by AJ Stern
The doctor was calming Bark down with a treat and petting him. Bark was being on his best behavior now. Then a secretary walked out of a different doctor room and stood over us.
“And who, exactly, is responsible for you?”
“Dan and Anna Miller,” I told them.
“Well, can you please tell us how to get in touch with them?” The secretary seemed very, very angry. As I told her my mom’s cell phone number, I sta rted to get a Very badday feelling on my skin.
“Why don’t you wait on the bench outside while I call pour mother, okay?” the angry secretary said.
Elliott and I looked at each other with big, worried faces. Then Elliott took Bark by the leash and I followed them into the waiting room where I got the wheelchair and we headed out the front door. But before we left, I turned to everyone in the waiting room and said sorry to the ground, even though it was meant for the people.
When we got outside, Elliott got back into the wheelchair, we got Bark on his lap, and I wrapped them with the Ace bandage. Then, just as I was about to sit on the bench in front of the veterinarian’s office, my mom rounded the corner with a Very bad day mood on her face.
And just as she went to open her mouth to let us know how much trouble we were in, her cell phone rang .
“Hello? What? No! Oh my! That’s just—Okay, okay, okay. We’ll be right there.” Then she hung up the phone, looked at us, and said, “Come on kids, we have to hurry !” She raced ahead, rounded the corner, and ran to the end of the block where Magoo lived.
I pushed Bark and Elliott very quickly but also very professionally around the corner and up the block behind my mother. It was exhaustifying. By the time we got to Magoo’s house, my chest was all out of breath.
Just as my mom was about to open the front door, it flew open and a very large woman with tears in her very red eyes, a swollen face, and red bumps on her neck came running out. Magoo came crutching up to the door behind her yelling, “Wait! Wait! We can do this somewhere else!” And then I saw the slippy cats on the floor behind them.
When I saw the cats, that’s when I got a Very bad feeling in my memory. And that bad feeling was that when I pushed the wheelchair out of the television room, I might have, maybe, perhaps, possibly, it could be, there’s a little chance that by the hugest of accidents, I left the door just a little bit open.
Maybe.
The big lady stopped when she saw us. I looked behind her and saw Magoo and Dad’s bright red, angry faces. My mom was standing next to us, and her face was angry, too.
Elliott and I froze like Popsicles. The lady stood right over us, with her hands on her hips. And we stared up at her, terrified. But then, she did the weirdest thing in the entire world.
She laughed.
I didn’t know what she thought was so funny. Looking at all the very mad faces glaring at us from inside Magoo’s house, you’d think there’d never be anything funny ever again.
“Who are you and what in the world are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m Frannie and this is my best friend, Elliott. And that’s Bark. We thought he had a case of limp paw so we took him to the veterinarian around the corner.”
“And you brought him in a wheelchair?”
“He had limp paw! He couldn’t walk!” Elliott said.
“What’s that you have there?” the lady asked, pointing to Elliott’s pocket. He looked down and pulled out his sock doll.
“This is my sock doll.”
“Did Margot make that for you?”
“No, I’m making it.”
“You’re making it?”
“Yes. And when it’s done, it’s going to be my good luck charm.”
The woman didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she turned around and looked at Magoo with brand-new eyes and asked, “Is there a drugstore nearby?”
“Just across the street from the vet’s office,” Magoo told her.
The lady looked at me and Elliott and asked, “Can you take me there?”
We looked at my dad, who shrugged.
“Okay,” I said.
Then the lady turned to Magoo and said, “You put the cats away. I’m going to get some allergy medicine, then I’ll come back. I think these children just gave me a marvelous idea about your dolls.”
Elliott and I left Bark and the wheelchair with Mom, Dad, and Magoo. They all looked half confused and half the maddest I’ve ever seen them in my worldwide life and that is Very, extremely, professionally mad.
We each took one of the lady’s hands and went to the drugstore. She picked out some medicine and also some eyedrops. As soon as she put the drops in her eyes, the red magically disappeared. She told us the splotches and bumps would go away about twenty minutes after she took the other medicine. Then we headed back to Magoo’s to hear her marvelous idea.
CHAPTER 11
When we got back, my parents had on their “you are in the hugest amount of trouble but we are in front of company so you are not getting punished at this exact minute” expressions.
They had to keep these expressions for a long time since the fancy lady wanted me and Elliott to stay and hear her marvelous idea. She gave a long, boring talk about the dolls and said words that had Qs in them, so we knew whatever they meant was complicated.
Then she said things about other dolls and other toys and even though she was talking about dolls and toys, I can tell you for a scientific fact that it was not interesting. But when she started talking about me and Elliott, suddenly it became interesting.
“When I saw these kids and that little boy with his handmade doll, I had a vision.”
Magoo was leaning in so closely, I saw the little hairs on my arms rise and fall from her breath.
“Not only are we going to sell your dolls, but we’re going to do workshops where we teach children how to knit, crochet, sew, and ... with your permission, make your sock dolls.”
Magoo inhaled the biggest breath of happiness.
“Really?” she asked.
