Showoff

by Gordon Korman

  “You’re dreaming,” Ben said sourly. “I’ve seen the Global Kennel Society show on TV. They put those dogs under a microscope. They weigh them; they measure them; they examine their paws and coats and who knows what else; they shine lights into their eyes and ears. I couldn’t tell you what they’re looking for, but they’ve got to be pretty picky.”

  “Yeah, well, Luthor’s just as good as any of those showoffs. After we check a couple of dog-training books out of the library, he’s going to be invincible.” He gazed approvingly at the Doberman at the end of the leash. “I think Savannah might have been right about him all along. Have you ever seen a more cooperative animal? He’s like clay, ready to be molded by a sculptor’s hands into the perfect champion.”

  And there, at the intersection of Honeybee Street and Park Avenue, Luthor ground to a halt and refused to move another inch.

  “Come on, Luthor,” Griffin wheedled. “We’re going home.” He tugged on the leash, but the big dog didn’t budge. The Doberman sat, still as a boulder on the sidewalk, eyes obstinately fixed up Honeybee Street.

  “Uh-oh.” Light dawned on Ben. “To him that is home. Savannah’s house is that way.”

  Griffin hesitated. To Luthor’s canine mind, the night at the pound was nothing more than some kind of misunderstanding. Why else had Griffin and Ben come to secure his release? Problem solved, he was back on the street, and it was time to go home.

  But Savannah and her family were off limits until further notice.

  How are we ever going to explain that to Luthor?

  The answer came from Savannah herself. Animals were treated exactly the same as humans in the Drysdale home — although, in Griffin’s opinion, they were treated a whole lot better. Luthor was used to being spoken to like a person.

  He may not understand all the words, Savannah was fond of saying, but he’s an intelligent, sweet, sensitive creature who is more than capable of picking up the meaning.

  “Okay, Luthor, it’s like this —” Griffin began, feeling foolish talking to a dog. He shrugged off a bewildered look from Ben and forged on. “You’re probably all amped to go see Savannah and Cleo and the pack rat and that albino chameleon you like. And you will — soon. But in the meantime, we’ve hooked you up with a new place. It’s just temporary. You know what I mean?”

  If a dog could frown, Luthor was frowning.

  “I don’t think he gets it” was Ben’s opinion.

  Griffin opted for a simpler message. “Savannah’s house — bad. Griffin’s garage — good. Now let’s go.”

  Luthor remained frozen in his tracks. Griffin drew gently on the leash, then a little harder. There was zero response from Luthor, who now appeared to be carved from stone.

  “Okay, Ben. You pull, and I’ll push from behind.”

  Ben backed off a couple of steps. “No way! He’ll bite my head off! “

  Griffin held out the leash. “Fine. I’ll pull and you push.”

  “He’ll kill you and then turn on me!”

  Griffin was growing impatient. “What do you suggest we do, then? Stand in the middle of the road forever while the Drysdales get sued?”

  Ben was bitter. “You promised no plans, and this one’s turning into the great grandfather of them all. A million-dollar baseball card is nothing compared to entering this monster in a dog show. We can’t even get him to walk down the street!”

  “Well, you’re the big pet owner,” Griffin insisted. “Ferret Face always does what you tell him. What’s your secret?”

  Ben shrugged. “I bribe him. I carry pepperoni slices wherever I go. My mom goes ape over the grease stains.”

  Ferret Face poked his head out of Ben’s collar and looked around hopefully.

  “That’s it!” Griffin exclaimed. “How much money have you got?”

  They pooled their resources, and Ben was sent to the Cedarville McDonald’s for a hamburger.

  He returned in short order. “They only have breakfast. I got him an Egg McMuffin.”

  Luthor’s nose twitched.

  “Hungry?” Griffin snatched the bag from Ben and held it high in the air. “Well, right this way, sir. Breakfast is being served in my garage.”

