Dodger and Me

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  “Don’t be a wise guy, mister. I don’t have to feed you dinner, you know!”

  As I groaned and slowly removed myself from the pile of razor-sharp objects that had been my favorite room decoration, I asked Dodger, “Okay, when can we start with this Three-Part Plan?”

  “Soon,” he replied with a sly little grin.

  “How soon?”

  “Not until the day after tomorrow, at the earliest.”

  “Uh, Dodger, why not sooner?”

  “Well, little bud, before I can work my magic and fix up your life, first I have to observe you in your natural social environment.”

  A cold sweat instantly began dripping down my back. “What do you mean, my natural social environment?”

  “Dude, tomorrow I’m coming with you—to school!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mary Had a Little Lamb

  YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE how hard it is to get a chimp ready for school. I mean, first you have to teach it the names of all the colors, numbers, the alphabet … no, I’m kidding. What I really mean is that sneaking Dodger around the house, getting him food, and dealing with his bathroom needs were all really tricky tasks when both of my parents and Amy were all trying to get ready for their days at the same time. The worst was the bathroom. I had to dig up an extra toothbrush for him, and then he got all grumpy because it was decorated all over with pictures of the Little Mermaid. I pointed out that A) we were alone in the bathroom, B) he was invisible to everyone but me, anyway, and C) a girly toothbrush was way, way better than two-day-old monkey breath. Then I had to listen to a whole speech about chimps versus monkeys. Apparently, “Chimps are so not monkeys. We’re great apes. So how’s about showing some respect to your fellow primate? Besides, you better be thankful I’m not a monkey, buddy. I might have bad breath in the morning—but monkeys throw their poop to show displeasure. And I am not pleased with you right now. ‘Monkey breath,’ he says. Dude …”

  And then there was the shower issue. I had to make mine super-quick so that Dodger could take one, too, without my family getting mad that I was hogging the bathroom. But then he complained the whole time he was in there. The soap wasn’t fruit-scented. The shampoo wasn’t bubbly enough. And we didn’t have a back-scratcher he could use. A back-scratcher, for crying out loud. Then when he got out, he made me hand him my favorite towel, wrapped it around his waist, and marched out of the room—leaving me the horrendous task of scooping a wad of blue hair off of the drain.

  But none of the morning rituals were half as scary as the idea of getting Dodger onto the school bus. It seemed to me that Dodger should just stay home, or maybe hang out in the woods all day. I mentioned this on our way downstairs for breakfast and he didn’t say anything. Five minutes later he started talking to me about it, as I sat at the kitchen table, ate all-natural, unsweetened oatmeal with my family, and pretended I wasn’t listening to an invisible primate. I just shoveled in my food, wished I could be eating sugary cereal like a normal kid, and tried to listen to my dad telling my mom about the work he had to do that day. Dad is an author. He writes self-help books about marriage, and he had to do some telephone interviews about the newest one, Yes, Dear: Ten Things to Say to the Difficult Wife.

  Meanwhile, Dodger was getting himself psyched up for the day, too. “You think I can’t handle the school bus? Dude, I’m a wild animal. I’ve faced the deadly black mamba snake. I’ve outrun a charging rhinoceros. I laugh in the face of danger. You think I’m going to go hide in the woods because a bunch of snotty little kids are too scary for me? I will get right on that bus! I will pound my chest with my fists! I will bellow my fierce cry of rage! I will …”

  Jeepers, I’d rather hide in the woods than face dumb old Lizzie from England, but whatever. With my whole family sitting there, I couldn’t answer him, anyway.

  Twenty minutes later, Dodger was cowering under my seat, praying for the insanity to stop. As a gigantic ball of spit-moistened paper bounced off of his outstretched leg, I reached down there to give him a reassuring pat, and he grabbed my hand so hard I thought my bones would snap. Lizzie had gotten on at my stop, and her nonstop babbling could not have been helping. As usual, she had sat down next to me. Before my best friend, Tim, moved away, he’d always gotten on at our stop and been my human Lizzie shield—in fact, she had always talked a ton to him, but basically ignored me. Without him, though, I was totally defenseless. She was on a roll:

  “Did you have fun doing your baseball yesterday? It was quite an exciting match. And I daresay you would have won if you had just hit that one ball a little straighter. Or, you know, if you hadn’t completely missed the last one. But you tried hard, I could tell. I was proud of you, anyway. And when the dreadful people around me started booing and chanting, ‘Yay, Wimpy,’ I gave them several nasty looks. In fact, I think that’s what stopped them joining in when everyone started throwing their food wrappers at you as you left the court. Oh, dear, I hadn’t meant to tell you that last part. Anyway, I do hope my cheering drowned out some of the comments those ruffians were making.”

