“Ready to go home?” I said.
Willy perked his ears up and let out a little bark. That dog sure was smart.
I untied his leash and started for the path that led to the road. But as I was crossing the clearing where Mookie had camped, I noticed something that made me stop. A little green dog collar, lying on top of the log that Mookie used to sit on.
My heart dropped with a thud. That collar looked familiar.
I picked it up and studied the tag. Yep. There it was, plain as day. Willy.
I turned it over and read:
Carmella Whitmore
27 Whitmore Road
Darby, NC
I felt a big blanket of shame fall over me. Mookie had found Willy’s collar. He had known the truth about Willy. He had known the truth about me.
I looked down at Willy. He was watching my face like he knew every thought in my head.
“Mookie knew about us, Willy,” I said.
Willy whined and wagged his tail.
“I wonder why he was so nice to me,” I said.
Willy nudged me with his nose.
I buckled the green collar around his neck and said, “Come on, Willy. Let’s go home.”
By the time I got to the corner of Whitmore Road, Willy was pulling so hard I thought that string was gonna bust in two. I knew he was dying to race up the street, through the gate, up the porch steps, through the doggie door, and right into Carmella’s lap. But I needed to slow down a minute. I had to make sure the coast was clear and nobody was outside.
“Hang on, little fella,” I said.
I squinted up the road, checking out the yards and driveways.
“Okay, Willy,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I hurried toward Carmella’s house. By the time we got to the hedge, Willy was practically going crazy, leaping and carrying on.
I tiptoed along the hedge, trying to keep Willy from yanking the string right out of my hand. I hoped Carmella wasn’t home, but when I got to the gate, I could see her car in the driveway. I untied the string from Willy’s collar. Then I took his whiskery face in both my hands and rubbed my nose back and forth against his. An Eskimo kiss.
I lifted the latch and opened the gate. Then I let go of Willy’s collar and watched him dash across the yard and up the steps, then disappear through the doggie door and into the house.
I turned and hurried back up the road. But the farther I got from Carmella’s house, the heavier my feet felt. By the time I got to the corner, they felt like cement bricks, slowing me down until I couldn’t take another step.
What’s wrong with you, Georgina? I said to myself. Don’t stop now. Get on outta here before somebody sees you.
But I guess my heart was taking over my feet, making me stop. Making me turn around. Making me walk on back to Carmella’s.
I stood outside the gate. Music from a radio drifted out of the screen door. More than anything, I wanted to disappear. To leave Whitmore Road and never come back. To just pretend like I’d never laid eyes on Willy or Carmella.
But I couldn’t.
I took a deep breath and put my hand on my heart. I could feel it beating, fast and hard. Then I opened the gate and made my cement feet walk up the sidewalk to Carmella’s front door.
“Carmella,” I called through the screen.
“Georgina!” Carmella squealed from inside. “Guess what!”
She came to the door carrying Willy. He was licking her face all over and wiggling his whole body.
“Willy’s home!” Carmella said. Tears were streaming down her face and she looked about as happy as a person could be. “He just came running right through that doggie door and into the kitchen like he’d never been gone.” She kissed Willy’s nose. “Can you believe that?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I can believe that, ’cause, um …”
“Come on in.” Carmella pushed the screen door open. “I’m gonna give him a bath. He’s a mess.”
I stepped inside.
“But first,” Carmella said, “I’m gonna cook him some sausage.”
“Carmella …” I followed her down the hall and into the kitchen. “I, um, I need to, um …”
But Carmella wasn’t listening. She was humming and talking to Willy while she put little sausages in a frying pan.
“Carmella,” I said louder than I’d meant to, ’cause it sounded like a yell.
She looked at me kind of surprised.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
She put a lid on the pan and turned to me.
“Okay,” she said.
I looked down at the dirty linoleum floor. Willy had left little muddy paw prints in front of the stove where Carmella was standing.
“I stole Willy,” I said to the floor.
A terrible silence settled over the room. I could hear Carmella’s wheezy breathing. In and out. In and out.
Finally, she said, “What do you mean?”
I looked up. She was standing by the stove, holding a fork. Her face was white, making her freckles stand out like sprinkles of cinnamon. Willy sat on the floor beside her, watching her, waiting for that sausage.
“I mean, I stole Willy,” I said. “I took him right out of your yard.”
Carmella gripped the edge of the counter for a minute, then pulled out a chair and sank into it.
“But why?” she said.
And then I did the hardest thing I’d ever done. I told Carmella everything. I started with those three rolls of quarters and the wadded-up dollar bills in the mayonnaise jar, and I ended with Mookie leaving Willy’s little green collar on that log.
