeks ago.”

  “Injured?” I said as a knot tightened in my stomach.

  “The station reached me at once and I called the man right back to get the whole story,” my mom said breathlessly.

  “Apparently he was hit by a car. Broken leg,” my dad chimed in quickly.

  “Oh, no!” I felt my stomach lurch as my dad sped down the freeway toward the Ventura Boulevard exit.

  “He must have run a long way. Dogs sometimes do that. They found him close to the entrance of your school, Bree,” my mom continued.

  I flashed back to Danny jumping out of the car when my mom picked me up from school.

  “Eight miles from home. That’s crazy,” I said softly.

  “Well, this kind man and his wife were driving to their home in Sherman Oaks along Mulholland Drive and saw this dog lying on the side of the road. He couldn’t walk, so they put him in their car and rushed him to their vet. They have two dogs of their own and knew what to do. Their vet scanned him but found no microchip, and he didn’t have a collar either.”

  “It came off in Santa Monica, by Martha’s house,” I said.

  “They posted Found Dog signs, but none that we would have seen.”

  “The vet had to reset his leg and has kept him confined in a cage at his facility,” my dad said.

  I thought of all the dogs I had seen in cages at the shelter, and how often I had imagined Danny stuck in a cage where I would never find him again.

  “George and his wife—those are the people who found him—decided that if they couldn’t locate the owners once his leg healed, they would turn him over to a rescue group.”

  “I still don’t believe it’s him. It’s not possible,” I said as we pulled up outside the Sherman Oaks Veterinary Group.

  My dad switched off the ignition and turned back to me.

  “Rayleen said he’d be back when the time was right. Remember?”

  I nodded.

  My dad smiled. “It’s time.”

  We were met in the vet’s waiting room by a balding, older man with soft brown eyes. His redheaded wife wore a sweater embossed with Pomeranians on it.

  “These are our dogs. I knitted it myself,” she said after my mom and dad introduced themselves to George and Verna, the couple who had found the dog—I refused to say Danny. I had been through too many disappointments already.

  “We’re so grateful,” my mom said. “Thank you.”

  As we sat in the vet’s lobby, I felt my heart pounding hard against my chest. The receptionist told us to wait and that Dr. Shapiro would be out in a minute.

  As my parents made small talk with Verna and George, a wave of emotions washed over me. It was as if all that I had been through since Danny had disappeared hit me at once like a tidal wave. Disbelief, sadness, hurt, anger, disappointment, fear, anticipation, exhaustion, and joy. Yes, joy for all the animals I had helped save. But there was still an emptiness inside me.

  “Please, please be Danny.” I closed my eyes and prayed as the gray-haired vet in the white lab coat came out to get us.

  It’s hard to explain those minutes when we followed Dr. Shapiro down the corridor that smelled like disinfectant and sat and waited, yet again, in an examining room. Dr. Shapiro said that the border collie was doing much better. He had come in very hungry and dehydrated, most likely from being on the road for a few days. Then getting hit by a car that never stopped to help him had just made his condition much worse.

  “But he’s a trouper. Great dog. Glad we’ve found the owners,” Dr. Shapiro said to us before closing the door to go and get him.

  George and Verna were waiting in the lobby, and my mom paced back and forth in the small room. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  “Be Danny, Danny, Danny” was the pulsing beat in my heart. The minutes of waiting for the vet to come back felt like an eternity.

  Dr. Shapiro finally opened the door with the dog by his side. “Here he is,” he announced.

  I looked into his eyes, then down his black and white shaggy coat to a leg that was bandaged all the way up. I watched a tail that wagged like it would never stop when he saw me. I fell on the floor and opened my arms wide as he hobbled over to me, his tail still wagging a million miles an hour. I kissed him over and over again in the fuzzy spot between his eyes.

  “Danny, it’s really you!” I cried into his soft fur.

  “Thank the heavens above!” My mother dropped beside me and wrapped her arms around us both.

&nb
sp; Danny barked with excitement and licked the tears from our faces over and over again, then cocked his head and gave me a look as if to say, “Hey, what took you so long?”

  “You didn’t exactly make it easy.” I laughed. “All your adventures have to include me from now on, Danny-O.” He put both paws around my neck and looked into my eyes as if to say, “Don’t worry. I’m done. There’s no place I’d rather be than home.”

  I smelled my dad’s spicy aftershave as he joined us, and we remained, clinging to one another and the dog that we loved, on the white linoleum floor.

  We were a family once again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Slow down, boy, he’s still healin’.” Rayleen cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered at Neptune, who was playing chase with Danny in our backyard. It had been a month since that memorable Saturday, and Dr. Shapiro had taken the bandages off just two weeks ago.

  It still seemed like a dream, bringing Danny home, watching him lie down in his doggy bed for the first time. My dad went out and bought him a big delicious dog bone as a welcome-home treat, and on Monday morning my mom, Danny, and I saw my dad off at the airport. I would miss him terribly.

  I relished every second of lying on the couch with Danny again, careful not to crush his leg as I watched TV and held him close.

  I slept better than I had since he was gone, with my feet pressed against his furry body as he curled up, like he always did, at the bottom of my bed.

  Lulu and Ashton had both been ecstatic when I text messaged them from the car that I had my dog back, with Danny resting his head in my lap as we drove home from the vet’s office.

  I had called Rayleen while my mom and dad said good-bye to Verna and George, and she was very quiet in a way I had never heard her before.

  “That’s great news, sweet pea. I’m happy for you,” she said before handing the phone to Martha, who told me she was going to make Danny his own special batch of chicken and yams and rice and that he and Neptune would be best friends. They were. The dogs played together at least three times a week, and since Danny couldn’t walk very far yet, I stopped by every afternoon to take Neptune to Ocean Avenue for a walk. He was a changed dog. Happy and confident and the light of Martha’s life.