  Somehow, between the general screaming, the flying objects, the extreme bumpiness of the ride, and Lizzie’s painful recap of my pathetic ball game, Dodger and I survived all the way to school. I waited for everyone else to get off the bus, then helped Dodger to get himself uncurled from underneath the seat. As I worked to untangle a ball of ABC gum from his shoulder hair, I asked Dodger what he thought of Lizzie. “I think you should probably marry her when you grow up,” he said dreamily. “Her beautiful voice was the only thing that kept me from going completely crazy back there. Plus, she has cute ankles. Is she a good cook? Do you by any chance know whether she likes bananas? My mother always said you should never give your heart to a girl who doesn’t like bananas!”

  Whoa. I had a feeling Dodger wasn’t going to like my first wish.

  But he just didn’t understand how embarrassing Lizzie was. Like the first time I ever saw her, in third grade. We were in the middle of a history lesson about Paul Revere’s ride, and the teacher had us chanting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” We were interrupted by a knock on the classroom door. In stepped the school counselor, with her hand on the shoulder of a girl who was wearing a bright red jacket. The counselor said, “Hello, third graders! Remember I told you you’d be getting a new classmate this week, all the way from England? Well, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth Barrett. I know you’ll give her a nice warm welcome.”

  The new girl was beaming, and it occurred to me that she probably thought the whole “The British are coming” chant had been in her honor. I started to smile at her, and so did Tim. But then James Beeks shouted, “Look out! She’s a redcoat!” All the cool kids started shouting, “Redcoat! Redcoat!” and Lizzie’s smile just crumpled. I didn’t join the shouting, but I did stop smiling at Lizzie. In fact, the only person who made friends with Lizzie that whole day was Tim. He never did care what the cool kids thought.

  But I did. One of my life’s goals was to make sure the cool kids didn’t notice me. And Lizzie just had this amazing talent for sticking out.

  Anyway, Dodger and I made it into school with no problem, and before I knew it we were in my classroom, waiting for my teacher, Mrs. Starsky, to begin the first lesson of the day: our weekly spelling pretest. The kid next to me, Craig Flynn, had been held back in fifth grade and was built a lot like Dodger. That is, he was shaped roughly like a cinder block with arms and legs. He whispered at me, “Hey, Wimpy—did you study?” I had just enough time to wonder who in the world would study for a pretest before Mrs. Starsky began to read off the list. This week’s words were all place names. As Dodger hooted, danced, and climbed along the radiators, I tried to focus on the words. Things went okay for a while, until I got stuck on the ninth word: Serengeti. I stared and stared at what I had written on my paper, but it just didn’t look right. Dodger climbed across the classroom’s hanging fluorescent lights and swung down next to my seat. “That one’s wrong,” he m
urmured in my ear. “It’s S-E-R-E-N-G-H-E-T-T-I.”

  I dropped my pencil on purpose and bent down to get it so I could whisper to Dodger without anyone seeing me. “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Dude, the Serengeti is in Africa. Of course I know how to spell a place that’s, like, practically my neighborhood. Trust me.”

  I sat back up and changed my answer. To my horror, I noticed that Craig Flynn was looking at my paper. He quickly changed his answer, too. Then Mrs. Starsky announced the next word: Tanzania. Again, I stared and stared at my paper, as Dodger whispered, “T-A-N-N-S-Y-L-V-A-N-I-A.” That sounded totally ridiculous, but Dodger muttered in my ear, “I’m FROM there! Would I spell my own country wrong?”

  Mrs. S. told us to hand our papers in, and I panicked. I changed my answer to Tannsylvania. To my horror, Craig copied my new answer, too. Then Dodger mumbled, “Oh, wait. Maybe I’m getting that confused with Transylvania. Ooh, you might not want to put that down, Willie.”

