I leave her in the waiting room and visit the animals in the kennel: a basset hound named Lionel who’s here while his owners are on vacation and two gray cats I’ve never seen before. I give Lionel a treat from the canister on the counter, then sneak a peek at my mom, who’s still reading even though she doesn’t know I’m watching. She has on the same content face that Carly had at Jamie’s store, and I wonder if books make only girls happy. Then I remember my dad and Uncle Bob both like to read, and I start to wonder what’s wrong with me. Maybe it’s like blue eyes and blond hair—there’s a reading gene some people get or don’t get at birth.
When my mother turns the page, she spots me near the door. “It’s the perfect time to start one of those books on your list.”
“No thanks.”
“I’ll get us some cookies.”
“No thanks.”
“I’ll help you with the words you don’t know.”
“No thanks.”
“Two chocolate chips per page?” She pats the seat next to her, an invitation for me to sit down. “Let me see the illustrations you did of your vocabulary words so far.”
I run back to the house and get my sketchbook, sit down next to her, and show her my drawings.
She smiles. “Some of these remind me of your father’s. Did you know he used to get yelled at when he was young for drawing all over his homework?”
I shake my head.
“One of his teachers called his drawings ‘messy doodles’ and ‘a waste of time.’ I bet she’d be surprised to find out he gets paid to do them now.”
This gives me an idea, and I draw a picture of Dad as a kid using a giant pencil as a battering ram, knocking down the school’s exit door. I choose the colors carefully, the way I always do. When I finish, Mom asks if she can have it. I say yes and she tacks it to the wall next to the main desk.
I spend the rest of the afternoon checking the details of my illustrations. I may not make my bed, pick up my clothes, put away my DVDs, or wipe the puddles of water off the floor after I take a bath, but I’m never messy with my drawings.
A New Friend
One of Mom’s assistant vets is on vacation, so she lets me come to work with her again. Usually, she has a few cats and dogs in the boarding cages, but this time when I go into the back room, I’m surprised to find a monkey.
“His name is Pedro. He’s a capuchin who’s been trained to work with people in wheelchairs. Pedro lives with a good friend of mine who just moved to Venice Beach.”
“He’s wearing a diaper!”
“So he doesn’t make a mess.”
“What does he do around the house?”
“All kinds of things. Capuchins start training when they’re young. They make very nice companions.”
Suddenly a boring day of tagging along with my mother becomes a day full of possibility and adventure.
But Mom’s spoil-his-fun antennae pop up. “Even though Pedro is trained, monkeys can still bite. I don’t want you getting any ideas.” She explains that she usually doesn’t treat monkeys, but because she had a lot of training with exotic pets in vet school, she’s able to help out her friend. Then she steers me away from the capuchin and asks me to trim the cocker spaniel’s nails. I’ve been doing this for a while, so I know how to fasten the dog’s leash to the table and get him in position so he doesn’t move around. I even know how far down to trim so I don’t cut inside the nail where it could hurt.
But as I’m grooming the spaniel, all I can think about is Pedro. In my imagination, my mother goes out to lunch and I let the monkey out of his cage, call Matt, and we watch action movies while Pedro does our chores. When he’s finished, he sits between us on the couch and goes crazy during the explosion scenes. We even skateboard down the street with Pedro alternating between our two boards. In reality, my morning is much less exciting. I cut the dog’s toenails while Pedro scratches himself.
After sweeping up hair and putting away the heartworm pills, I decide Pedro and I both need some fresh air. While my mother is in one of the rooms tending to a cat that swallowed her owner’s bracelet, I undo the latch on Pedro’s cage and slip him onto my shoulder. He’s surprisingly light and sits quietly on my head while I sneak out the back to our house next door. My father’s car is gone, so Pedro and I have the place to ourselves.
I break up a candy bar into a bowl to test Pedro’s microwave skills so we can dip strawberries into the melted chocolate. Instead, he eats the chocolate without even trying to use the microwave. I wonder if the woman in Venice Beach lied to my mother when she said Pedro helps around the house.
I decide what Pedro needs is fun, not work, so I find my old cowboy outfit in the basement. I poke another hole in the holster strap, then fasten it around Pedro’s waist. He takes the cowboy hat off the counter and puts it on as if he’s just been waiting for this. He must watch a lot of Westerns with his owner because Pedro takes the toy guns from the holsters and wields them like he’s tearing up an old saloon. Bodi wanders in from the doggie door, then barks like a lunatic when he sees Pedro.
“Calm down,” I say. “You two are going to be great friends.” I pick up Pedro and place him on Bodi as if he’s a horse. Either he wants Pedro off his back or he’s willing to play along, because Bodi takes off through the house with Pedro holding on to his collar for dear life. Bodi is barking and Pedro’s shrieking, so I start screaming too and grab the gun that Pedro dropped. The three of us race through the house when I suddenly see my mother standing in the doorway. The expression on her face is scarier than an actress in one of Dad’s horror movies.
