Max wished he could think of some way to shut Polly up. But it was too late. His mother’s forehead wasn’t wrinkled anymore. He could absolutely see her changing her mind.
“Oh, all right,” Mother said then. “I guess we could take her. Max has always wanted a dog.”
Mrs. Kavitsky beamed. “Wonderful! Just wonderful! Every boy should have a dog.” As she bent to put the dog on the floor, it stiffened. It barked. Or yipped. Or maybe yapped. Whatever it was, the sound was bigger than the dog itself, Max thought. Its eyes were fixed on something behind Max. Max turned around to see. Ali Baba was pressed against the living room wall. His back was arched. His tail was puffed up to twice its regular size. Ali Baba hissed.
The dog squirmed out of Mrs. Kavitsky’s grasp. A streak of dirty yellow flew past Max’s legs. Ali Baba hissed again and flashed out a paw full of claws. There was a yip that turned into a yelp. Then Ali Baba ran. He moved faster than Max had ever seen him move. He went under the couch. The dog, with a long red scratch on its muzzle, tried to go after him. It got stuck halfway and stayed there, its long, ratty tail wagging wildly. From under the couch came hisses and little high-pitched whines.
“Looks like Ali Baba can take care of himself,” Mother said.
7
“OKAY, MAX,” MOTHER SAID AS soon as Mrs. Kavitsky left. “You’ve got your dog. I’ll pick up all the things we’ll need for her on my way home from work tonight. But she’s absolutely disgustingly dirty.” She checked her watch. “There’s just time before school for you to give her a bath.”
“A bath? I’ve never given a dog a bath —”
“It isn’t hard. Water in tub, dog in tub, wash dog, rinse dog, dry it with towels. I’ll get you some old ones. And you can use Polly’s no-tears shampoo. You said if you could have a dog, you’d take care of it.”
Max had to drag the ratty little dog out from under the couch three times. As soon as he let her go, she would run right back after Ali Baba and get stuck again. Finally he had to carry her, wriggling and whining, into the bathroom and shut the door. As he ran water in the tub, the dog scratched and whined to get out and chase Ali Baba.
Then, when he put her into the tub, she struggled and splashed and tried to climb out. She scratched Max’s arms with her sharp little claws. She didn’t like getting a bath.
“Tough,” Max told her. “I don’t like giving you a bath either!” By the time Max was finished, he was as wet as the dog. When he tried to dry her, the dog grabbed a corner of the towel in her teeth and started tugging. Max was surprised at how strong she was. He couldn’t get the towel away from her, even though her claws slipped on the wet tile floor. He dragged the dog around the bathroom until finally the corner of the towel tore completely off. This real, live dog had very sharp teeth.
Even clean, the dog was ugly. Really, really ugly, Max thought. Polly didn’t think so. Polly thought the dog was cuter than ever. Mother said the dog was a lovely color. She also said they should name her quickly so she could get used to her name. Polly wanted to call the dog Cuddles. Max suggested Ratty. Mother didn’t listen to either of them. She named the dog Goldie.
Max decided he would stick with Ratty anyway.
When it was time to leave for school, Mother said, “It seems as if Ali Baba can hold his own with this dog. But until they get used to each other, we probably shouldn’t leave them alone together. She’s yours, Max. When we aren’t here, she’ll have to stay in your room.”
So Max dragged the still-damp dog back out from under the couch. “Sit and stay, Ratty,” he said as he closed his door. But he could hear that she wasn’t sitting. Or staying.
When they got to the bus stop, Polly was still talking about their new dog. Max wanted her to quit. He wanted to forget how badly his wish had turned out. Jerome Fisher was one of the kids waiting for the school bus, he noticed. He must live nearby. He and Max were the only third graders who got on at this stop. When Jerome got onto the bus, he sat near the back by himself. Max would have liked to sit with him instead of Polly. He wanted to ask what it was like having a policeman for a father. But Mother had said he had to sit with Polly till she had friends of her own to sit with.
“Isn’t she the most beautiful dog you ever saw?” Polly asked him as he sat down next to her. “Aren’t you glad you finally got a dog of your very own? Will you let me feed her and walk her sometimes? Will you, will you?”
