Pet Disasters

by Claudia Mills

  There were ten kids total in the camp. Mason didn’t know the other six and didn’t plan on getting to know them.

  Making her rounds to inspect everybody’s work, Mrs. Gong stopped by Mason and Brody’s table. Because there were so few kids in the camp, they were sitting just two kids to a table.

  “I love your fish, Brody,” she said. “It’s so colorful—such vibrant hues!”

  For this first introductory day, Mrs. Gong had told the campers to draw anything they wanted using anything they wanted: crayons, markers, watercolors, pastels. “Choose your own medium,” she had said. “Explore its possibilities!”

  Brody had chosen crayon as his medium. Mason didn’t know what “vibrant hues” were, but Albert was certainly brightly colored. Brody had pressed so hard with his yellow and orange crayons that he had already broken both of them.

  Mason felt Mrs. Gong peering over his shoulder.

  “Mason, I like your …” She hesitated.

  Mason decided not to help her out.

  “Your little kitty.”

  “Hamster,” Brody told her, since Mason hadn’t said anything. “Mason just got a new pet hamster.”

  “Hamster! Of course!” Mrs. Gong corrected herself. “It’s hard to draw from memory, isn’t it? And using wide-tipped markers as your medium adds to the challenge, doesn’t it?”

  She squinted critically at Mason’s picture, as if trying to decide how to make something so catlike look a bit more hamsterlike.

  “Well, just keep going!” she finally said.

  Mason heard her praising the realism of Nora’s pencil sharpener, which did look exactly like the classroom pencil sharpener. “You have an excellent eye! Many people can look at something, but only a few can see. Colored pencil was a good choice. Excellent work, Nora!”

  Dunk had already finished his picture of a football. How long did it take to draw a pointy oval and color it orange? Dunk’s medium was wide-tipped markers, too.

  “It’s a football,” Dunk told Mrs. Gong right away so she wouldn’t have to guess.

  “Ah,” Mrs. Gong said. “I’m not such a devoted sports fan, but—I believe a football has some stitching on it, doesn’t it? Some stitches in a pattern? Why don’t you add the stitches? You’ve heard the saying ‘God is in the details.’ ”

  Dunk shook his head. Mason had never heard that saying before, either.

  “It means that the details are what bring a work of art to life!” Mrs. Gong explained.

  “A football isn’t alive,” Dunk said.

  Mason thought Dunk had a point.

  Mrs. Gong seemed to think he had a point, too. “It’s your artwork, Duncan, and I want you to make your own creative choices.”

  Mason knew Dunk was making his own lazy choices. That was okay. Mason had nothing against lazy choices.

  “It’s almost time for our snack break!” Mrs. Gong announced, after she finished her comments to the kids at the last table. “But before we have our break, I need to tell you about the art show we’re going to have on our very last day.”

  She made it sound as if the very last day were going to be fairly soon rather than two whole long weeks away.

  “We will have all our projects displayed here in our art room for your family and friends to see. I know they will be very impressed by all we will have accomplished.”

  Mason looked down at his hamster picture and glanced over at Dunk’s football picture. He wasn’t sure the art-show guests were going to be very impressed.

  “And,” Mrs. Gong went on, “I will be selecting our very best work to send to the citywide summer art show. That piece will be displayed for the rest of the summer, together with works from artists of all ages, in the gallery downtown at the public library!”

  Brody’s face lit up. With his broken orange crayon he added one more patch of vibrant color to his portrait of Albert, as if imagining Albert in all his glory exhibited on the walls of an actual art gallery.

  “All right, artists!” Mrs. Gong said. “Snack time!”

  Mrs. Gong had explained earlier that every day a different kid was going to bring a snack to share. On this first day, Mrs. Gong had provided the snack, setting it up on the one vacant table nearest to the sink. She served a pitcher of grape juice and a plate of little pastries from a white bakery box: cream-filled horns and fruit tarts.

  Dunk took five.

  “No, no, Duncan!” Mrs. Gong said. “These are very expensive pastries, so I just have one for everybody.”