“Yes, really . I know that the children will love it!” Then she said things that sounded like this: Boring boring boring. Even more boring. The boringest of boring. Something so boring it bores even the most boring things in the entire world. One last thing that is so boring, I just bored my own self to sleep. I’d like to start as soon as possible. Do you think you could have one hundred dolls in the store by September?”
“Absolutely. It would be my honor,” Magoo said.
The fancy toy store woman stood, shook hands with Magoo, gave me and Elliott each a big kiss, and thanked us. And then Mom, Dad, and Magoo walked and crutched their way to the door. When they came back, Elliott and I stood up, very happy and on our way to play in the other room. My dad put his arm out and rested it on my shoulder.
“Not so fast, Frances.”
CHAPTER 12
We were in a Frances amount of trouble. When my parents use my full name, Frances, it’s serious.
We didn’t know that we had left the door open behind us when we went to get the wheelchair. So we didn’t know that the cats got out, and that Magoo couldn’t get them back in the room because she was on crutches. We also didn’t know that time went by so fast. What we did know was that we left the house without an adult and that we were just very lucky that the fancy top store lady had a genius-al brain and got a good idea just from seeing Elliott with that doll.
We had so much to fix in order to make things right again that I almost lost track.
First, we had to apologize to Magoo. We went into Magoo’s room, and she was sitting on her bed, making a brand-new sock doll.
“Magoo?” I said.
“Mmmmm....?” she replied with a needle clamped between her teeth.
“Elliott and I wanted to tell you that we’re sorry we almost ruined your life.”
Magoo looked up with a smile, but didn’t sap anything back.
“We were only trying to help because we thought that Bark had limp paw.”
�
�Well, it’s nice that you wanted to pitch in, but it sure did cause me a lot of stress,” Magoo said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, honey. I would just ask that, in the future, you’ll think long and hard before you make a decision. Because if your decision affects other people in a bad way, maybe it’s not a good decision.”
I looked down at the ground. “Does that mean I was selfish?”
“I’m afraid so,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Magoo. I really didn’t mean to be selfish on purpose. I got excited.”
“Oh, it’s okay, as long as you learned from it for next time. Now come here both of you.” We went over to Magoo and she wrapped us up in her arms and hugged us. When we were walking out of the room, she stopped us and we turned around.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” I asked.
“For being you. After all, none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the two of you.”
Elliott and I shrugged. Who else were we supposed to be?
Then Dad walked us over to the veterinarian’s office where we apologized to everybody and stayed for one entire hour helping them clean up. I was very worried that we had scared all the animals for the rest of their worldwide lives. But the secretary said they were all going to be fine, and that is not an opinion.
When everything was cleaned up, the secretary showed Elliott how to work the phone bank since he was going to be a veterinarian’s secretary. And the veterinarian let me try on his stethoscope and white jacket! It was all very official and definitely and clearly professional.
When we got home, my mom said that even though we had made a lot of apologies, saying we were sorry was not enough. What else in the worldwide of America could we do, I wondered?
First, we were not allowed to watch any more TV. We had to go to bed one half hour earlier and read to ourselves instead of being read to. And we had to give Hester, Esther, and Lester baths. And if you think cats are slippy when they’re dry, you should never wash a cat!
It was the worst day of my entire life, but it was also the best. I was with my best friend in the world, I got to wear a real veterinarian’s jacket and a stethoscope, my aunt sold her dolls, and Elliott’s sock doll was already lucky charmed!
Everything worked out in the end.
Except that I was not allowed to quit school and become a veterinarian.
Not get, anyway.
THE END.
The waiter bent down so he was closer to our eardrums and turned his face channel to very serious. Then he started to tell us about all the different dishes in a very whispery storytelling voice. He went on and on about each little thing in the dish and I thought he might cry. It was like he was talking about his favorite aunt whom he loved so much, but couldn’t see because she lived far, far, far away in Pennsylvania.
He told us how everything was cooked and what everything came with and sometimes he fluttered his hands like he was pretend-cooking . Other times he kissed his fingertips and then tossed them up in the air, like he was throwing a real, live kiss across the room! His accent was already funny, but sometimes he danced the words around when he said them, or stretched them out. Like, instead of saying little, he said “leeeeetle” The worst of it—and this is not an opinion—was the specials themselves. They were not even food things! A for instance of what I mean is this:
“Tonight, we have a very beautiful frizzy salad appetizer, with shaved leaks, and a light sprinkling of Corny shuns. For a main course, we have a dreaded veal cutlet, En Yucky, SCar Go and, because we are just opening, we are offering all our guests a glass of two-hundred-year-old socky.”
Elliott and I couldn’t even help ourselves. It was the funniest menu we’d heard in foreverteen. What restaurant in the worldwide of America would serve frizzy salad and two-hundred-year-old socks? And those were only TWO of the funniest things my eardrums heard on that menu. Plus, the waiter’s accent was very funny and made his foreign language sound like all the words were made out of velvet and doilies. We were trying not to be obvious about laughing, but our laughing kept making our menus bounce up and down. I tried very hard to think of terrible things so I would stop laughing, but it didn’t work. Remember how sich you got from all the jelly beans the other day and almost threw up all over the classroom in front of every single person that you know? But even that didn’t help me. I t made it worse, actually.
