Guinea Dog

by Patrick Jennings

  “Lead on, Mr. Molloy,” I said.

  For a guy who never came up with many bright ideas, I was coming up with an awful lot of them. Which worried me.

  As I hoped, no one noticed me in the office when we picked up our tardy slips. (I jammed mine in my pocket.) And no one noticed me when we walked through the door to class—all eyes were on Murphy, as usual. I handed Ms. Charp back the bathroom pass, which, if he even noticed, Murph probably figured it was my tardy slip. Then I snuck away quietly to my seat. I was pretty darn proud of myself. All had gone according to plan. I had gotten myself out of a pretty sticky situation.

  And into another one.

  12. Recess is a joke.

  The adults at school think it’s their big gift to us, a time for us to go outdoors and relax and have fun with our friends. Yeah, right. Recess basically lasts the time it takes for a group of school kids to run outside, agree on something fun to do, get started doing it, then have to turn around and go back in. If you’re going to have any fun, you’ve got to be smart, prepared, and organized. Here are some tips:

  • Do the same activity every day. Less time wasted choosing.

  • Pick an activity that requires little or no equipment. Less time spent gathering stuff.

  • If it’s a team activity like a sport or game—which, for guys, it usually is—pick teams when time’s not so crucial, like during class.

  • Continue the same game the whole school week, so you can come close to kind of finishing maybe a quarter of one by Friday.

  • Make everybody (except Murphy) swear to play every day; otherwise, it screws everything up. (You can’t trust Murphy even if he does swear, so why bother? Some girl walks up and he’s bye-bye.)

  • Keep playing till one of the recess “teachers” (they’re really just aides and kitchen ladies and stuff) comes over and tells you personally to go inside. You have earned those extra seconds. They are yours. Fight for them!

  Anyway, me and some guys had planned a soccer game the day I hid Fido in the bush, so when the bell for recess rang, we stormed the ball field. We would have jumped right into it, but a couple of guys were out sick and they were on the same team. That meant some trading, which ate up a minute or two, which at recess is, like, an eon. Finally, the game started and we were all running around breathing fresh air and actually using our bodies when this little orange furball streaked across the field and everybody stopped and pointed and laughed and said, “What was that?”

  It was Fido, of course.

  Here’s how she probably got loose:

  • I forgot to zip my backpack.

  It was pretty clear what she was doing out there, and it wasn’t trying to kick a field goal. She was looking for yours truly. And she spotted him. And she made a beeline for him. And she was making some pretty good time as she cut a path across the field, let me tell you. I mean, the guys’ mouths were all hanging open. Well, that’s not so odd, but, believe me, they were amazed.

  “It’s a…guinea pig?” one of the brighter minds of my generation said.

  “No, it’s a woodchuck!” said one of the dimmer ones.

  Once again, I was going to have to come up with some big, fat, believable lie or else, and Fido’s surprising speed was rushing me, which I did not appreciate. It was no surprise that, in the end, I thought of nothing at all clever or helpful to do or say. I simply turned and ran away. This is my second main strategy—after stalling—when facing sticky situations: bolting.

  Fido let out a bark. (Yeah, a bark. A teeny, tiny little bark, but it was a bark.) Then she kicked into high gear after me. That’s right: She had a higher gear. It was ridiculous. The pet store must have been giving its rodents steroids.

  I heard the guys behind me, laughing their heads off.

  “Look at that fat rat go!” one screamed.

  “It’s following Roof!” one hollered.

  I ran from the field to the basketball court, and the basketball-playing guys followed the soccer-playing guys, who followed Fido, who followed me, and I shouted, “Run, run, fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the…”

  Where was the bell? It should have rung eons ago.

  And through the playground I ran, and all the children stopped their play to watch, and smiled with glee, and they joined in the parade, and I scanned the skies for giant inflatable cartoon characters, but it was the wrong city, the wrong month, and the wrong parade for that. This was the First Annual Rustbury Spring Recess Parade, with Grand Marshal Fido, and starring Rufus the clown.

