And as I drove along, out of Darby, out of North Carolina, on and on and on, as far as I could go, I felt better about what I had to do. I had to steal that little dog, Willy. No matter what.
5
I watched Luanne and Liza Thomas walking to the bus after school, their matching blond ponytails swinging from side to side. They carried their ballet slippers in their Darby Dance School tote bags.
Instead of getting on the bus and taking my usual seat beside Luanne, I had to wait for Toby so we could go to the Laundromat. I watched everybody get on the bus in their perfect clothes so they could go home to their perfect bedrooms. They’d put their school clothes away in real drawers, not trash bags. Then they’d go to soccer practice or ballet class, not to the Laundromat like me.
I blinked hard and stared down at my feet, just in case I looked as miserable as I felt. The toe of my sneaker was wearing out and I could see my blue sock starting to show through. When I heard someone running, I looked up to see Toby racing toward me, his hair flopping down in his eyes.
“Hurry up,” I snapped. “I’ve been waiting for, like, an hour.”
“I got on the bus but then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to,” he said.
Oh, great, I thought. I bet Luanne and Liza had themselves a good laugh about that. I bet Liza said, “How come Georgina and Toby aren’t riding the bus?” Then what would Luanne say? Please, please, Luanne. I closed my eyes and tried to send my thoughts across the parking lot and into the school bus window where Luanne sat. Please don’t tell Liza we live in a car.
Then I hurried up the sidewalk toward town. Toby trotted along behind me, whining for me to slow down, but I didn’t. We headed on over to Montgomery Street where Mama had parked the car near the Laundromat. I unlocked the trunk and tossed my backpack inside. Then I stood on the bumper of the car so I could reach way in the back of the trunk. I pulled a corner of the carpet away and took out the envelope Mama kept hidden there. I thumbed through the money stuffed inside. It sure looked like a lot to me, but I guess it still wasn’t enough to get us a place to live.
I took out five dollars and jammed the envelope back under the carpet. Then I gathered up the dirty laundry and locked the car.
“Let’s go, Toby.”
I stuffed all the clothes into one washing machine.
“If we don’t use two machines,” I said to Toby, “we’ll have enough money to buy a snack.”
On the way out, we checked all the coin return slots for money and found two quarters. Then we went on over to the grocery store and bought some saltine crackers and sliced cheese. We went around back to the alley and sat on the warm asphalt to eat.
“Listen, Toby,” I said while I peeled the plastic off my cheese. “We need to find some kind of rope or something to tie to that dog’s collar.”
Toby nodded as he squished a piece of cheese into a little ball and popped it into his mouth.
“Where can we find rope?” I said.
He shrugged.
“Dern it, Toby,” I said. “If you want to help me, you’ve got to come up with some ideas, too, you know. I can’t think of everything.”
“Okay,” he said. “Why don’t we buy some rope?”
I rolled my eyes. “We’re trying to save our money, not spend it. We need to find some rope for free.”
Toby looked around him at the piles of cardboard boxes beside the Dumpster. “Maybe there’s rope back here somewhere.”
I got up and peered into the Dumpster. Just more cardboard boxes.
“Naw,” I said. “I think we’re going to have to wait till trash pickup day. Then we can look through the stuff that people leave by the road, okay?”
“Okay.” Toby squished another piece of cheese and then smashed it between two crackers.
“Let’s go put the clothes in the dryer, then check out that dog again.”
When we got to Whitmore Road, I motioned for Toby to be quiet.
“We don’t want anybody to notice us,” I whispered.
We made our way up the road toward the big brick house. When we got to the corner of the yard, I could hear someone out front. I tried to see through the hedge, but it was too thick. I squatted down beside the fence to listen.
“Get the ball, Willy,” someone said. I was pretty sure it was the same woman we had seen there the other day.
I could hear Willy making happy little yip noises. Then the woman would laugh and say stuff to him. After a while, I heard the wooden front steps creak and the screen door slam.
I looked at Toby. “I think she went inside,” I whispered. “Let’s go see.”
We tiptoed to the gate and I peeked into the yard. The woman was gone, but Willy was sitting on the front porch. When he saw me, he came bounding down the steps and over to the gate.
“Hey there, Willy,” I whispered.
He pushed his nose through the gate and licked my hand.
“Isn’t he cute?” I said to Toby.
“Yeah.” Toby put his hand out and Willy licked him, too. “When are we gonna steal him?”
“Shhhh.” I smacked Toby’s knee. “Hush up, you idiot.” I looked around us. The street was quiet and empty. I could hear a radio somewhere in the distance, but I didn’t see anyone.
“We have to wait till everything is just right,” I said. “That lady has to be gone.” I nodded toward the house. “And we need some rope, remember?”
“After we get the rope and steal him, where are we going to hide him?” Toby said.
Dang! I hadn’t even thought of that! I couldn’t hardly believe how stupid I’d been. I’d made all those plans and hadn’t even thought about where we were going to hide that dog!
I looked at Willy and then back at Toby. “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” I said, pretending like it was no big deal. “You got any ideas?”
Toby shook his head.