When Mom grabs Bodi by the collar, Pedro climbs up her arm and sits on her shoulder. She hands Bodi a treat from the pocket of her lab coat, then turns to me.
“I’m signing you up for summer camp.”
“NO! We decided I would stay home and play this summer!”
She points around the living room to the tipped chair and my dad’s portfolio all over the floor. “If kidnapping a monkey and running wild through the house is your idea of ‘play,’ we need to redefine the term.”
I still would rather be home, but I suppose there are worse things than doing sports all summer. I tell her I’ll look through some camp Web sites and find a good one tonight.
She shakes her head.
“Skateboard camp?” I ask.
“Not this time.”
“Rock climbing camp?”
“No.”
“Karate camp?”
“No again.”
I suddenly fear for my life.
“You have too much time on your hands,” she says. “You’re going to Learning Camp.”
“NO!”
“Yes. There are six weeks left of vacation—think of all the things you can accomplish. You’ll start school in September ahead of the game.”
“But what about lying on the grass and staring at clouds and playing kickball and making forts and watching The Three Stooges and eating Popsicles and—”
“Enough! You’re not five years old anymore. You need to start getting serious.”
“I’m twelve! Plus, it’s summer—no one’s supposed to be serious!”
It almost seems like Pedro knows what’s going on because he wags his finger as if he disapproves of my behavior.
“I was going to shave him with Dad’s electric razor,” I say. “But I didn’t! I used good judgment. I don’t need to go to Learning Camp!” I don’t tell her that the only reason I didn’t shave Pedro was because I couldn’t find Dad’s razor.
Bodi sticks his head between my legs, a move he always makes when he knows I need comfort. My mother brings Pedro back to her office and tells me we’ll sign up for Learning Camp after dinner.
Why can’t grown-ups just let a kid play with a dog and a monkey in peace?
I Try Not to Kill the Babysitter
The next day my mother hires Amy to “keep me company,” which is really just another way to say “babysit.” I overheard my parents talking in thei
r room last night when I was supposed to be asleep. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to string the words impulse control and discipline into a story no kid wants to read. When they’re done, my father tapes Ms. Williams’s summer reading list onto the refrigerator. They tell me Learning Camp is all set, but I tell them the best place for me to spend the rest of the summer is leaning against the large palm tree in our backyard with a stack of comic books and Bodi. It’s a discussion I don’t have a chance of winning. I feel like I’m trapped in Prison in July, a horror movie I just made up.
When Amy first started babysitting, she used to make my lunches; now she twirls her hair and points to the cupboard for me to make my own peanut butter and banana sandwich. I can, of course. I just preferred it when I looked for funny videos online and she made lunch. I cut the sandwich on the diagonal and put the pieces on a plate to prove I don’t need her help to make a nice meal.
“I killed one of my first babysitters,” I say. “So I wouldn’t try anything if I were you.”
“I’m really scared,” she says, then tears off a corner of my sandwich without asking.
“Seriously. Babysitting for me can be lethal. I feel I should warn you.”
“For ten dollars an hour, I’ll take my chances,” Amy says.
I think about offering her twelve dollars an hour to go home, but I’m pretty cheap when it comes to spending my own money on boring stuff like babysitters.
“Your mom told me about that girl who drowned. Don’t expect that kind of service from me.”
For once I can’t think of a snappy comeback, choosing instead to concentrate on my lunch.
Amy leans back in her chair. “I don’t know anyone who died. My second-grade teacher’s husband got killed in a car accident, but I never met him.”
“I didn’t really know Susan either,” I say. I don’t tell her that last night in bed, I imagined that I drowned with Susan. The thought kept me awake until Bodi made his dreaming noises and stopped me from doing any more thinking.
I give Amy the rest of my sandwich and start making another. Just then, Matt bursts into the kitchen.
“They’re delivering bricks for our new patio,” he says. “There’s a huge eighteen-wheeler in the driveway. Let’s take my old action figures and put them in front of the tires so when the guy drives away, he’ll squash them like grapes.”
Matt doesn’t have to ask twice. I tell Amy I’ll be at Matt’s, but she barely hears me because she’s back on her phone.
As Matt and I line up his old toys in front of the giant tires, I find a small plastic raccoon. I used to have this same action figure, a present in some meal package from a fast-food restaurant. Although he’s made of plastic, his kind eyes remind me of Bodi’s, and I don’t have the heart to squish him. I put the raccoon back in Matt’s toy bin and take out some happy elves instead.
Matt and I are ecstatic when the driver pulls away; he even blasts his horn several times. But the toys are not as flattened as we’d hoped, so we head to the garage to see what else we can use. We find a bag of stones and Tanya’s old rock polisher that looks like a cement mixer. We lock the elves inside, then make noises like they’re screaming to get out.
Surprisingly, it’s not as much fun as I thought. I realize Matt is having a blast, and I’m the problem. Learning Camp starts Monday, and it weighs on me. Suppose I’m the worst student there? I have to work so hard to keep up during the school year—do I have to fake my way through all summer too? The thought of one more person cracking the whip about LEARNING makes me want to jump into the cement mixer with these crazy elves.
I tell Matt I have to go and spend the rest of the afternoon lying in my backyard staring up at the clouds, Bodi by my side.
My Father Tries to Help
Dad sits me down at the kitchen table to organize the next day.
“I’ll drop you at camp at nine,” he says.
“NINE? That means I have to get up in the eights.”
“Actually, you have to get up in the sevens. It’s half an hour away.”
Learning Camp is one thing, but an hour a day in the car with one of my parents trying to tell me how hard I have to work to be successful is another thing altogether. I realize I have to quickly locate my MP3 player and headphones.
Bodi barely opens his eyes when I toss him the bone from last night’s dinner, so I yell upstairs and ask my mother to take a look at him.
She comes down wearing her headset and holding her cell. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s a doctor, but she’s convinced cell phones can give you brain cancer, so she always uses a headset.
Mom hangs up with her friend and looks into Bodi’s eyes. She feels his throat, then his belly.
“Is he okay?” I ask twice before she answers.
“Bodi’s thirteen now. That’s old for a dog.”
I pray she doesn’t use this as an example of how math comes in handy in real life, but my father beats her to the punch. I hate how parents think they have to use everything that happens as some kind of lesson.
“Seven dog years equals one human year, right? So seven times thirteen equals…”
He waits for my answer like an FBI agent interrogating a spy. Thankfully, my mother saves me the embarrassment of not knowing the answer.
“Actually, seven to one is the old rule,” Mom says. “Weight and breed are factors too. It’s more like he’s eighty.”
I’m grateful to be off the hook, but then she spoils the moment.
“See how important math is?” They both look at me with such desperate smiles, I want to smash my head into the tile counter.
“I just care about Bodi,” I say. “Not about stupid math.”
My mom thinks he’s okay but she’ll give him a full workup in the morning.
“I obviously can’t go to camp,” I say. “I need to be here while you run tests.”
“Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing,” she says. “Bodi will be fine until you get home.”
I try variations on this plan with no success. But maybe Bodi just needed a rest because when it’s time for me to go to bed, he follows me upstairs with no problem.
The next morning when I wake up, my mother is sitting on the bed, petting Bodi.
“Is he okay? Because I can definitely stay home from camp.”
“He’s fine,” she says. She reaches into the pocket of her robe and hands me a banana and a protein bar.
I ignore my mother’s protests and feed half of the banana to Bodi.
As soon as he gets in the car, my father takes my headphones.
“We’ve got some quality time ahead of us,” he says. “I thought we could discuss one of the books you’re reading.”
I try to guess our speed so I can figure out the best time to hurl myself out of the car. I imagine myself tumbling along the side of the road, then eating berries and roots in the woods for the rest of the summer.
“Derek? What do you say?”
I bang my head repeatedly against the side window. When Dad tells me to stop, I open the window, stick my head out, then press the button so the glass squishes my head on its way back up.
“Derek!”
By the time I let down the window, he’s turned on the radio. He’s shaking his head, probably thinking about how he’s failing as a father. I’m just glad I can sit here on my way to Summer Prison in peace.
Isn’t This Fun?
After we register, the camp leaders divide us into groups. Mine is called the Mustangs. The leaders show us where to store our possessions and give us directions to the outdoor work areas. I figure things can’t get any worse until I see a girl filling out her name tag at the registration table. Just as I’m about to make a run for it, she spots me.
“What are you doing here?” Carly asks.
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
She shrugs. “My mother works, so I go to different camps every summer.”
I know it’s only a matter of time before she interrog
ates me, so I beat her to the punch. “Don’t ask about the summer reading list because I haven’t even started.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you anything.” She leaves me by the table and approaches the camp leader. She’s probably going to try and be that teacher’s pet too.
For a brief moment on the drive in, I thought maybe I’ll be one of the smartest kids here, maybe I won’t be the one who needs extra help. I’m sick of feeling like an old broken-down horse on a racetrack that everybody has to encourage from the sidelines. I hoped Learning Camp could be different. Seeing Carly guarantees it won’t be.
Our leader’s name is Margot, and she reminds me of the actress I saw on the horror set last week. Imagining her with blood gushing from her nostrils and ears makes the first session go by much faster.
“First item on the schedule—geography!” Margot has so much enthusiasm that I wonder if she’ll pop an artery for real.
She gives us maps and asks us to plan trips to various cities around the country. Here’s where I want to travel to: ANYWHERE BUT HERE.
An hour later, Margot hands out Popsicles and tells us to take a break. I check to see if everyone got a Popsicle before I pretend I didn’t and take another. I pull my markers and pad from my pack for a minute of peace.
No such luck.
“Can I see?”
I look up to find Margot eating potato chips and pointing to my sketchbook. I shrug and show her my drawings.
“That’s how you do your vocabulary words? Cool.”
My Life as a Book Page 3