“Any time,” Max said. “Any old time.”
All morning, Max had trouble paying attention in class. All he could think about was his wish and the horrible little rat dog. Mr. Malone accused him of daydreaming two different times.
At lunch, Nick Berger sat down next to Max. Luis sat on the other side of him and Rocco stood behind him. “Give me that bag of potato chips,” Nick said. He already had a bag of chips they’d taken from a second grader and a pudding cup from Caitlin.
Max gave him the bag of chips, and the three of them went off to share their loot. Max didn’t care. There were worse things in life than losing a bag of potato chips. Jerome was sitting at the next table. He threw Max a half-empty bag of pretzels and mouthed the word trolls. Max grinned and nodded.
On the bus ride home, Polly went right back to talking about the dog. Max slumped in his seat and put his hands over his ears. He thought and thought about his guaranteed wish. He remembered the exact words he’d used when he made it. A real, live dog. Clearly, his wish had come true. Ratty was a dog. She was alive. And she was certainly real. The scratches on his arms proved that! But she wasn’t the dog he wanted. It was King he’d been thinking about when he made his wish. The man at Wishworks, Inc., should have known that! King had been sitting right there on the sidewalk outside the shop at the time. What good was a guaranteed wish if it didn’t match what you were thinking about when you made it? It had all gone awfully, horribly, dreadfully wrong.
8
WHEN MAX GOT HOME FROM school, he found that Ratty had chewed the ears off his old teddy bear and made a puddle on the floor of his closet. Mother came home early from work, bringing a red collar and matching leash, a ball, a rawhide chew toy, and a bag of dog food.
“It isn’t her fault,” she said when he complained about the puddle in his closet. “I should have had you take her out before we left. From now on, you’re going to have to walk her every morning until she’s finished doing her business, and then again as soon as you come home from school,” she told him. “And there’s a pooper-scooper law, so you’ll have to take a trowel and a plastic bag along with you.”
“You mean I have to pick up her poop and bring it home?”
“You can put it in the nearest trash can. I’ll walk her one last time every night before I go to bed.”
From then on, Max was in charge of the dog. He had to get up half an hour early to walk her before school. He carried the trowel and the plastic bag for Ratty’s poop in a grocery bag. It was embarrassing. At first he tried to make believe it was King he was walking. But it didn’t work. Ratty was nothing at all like King.
Even with a leash, Ratty didn’t walk nicely at his side. She dragged him first one way and then another. She was little, but she was all muscle. And he very quickly learned that Ratty didn’t like to chase just Ali Baba. She liked to chase anything that ran. Outside, that was mostly squirrels. If she saw a squirrel across the street, Max had to grab hold of a lamppost or wedge himself against a parked car to keep from being pulled into traffic.
Sometimes while they walked, he tried to pretend he was a spy. There were lots of people walking their dogs every morning. A spy might walk a dog to blend in so whoever he was spying on wouldn’t notice him. But a spy would never have a dog like Ratty. Everybody noticed Ratty. She barked — a lot. She barked at other dogs. She barked at pigeons. She barked at people carrying anything that smelled like food, and she tried to jump up on them to get it.
People frowned at her and shook their heads. They frowned at Max. He had to spend half their walks apologizing to str
angers. But by the third day, some of them weren’t strangers anymore. They knew Ratty and they knew Max. They waved newspapers or shook briefcases at them to keep them away. Some of them took to crossing the street to avoid them.
The worst part of their walk was passing LaRosa’s Italian Grocery and Wine Shop. Ratty whined and yelped and jumped at the window, where cheeses of all shapes and sizes and piles of sausages were displayed. She seemed to be able to smell them through the glass. It was all Max could do to drag her away. A big man with a thick, black mustache came to the window and shook his huge fist at them sometimes.
There was one little old lady they saw every morning, though, who seemed to like the dog. Max thought she might be crazy. She carried little bone-shaped biscuits in her pockets and would dig some out as soon as she saw them coming. She would stop in front of them on the sidewalk. “Sit!” she would say to Ratty in a high, thin voice. Ratty made her skinny rattail go around and around in circles, but she never sat. The woman threw her three biscuits anyway, one at a time. Ratty would catch them right out of the air. Max had to give the dog a little credit for that at least. She never missed. “Good dog!” the woman always said. “She’s smart enough,” she added one day. “You should take her to obedience school.”