  Finally, once every kid at school got a good look at my crazy, hyperspeed, punk guinea pig chasing me around the school grounds, the bell rang. I don’t think anyone ever looked into it, but I’m pretty sure it was the longest fifteen-minute elementary-school recess in American history.

  The bell had its usual effect. Everybody stopped what they were doing and started shuffling toward the building.

  I seized the moment and ducked behind a bush. Fido followed me. I picked her up. She was panting heavily, but, overall, she seemed happy. She licked my face. I hissed and showed her my fangs. She whimpered.

  “Back in the bag with you,” I said.

  I dashed from bush to bush till I was back at the one with my backpack under it. As I suspected, it was unzipped. Did I leave it that way, or did Fido know how to unzip? After all, she knew how to do a lot of really strange things.

  I put her inside and zipped the bag shut.

  “Stay!” I said.

  She whined.

  “Quiet!” I added.

  She stopped whining.

  I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t get out again somehow. I considered putting big rocks on the zippered end of the bag, but there weren’t any big rocks handy. Wouldn’t you know it? I thought I could lock the zippers together through the little holes in the zipper pulls, but I didn’t have a lock. The backpack came with a little one with a tiny key, but who knows where that went. Then I got the brilliant idea to tie them together, but I didn’t have anything to tie them with, until I looked down, and duh, I saw my shoes. I pulled the laces out of my left one and threaded it through the eyes of the zipper pulls and tied a good and tight knot. Then I put the bag under the bush and took a really deep breath because I hadn’t breathed for a while. Then I ran back to class.

  Murphy was entertaining everyone with a reenactment of the First Annual Rustbury Spring Recess Parade. He played me and used Shireen’s poofy orange hat with the chin straps as Fido. He ran around the room dragging the hat behind him and everybody cracked up. When he saw me, he let go of Shireen’s hat and went into this whole mock excited and honored routine, saying, “And here he is nowwww…Rufus! The boy who outran a…weird rodent thing! Put your hands together for him!”

  Everybody snickered and clapped.

  Then Ms. Charp walked in behind me, and they all knocked it off.

  “Seats, please,” she said, glaring at everyone. “I could hear you all the way from the staff lounge, for your information.”

  I slunk over to my desk. Dmitri scooted his desk over an inch. Lurena, in front of me, turned around.

  “Of all the kids on the playground, why did she choose you, Rufus?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “What makes you think it was a she?”

  13. I wasn’t as nervous to go home that day.

  In fact, I couldn’t wait to get there.

  I slipped out after the bell without Murph seeing me, which isn’t so tough to do; his focus is not usually on any one person unless it’s a cute girl, which I am definitely not. Dmitri was helping out by trying desperately to show Murph his U-phone, which he had rushed to get from Ms. Charp before the bell had finished ringing. (The phone had beeped too many times during class and she had confiscated it.) I grabbed my jacket from my locker, scrambled outside, got my backpack from under the bush, and shot like a bullet toward home. My loose left shoe slowed me down, but I didn’t stop to replace the lace, or to check on Fido in my bag. I didn’t want anyone ca
tching up with me and bugging me about the strange animal at recess. I just wanted to get home.

  Dad was waiting for me just inside the door again.

  “Hello, son,” he said, his eyes glowing in the dark.

  “Uh…hi, Dad.”

  “Fine day at school?”

  “I guess.”

  I started to edge by him. He blocked me.

  “Aren’t you going to ask about my day?”

  “Oh. Sure. How was your day, Dad?”

  “On the whole, nerve-racking. Thanks for asking.”

  I looked at him blankly. “But Fido…,” I started to say, then wondered if I should volunteer how she stowed away and got loose at school and everything.

  If Dad had a bad day, it couldn’t have been Fido’s fault. It must have been because of something else. I had taken off in a real rush this morning. I bet I forgot to do something, like bus my dishes. No, all I had was a banana. And I distinctly remembered throwing the peel in the compost, not the garbage. I couldn’t think of anything I did or didn’t do that would have made Dad’s day “nerve-racking”—that is, any-thing that would have bugged him all day long.