I frowned. “Then we’ll have to think of something.”
That night, I propped the flashlight up on the seat next to me and tried to do my math homework. Toby’s snores drifted through the beach towel wall between us. I used to be good at math, but it seemed like now I wasn’t. I gave up and took out my purple notebook. I opened to:
How to Steal a Dog
by
Georgina Hayes
I wrote April 7. Then, after Step 2, I wrote:
Step 3: Get ready to steal the dog.
1. Keep watching the dog to make sure he is the right one to steal.
2. If you need a leash, find some rope or something.
3. Figure out where you are going to hide the dog.
I chewed on the eraser of my pencil and stared out the window into the darkness. Number 3 was a big problem. I wished I could ask Luanne to help me. She always had good ideas about stuff. I looked down at my notebook again. I guessed I was just going to have to figure this out by myself, unless some miracle happened and Toby got an idea.
I closed the notebook and watched the moths fluttering around the streetlight outside the window. Maybe stealing a dog wasn’t such a good idea after all. I propped my feet up on the seat in front of me and frowned at my bare toes. My Party Girl Pink nail polish was wearing off and I didn’t have any more. I guess it got tossed out with all my other stuff.
“We can’t take everything, Georgina,” Mama had hollered at me when Mr. Deeter kicked us out. “One bag,” she had said in a mean voice. “That’s it.”
Just when I was starting to feel a good cry coming on, I heard Mama hurrying toward the car. I sat up and rolled down the window.
“Georgina,” she whispered real excited-like. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I found us a place!”
“Really?” I felt my heavy heart start to lift.
Mama put both hands against the car door and grinned down at me. Her hair was damp and frizzy from working her second job in the steamy back room of the Regal Dry Cleaners. She took her shoes off and climbed into the front seat.
“Ye
p! We’re moving into a house!”
We had only ever lived in apartments before. Never in a house. I could already see my bedroom. White furniture with gold on the edges, like Luanne’s. Maybe even pink carpet.
“When?” I said.
“Friday.” Mama examined herself in the rear-view mirror.
“I look as beat as I feel, don’t I?” she said.
“You look all right,” I said, but I was lying. She did look beat. Dark circles under her eyes. Her skin all creased and greasy-looking.
I lay back against the seat and felt about a hundred pounds lighter than I had just minutes before. I’d known in my heart that stealing a dog was a bad thing to do, and now I didn’t have to. I couldn’t believe everything had turned out so good.
6
My stomach was flopping around like crazy as we made our way through the neighborhoods of Darby. I couldn’t hardly wait to see which house would be ours.
But when Mama turned onto a dirt and gravel road, I started to get a bad feeling. The car squeaked and bounced up the narrow, winding road, deeper and deeper into the woods. When we passed a faded, handwritten sign nailed to a tree, my bad feeling got worse.
KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY.
“Are you sure this is right?” I said to Mama.
She clutched the steering wheel and sat up straight and tense. “Yes, Georgina,” she said. “I know what I’m doing, okay?”
Then, just as I thought my bad feeling couldn’t get any worse, we rounded a curve and I saw a house just ahead of us. A ramshackle old house with boarded-up windows and the front door hanging all cockeyed on its rusty hinges.
Mama stopped the car and we all three stared in silence at the wreck of a house. The tar paper roof was caved in and covered with rotting leaves and pine needles. Prickly-looking bushes grew thick and dense across the front, while kudzu vines snaked their way up the chimney and across the roof.
“Well,” Mama said, “It ain’t Shangri-la, but it’s better than nothing.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“That’s the house we’re gonna live in?” I said.
“It’s just temporary.” Mama turned the engine off and started throwing stuff into a cardboard box on the seat beside her. “Beverly Jenkins over at the Handy Pantry knows the owner, and she said he won’t care if we stay here for a while.”
Toby started crying. “I don’t want to,” he whined.
“Hush up, Toby,” Mama said. She got out and tried to push through the bushes that grew across the front of the house. “Come on, y’all,” she said. “Let’s check it out.”
I crossed my arms and slumped down in the seat. This just beat all. First I had to go and get a daddy who acted mean all the time and then just up and left us. Now I had a mama who had gone plumb crazy.
“Come on, Georgina,” Mama called. “It’s not that bad.”
She had managed to get to the front door and had pushed it open to peer inside.
“Really, y’all,” she said. “We can clean it up and make it nice.”
Toby was sniffling, and I knew he was waiting on me to make the first move.
“I bet there’s snakes in there,” I called out through the car window.
Mama had disappeared inside, but her voice came drifting out to us. “There’s no snakes. There’s even some furniture. Come on.”
I looked at Toby and he looked at me.
“You think there’s really snakes in there?” he said.
“Snakes and worse,” I said. “Probably rats and spiders and dead stuff.”
Toby started wailing. Mama came out and made her way back to the car, pushing the bushes aside to make a path. “Come on,” she said, opening the door and gathering up the box and trash bags and stuff.
“No,” I said. “I’m staying here.”
“No,” Toby said. “I’m staying here.”
Mama slammed the box down and yanked the back door open.