And then I waited for Carmella to hate me.
But you know what?
She reached out and took my hands in hers and didn’t sound at all hateful when she said, “I guess bad times can make a person do bad things, huh?”
I hung my head and couldn’t get myself to say another word.
“You did a real bad thing, Georgina,” Carmella said.
I nodded, keeping my head down so my hair would hide my face. Tears dropped right off the end of my nose and onto the floor.
The room was silent except for the sizzle of the sausage on the stove and the tick, tick, tick of the clock over the refrigerator.
Carmella pushed herself up off the chair and went over to the stove. She took the sausages out of the pan and cut them into pieces. Willy whined at her feet.
Tick, tick, tick went that clock.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Tick, tick, tick went that clock.
Carmella dropped the sausage pieces into Willy’s bowl. He gobbled them up and then kept licking the bowl, making it slide across the floor.
“I guess I better go,” I said. But I didn’t move. I stayed there with my heavy, cement feet planted firmly on the cracked linoleum of Carmella’s kitchen floor, waiting for her to make me feel better.
But she didn’t.
So I moved my heavy feet, one in front of the other, down the hall, through the front door, and out onto the porch. I was almost to the gate when Carmella called, “Georgina.”
I stopped and turned around.
She stood on the porch holding Willy. His tail wagged, thwack, thwack, thwack against her leg.
“Why don’t you and Toby come by tomorrow?” she said. “Y’all could take Willy for a walk.”
I felt my whole self get lighter, as if that heavy blanket of shame I’d been wearing had been lifted right up off of me.
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “We will.”
Then I hurried out of the gate and up the road. I couldn’t wait to tell Toby what I’d done. I knew he wouldn’t be mad when I told him how happy Willy was and how Carmella didn’t hate us. I’d let him hold the leash when we walked Willy tomorrow, and he wouldn’t think I was mean anymore. When I got to the corner of Whitmore Road, I stopped and looked back. Carmella was still standing on the porch, holding Willy like she wasn’t ever going to put him down.
/> She waved at me.
I waved back.
Then just as I was about to turn and head back toward the highway, I glanced down and noticed my footprints in the dirt along the side of the road. I smiled, thinking about Mookie and his motto. About the trail you leave behind being more important than the path ahead.
Then I turned and raced off toward school to wait for Toby.
21
We lived in that nasty old car for two more days. Then one day Mama came back from work and said, “Pack your bags, boys and girls. We’re moving.”
Me and Toby looked at each other, then back at Mama, waiting.
She tossed two Snickers bars into the backseat and said, “You heard me. We’re moving. And I’m talking house. A real house.”
Me and Toby started whooping and bouncing up and down on the backseat. Then we took down our beach towel wall and jammed all our stuff into garbage bags. Schoolbooks and dirty T-shirts. Playing cards and comic books.
As we drove to our new house, I felt a flutter of excitement as I thought about being normal again. I pictured myself going to school in clean clothes and having all my homework done and Mama telling Mr. White that everything was fine now, so don’t worry about Georgina anymore. I pictured me and Luanne having a sleepover like we used to, painting our toenails and sharing our secrets. Maybe working on our cooking badge for Girl Scouts. I even pictured myself sitting on my very own bed wearing my new ballet shoes, combing my hair so I’d look nice for my ballet lessons with Luanne and Liza Thomas.
When we pulled up in front of our new house, me and Toby grinned at each other. It was a tiny white house with a rusty swing set in the red-dirt yard and a refrigerator with no door sitting right up on the front porch.
But it looked like a castle to me.
Somebody named Louise was already living there with her baby named Drew. Louise was a friend of Patsy’s and needed somebody to share the house with her and help take care of Drew and pay some of the rent.
I didn’t have my very own room, but I had my very own bed. Louise gave me a plastic laundry basket to keep my things in and told me to put it up on the closet shelf so Drew couldn’t get my stuff.
The first night in our new house, Mama brought home pizza and we watched TV Before I went to sleep, I lay in my bed and stretched my legs out under the cool sheets. The tiny window across the room was open, and a soft breeze lifted the faded curtains. Moths flapped and buzzed against the screen.
I reached under my pillow and took out my glittery purple notebook. I turned to my How to Steal a Dog notes, and in the dim glow of the hall light I read through Step 8 again. About making a decision. About getting the reward or not getting the reward. I smiled to myself when I read the part that said:
THAT
is the decision you will have to make.
I knew I had made the right decision because my tapping insides had finally settled down.
But I still felt bad about what I’d done. I still wished I could turn back the time far enough to where I could do things different.
But at least when I’d gotten to Step 8, I’d made the right decision.
