Mud-Puddle Poodle

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “OK,” I said. I’m not really a “park” person. Danny loves the park that’s near us, but he’s a ridiculous sports guy, so he likes having all that space to run around and hit baseballs and practice soccer and whatever. When I go to the park, I’m usually like, OK, now what? I don’t want to run around and I’m always worried about getting grass stains on my clothes.

  But if it meant tiring Buttons out so she’d be a good dog, I was willing to try it.

  It turned out the only brother who was free after school on Thursday was Miguel, and boy did he grumble about it. “I don’t want to be seen with that furball,” “Moooooom, why do I always have to babysit,” “This is so totally embarrassing,” and on and on and on.

  But Danny had soccer practice and Carlos had a Mathletes meeting and Oliver was taking a practice SAT test, so it had to be Miguel. Which was his own fault anyway, since he doesn’t ever do anything except fix his hair and wonder why girls don’t talk to him.

  He slouched around grumbling while I clipped Buttons’ cute pink leash onto her collar.

  “I could go by myself,” I said. “It’s only a few blocks.”

  “Yeah, right,” Miguel said. “I’d be grounded for the next century if I let you go by yourself. But listen, if we see anyone from my class there, you don’t know me, OK? And that’s definitely not my dog.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine by me!”

  I put some plastic bags and a bottle of water and a little plastic bowl in my pink purse, and I changed into my oldest jeans, so that I’d be ready if Buttons decided to climb on me with muddy paws again. Then we started off for the park.

  Buttons loved her leash. She kept jumping on it and trying to pin it down with her paws and getting it tangled around her legs. She loved it so much it took her almost two whole blocks to realize that she was outside. Then she had to stop and sniff every blade of grass. A couple of times she tried to stop and roll in the dirt, but I tugged her along so she wouldn’t do that.

  Miguel walked a few steps ahead of us and pretended we weren’t there. Whenever we stopped, he would stop, too, looking around all “la la, just standing here on a street corner, whatever.” He pulled out his comb and ran it through his hair a few times, smoothing out the flyaway bits. I don’t even remember when Miguel became such a dork. He tried so hard to seem like a macho tough stud for the girls, but I’d never seen any of them talk to him.

  When we got to the park, Miguel said, “There’s a dog run over this way.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s a fenced-in area where you can let your dog off the leash,” Miguel said. “So she can play with other dogs.”

  “I don’t want her to play with other dogs yet,” I said. “Let’s just walk and let her sniff things.”

  Miguel fidgeted and shoved his hands in his pockets. He kept looking around like he was afraid he was being watched. But Buttons was the happiest I’d ever seen her. She ran in big circles on the grass in front of us as we walked. The wind blew a leaf past her nose. With a ferocious yip, she pounced on it, then blinked in surprise when it didn’t try to run away. She poked it with her little black nose, then looked up at me like, Did I win? Did I win?

  And of course she tried to dive under every bush we saw. I could already see tiny green grass stains on her little white paws. Small twigs and leaves hooked in her honey-colored fur as she romped through the park. But I couldn’t really get mad at her for it. She was having such an amazing time.

  As we got closer to the pond in the middle of the park, I heard a loud baying sound. It was so loud and strange that I didn’t realize for a minute that it was a dog barking. Buttons knew right away, though. She stood up on her hind legs and lifted her nose in the air, leaning on the end of the leash. With her little front paws folded down, she looked kind of like these meerkats I’d seen on TV.

  “AROOOOOF AROOOOOF AROOOOOOF!” went the mystery dog. Then I saw the barker barreling toward us. It was brown and black and white with floppy ears — a beagle, I was pretty sure. A black-and-red leash trailed around its neck. It went “AROOOOOOOOF!” one more time and bounded up to Buttons.

  I was about to grab my puppy out of the way when I saw the dog’s owner running after her.

  “I’m sorry!” she yelled. “That’s my dog! She’s harmless! Just noisy! I’m sorry!”

  I knew who she was — Ella Finegold, the older sister of annoying Isaac. She was in Danny’s class at school. Last week she’d done this hilarious awesome song at the talent show with her beagle. So I decided it was OK for Buttons to say hi.