  I tried to change my paper again. Seeing what I was doing, Craig started frantically erasing his last answer, too. “Thanks, Dodger,” I said. “Do you have any other brilliant ideas?”

  “Look up,” he hissed.

  “I can’t look it up, you … you … chimp! I have to hand in my paper!”

  “No, LOOK UP, Willie!”

  I did. Right into the furious glare of Mrs. Starsky. She snatched my paper off the desk and grabbed up Craig’s, too.

  “Well! I have never seen such a bold example of cheating—and on a pretest, for goodness’ sake! What do you have to say for yourself, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Uh, I wasn’t cheating?”

  “Oh, really?” she asked with her left eyebrow raised.

  Don’t you hate it when teachers get all sarcastic, by the way? I nodded.

  She made a big show of comparing my paper with Craig’s. “So there just happen to be two fifth graders in the world who think not only that Serengeti is spelled like ‘spaghetti’ but that Tanzania somehow rhymes with Pennsylvania?”

  “Um, maybe?”

  “And they just happen to sit next to each other?”

  “Mrs. Starsky, I swear I didn’t cheat.”

  Mrs. Starsky crossed her arms and started tapping her foot. Uh-oh. “You are making me really angry now, William. I know that you are a good speller. It’s not like you to make these bizarre mistakes on your own. And I heard you whispering to Craig.”

  Oh, boy. How was I going to explain this? “Well, Mrs. Starsky, I wasn’t actually talking to Craig. I was talking with my … uh …”

  “Your what, William?”

  I had to think fast. “Well, see, I have this, umm, imaginary friend. And I was asking my, umm, my friend for his—his—his imaginary eraser. And then—”

  “I don’t have time for this, William. Your grade for the day is a zero. Also, I am writing a note home to your parents about your behavior. I will administer this test to both you and Craig first thing tomorrow morning. I’d suggest you study this evening—or bring a smarter imaginary friend tomorrow.” She gestured with disgust at my paper. “A monkey could spell better than this!”

  The whole class cracked up. In fact, I looked around, and the only ones in the whole room who weren’t roaring with laughter were Mrs. Starsky, Craig, and me. And Dodger: I don’t think he liked hearing that a monkey would do better than he did in anything. Ooh, I almost didn’t notice, but there was one other person who wasn’t laughing at me. I’ll give you a hint: She used to live in England.

  I sat there fuming through the rest of language arts and all of math, while Dodger took a nap under the art table in back of the room and Craig glared at me. When lunchtime came, I sat at a table in a shadowy corner of the cafeteria. While everyone else waited in the hot-lunch line for pizza and fries, I took out my usual embarrassing health-food lunch: a slice of wheat bread, a health-food fruit bar, and a thermos of soup. All I wanted was to be alone. Of course, I nearly got my wish. Nobody but Dodger wanted to be anywhere near me—except Lizzie. There was only room for two little plastic seats at the table. Of course, I was at one. Dodger tried to sit at the other. It was pretty funny: He was about twice as wide as the chair and had to balance by reaching his long arms down and putting the backs of his knuckles on the floor. That totally didn’t work, so he stood back up and I dragged his chair to another table. Then he squatted on the floor, which looked a lot more comfortable for him. Lizzie saw there was space at my table and came zooming over like a rocket, grabbing an empty chair on the way.

  “Hey,” she said, “I’m sorry about this morning. Mrs. Starsky was being dreadfully unfair. Although you probably shouldn’t have made up that excuse about the imaginary friend.” Then she swung the chair in next to me, smacking Dodger’s kneecap in the process. He hopped around in little circles and grunted while Lizzie started unpacking her bag lunch. Dodger got himself back under control in time to gaze longingly at the banana yogurt she took out.

  I said, “Yeah, well …” because my general Lizzie strategy is to speak to her as little as possible. I keep thinking she will speak less in return, but things haven’t worked out that way so far.

  She responded by making a speech about how Mrs. Starsky was trampling on my rights as an American. I mostly tuned her out, looking around the room, nodding once in a while so she’d think I was listening. But then her tone changed all of a sudden, and I kind of woke up. “Hey!” she squealed. “My yogurt!” Suddenly I noticed that the table was covered in yogurt. Lizzie was covered in yogurt. And there were little droplets of yogurt in my hair.

