Smarty-Pants Sheltie

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “I’m Maggie,” said the girl, tossing her dark curls. She had an Irish name, but she looked like she was part Native American, maybe. “You may have seen my cat, Angelina Meowly, on commercials for —”

  All the guys and a couple of the girls in the class groaned loudly. The blond girl next to Maggie covered her mouth and giggled.

  “What?” Maggie said, turning red. “He might have! She’s on TV all the time!”

  “All right, carry on,” said Mr. Peary, nodding at the blond girl.

  Later on, when Mr. Peary told us to take out our notebooks for math, I turned to the back of mine and tried to write down all the names I remembered. I wouldn’t tell anyone this, but I actually have a pretty good memory. It helps if I write stuff down, though. Here’s what I wrote about my new class, in the order they were sitting in:

  Maggie: cat named Angelina Meowly???

  Rebekah: blond, blue cat-shaped barrette in her hair

  Eric: keeps looking at Rebekah, fiddles with a small green USB drive while he talks

  Danny: Heidi’s friend from the park, tall, really loud laugh

  Parker: one of the only ones who looked at me when he said his name, baseball glove sticking out of his backpack

  Nikos: raises his hand whenever Mr. Peary asks a question, probably the “N.S.” whose essay is stapled to the Gold Star board

  Brett: cheesy grin, laughed at girls moving my desk, flips his pen between his fingers like he’s been practicing that for a while and hopes someone will tell him how cool it is

  Jonas: quiet, hard to hear, notebooks with fish and whales and sharks on the covers, glasses

  Virginia: silver rings, necklace, small dangly earrings (pierced ears), big smile, stack of horse books on her desk at free reading time, probably the “V.M.” whose horse drawing is next to Nikos’s essay on the Gold Star board

  Natasha: one of the whispering girls, pretty, glasses, giggles at almost everything

  Tara: the other whispering girl, pink beads in her hair match pink nail polish, very thin

  Kristal: braces, light blue shirt that says “Big Sisters Are the Best!”, split a Twix bar with Heidi at snack break

  Heidi: Heidi. ’Nuff said.

  Ella: supercurly brown hair, taps her fingers against her desk almost nonstop, looks like she’s in another world half the time

  * * *

  I glanced at my list again, then crossed off the “pretty” beside Natasha’s name over and over so that you couldn’t read it. If anyone accidentally saw this list, I didn’t want anything on there that someone could make fun of me for. I mean, she was pretty, but so were Rebekah and Heidi and Virginia and Tara. And maybe Ella, if she’d ever stop tapping. Plus Kristal seemed a lot nicer than Natasha; she’d leaned over to smile at me when she said her name, like Parker did.

  None of the guys reminded me of Victor or Josh, though. I couldn’t imagine watching football or doing crazy made-up science experiments with any of them. The only one that gave me any hope was Parker, but I could tell he was already best friends with Danny and Eric.

  There was some good news. It turned out I was way ahead of the class in math — it was the same textbook, but my class in Rochester had already finished the next two chapters. The world geography lesson wasn’t anything harder than capitals and mountain ranges. And everyone was reading Holes for English, which I’d read last year.

  To be honest, I was pretty bored. I doodled in my math notebook while Mr. Peary talked about fractions. I drew footballs and buffalo and a tiny football field surrounded by a stadium full of fans.

  But I was just trying to distract myself from what I knew was coming. The part of the day I dreaded most was the moment when I’d walk into the cafeteria and have to figure out where to sit.

  So even though the morning seemed to go really slowly, it still felt too soon when the bell rang for lunch. I picked up my brown bag and joined the line out the door with a stomach full of butterflies.

  The cafeteria was a huge room with long, pale green tables and dark green chairs. It smelled exactly the same as our cafeteria in Rochester, kind of like ketchup and reheated pizza and sloppy joes, even though what they were actually serving was tacos. There was a separate salad bar, although only a couple of sixth graders and a bunch of teachers went over to it.