  “Why was it nerve-racking?” I asked.

  “Well, first I spent over an hour hunting for your mother’s Petopia,” he said. “Without success, of course.”

  Good. That was Mom’s fault.

  “And then I spent the rest of the day trying to work while being driven stark-raving mad by the chattering of that…that…” His face got all red and scary. “That…that…creature.”

  I took a couple of breaths, sort of letting his anger cloud blow over me. Then I said, “But Dad, Fido was—”

  “So maybe you have some idea how we might rectify this untenable situation, son,” he interrupted. “After all, I do have a living to make.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t exactly sure what he had said.

  Luckily, Fido said something. I’d forgotten about her for a minute, if you can believe that. That’s what Dad can do to me. He can make me forget I have a chubby rat in a sack on my back.

  When Fido started whining, Dad’s shoulders shrank up to his ears.

  “Find her, Rufus,” he growled. “Find her wherever she is and I’ll destroy her.”

  “But, Dad. She’s right here, in my backpack. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She stowed away in it this morning somehow, and she’s been at school with me all day.”

  Dad’s shoulders fell. So did his jaw. And his face. I never saw somebody go from so tight to so loose so fast.

  “But…,” he muttered.

  “Look,” I said, and I took off my backpack, untied the shoelace, and unzipped the zipper. A smell rushed out at my nostrils. It was not a nice smell. Right behind it was Fido’s twitchy face. She, of course, licked mine. Well, my face wasn’t twitchy. Then again, maybe it was.

  “She was…,” Dad said, looking down at her. He was still acting weirdly dazed. “She was…with you…all day?”

  “Yeah, she was in my backpack. After I found her, I hid the backpack in some bushes. She was in there all day.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. She got out. Who knows, maybe she went home and bothered Dad and came back before recess. It was possible. Maybe after recess, after I tied her in, she squealed so loud that Dad heard her from home. No, that was impossible. Dad has sensitive hearing—very sensitive hearing—but no human being could hear a guinea pig from that distance. Nope, she couldn’t have bugged him all day. So that was my justification for not telling him about the recess parade. Neat, huh?

  “So then she wasn’t…here?” Dad said. He sounded like he was talking to himself, so I didn’t answer.

  His forehead got all worry-lined.

  “I’ll take her out back and play with her so she won’t disturb you anymore,” I said.

  Dad nodded, then turned away. “Thanks.”

  I carried my backpack outside and dumped it out onto the grass. Fido ran around in circles, hopping and barking and acting nuts, so I ordered her to sit, and she sat. The people who trained her knew what they were doing. It was a pity we couldn’t find the store where Mom bought her. I bet a lot of people in Rustbury would want a trained guinea pig.

  Not me, though. I wanted a dog.

  Her little turds were hard and didn’t smell too bad. Neither did the pee, though it smelled worse. There were some signs of gnawing and scratching on the inside of the bag, but nothing major. I expected it to be worse. Though she shouldn’t have stowed away, she had been sort of good. Yes, she did totally embarrass me in front of the entire fifth grade, but that wasn’t exactly her fault; I probably left the zipper unzipped. I should try to remember to start closing things I want closed. Such as my mouth around Mom when I want a dog.

  Fido sat up, looking up at me, her front paws dangling, her nose and whiskers twitching. All of a sudden, the white mohawk just cracked me up, and I, like, totally lost it. She was a weird, weird little thing, no doubt about it. But she sure did aim to please.

  I tossed a twig a couple feet away, and she raced after it. When she brought it back, I threw it again. Then again. And again. Twenty times. Maybe thirty. She was always ready for another toss, hopping up and down, wagging her butt. It wasn’t exactly playing Fetch with Buddy. It wasn’t remotely like playing Fetch with Buddy. But, yeah, okay, in a way, it was Fetch. Fetch with a tiny twig and a rotund rodent.

  One time instead of coming back with the twig, she had a dusty old piece of string. She dropped it on the grass then picked up one end in her teeth. The other end dangled.