  Dunk put back four. That meant that four of the pastries had been touched by Dunk. Mason quickly took a non-contaminated one, wishing it were a Fig Newton instead. He always wished that a snack were cookies, and he always wished that the cookies were Fig Newtons.

  The kids carried their paper plates and paper cups back to their worktables.

  “Be very careful!” Mrs. Gong called over to them. “I don’t want juice spilled on anybody’s masterpiece!”

  Instead of sitting at his own table, Dunk plunked his snack down on Mason and Brody’s table and stood towering over them, eating while he talked.

  “Hamsters are dumb pets,” he said, with his mouth crammed full of expensive pastry. “Fish are even dumber.”

  Mason had to admit Dunk had another good point. But Brody’s eyes glistened.

  “Albert is a wonderful pet!” Brody told him. “And Hamster is a wonderful pet, too!”

  “That’s his name? Hamster? Talk about lame!” Dunk sneered. “And who ever heard of a fish named Albert?”

  Alone at her own table, Nora took a small sip of grape juice and set her cup down carefully next to her pencil sharpener drawing. “Why can’t a fish be named Albert?” she asked Dunk. “Why should certain names be just for certain species?”

  “I have a dog,” Dunk said, ignoring Nora’s questions. “A dog is a real pet. And my dog has a normal dog name.”

  Mason wasn’t going to give Dunk the satisfaction of asking the next question, but Brody did.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Wolf.”

  “Why is ‘Wolf’ a better name than ‘Hamster’?” Nora asked. “They’re both words for kinds of animals.”

  “Yeah, well, ‘Wolf’ would be a bad name for a wolf. Because a wolf already is a wolf. But it’s a great name for a dog.”

  Mason didn’t think so. It certainly wasn’t a great name for a friendly dog.

  “And,” Dunk added proudly, as if reading Mason’s thoughts, “my dog bites!”

  To illustrate, Dunk made a biting, pouncing motion, knocking over his grape juice, and Mason’s, too, onto Brody’s vibrant-hued portrait of Albert. Nora snatched up Mason’s picture in the nick of time. The grape juice ran across the table like a purple wave across the sand.

  Instantly, Mrs. Gong was there, trying to mop up the grape juice with a fistful of paper towels. Nora had already begun dabbing at the spill with her paper napkin. But it was too late. Brody’s drawing was soaked.

  “It was an accident!” Dunk shouted. He didn’t say he was sorry, and he didn’t grab any paper towels to help soak up the spreading purple sea.

  Tears sprang into Brody’s eyes as he gazed down on his ruined work, which now would never be shown on the walls of any art museum, anywhere.

  Mason couldn’t stand seeing Brody look so miserable. Maybe they should have picked science camp or sports camp. Any camp that didn’t have Dunk in it.

  If only Dunk had ruined Mason’s hamster picture instead. Even though Mrs. Gong hadn’t come right out and said so, Mason knew it wasn’t a very good picture.

  Just the way a hamster wasn’t a very good pet.

  3

  That afternoon, after lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, and milk, with Fig Newtons for dessert), Mason and Brody sprawled on the floor of Mason’s family room, watching TV while Hamster slept.

  Brody’s parents both worked full-time, so Brody spent most afternoons at Mason’s house, unless he was playing with another friend.
Mason’s mother worked at home, editing an online newsletter about knitting for other people who liked hand-knit Mexican ponchos and hand-knit pillows shaped like animals. A duck-shaped hand-knit pillow was under Mason’s head right now; an elephant-shaped hand-knit pillow was under Brody’s.

  “Look how cute Hamster is when he’s sleeping,” Brody said. Because Hamster ran around on his wheel all night, he slept all day.

  Mason looked. It was hard to see Hamster at first. Then Mason spied him, half buried in the wood shavings, tucked up into a little brown ball.

  If you thought little brown balls were cute, you’d think Hamster was cute, too. The trouble was, Mason didn’t think little brown balls were all that cute. So half the time he didn’t think his pet was all that cute, and the other half of the time he thought his pet was noisy and annoying.