Max just nodded. King would never have to go to obedience school, he thought.
At home Ratty chased Ali Baba. Yapping gleefully, she chased him down the hall. She chased him around the kitchen. She chased him under the chairs and the couch. When he came out, she chased him onto and over the couch, scattering pillows. She chased him into Polly’s room and out again. She chased him right over Mrs. Chang while she was watching her TV talk show. Mrs. Chang didn’t get mad. She thought it was funny.
Whenever Max poured dog food into her bowl, Ratty heard the sound and came as fast as she could, her claws skidding on the kitchen tiles. Her skinny rattail went around and around. She yipped with excitement and jumped all over him. Sometimes she nearly knocked the bowl out of his hands before he could put it on the floor.
“Why can’t Polly feed her sometimes?” he asked Mother. “Why can’t Polly walk her?”
“Polly’s too little,” Mother said.
She was right, Max thought with a sigh. Polly could never handle Ratty. It was all he could do to handle her himself. Ratty was probably the worst dog in the whole entire world.
Nobody else agreed with him. Polly thought she was adorable. Whenever Polly called her, the dog would flop down on the floor and beg for a tummy rub. Ratty loved it when Polly rubbed her tummy. Polly dressed her in doll clothes and tried to get her to ride in a stroller. When Ratty jumped out of the stroller and pulled the doll clothes off with her teeth, Polly only laughed and rubbed her tummy some more. Then Ratty would jump up and lick Polly on the nose, waggling all over. The dog looked particularly ugly when she was waggling all over, Max thought.
Mother liked the dog almost as much as Polly did. She let Ratty sit on the couch while she was reading and even shared peanuts with her. Ratty caught the peanuts in midair too.
Max told Mother that Ratty chased the cat too much. “Ali Baba could have a heart attack,” he warned.
“I doubt it,” Mother said. “This morning I saw Ali Baba lying in wait behind the couch. He pounced on her when Goldie went by. After that, you couldn’t tell who was chasing whom. I haven’t seen him this active since he was a kitten. I think he may be losing weight. Goldie’s good for me too. I get exercise walking her every night. Who knew that we all wanted a dog?”
They were all crazy, Max thought.
And Ratty chewed. She chewed on her rawhide toy, of course, but that wasn’t all. She chewed on the corners of the boxes in Max’s room. Once when he came home, she had chewed clear through the cardboard on one of them and pulled out his favorite knight action figure. Then she had chewed his head off. Max began unpacking the boxes so he could put his things up on his shelves where they would be safe.
One day a second-grade girl asked Polly to sit with her. So Max went to the back of the bus and sat down beside Jerome Fisher. “Hi,” he said. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sure.”
Max didn’t know what else to say. A scuffle started between some older kids, and the bus driver yelled at them. “They wouldn’t do that if your father was on the bus.”
“No,” Jerome said.
“It must be great to have a policeman for a father,” Max said.
“It’s okay,” Jerome said. “But Mom worries about him a lot.”
“Oh.”
“I tell her he’s a hero and nobody has to worry about heroes. What does your dad do?”
“He’s a salesman,” Max said. Nobody had ever heard of a hero salesman, he thought. “He lives in Chicago.”
“Oh. Is that dog I saw you walking one day yours?”
Rats! Max thought. He had hoped nobody from school would ever see him with Ratty. He shook his head. “I was just walking her for the family she lives with.”
“I’ve always wanted a dog,” Jerome said. “For as long as I can remember.”
“Can’t you have one?” Max asked.
Jerome shook his head. “No way. My mom’s allergic. The only pet I can have is a goldfish. His name is Sam. He’s boring.”
Max nodded. “My mom likes dogs.” At least, he thought, she likes one dog. And then, before he could stop himself, he heard himself saying, “I have a big dog with a plume of a tail. His name is King.”
“You’re lucky,” Jerome said.
“Yeah.”