  At the Bing house, Griffin punched the code on the keypad, and the garage door rattled open to reveal the organized chaos of his father’s workspace. The vast tool bench and metal shop stretched across the rear. Filing cabinets bulged with schematic drawings, patent applications, and other business documents. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings singing the praises of Mr. Bing’s creations — the SmartPickTM, the Rollo-BushelTM, and the Vole-B-GoneTM. By the wall stood the inventor’s latest project, the Orchard Spritz-o-matic. It had the appearance of a robotic garbage can, about three feet high with a rounded top and caterpillar treads, similar to those on a bulldozer. Its purpose was to wander through an orchard, bouncing off trees without damaging them, spraying fertilizer or insecticide from a ring of rotating nozzles on its “head.”

  “Is that your dad’s new thingamajig?” asked Ben. “It looks like R2-D2.”

  “I wish it was,” Griffin replied morosely. “At least then it would work. Dad’s ready to give up on it.”

  He kicked a metal pail under a spigot and began to fill it with water. Luthor let out an irritated bark and snapped at the bag Griffin still held high. “Cool your jets, Ronald McDonald. You’ll need something to wash that down with. Bon appétit.”

  He turned off the tap and tossed the breakfast bag toward the back of the workshop. It never hit the ground. Luthor was on it in an instant, snapping it out of the air and worrying the paper wrapper to get at the sandwich. Griffin and Ben hightailed it out of the garage and hit the button to close the door.

  They barely made it. A split second after the weather stripping touched the driveway, a colossal crash rocked the neighborhood. Both boys stood frozen, fully expecting to see a dog-shaped hole in the segmented door and Luthor flying out at them. Luckily, the barrier held.

  “Hang in there, dude,” Griffin called. “We’ll be back with some dog food.”

  Ben was pale and shaken. “What now?”

  “We’re late for swimming. And while we’re at the community center, we’ll hit the library for some dog-training books.”

  Another clang had the metal vibrating.

  “We’re going to need them,” Ben prophesied.

  6

  “Welcome to the delightful world of showing purebred dogs for fun and profit. Right now, your adorable little puppy is as frisky as a March hare, a bundle of unbridled playfulness and love….”

  “No,” Ben interrupted. “Right now my adorable little puppy is trying to blast through a steel door so he can run amok and flatten Cedarville.”

  The two were on their way back to the Bing house. Ben struggled under a ten-pound bag of Alpo while Griffin read aloud from Puppy Today, Champion Tomorrow.

  “If he was still doing that, we’d hear it by now,” Griffin reasoned as they started up the driveway. He returned his attention to the book.

  “Don’t despair. Your dog may seem wild and unruly at the moment, but with the training and nurture you will learn from these pages …”

  “You, too, can be eaten alive by a purebred Doberman,” Ben finished in a nervous tone.

  Griffin paused before the garage door. “He’s totally calm. Not even Luthor can stay nuts forever.” He punched in the code on the keypad and the opening mechanism clattered to life.

  Ben tried to make himself small behind the food bag.

  The metal door rose and folded out of view, revealing a scene straight from a war movie. Mr. Bing’s workshop was utterly trashed. Tools were strewn from the front of the space to the back, and even the pictures and clippings from the walls had been torn down. The file cabinets lay on their sides, their contents spilled out and scattered, some of them chewed. The original SmartPick was keeled over, its long pole bent. The Rollo-Bushel had been upended, crushing the cage of the Vole-B-Gone.

  Griff
in’s breath caught in his throat. Dad wasn’t going to be happy about the damage to his first three prototypes, but at least those inventions were completed and in production. He looked around desperately. Where was the Spritz-o-matic? It wasn’t finished; it wasn’t patented. Dad hadn’t even gotten it to work yet!

  Then he saw it. It looked as if Luthor had dribbled it like a basketball and slam-dunked it on the cement floor. The shell was dented and split open. The rounded top was off. Wires spilled out like multicolored capellini. The caterpillar treads had been torn off and dismantled, scattered all around the garage.

  Luthor lay on a crumpled tarp, fast asleep, exhausted from his activities and the stress of the past twelve hours.

  “I’m dead,” Griffin whispered in shock. “I promised my dad I wouldn’t touch his stuff.”

  “You didn’t,” Ben offered. “Luthor did.”