  “You want me to take that?”

  She growled. It was a very tiny growl coming from the very tiny throat buried deep in the fur around her neck, but I’m gonna cut her some slack here and call it a growl. I took the other end of the string, and she gripped her end tighter and growled a bit deeper.

  “Tug-of-War?” I asked, pulling my end a little harder. “Are you kidding me?”

  She dug her front claws into the sod. She wagged her butt, trying to maximize her weight distribution, like a TV wrestler, or least that’s what it looked like to me. I tugged a little bit harder. Understand that I was pinching my end of the string between my finger and thumb, and that holding on to it took absolutely no strength at all. This was totally one-sided. She was doing all the tugging.

  She dug her claws deeper into the ground and pulled on the string with all her weight. The string snapped between her sharp front teeth, and she rolled over backward like a fuzzy cantaloupe three or four times. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. I fell over laughing. I laughed till it hurt. Which felt pretty good. Fido just ran around and around me, squealing.

  Dad slid open the window in his study and hollered, “Rufus!”

  I stopped laughing. Fido stopped circling. We looked up.

  Dad sighed. Then he smiled. I wasn’t sure at that distance if it was pleasant or maniacal.

  “Never mind,” he said, and slid the window shut.

  I shrugged at Fido. Did she shrug back? Probably not, but it looked like it.

  “Rufus?” a voice called. It came from the front of the house. “Rufus? I don’t know the code! Do I need the code?”

  It was Lurena Shraits. What was she doing at my house?

  I ordered Fido back into my backpack and she obeyed without a whimper.

  Lurena was on the front porch. She was not hard to spot. Her hair is very long, like, never-been-cut-in-her-life long, and wavy-curly and goldenish. She puts a lot of things in it—girl things, hair things—and she wears really girly clothes, too: dresses, skirts, shiny shoes, sweaters that button down the front. Here’s what she doesn’t wear: normal clothes, like jeans or athletic shoes or T-shirts or hoodies.

  “I really can’t knock?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I have to have a code?”

  “My dad works at home.”

  “Oh,” she said, thinking this over. “I was heading over to
the rec center because they started a new Scrabble club, and I came by to ask you to join me, if you’d like. You’re the only other person I know who likes to anagram. If you don’t go, there might not be anyone there. Except me, that is.”

  She laughed. Why? Because she thought what she said was funny. She often thinks what she says is funny. And laughs at it. Usually alone.

  “So what do you say?” she asked, clapping her hands together. “Want to come?”

  It was true that I liked to anagram and that not very many other kids did. But did I want to join a Scrabble club, or hang out with kids who would? More important, was it worth walking down the street with Lurena to check it out? It was the kind of thing that could ruin a fifth-grade guy’s image—not that my image was all that hot. Still, I was leaning toward not risking it.

  Fido spared me the decision.

  14. I guess I forgot to zip it up again.

  “So it is your guinea pig,” Lurena said, looking down at Fido, who had joined us in the front yard. She was standing next to my laceless left shoe, up on her hind legs, looking up at us, her tongue hanging out. She had escaped the backpack yet again.

  “You can’t bring her to the rec center,” Lurena said. “No pets allowed. It’s the rules.”

  “She’s not my pet, Lurena,” I said. “She…” Once again the lie wouldn’t come.

  “Followed you home?” Lurena said.

  “Right.”

  “What are you calling her?”

  “Why do you think she’s a girl?”

  Lurena set her hand on her hip and rolled her eyes at me. This was supposed to mean something, I’m sure, but I had no idea what.

  “Okay, her name is Fido,” I said, “and she’s mine, but please don’t tell anyone, or the guys at school will kill me with jokes. Besides, we’re not keeping her. My dad hates her. We’re taking her back to the pet store…as soon as we find it. It was all my mom’s idea. I wanted a dog.”

  Lurena crouched down and put her hand out. The million bangles she always wears on her wrist bangled. Fido sniffed her fingers, then licked them. Lurena giggled.