I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and wrote: May 3.
Step 9: Those are all the rules for how to steal a dog.
But
I drew a red heart around the word But. Then I wrote in great big letters:
DO NOT STEAL A DOG
because
I drew a blue circle around because. Then I took out my gold glitter pen and wrote:
it is NOT a good idea.
THE END
I closed my notebook and slid it back up under my pillow.
As I lay there in my very own bed, I thought about Mookie. I wondered what he was doing right that very minute. Was he making Hoover gravy? Was he wiggling that three-fingered hand of his at somebody? Was he fixing somebody’s car?
Where was he leaving his trail now?
I thought about Willy, too. I bet he was curled up at the foot of Carmella’s bed beside his chewed-up toys, dreaming about sardines and liver puddin’, happy as anything to be back home again.
I looked over at Toby, sucking his thumb in the bed next to mine. Then I tiptoed over to the window and looked out into the night. I took a deep breath. The air smelled good. Like honeysuckle and new-mowed grass.
It didn’t stink at all.
Also by Barbara O’Connor
BEETHOVEN IN PARADISE
ME AND RUPERT GOODY
MOONPIE AND IVY
FAME AND GLORY IN FREEDOM, GEORGIA
TAKING CARE OF MOSES
GREETINGS FROM NOWHERE
GO FISH
QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR
BARBARA O’CONNOR
What did you want to be when you grew up?
For most of my childhood, I wanted to be a teacher. I also thought I might like to be a dance instructor and have my own dancing school, which I actually did for a few years.
When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
I don’t remember ever making a conscious decision to be a writer. Writing was just something that I loved doing from a very young age. I still have boxes and boxes of things I wrote as a child, from poems to stories to plays.
What’s your first childhood memory?
The earliest memory I have is when I was about four years old and the ice cream truck was coming through my neighborhood. My sister and all her friends were running after it but I couldn’t keep up. I remember just standing there crying.
What’s your favorite childhood memory?
Being at my grandmother’s house in North Carolina with my cousins. My grandfather had filled an old chicken coop with sand to make a huge indoor sandbox. We played in that chicken coop sandbox for hours.
As a young person, who did you look up to most?
My dad.
What was your worst subject in school?
Economics. (I’m still not very good at economics.)
What was your best subject in school?
English.
What was your first job?
I used to teach dancing lessons to neighborhood children. I had a dance studio in my garage that my father helped me make.
How did you celebrate publishing your first book?
With lots of whooping and yahooing—and then dinner out with my family.
Where do you write your books?
In the winter, I write in my office, which is a converted bedroom in my house. I have a huge, lovely desk that was handmade by a friend of mine. The wood is beautiful and there is lots of room for family photos. My two dogs always stay in there with me and keep me company.
In the summer, I love to sit out on my screened porch. I love being able to watch the birds and look at the flowers while I write.
Where do you find inspiration for your writing?
My biggest inspiration comes from my memories of my childhood in the South. But I also love to go back to the South and pay attention to all the little things that make it so special there: the way the people talk and the food they eat; the weather; the trees—all the things that add richness to a story.
I’m also inspired by reading.
Which of your characters is most like you?
Jennalee in Me and Rupert Goody. I think I felt the most like her as I wrote her story and I definitely related to the setting of the Smoky Mountains, where I spent a lot of time as a child.
When you finish a book, who reads it first?
I belong to a writers group, so I share bits and pieces of my stories as I write them. But once the story is complete and polished, the first people who read it are my editor, Frances Foster, and my agent, Barbara Markowitz.
Are you a morning person or a night owl?
No question about it: a morning person!
What’s your idea of the best meal ever?
Sushi! (But some good ole greasy fried chicken and big, hot, fluffy biscuits sound pretty good, too.)
Which do you like better
: cats or dogs?
I am definitely an animal lover. I love them all. But dogs are my favorite. I adore them.
What do you value most in your friends?
A sense of humor, honesty, and respecting my need for “alone” time to recharge my batteries.
Where do you go for peace and quiet?
I like being home. But outside of my home, I love to walk with my dogs, either in the woods or at the beach.
What makes you laugh out loud?
My husband and son both have a great sense of humor, so I laugh with them a lot. My two dogs also make me laugh.
Who is your favorite fictional character?
Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby.
What are you most afraid of?
Heights and snakes.
What time of year do you like best?
Summer.
What’s your favorite TV show?
Judge Judy.
If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?
Probably somebody who was very good at building boats out of things you find on a desert island.
If you could travel in time, where would you go?
The fifties. Everything seemed much simpler then.
What’s the best advice you have ever received about writing?
How to Steal a Dog Page 11