  The dog skidded to a stop in front of Buttons and stood there wagging its tail and panting goofily. Buttons sniffed her all over and the dog stayed perfectly still. Then Buttons did the cutest thing. She stood up on her hind legs, put her front paws together, and pawed the air with them, like she was going Play with me play with me play with me!

  “Trumpet, you wicked thing,” Ella said, catching the beagle’s leash. She was panting even more than the dog and her curly brown hair was fluffing out everywhere.

  “Hey, I remember you,” Miguel said to her. “You won the talent show at Rosie’s school.”

  “I did,” Ella said, turning pink. “But mostly it was because of Trumpet.” She patted the beagle’s side and Trumpet looked up at her with this adoring grin.

  “Yeah, it was awesome,” Miguel said, letting Trumpet sniff his hand. Buttons flapped her paws madly at Trumpet again.

  “Aww, she’s so cute,” Ella said.

  “Ella!” a voice called in the distance. I saw a boy waving from over by the playground. It looked like Nikos Stavros, who’s in Danny’s class, too. And next to him was a girl I thought might be Rory Mason. Her dad is Danny’s baseball coach. She’s nice, but she’s, like, the total opposite of me — I mean, I guess in a different way than Pippa is. Like, I’ve never seen Rory without scrapes all over her knees and elbows, and I don’t think she’d be caught dead in pink.

  “Coming!” Ella called. “See you guys later,” she said, and dragged Trumpet away.

  Buttons sat down, looking disappointed.

  “Don’t worry, Buttons,” I said. “We’ll find you some friends soon.”

  “That’s a pretty cool dog,” Miguel said, nodding at Ella and Trumpet as they ran off. “Still not big enough, though.”

  “Miguel?” said a girl’s voice.

  Miguel froze. He’d been so busy saying hi to Trumpet that he’d forgotten to stay away from me and Buttons. And now his worst nightmare had appeared behind us.

  Cheerleaders!

  I didn’t know their names, but I’d seen these two girls outside the high school, sitting under a tree and flipping their hair as the boys went past. I was pretty sure they were cheerleaders.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” said the short blond one. She was staring at Buttons.

  “Is that your dog?” the tall one with red hair asked Miguel. She pointed at Buttons and tilted her head so the sun caught all the shiny highlights in her hair.

  “No,” Miguel said quickly. He was totally blushing. “Nuh-uh, nope.”

  “She is SO. CUTE!” the blond girl squealed. She talked like every other word was its own sentence, with all these dramatic pauses in between. “I just. LOVE HER! I just. Want to spend all day. SNUGGLING HER!”

  “Me too!” said the redhead. “Is she yours?” she asked me.

  “Uh, she’s ours,” Miguel said quickly. “That’s what I meant. Both of ours. Our family’s.”

  Ha. Nice save, Miguel. I could see which way the wind was blowing. “She’s really mine,” I said.

  “Wow, Miguel, you’re so sweet to take your little sister and her puppy to the park,” said the redhead. She tilted her head again. I was pretty sure she was doing it deliberately to show off her hair in the sunlight. It looked accidental, but she had kind of a faraway expression, like half of her brain was thinking about how she looked all the time.

  “Yeah, well, you know, I like to help out,” Miguel said. />
  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?” I said to him. He turned even redder.

  “This is Caitlin,” he said, nodding at the redhead, “and this is Sarah. This is my sister, Rosie.”

  “Hi,” Caitlin said, her gaze drifting back to Buttons. I could tell she was going to forget my name before she even left the park. Definitely not as cool as Miru.

  “My parents got us a dog this summer,” Sarah said. “But he was SO big and furry and all OVER the place. I was like, YUCK, I mean, PLEASE, couldn’t we have a SMALL dog if we have to have anything? You know what I mean?” she said to Miguel, twirling a strand of hair around her finger.

  “Yeah, totally!” Miguel said.

  “Small dogs are ever so much cuter,” Caitlin said, flipping her hair back.

  “I know,” Miguel said eagerly. “They’re way better.”

  “Miguel has always loved small dogs,” I said sweetly. “I said, ‘Miguel, don’t you want a big tough scary dog?’ and he was like, ‘No, no, no, we should definitely get something tiny and cute and fuzzy.’”