  “Same difference,” Griffin breathed. “I mean, he might not kill me for the mess if I promise to cut the grass for the next fifty years. But the Spritz-o-matic — that’s not done yet! He’s going to have to throw it away and start over! Six months of work down the toilet, thanks to this useless mutt!”

  Luthor rolled over on the tarp and began to snore.

  Ben looked worried. “You’re not thinking of taking him back to the dog pound, are you?”

  “What do you care?” Griffin retorted savagely. “You were against this from the beginning. He scares you witless.”

  Ben flushed. “Yeah, but asleep he looks kind of harmless.”

  Griffin surveyed the wreckage. “It’s when he wakes up that the trouble starts. I’m so dead.”

  “You know,” Ben mused, “nothing’s missing. Everything’s still in the garage. Maybe your dad’s thingy can be fixed.”

  Griffin reached over and tapped the guts of his father’s latest invention. A tuft of tiny wires came loose and fell into his palm. “Forget it. Albert Einstein couldn’t put this thing back together again.”

  As if in confirmation, the ring of rotating spigots fell off the robot body and toppled to the floor with a clang. The noise woke Luthor, who was on his feet and out the open door in one fluid motion.

  Griffin and Ben gave frantic chase, but by the time they were halfway down the block, the Doberman was around the corner and out of sight.

  “We lost him!” wailed Ben.

  Griffin slowed his pace. “Don’t worry. It’s not like we don’t know where he’s going.”

  Jogging now, the two loped through their neighborhood, past Ben’s house and Cedarville Middle School, turning left onto Honeybee Street. By the time they reached the Drysdale home, both were sweat-drenched in the heat. But the sight that greeted them on Savannah’s porch erased their exhaustion in a heartbeat.

  Luthor had Melissa Dukakis pinned up against the storm door, his huge front paws pressing her shoulders into the glass. Her fearful eyes stared at the dog through the curtain of hair that usually shielded her face from the world.

  “Luthor!” Griffin ordered in an authoritative tone he’d heard Savannah use. “Sit!”

  The Doberman looked over his shoulder at them and growled menacingly. The boys froze on the front walk. Melissa moaned in terror.

  “Don’t panic,” Griffin advised. “He doesn’t want to hurt you. He thinks he’s going home. As soon as he sees Savannah, he should be okay.”

  “But she’s not here,” Melissa quavered. “The whole family left this morning. They had to get Savannah out of town.”

  Ben was bewildered. “Why?”

  “She was too depressed. Everything around here reminds her of Luthor.”

  Ben nodded nervously. “Pretty much everything in Cedarville has his teeth-marks on it.”

  “When are they coming back?” asked Griffin.

  Melissa’s stringy hair rustled in Luthor’s hot breath. “Probably not till August. They’re staying at some lake house their aunt owns. Mr. Drysdale brought his laptop so he can work from there. They took Cleopatra and the cats and left me the key to feed the rabbits, hamsters, turtles, mice, pack rat, and chameleon.”

  “The key?” Ben echoed. “What are you waiting for? Open the door, and when he runs inside, slam it real fast before he has a chance to figure out there’s no Savannah.”

  Griffin glared at him. “Are you nuts? What if he lays waste to the place, like he did to my dad’s workshop?”

  “Better to trash a house than the three of us,” Ben returned.

  The impasse was broken by Luthor himself. The big Doberman removed a paw from Melissa, reached over, and rang the doorbell.

  “She’s not here, Luthor,” Griffin said gently.

  Luthor dropped down on all fours, releasing Melissa, who rushed over to join Griffin and Ben. The big dog stood patiently for a while, then began to pace the porch.

  Griffin tried again. “Nobody’s home, buddy. Sorry.”

  Luthor rang again, this time with his nose, and sat down to wait, whimpering a little.

  Griffin pointed to the driveway. “The car’s gone, too. See?”

  “You realize you’re talking to a dog, right?” Melissa asked.

  “He’s pretty smart,” Griffin insisted. “Watch him — he’s looking in the windows, checking the driveway. He’s putting it all together. He’ll figure it out.”

  And Luthor did. His ears drooped. His short tail lost all motion. His head went down and his belly dropped with it.