  Everyone ate lunch at the same time, so the room was full of kids, most of them yelling to one another or running around the tables. It was really loud and confusing. When we got to the door, most of the kids in my class split up; some of them went straight to their tables and sat down, while others ran to the soda machine or got into the main line.

  I stayed behind Danny, who’d been in front of me when we left the classroom. I figured I’d just follow whatever he did, which is how I ended up in the line for tacos.

  Danny took a tray and gave me a weird look as I took one, too. “Didn’t you bring your lunch?” he asked, nodding at the bag in my hand. I’d completely forgotten about it. Now I felt like an idiot.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “But I really wanted some, uh … applesauce.” I grabbed the first thing I saw. I don’t even like applesauce.

  “Oh, OK,” Danny said. He moved along, distracted by the tacos. I took a carton of chocolate milk and followed him to the cashier. She peered at my mostly empty tray and lifted her eyebrows at me, but she took my dollar without saying anything.

  “Heidi!” Danny yelled, stopping right in front of me so I nearly crashed into him. “I’ve been waiting to show you this all day!” He balanced his tray on one hand and started fishing through his pockets. It looked like a disaster waiting to happen.

  I edged away from him and glanced around at the crowded, noisy room. Nobody even looked at me. I felt queasy.

  Then somebody grabbed my arm and I jumped, knocking my milk carton to the ground.

  “Oops!” Heidi said at my elbow. She knelt to pick up the carton at the same time as I did, and our heads bumped. She started laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re as klutzy as I am!”

  “Yeah, we can only handle one Heidi in the class,” Danny said to me. He waved a glossy brochure at her. “Check it out!”

  Heidi took it from him and unfolded it as Danny headed for a nearby table. Parker and Eric were already there, along with a guy I didn’t know and the curly-haired girl, Ella.

  “Oooooh,” Heidi said. I saw that there were photos of dogs on the front of the brochure. She started toward the same table and then stopped to glance back at me. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Uh — sure,” I said. Maybe she thought Danny had invited me to sit with them. I hoped he wouldn’t mind. He did look surprised when he saw me coming, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t believe you let me call you Nathan!” Heidi said to me as I sat down in the chair next to Parker’s. He grinned at me, and I felt a bit better.

  “What about Nathan?” Rory said, bouncing into the chair beside Heidi. “Oh, hey, Nathan. What’s up?”

  “His name isn’t Nathan,” Heidi said. “It’s Noah.”

  “Oh,” Rory said, a little wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “That’s weird. Why’d you say your name was Nathan?”

  “I didn’t!” I protested, but she was already getting to her feet again.

  “ ’Bye, Rory!” Heidi called. “Rory eats lunch with her dad every day,” she explained to me. “He’s Coach Mason, our PE teacher; you’ll meet him tomorrow. It’s, like, their ritual so she can hang out with him without her stepbrother and stepsister for a little while.”

  “Do you play baseball?” Parker asked me. “Coach Mason’s pretty great.”

  “Uh, no,” I said. “But I guess I could.”

  “Only if you’re good,” Danny said loudly. “Because we’re going to win every game this year! Yeah!”

  “So’s the girls’ soccer team!” Heidi said.

  “Noah, this is Troy,” Parker said, nodding at the redheaded guy with glasses sitting a couple chairs down the table. “He’s in Miss Woodhul
l’s class.” Troy gave me a halfhearted wave and went back to picking celery out of his tuna salad sandwich.

  Kristal appeared with a tray of tacos, followed by Rebekah, who was one of the few kids who had a plate from the salad bar.

  “What’s that?” Kristal asked, nodding at Heidi’s brochure as she sat down. Rebekah smiled at Eric and he blinked a lot, then smiled back at her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Danny said, grabbing the pamphlet. “Parker, you should see this, too. Carlos found it. It’s this obedience and agility class for dogs, and it starts tonight! We totally have to go!”

  Ella and Eric both leaned in to look at it. Kristal sighed and started poking her tacos with her white plastic fork.

  “Aw, man, more dog talk? You guys are torturing me,” said Troy. “This is totally unfair.”