Why, Max wondered later, had he lied? What if Jerome saw him walking Ratty again — and again? And what if he wanted to know why he never saw him walking King? Max couldn’t very well tell him that even if he was walking King, Jerome wouldn’t be able to see him. It was all Ratty’s fault, Max thought. If she wasn’t in his life, he wouldn’t have had to lie.
But the very worst thing about Ratty was what she did to Adventure Time. After dinner and homework, when Max settled on his bed to make up his stories, Ratty jumped up too. She climbed into his lap and licked his face. She had terrible breath. He had to wipe his face on his pillowcase to get her spit off him.
As soon as he closed his eyes and started to get quiet, Ratty would claw at his arms to get his attention. Before he could even start imagining a story, she would drop her ball in his lap. Then she would jump down off the bed and yip and yip until he threw it for her. No matter how hard he threw it or how high it bounced, Ratty could jump up and snatch it out of the air. If somehow she missed and it went under his dresser, she whined till he got up and dug it out for her. By the time she was tired of playing and would leave him alone, Max was too sleepy to stay awake long enough for an adventure.
Max looked forward to school every day. There was no Ratty at school. Max could have King with him instead. It was taking a long time for the rest of the class to learn borrowing and carrying, so during math, Max and King could go up in the space shuttle. They could conquer invading armies of goblins. They could hunt tigers in the jungle or terrorists in the city. They could save little kids who fell into fast-running streams, and get medals for bravery.
Nick stole Max’s homework from his cubby one day. But he only hid it. He didn’t chew it all up and leave slimy wet bits of it all over the floor. When Rocco or Luis bumped into Max in the hall or crashed into him on the playground, they didn’t leave claw scratches on his arms and legs.
One night, Max woke up shivering. He had tried to make Ratty sleep on the floor, but she liked his bed better. He remembered how he had wanted King to sleep on his bed, the way Ali Baba used to, to keep him warm with his long, dog body. But Ratty had turned around and around and around and scratched at his quilt until she made herself a comfortable nest. Max was left with nothing but the sheet. Ratty’s head was draped across his arm. His hand had fallen asleep and he couldn’t feel his fingers. Something, he thought, has to be done.
9
WHEN MAX WAS WALKING RATTY after schoo
l the next day, he saw Jerome on the sidewalk across the street. He hoped Jerome wouldn’t look his way. He didn’t want him to see him walking Ratty again. He didn’t want Jerome to ask about King.
A bus went by, hiding Max and Ratty from Jerome for a moment. Hurriedly, Max dodged into the nearest shop, dragging the dog with him through the door and closing it behind them. Jerome wouldn’t be able to see them now. But no sooner had the door closed than Ratty began to yip and strain at her leash, standing on her back legs and dancing around like a circus dog. Max looked to see what had gotten into her. Too late, he realized he had brought her into LaRosa’s. Ratty was struggling to reach the window display of sausages and cheese.
She had gone from yipping now to howling. It was a sound she’d never made before, so strange and loud it made goose bumps rise on his arms. Max jerked on the leash to make her stop. She just howled louder and dragged him sideways toward the window.
“Out!” a voice yelled from the back of the shop, so loud that it nearly drowned out Ratty’s howling. “Out, out, out!” From behind a meat display case came the man with the black mustache. He was much worse than a troll or a giant. His white apron was stained with blood, and he held aloft a gleaming silver meat cleaver. His face was nearly as red as the stains on his apron. Max desperately tried to drag Ratty back to the door, but Ratty was pulling too hard toward the sausages in the window.
A woman with bright red lipstick, pushing a small shopping cart filled with bottles of wine, was blocking the narrow aisle between the man and Max. “You shouldn’t have a dog in here,” the woman said. “I’m sure there’s a law!”
“Out!” the man yelled again, waving the cleaver wildly. He stormed around a stack of cans and started down the shop’s other narrow aisle. There was nothing to stop him now, Max thought. He would be on them in no time. Ratty was pawing at a pyramid of wine bottles in front of the window, trying to climb it to reach the sausages. Max pulled on her leash with all his might. Ratty and the whole pyramid of bottles came crashing down.
Wishworks, Inc. Page 3