  “You know,” Melissa commented, “I feel really bad for him. When I first heard Savannah had to give him up, I was almost glad that he wasn’t going to be around anymore. But what’s he doing here? I thought he was at the dog pound.”

  “We sprung him,” Ben admitted. “There’s a plan involved.”

  The boys explained their strategy of turning Luthor into a prizewinning show dog in order to raise the money to cover the Drysdales’ lawsuit. Melissa’s eyes widened behind the curtain of hair, but she did not laugh in their faces. She was a loner who preferred the company of her computers and electronics to interaction with real people. If it hadn’t been for Griffin’s scheming, the brilliant girl might never have made a single friend. She had total faith in The Man With The Plan.

  Ben went so far as to pat Luthor’s sagging head. “Sorry, big guy. Looks like you’re stuck with us.”

  Melissa’s eyes fell on the tuft of wiring still clutched in Griffin’s hand. “Where’d you get the pattern guidance circuitry?”

  Griffin goggled. “You know what this is?”

  “Well, not exactly. But it looks like part of the electronics that would operate a medium-sized robot.”

  Hope began to stir in Griffin’s heart. “If I show you where it came from, do you think you could fix it?”

  “I can try,” Melissa offered. “What is it?”

  “If my dad sees it,” Griffin replied with a heavy sigh, “it’s the end of the world.”

  7

  * * *

  OPERATION DOGGIE REHAB

  GOAL: For Luthor to WIN the Global Kennel Society extravaganza in New York City.

  Step 1: TRAIN Luthor to be just like the dogs in Puppy Today, Champion Tomorrow.

  Step 2: WIPE UP THE COMPETITION at a smaller show as a warm-up.

  Step 3: Win BEST IN SHOW at Global; give PRIZE and ENDORSEMENT MONEY to Drysdales to pay off LAWSUIT.

  Step 4: RETURN Luthor to Savannah.

  Step 5: FIX UP workshop in time for Dad’s return.

  * * *

  While Melissa got down to business trying to restore the internal wiring of the broken Spritz-o-matic, Luthor’s official career as a show dog began in nearby Cedarville Park.

  It was a familiar place for the dog, because Savannah’s house was right next door. She had taken him there almost daily for exercise and to visit the duck pond and a loon, who — along with Ferret Face — had been freed from All Aboard Animals, a badly run floating zoo.

  “Okay,” said Griffin, reading from Puppy Today, Champion Tomorrow. “The first thing we have to teach him
is how to stack.”

  Ben was bewildered. “If you’re going to stack dogs, don’t you need more than one?”

  “It doesn’t mean stacking them on top of each other,” Griffin said impatiently. “It’s the way they have to stand to be examined and judged. If your position isn’t exactly right, then your legs won’t line up, or your butt will drag or be too high, or your elbow will stick out, and the judge will think you’re not perfect.”

  “No judge is going to have to look at this dog’s butt to figure out he isn’t perfect. The guy’s going to notice when Luthor eats the nearest pug for a pre-show snack.”

  “That’s why you do the training,” Griffin lectured. “A dog is only wild because you haven’t shown him the proper way to behave. It says so right here.”

  A long, warbling cry came from the loon in the duck pond. Recognizing the call of an old friend, Luthor took off like a shot, galloping across the park. Long legs flailing, he hurled himself into the water with joyous abandon, drenching a woman and her toddler who were trying to feed the ducks. The flock scattered, squawking in alarm, and even the loon tried to retreat into the safety of his ruff of neck feathers.

  Griffin and Ben rushed over to retrieve their pupil.

  “Luthor, come back here!” ordered Griffin, and was genuinely amazed when the dog obeyed. “You see?” he said to Ben. “We’re making progress.”

  Luthor stepped out of the pond and gave himself a good shake, spraying them from head to toe. Inside Ben’s shirt, Ferret Face clucked in annoyance. He didn’t like to get wet.

  “Here’s the deal,” Griffin addressed the dog. “You have to stand with your front legs dropping straight down from your shoulders and your back legs set so that the hocks are at a right angle to the ground. No, too wide —” He reached under the Doberman to reposition the hind feet.