  Miguel shot me a glare.

  “Aww, that’s adorable,” Sarah said, crouching to pat Buttons. Buttons nosed at her hand and she pulled it back quickly. “She doesn’t bite, right?”

  “Of course not,” I said, offended for Buttons. I was more likely to bite Sarah than Buttons was.

  “So what happened with your dog?” Miguel asked Sarah.

  “We gave him to my sister’s best friend’s little brother,” Sarah said. “Like, good luck with that, because he was a total lunatic. He ran away, like, all the time.”

  Smart dog, I thought.

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked. These two didn’t seem like they’d come to the park to play baseball.

  “We always come to the park on Thursdays,” Caitlin said. “That’s when the boys’ Ultimate Frisbee practice is.”

  “We’re cheerleaders,” Sarah explained. “So we figure we should support them while they’re practicing.” She exchanged a little smile with Caitlin. I had a feeling if we followed them to the Ultimate playing field, we’d find out that a lot of the boys played with their shirts off.

  “That’s great,” Miguel said. “That’s so cool.”

  “So maybe we’ll see you and your puppy next Thursday,” Caitlin said to Miguel. Buttons rolled onto her back, and Caitlin gingerly patted her tummy.

  “Yeah! Definitely!” Miguel said. “We’re always here! Me and my puppy!”

  I managed not to laugh, but it was hard.

  “We should go,” I said to Miguel. “Buttons is getting tired.”

  “Buttons!” Sarah squealed. “That is SO! ADORABLE!”

  “Really?” Miguel said to me. “She doesn’t look tired.”

  Buttons was flopped over in the grass. Her eyes were drooping and her paws twitched like she was already dreaming.

  “Miguel,” I said firmly.

  “OK, ’byeeee,” Sarah said.

  “ ’Bye, Miguel,” Caitlin said. Her voice made his name sound much more grown-up than when anyone in our house said it.

  “See you next Thursday,” Miguel said with a huge grin.

  The girls sashayed away with their arms linked, giggling. Miguel looked like he’d been run over by a spaceship. His expression was all dazed and silly-looking.

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing his wrist and dragging him out of the park. Buttons bounced to her paws again as soon as I moved. She found a few more bushes to dive into on our way out. Whenever she spotted the leash out of the corner of her eye, she spun around and pounced on it, which made walking in a straight line kind of difficult, but it was pretty funny.

  “They talked to me,” Miguel said in a wondering voice when we were a block away from the park. “Did you see that? That really happened, didn’t it? Caitlin and Sarah talked to me!”

  “I guess you could call that talking,” I said. “Mostly they flipped their hair at you.”

  “They’ve never talked to me before,” Miguel said. “I can’t believe they know my name. How’s my hair? Does it look OK?”

  “They didn’t care about your hair,” I said. “They just wanted you to notice their hair.”

  “They have great hair,” Miguel said dreamily.

  “I forbid you to date those girls, Miguel. They’re total dimwits.”

  “They loved Buttons,” Miguel said. The puppy looked up at him with her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth. She wagged her tail and he bent down to ruffle her fur. “You’re the best dog ever,” he said.

  Wow! “‘Best dog ever?’” I said. “What happened to ‘too small, too fuzzy, too embarrassing’?”

  “Well,” Miguel said loftily, “if I had known that girls liked little dogs I would have voted differently from the beginning, wouldn’t I?”

  “Um, I’m a girl,” I said. “That didn’t tip you off?”

  “Yeah, but you’re Rosie,” he said.

  That was true. And I was very glad to be Rosie, and not Sarah or Caitlin, thank you very much. Even if they did have great hair.

  On the plus side, Miguel’s newfound love for Buttons meant that it was easy to convince him to give her a bath when we got home. I supervised, but he was the one who got all wet, which was very satisfying. Then we dried her off and took her into the living room. She rolled around madly on the couch, sprinting from one end to the other and nose-diving into the cushions with happy rrrrrruffs. Miguel sat on the arm of the couch and laughed.

  “What are you doing?” Danny asked, poking his head into the room.