  It wasn’t as if Mason didn’t like his pet. He did like him. Or at least he was trying to like him.

  “Maybe we should take him out of his cage and play with him,” Mason suggested. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back.

  Brody’s face lit up. “Could we? Would he mind if we woke him up during his nap?”

  “Well, maybe we should let him sleep,” Mason said quickly.

  “No! He’s probably slept enough. It’s not good if they sleep too much. Like it’s not good if they eat too much.”

  Mason glared at Brody. It wasn’t polite to mention eating too much after what had happened to Goldfish.

  Brody didn’t seem to notice Mason’s glare. He was already over at Hamster’s cage. “Can I take him out? Or do you want to? Because he’s your pet.”

  Still mildly miffed at Brody’s remark about overeating, Mason said, “I’ll do it.”

  He opened the latch on Hamster’s cage. That part was easy. But he had never picked up Hamster before. He had never held any small living thing. What if Hamster was a biter, like Dunk’s dog, Wolf? Maybe animals were more likely to bite if you woke them while they were sleeping. Or maybe he’d break Hamster.

  “Okay, you can do it,” Mason offered.

  Brody reached into the cage and picked up Hamster, just like that. Brody was obviously braver than Mason thought.

  “He’s so soft!” Brody cooed. “Get a blanket to put on my lap, and I’ll sit and hold him.”

  “What if he decides to go to the bathroom?” Mason asked.

  For a moment Brody looked uncertain. Then he said, “I think he’ll be able to hold it. For a while, at least. Won’t you, Hamster?”

  Mason dragged a bulky hand-knit afghan off the couch and draped it over Brody’s knees. There were at least three hand-knit afghans on every couch and bed in the house.

  Hamster looked up at Brody with his bright, beady eyes, gave a sniff, and curled himself back into a little brown ball again. Animals probably didn’t go to the bathroom while they were sleeping.

  Okay. They had played with Hamster. Maybe it was time to put him back in his cage and play with something else instead. Like the remote control for the TV.

  “Now what?” Mason asked.

  “We can teach him tricks!”

  How many tricks have you taught Albert? Mason wanted to say. Not all pets were trick doers. But he didn’t want to sound mean, like Dunk.

  “Or we could build him a maze!” continued Brody. “And put a food treat at the end for his reward.”

  Mason rejected that idea with a single word: “Overfeeding.”

  “Or—we could make him a Halloween costume!”

  “Brody, it’s June. Halloween isn’t until October. July, August, September, October. Four months away.”

  “We can save it for him until Halloween. My mother hates when we leave our Halloween costumes until the last minute. You don’t want to leave Hamster’s Halloween costume till the last minute, do you?”

  Mason gave up. “What should he be?”

  “My best year I was a pirate. Arghh! Arghh!” Brody shouted his pirate curses so loudly that Hamster woke up and scurried off his lap.

  “Catch him!” Brody yelled.

  Somehow Mason did. He wasn’t sure himself how it happened, but as Hamster darted past his outstretched legs, he reached out his hand and snagged him. Now he had a small, wriggling, brown, alive thing in his hand. It was a strange sensation.

  “Here—you take him!” Mason said.

  Mason managed to hand Hamster back to Brody without dropping him. He wiped his hand on his shorts. He definitely liked Hamster better when Hamster was less exciting. That had been one good thing about Goldfish: he had never been exciting at all.

  It didn’t take Brody long to recover. “We can give him a black eye patch and a pirate hat. And we can tape a tiny hook to one of his paws.”

  Some things you could know were bad ideas without even trying them.

  “I don’t think he’s going to like the tiny hook,” Mason said. As if Hamster were going to love the hat and the eye patch.

  “We’ll leave the hook until last,” Brody said. “We can wait to put it on until we get him used to the rest of his costume.”

  Once upon a time, Mason knew how to fold a pirate hat out of newspaper, but he had long since forgotten. Brody still remembered. He really was talented at anything to do with arts and crafts. Maybe he would be the art camper whose work was chosen for the citywide art show. Mason wouldn’t be surprised.