  “Yeah,” Kristal chimed in. “All you ever care about now is dog stuff.” That surprised me. I couldn’t think of anything to say about my dog, except maybe about how she stared at me all the time. Luckily no one seemed interested in hearing me talk. They were too busy doing all the talking themselves.

  “You’ll get a dog someday,” Parker said to Troy.

  “I won’t,” Kristal said, stabbing her tacos harder. “Dad is totally allergic. When we got back from your house, Parker, he sneezed for, like, half an hour because we had Merlin’s fur on our jeans or something.”

  “Well, maybe you can come watch us train our dogs,” Heidi said.

  “Probably not, but anyway …” Danny said. He was clearly impatient to talk about the class again. “So it’s only an hour long, and it meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights for the next two weeks. Carlos already signed us up with Buttons. You want to go, right, Heidi?”

  I realized that if I wanted to be friends with these people, I’d have to do more than memorize all their names. I’d have to remember all their dogs’ names, too. I thought of the small white dog I’d seen with Danny on Saturday. Buttons. Small as a button. I could remember that.

  “Mom and Dad would love to get Yeti trained!” Heidi said.

  “But what’s ‘agility’?” Ella asked. “Is that like gymnastics? Or yoga?” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounds like ballet.”

  Heidi laughed. “No way! Agility is much more fun than ballet! I’ve seen it on TV — the dogs have to go through these, like, obstacle courses. They jump over hurdles and run through tunnels and climb ramps and it’s superfunny. You’ll like it!”

  Ella looked skeptical. “That’s a lot of time when I should be practicing,” she said.

  “But Ella,” Rebekah chimed in, “if you take Trumpet to this class, it’ll tire her out. It’s like taking her for a long walk or playing outside. Once you get home, she’ll sleep right through your piano playing.”

  That made Ella look more cheerful. “OK,” she said. “I’ll ask Mom.”

  Trumpet, I said to myself. I tried picturing a trumpet with Ella’s long curly hair. Hopefully that would make the name stick in my head.

  “What about you, Eric?” Rebekah asked with a hopeful expression.

  Eric snorted. “Are you kidding? Can you picture Meatball jumping hurdles?” Almost everyone at the table started laughing, so I smiled, too, even though I had no idea why that was so funny.

  “He’s amazing with that skateboard, though!” Rebekah said. “Maybe he has hidden talents. Come on, I’ll sign up Noodles if you bring Meatball.”

  “Uh — OK,” said Eric.

  Meatball and Noodles. I’d have to draw a meatball on a skateboard next to Eric’s name when I got back to my notebook. That should be easy to remember. I wondered what kind of dog he was.

  “Yay!” Heidi cried. “This’ll be so much fun!” She put her arms around Ella and Rebekah, on either side of her, and squished them into a hug.

  Kristal slammed her fork down on her tray. “I’m going to the library,” she said. “Not like anyone cares.” She dumped everything on her tray into the garbage on her way out the door.

  “Whoa,” Danny said through a mouthful of taco. “What’s her problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Heidi said, looking confused. “Did I say something?”

  Rebekah sighed. “Maybe she’s mad because she can’t come to the class.”

  “Or maybe she feels left out,” Troy said grumpily. “Since you guys are all ‘dogs dogs dogs’ all the time.”

  There was an awkward silence. I was beginning to wish I’d sat at another table. Maybe a table with no girls at it. Girls were complicated.

  “Hey, did you see the game last night?” Parker asked Troy. “With that crazy grand slam in the eighth inning?”

  “I did!” Danny nearly yelled. “That was amazing!”

  The four guys all started talking about baseball at once. Nobody asked me if I’d seen the game — which I hadn’t, of course, because our cable wasn’t hooked up yet, either.

  “Hmm,” Rebekah said. “I was watching my favorite dance show. You guys didn’t see it, did you?” she asked Heidi and Ella.

  “I was practicing,” Ella said.

  “I was trying to find all the candy stashed in my room before Yeti finds it and eats it,” Heidi said. “Oh my gosh, I had lollipops and Butterfingers and gummi bears hidden behind everything!”

  Rebekah rolled her eyes, smiling. “I’ll go ask Maggie if she saw it.” She took her salad with her to the other table.