“Listen here,” she hollered. “I’m doing the best I can. At least we’ll have a roof over our heads and some room to spread out. It won’t be for long.”
“How long?” I said.
She sighed. “Not long,” she said. “I almost have enough for rent, but most places want a deposit, too.
You two just don’t get it.” Her voice started getting louder until she was hollering again. “You think all I got to do is snap my fingers and bingo!” She pounded on top of the car. “There’s the rent and there’s the deposit and there’s the gas for the car,” she yelled. “And snap, there’s electricity and water and phone. Not to mention food and clothes and doctors and STUFF” She kicked the car when she yelled the word “stuff.”
Toby and I jumped.
“Now get out of the dern car and come inside,” she said. Then she picked up the box and started back through the bushes toward the house.
I gathered up my pillow and our beach towel wall. “Come on, Toby,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The house smelled damp and moldy. The floor was littered with leaves and acorns. In the front room, a lumpy couch stood underneath the plywood-covered window. Mice or rats or something had chewed through the fabric to the foam stuffing beneath. Stacks of yellowing newspapers were piled in one corner. Two empty cans of pork and beans sat on a rusty wood stove.
I followed Mama into the kitchen. The cracked linoleum floor was sticky and made squeaky noises as we walked across it. I wrinkled my nose and peered into the sink. Twigs and dirt that had fallen through a hole in the ceiling floated in a puddle of dark brown water. I turned the faucet, but no water came out. Not even one little drop. In one corner of the kitchen, a wobbly table was covered with empty soda cans and beer bottles. Cigarette butts were scattered on the floor beneath it.
“Our nasty ole car is better than this place,” I said, but Mama acted like she didn’t hear me. She set the box on the table and pushed her hair out of her face.
“Y’all bring the rest of our stuff in and let’s start cleaning this place up,” she said.
That night, I lay on the floor on top of piled-up clothes, covered with my beach towel, and stared at the mildewed ceiling.
In one corner, rain had leaked in and left a dark spot.
I narrowed my eyes, and that dark spot looked just like Willy. His ears and his eyes and even his whiskers. That morning, I had pushed him right out of my mind and now here he was back again, all because of this awful old house.
I could hear Mama tossing and turning on the other side of the room. Toby was curled up next to me. Every now and then his leg jerked. I bet he was dreaming about spiders and snakes.
I wanted more than anything to go to sleep so I wouldn’t have to think about stuff, but I couldn’t. I just lay there thinking about how everything had gotten so messed up and all. Then I remembered an Aesop’s fable that Mr. White had read us in school. The one about the hares and the frogs. I could still hear him reading the moral at the end. “There is always someone worse off than yourself.”
Ha! I thought. Ole Mr. Aesop must have been stupid ’cause he was just flat-out wrong. There was nobody, nowhere, worse off than me.
7
I studied myself in the mirror of the bathroom at McDonald’s. My hair hung in greasy clumps on my forehead. Creases from the crumpled-up clothes I had slept on were still etched in the side of my face. I rubbed my hands together under the water and ran my wet fingers through my hair. Then I used paper towels to scrub my face and arms. The rough brown paper left my skin red and scratched.
We’d spent the weekend in that old house and I was beginning to think I’d rather sleep in the car again. Mama had got some stuff at a yard sale to try to make things better. A plastic raft for us to take turns sleeping on. A radio that ran on batteries. An alarm clock. Stuff like that. She even got a great big artificial plant with red and purple flowers. She had wiped the dust off the leaves with her shirttail and set it up on top of the wood stove. I guess she thought that plant would make me glad to be there, but it didn
’t. If things didn’t change soon, I was going to have to go back to my dog-stealing plans. That’s all there was to it.
The bathroom door opened and Mama stuck her head inside.
“We got to go, Georgina,” she said. “I can’t be late for work again.”
I followed her out to the car. I couldn’t help but notice how her blue jeans hung all baggy, dragging on the asphalt parking lot as she walked. I guess she was getting skinnier.
She had on her green Handy Pantry T-shirt. Her long fingers clutched a cup of coffee that sent trails of steam into the early morning air.
“I’ll drop y’all off at the corner,” she said, climbing into the car. “Then go on up yonder to the bus stop, okay?”
“Okay.” I got into the backseat beside Toby and propped my feet on top of my bag of stuff. Mama had told us not to leave our things in that nasty ole house, “just in case.” When I’d asked “Just in case what?” she had flapped her hand at me and told me to stop asking so many questions.
“After school,” she said, “you and Toby wait in the car while I work at the cleaners, then we’ll go on back to the house after that, okay?”
I stuffed my notebook into my backpack. Today was the day we were supposed to bring in our science projects. I didn’t have mine, but I didn’t even care. I’d tell Mr. White my project got lost or stolen or something.
“Okay, Georgina?” Mama said, craning her neck to look at me in the rearview mirror.
“I guess.” I stared out the window.
“What’s the matter?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Come on and tell me, Georgina,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
I felt a wave of mad sweep over me. “Everything!” I hollered. “Okay? Everything’s the matter.”
How to Steal a Dog Page 3