  “Playing with Buttons,” I said.

  “Isn’t she hilarious?” Miguel said.

  “Miguel!” Danny said, sounding shocked. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone over to the dark side, too.”

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Well, she is cute,” Miguel said with a shrug.

  Danny buried his head in his hands. “This is terrible,” he said. “I thought I could count on you guys!” He pointed at Buttons. “That is not a real dog. Merlin is a real dog. Real dogs are big and chase tennis balls. One day I’m going to get a real dog, and until I do, I want nothing to do with that fluffhead.”

  “Good!” I shouted after him as he stomped away. “You leave her alone! She’s too good for you anyway!”

  “He’ll come around,” Miguel said. “OK, I have to go e-mail my friends. Caitlin and Sarah! Craziness!” He left the room, shaking his head.

  Buttons flopped over with her head on my lap.

  “Boys are ridiculous, Buttons,” I said, scratching her belly.

  Snnzzzzzzrt, she agreed. And in half a minute, she was asleep.

  When Dad got home from work, he found us on the couch. I was reading, and Buttons had rolled sideways so she was asleep with all four paws in the air. Dad grinned, putting his briefcase down by the door.

  “Shh,” I said. “It totally worked. We took her to the park and now she’s all tuckered out.”

  “Aww,” Dad said. “What a good dog. Have your brothers been playing with her?”

  “They all like her now,” I said. “Except Danny. And I don’t care, because he’s lame anyway.”

  “Great,” Dad said. “Want to make some peppermint meringue cookies?”

  He remembered! My dad was so busy, I always expected him to forget stuff like that. But he had brought home all the ingredients we needed and everything. Buttons stayed asleep on the couch while I went to the kitchen with Dad. Later I saw Oliver in there patting her. He looked all mopey again, but when she batted at his hand he laughed.

  The cookies came out totally perfect. Dad separated the eggs for me, but he let me hold the electric beater to make the meringue all fluffy and peaked. We put pretty pink and purple glittery sprinkles on top of them, and in the end it was the prettiest batch of cookies I’d ever seen. Of course, then I had to keep a close eye on the kitchen all night to make sure none of my brothers snuck in and ate them.

  “Hey!” I yelled when I ca
ught Danny peeking under the foil.

  “Can’t I have one?” he said. “Just one?”

  “No, you can’t, poodle-hater,” I said. “Not unless you bring twenty-five cents to school tomorrow and buy one like everyone else.”

  “Bossyboots,” he grumbled, wandering back out to the den.

  “The Africans will thank you when their goat arrives!” I called cheerfully after him.

  Buttons was calm and sleepy for the rest of the evening. When we let her out, she trotted into the yard and then came right back in with no digging at all. She slept on my feet while I did my homework. At one point her paws started twitching and she made these cute tiny yips in her sleep, as if she was dreaming about racing around the park with Trumpet.

  When I went to bed, I tried putting my T-shirt in the dog bed and tucking Buttons in there. I don’t know if she was just too tired to climb out, but she curled right up and went to sleep. In her bed! Finally!

  “See?” I said. “Why couldn’t you do that from the start?”

  I was happy that Buttons was so sweet and good after her trip to the park. But I was worried, too. I couldn’t take her to the park every day. I had the bake sale tomorrow after school. There would be a lot more homework later in the school year. And I wanted to try out for the school play this year, which would mean lots of rehearsals. How was I going to make sure Buttons got enough exercise to be a good dog all the time?

  That will be seventy-five cents,” I said to Heidi Tyler. She had three different kinds of cookies in her hand and there were already crumbs all over her shirt.

  “Oh, man, how did I do that?” Heidi said, trying to brush them off and getting more crumbs in her hair. “Here you go, Rosie.” She handed me a five-dollar bill and I gave her four dollars and a quarter in change.

  “You do that so fast,” said Charlie Grayson. “I have to think about it for half an hour.” Charlie is the shortest boy in our class. He’s really quiet, like Danny’s friend Eric, who I mentioned earlier, so I was glad he was at my table for the bake sale. He let me handle all the money, which was totally fun. And he didn’t tell on me when I “accidentally” broke one of the cookies — maybe because I let him have the other half.