  Heidi and Ella started talking about some new song that Ella was learning. I just sat there, eating my lunch and wishing I were back in Rochester. Kids there were a lot easier to talk to.

  Then I remembered the new kid who’d shown up in fifth grade. None of us had talked to him, either. He sat by himself at lunch for the whole first month of school. I wouldn’t even have noticed, but Anjali pointed it out. She said Josh and I should go say hi, but we never did. We were too busy with our own stuff. Now I couldn’t even remember his name.

  What if that happened to me? What if nobody ever talked to me? Heidi had already forgotten my name once. What if everybody else did, too?

  It was too easy to imagine sitting there a month in the future, pretending to be part of a group, but really with no friends at all.

  The only thing anyone said to me was at the end of lunch, as we all got up to leave. Heidi picked up the brochure again, and then smiled at me.

  “Maybe you should bring Jeopardy to the class,” she said. “Shelties are so smart! I bet she’d be really good at it!”

  I knew better. She’d be terrible. She’d probably spend the whole class just staring at me and everyone would laugh at my weird dog. No way, no thank you.

  “Nah,” I said, but before I could explain why, Heidi called Rory’s name and ran off across the cafeteria.

  I was relieved. I figured she’d forget all about inviting me, and that would be the last I’d have to hear about this class.

  I had no idea how wrong I was.

  Jeopardy and Violet were already in the car when Mom picked me up after school. Jeopardy was clipped into this goofy purple seat belt–harness thing that my dad found for her online. It’s to keep her safe and stop her from bouncing around the car. She woofed at me from the backseat and tried to put her front paws up on the back of my headrest, but she couldn’t reach.

  “WOOF!” she said again, more grouchily.

  “How was your first day?” Mom said in an overly cheerful way as I slammed the door behind me. Her hair was up in her I’m a grown-up, take me seriously bun.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “MINE-SA FINE, TOO!” Violet shrieked, flinging her stuffed hippo at me. I tossed it back at her, even though I knew she’d probably just throw it at me again. If I didn’t give it back to her, though, she’d start wailing, and that would be much worse.

  I slouched down in my seat while we pulled out of the parking lot in a long, slow line of cars. I saw Danny getting his bike from the rack and pushing it alongside Parker and Eric and Troy as they walked off. I’d had best friends like that once upon a time. And now I ha
d no one. No one except a crazy dog and a supersonic little sister.

  “Well!” Mom said brightly. “Guess what? I signed you up for something!”

  “Oh, Mom,” I groaned. That’s when I spotted a glossy, colorful piece of paper sticking out of the cup holder. Uh-oh.

  “The woman at the day care was telling me about it,” Mom went on. She sounded horribly excited. “Apparently they do dog training classes there, too! Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  I picked up the brochure. It was exactly the one Heidi and Danny had been looking at.

  “No,” I said. “No way, I can’t. Like, half my class is going to this.”

  “All the more reason!” my mom said. “It’s a great way to meet people!”

  Yeah, right. Try a terrible way to meet people. “Have you seen our dog, Mom? She’s so embarrassing!”

  “Well, I already paid for it,” Mom said in her no-nonsense voice. “So if you don’t go, Violet and I will have to go without you.”

  I wondered if Mom noticed how often she used the threat of Violet to get me to do things. If there was anything worse than suffering through this class with Jeopardy, it would be sitting at home knowing that Danny and Parker and Ella and Heidi were all hanging out with my mom and my screaming little sister, thinking I was too pathetic to take the class myself.

  “RRRRRRRRGH,” I said, clutching my hair. But I was beaten and I knew it.

  So that’s how I found myself at the Bark and Ride Day Care at seven o’clock that night, standing awkwardly in the doorway with Jeopardy.

  The central room was big, with a high ceiling and empty cages all the way around the walls. Paw prints in all colors, red and yellow and green and blue, were dotted along the white walls next to words like WOOF! and PAWS FOR A SNUGGLE! and other dog-related silliness. The gray floor felt bouncy under my sneakers, like in a gym or something.