  Right in front of where Dodger had been kneeling, the bottom third of a yogurt container was lying on its side. The top two-thirds of the container was standing upside down next to it. There were jagged teeth marks all along the edges of each. I looked at Dodger, whose entire face was dripping with yogurt goo. “Oops!” he said. “I never did get the hang of all these silly plastic containers.”

  Lizzie just sat there, stupefied. I whispered, “Dodger! Hide!”

  “Why?” he asked. “You’re the only one who can see me.”

  “Uh, yeah, but I think other people might be able to see a floating mess of yogurt.”

  Poof! Just like that, Dodger disappeared. Lizzie, who had started frantically dabbing at herself with a wad of napkins, stopped long enough to ask me, “Did you just say something?”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “How did you manage to splash all this yogurt everywhere, Lizzie? Didn’t they teach you how to eat in England?”

  Lizzie said, “Of course they taught me how to eat! How could you … I … you … ugh! And to think I came over here to be nice to you!” Then her eyes started to fill up with tears and she ran out of the lunchroom.

  I sighed and unscrewed the cap of my soup thermos. With a wet POP!, Dodger appeared next to me, jumping up and down and fanning himself. The yogurt was off his face, but it had been replaced by little bits of—I sniffed at the air——chicken soup. Apparently, when I’d told Dodger to hide, he had decided to conceal himself in my lunch.

  “Ooh, it’s HOT in there!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t felt anything like it since those Aztecs sacrificed me and my third master to their angry volcano god back in—hey, where’s Lizzie?”

  “She ran away crying.”

  “Well, that went rather well, Willie.”

  “What do you mean, that went rather well? Didn’t you just hear me say she ran away crying?”

  “Dude, of course I heard you. We chimps have excellent hearing, sharpened by thousands of years of—”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you HEAR ME? We just made Lizzie cry.”

  “Right. And I happen to know that your first wish was going to be: ‘Make Lizzie stay away from me.’ Wasn’t it?”

  “Well, sure. But—” I had admit, he was right. And I had wanted to make her go away. But for some reason, I felt kind of rotten now that I had done it. Even if she was super-annoying.

  “But nothing. She’s away, isn’t she?”

/>   “Yes, but—”

  “Stop saying ‘but,’ okay? I like Lizzie. And that yogurt was excellent! But I’m just doing what you want me to do. If you want to drive away the one person in this school who cares what happens to you, it’s none of my business. Now I have to go to the first-grade tables. Some kid over there brought a huge bag of mixed-fruit roll-ups. Yum!”

  He went bounding across the room. Just as the high-pitched screams of the first graders began to fill the air, I decided I had better eat the rest of my lunch and try to get the table (and my hair) cleaned up a bit before Mrs. Starsky came for us. I plunged my plastic spoon deep into my soup, then stuck it in my mouth—and spat the entire mouthful across the table.

  A note to the reader: Chicken soup tastes better if it’s not mixed with banana yogurt and chimp hair. Just as I was about to get up and go dump out the rest of the muck that had been my lunch, a shadow fell over me. I looked up and saw the lunch lady standing over me, snarling. One of her hands held a dripping, stinky mop. The other was clenched tightly around the upper arm of my crying former lunch companion, Lizzie.

  Then, over the wailing of what sounded like the entire first grade, plus one hungry chimp, I heard the enraged voice of Mrs. Starsky saying, “What in the world is going on here?”

  All in all, it was turning into a pretty long day.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Home Front

  DODGER REFUSED TO GET BACK on the school bus, and I was in no hurry to get home with my note from Mrs. Starsky, so we took a long walk after school. You could probably guess that I was in a bad mood, but Dodger was really on a rampage:

  “That teacher of yours is nuts. Get a smarter imaginary friend, she says. She thinks I’m dumber than a monkey. Just because I’m a little bit rusty in the spelling department. A smarter imaginary friend? Hmph!”

  “Uh, Dodger? No offense, but Mrs. Starsky doesn’t even believe I have an imaginary friend. She was just being sarcastic. She really thinks I was cheating with Craig.”