  After putting Hamster back into his cage, Brody folded a human-sized pirate hat for a model. Then he cut a very small square of paper to make the hamster-sized version. Even Brody’s nimble fingers had a hard time folding something so small.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Mason told him. Brody might as well find this out sooner rather than later.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Brody tried for another ten minutes.

  Then: “This isn’t going to work,” Brody said. Failed miniature pirate hats covered the floor. There was a long, discouraged silence.

  Suddenly Brody gave a huge grin. “He can wear a bandanna! That will be even better! We can tie it on him so it won’t fall off. What can we use for a bandanna?”

  “How about—a bandanna?”

  Mason found a red bandanna in his bureau drawer, left over from one sad Halloween when his mother had made him be a cowboy. He hadn’t wanted to have a costume at all—did every single kid in the entire universe have to dress up on October 31 as something stupid? His mother had said he’d be the only kid in the costume parade without a costume, so she had gotten him a cowboy hat and fastened a red bandanna around his neck.

  And taken his picture. And put it on their family Christmas card, with a greeting that said, “Have a cowboy Christmas, pardner!” Mason shuddered at the memory.

  “Here.” He shoved the bandanna at Brody.

  “Is it okay if I cut it up?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Mason found some scissors, and then Brody cut different-sized bandanna squares. Unfortunately, it was Mason’s job to hold Hamster while Brody tried each one on. Finally, Brody found one that fit and somehow was able to tie it in place.

  Mason had to admit that Hamster did look cute in a bandanna.

  “Now for the eye patch,” Brody said. “Do you have any black construction paper? And a rubber band?”

  Mason had to ask: “Won’t a rubber band hurt? Like, pinch his head?”

  Brody thought for a minute. “We can use one of those cloth-covered ones, like my sisters use in their hair. And I’ll make sure it’s not too tight.”

  Brody dashed next door and returned with a pink cloth-covered rubber band.

  “Pink was all I could find,” he apologized.

  A few minutes later, Brody had a small black eye patch taped onto a pink rubber band.

  Mason held Hamster again in his cupped hands while Brody slipped the eye patch over Hamster’s bandanna. Mason was getting better at holding small, wriggling, alive things now.

  “Get a camera!” Brody said. “We need to take a picture.”
>
  Mason handed Hamster to Brody and went in search of his parents’ digital camera. Have a pirate Christmas, mate! No, he wouldn’t do that to Hamster.

  “Can I use the camera?” he asked his mom, who was hanging clothes outside on the clothesline, wearing a long, flowing dress made out of some kind of African fabric, with her hair tied up in a turban. She had stopped using the clothes dryer in order to prevent global warming.

  “Sure. What are you boys up to?”

  “We’re playing with Hamster.”

  Her face melted into a smile. “Oh, Mason, you do like Hamster, don’t you? I knew you’d warm up to him.”

  Mason forced a smile in return.

  Back in the family room, Brody was practically dancing up and down with excitement. From the mantel over the fireplace, he took down the model of a sailing ship that Mason’s father had made from a kit back when he was in middle school. For the past three Christmases, Mason’s dad had bought Mason similar, but much less complicated, ship models to assemble. All three still sat unopened in their boxes on the top shelf of Mason’s closet. “Ta-dah!” Brody crowed. “Are you ready?”

  Mason nodded. He focused the camera on the ship, which was ready to set sail on the high seas, manned by one swashbuckling hamster. He hoped he remembered which button on the camera he was supposed to push. The round button on the top seemed a good bet. He hoped it wasn’t the button, if there was such a thing, that would erase every picture on the camera as soon as you pushed it.

  Brody set Hamster on the top deck of the ship and let go his hand.

  Click! went the camera.

  “Catch him!” shouted Brody.

  Mason dove for Hamster, but Hamster darted across the room and into the kitchen.

  Both boys raced after him just as Mason’s mother was carrying in the empty laundry basket from outdoors, where Mason’s solid-colored T-shirts and long row of brown socks hung from the clothesline.

  The last they saw of him, Hamster was streaking out the open door to the wild world beyond.

  4

  Mason and Brody made posters: