by Susan Vaught
I hovered my finger near the screen, careful not to touch it and pause Mom. I mean, I knew I’d just be pausing the Skype call, but it seemed weird in my head that the screen would freeze and Mom wouldn’t, and part of me always worried that she would just be sitting there outside Mosul, Iraq, like a Mom statue, even if the bad guys came to shoot at her.
Sam licked my finger.
Mom nodded toward Sam. “Hello, littlest soldier.”
Sam-Sam’s curly tail thumped against my side. He stretched his body out longer and panted at the phone screen, his head right next to mine.
“I swear that dog knows how to smile,” Mom said.
“He’s talented.”
“How’s the training going?”
“Great! Um, well, I mean, okay. Actually, kinda awful. He’ll fetch any ball I throw, and he eats bacon whenever I hand it to him, but he stinks at finding the bacon-rubbed tennis balls in hidden containers. Last week, he was at two out of twenty. And I think he only found those because he tripped over the plastic and knocked the lids off.”
Mom winced. “Hunting hidden items might not be Sam-Sam’s special talent in life.”
“I’m not giving up.” I rubbed Sam’s fuzzy ears. “I haven’t tried it since Springer broke into the clubhouse—do you think Springer might mess up the bacon smell and confuse Sam even more? Maybe I should rub bacon on Springer, too.”
Mom held up a hand to stop me. “Who is Springer?”
“He’s this boy who moved here from Alabama, and he hates athletic cups and understands why I don’t want to wear itchy clothes. He doesn’t smell like bacon, though. At least I don’t think he does. I haven’t sniffed him.”
Mom reached down beside her leg, and I knew she was running her fingers through Shotgun’s fur like I ran my fingers through Sam’s soft coat all the time. I wondered if it made her feel better, like it did me.
“Sniffed—itchy—wait. Did you say athletic cup?” was all Mom could manage. “Explain that one immediately, Private.”
“They’re both uncomfortable,” I said. “The cups and those tank tops Dad bought and made me wear until I burned them. Ryker punched Springer in the face, too, but Springer is big enough to hit Ryker back, only he won’t.”
Mom took all this in without comment. After a few seconds, she asked, “Is Springer your friend now?”
I shrugged. “Sort of.”
“That’s great! But I’m not sure how I feel about you talking to a boy about athletic cups, even if he is your friend.”
“I talked to Dad about girl underclothes and he’s a boy. Clothes are just clothes, Mom.”
Mom smiled. “Good point.”
I put my chin on the pillow and held the phone up so Mom was perfectly level with my nose. “Do your uniforms itch?”
“Sometimes, but I wear them because people expect it of me, and it’s a sacrifice I can make to keep everything in order.”
I thought about that, wearing itchy clothes to keep stuff in order. It made sense. I liked things in order. But itchy—I didn’t know if I could handle that, because if something itched, I couldn’t think about much else and it made me want to scream and it made it so much harder not to punch jerkfaces, and itchy things even made people who weren’t jerkfaces seem like jerkfaces.
I told Mom that. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Shook her head and petted her dog.
“It’s your decision,” Mom said. “For now. Maybe for always, depending on what jobs you choose.” Then, before I could start talking about jobs or arguing more about itchy things, she added, “This thing with your father, it’ll be okay. We know he’s innocent.”
I pressed my chin deep into the pillow, so Mom was probably looking at my hairline. “But the police think he’s guilty.”
“Stan will get your father out on bond, and the police will figure out who really took the money.”
“I don’t understand why they didn’t look at, I don’t know, surveillance cameras or something.”
“You watch too many television shows.” Mom kept petting Shotgun. “Avery’s a little town. AJS probably doesn’t have cameras. Plus, I know your father. He doesn’t keep things very secure. Half the senior high might have been in and out of his classroom the day the money went missing.”
I lifted my head. “So half the senior high needs to be on my suspect list? Which half?”
“Nobody needs to be on your suspect list, Private Broadview.” Mom’s army voice. “The police and Stan and your dad will handle this.”
“Dad’s too nice to handle this,” I told her. “Solving crimes isn’t for nice people.”
Mom thought about that for a second, then said, “Explain.”
“Dad doesn’t say what he means, and he never thinks bad about anybody. And he doesn’t notice stuff if it’s not about Shakespeare and books and teachering.”
“Teachering?”
I rolled my eyes. “It should be a word, especially for people like Dad.”
“You’re right about your father,” Mom admitted. “But Stan’s a good lawyer. And the police—”
“Might not do what they’re supposed to, since they already think Dad is guilty.” I shifted on my pillows, feeling hot all of a sudden. “And Dad’s too important to leave it all up to other people. I want to help.”
Mom’s face softened, and for a few seconds, she looked like at-home Mom instead of at-war Mom. “Jesse, the best thing you could do to help is go to school tomorrow, like you’re supposed to.”
My shoulders sagged as some of the air went out of me because I knew that she wasn’t right, and that I needed to do something for the good of my family. What, I didn’t know. But something. But, since I was talking to Mom, who was definitely looking at-war again, I said, “Okay.”
Mom frowned. “That was too easy. What are you plotting, Private?”
“Nothing.” I hoped I sounded innocent and offended. “Can’t let Jerkface think he’s winning, right?”
Shotgun put his head in Mom’s lap. His nose looked bigger than my whole little white fuzzy Sam-Sam.
Sam yapped at Shotgun.
Mom jumped, and so did I.
“Fierce little monster.” Mom laughed and pushed Shotgun out of the picture. “I have to go, Private. This bigger monster and I need to get back to work.”
“I love you,” I said.
“When it gets bad,” Mom said, “when you get mad and lonely, remember I love you this much.” She stretched out her arms big enough to hug all the space between Mosul, Iraq, and Avery, Kentucky.
Then she waited.
“And I love you this much.” I blew her a giant kiss, sloppy enough to splash across mountains and fields and oceans and deserts, with enough love to fly thousands and thousands of miles.
Mom caught the kiss, put it on her cheek, then waved at me. She was about to punch the Off button but hesitated. “Jesse?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Don’t rub bacon on your new friend.”
“Oh. Okay.”
She tapped the button.
For a moment, she was frozen there, the Mom statue in Mosul, Iraq. And then she was gone.
For a while, I stayed in my blanket cave staring at the Skype screen. Mom and I had talked for thirteen minutes and forty-two seconds. Eight hundred and twenty-two seconds. That wasn’t many seconds out of the 86,400 that made up a day. Or the 31,536,000 in a year. Or the 39, 420,000 seconds Mom had been gone this time.
“When I was younger,” I told Sam, “I threw fits just so the counselors would send Mom a message to call me and some of my eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds each day could be with her, even if it was just on a phone.”
Sam licked my wrist.
“I know. It was an awful thing to do.” I glanced down at Sam’s face. He really did smile, just like a person. “But I’m older now, and I can count and think about puppy pictures. And I don’t want to worry Mom, and Dad needs me. And when I think about puppy pictures, I think about you.”
Sam licked my wrist some more, then smiled again.
“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get the room picked up. Then we’ve got work to do.”
7
Tuesday, Six Days Earlier, Afternoon
Eleven thousand, seven hundred and sixteen seconds later, after I made my bed and brushed my dog, when Aunt Gus was watching her shows and smoking a cigarillo inside with her bedroom window open and her hand hanging out over the patio, I borrowed our most recent AJS yearbook from Dad’s desk, snuck out of his bedroom window, and took Sam to the clubhouse.
When I pushed open the door, Springer was wadded up in the blankets, curled around one of the totes of supplies. He was still wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, and his eye still looked all dark and puffy.
I felt surprised, yet not really.
He lifted his head and one sleepy eye and one puffy swollen eye in my direction, and I said, “You didn’t go home, and you didn’t go to school, either.”
“I didn’t go home and I didn’t go to school, either,” he echoed, which made me smile, because usually I was the one echoing things, and it was nice to hear somebody else do it.
“I messaged my mom so she wouldn’t worry, though,” he added. “And your dad got arrested.”
“Dad got arrested,” I echoed, because I didn’t know what else to say, and it made me relax some that I didn’t have to figure out any other words.
Springer sat up, pulling a blanket over his legs. I took Sam to him and told Sam to stay with Springer, and I handed Springer the yearbook. “Get a pencil from the tote by your right elbow. Look through this book and circle anybody who looks suspicious, especially if they’re in senior high and Dad might teach them.”
Springer petted Sam-Sam quietly for a second or two, then asked, “Suspicious for what?”
“For stealing money out of my dad’s desk last week and making everybody think Dad’s a thief.”
He glanced from the yearbook to the tote and back to me. “Okay,” he said, still petting my dog.
“Does your black eye hurt?”
“A little.” He touched the edge of it and winced.
“Okay, then. Take care of Sam, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Before Springer could answer, I left him in the clubhouse with Sam and went back to my house. I didn’t sneak inside, just let the doors bang and did what I had to do. And that was making sandwiches and packing chips and drinks, and putting ice in a baggie. I got Springer a washcloth and took one of my dad’s T-shirts and a stick of his deodorant, too, and told Aunt Gus to never mind when she asked me what I was doing.
Once I got back to the clubhouse, I turned on my phone and played games while Springer ate and got cleaned up and changed shirts. I had a lot of messages, from Dad and Aunt Gus and then phone numbers I knew were Jerkface and the cockroaches. They liked to do that, send me mean texts. I usually didn’t even read them.
Springer wrapped the washcloth I brought him around the baggie of ice and pressed it to his black eye. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me it helped. That made me happy. I glanced through Dad’s messages, and Aunt Gus’s. Just stuff from last night. Nothing new or important.
There was a message from a number I didn’t know. It said, Good job answering that question in math. You saved us from extra homework.
Huh. That must have been from yesterday, too, when I solved the daily equation.
I looked up, feeling my eyebrows pull together as I wondered who had sent it. I wasn’t good with “tone” and humor and stuff. But it almost seemed like a nice message. Maybe even from one of the nice kids that had fourth period math with me.
Heard your pops got arrested. Perfect. Making you was a real crime. Ryker. Not nice, of course.
Bad genes, Messy Jesse. Maybe you’ll be next. That one was Chris.
For whatever reason, Trisha had given it a rest for a night—and she was usually the worst one of all on social media, before I deleted all my accounts.
I went back to my games, and for a while, Springer and I just played on our phones. Then I ate and stayed not cleaned up because not cleaned up was less itchy, because soap made my skin tight and dirt made it soft and clothes were lots softer when they weren’t just washed, even though some of my brain kept hearing Jerkface call me Messy instead of Jesse.
When we got tired of the phones, Springer held Sam inside the clubhouse while I hid Sam’s favorite ball and his favorite bacon treat in a plastic container and tucked it behind a rock, then covered it up with pine needles. I put five other containers near the clubhouse, making sure to get my scent on all of them, and I even half-buried one at a tree base.
“I thought dogs couldn’t smell through plastic,” Springer called from inside the clubhouse.
“Not really,” I admitted as I made my way back to the door and took my now very wiggly dog out of Springer’s hands. “But plastic containers aren’t as solid as people think. Smells get through.”
“Porous,” Springer mumbled.
When I looked at him, he said, “I love science words.”
“One-third of a dog’s brain is made to sniff stuff,” I said. “Mom says they smell five thousand times better than we do.”
Springer smiled.
I pulled Sam close to my face, until we were nose to nose. His curly tail bounced back and forth so fast it fanned the air. “You can do this, right?” I asked him.
Sam-Sam’s tongue fell out of his doggy mouth, and he doggy-smiled at me.
“Seriously,” I said, “I know you can. It’s not that hard.”
More doggy smiles.
“You like tennis balls, and you love bacon. So just find your favorite things.”
Sam wiggled and tried to lick my face.
I kissed him and lowered him to the ground.
He danced around my ankles.
“Sit,” I instructed.
Sam sat.
“That’s impressive,” Springer said.
Sam fidgeted. Sat. Fidgeted some more, yapped twice, got up, ran around my legs, and sat back down, dancing from front foot to front foot.
“He has trouble with the waiting part,” I told Springer.
“Me too,” Springer said.
“Okay, Sam-Sam.” I raised my hand.
Sam tried to keep sitting, but he popped up and danced and sat and then popped up again.
“Go!” I yelled, and dropped my hand to my side.
Sam shot off like I’d fired him from a slingshot. For a few seconds, he seemed to follow my scent toward the first buried container. My heart beat a little faster. Springer shifted his ice bag and leaned in Sam’s direction, even his bruised eye opened wide.
Sam stopped near the turned-up earth where I’d hidden the plastic with the ball and treat. So close. If he turned toward it, if he sniffed or dug at it, I could praise him and count it as a hit.
Sam sniffed the air and danced in a circle that sort of took him away from the container’s hiding spot.
Springer looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Isn’t he supposed to sniff that out and, I don’t know, point, or something?”
“Yeah, he is. But we’re early in our training, and he’s a Pomeranian. That dancing-in-circles thing is what they do when they find bombs, probably.”
This seemed to surprise Springer. “You’re training him to find bombs?”
“Right now, I’m training him to find stinky tennis balls, but later, maybe, yeah, I’ll train him for bombs like Mom’s dog Shotgun in Iraq. They find a lot of bombs.”
Sam strolled around in the brush, no doubt picking up lots of different types of burs in his coat.
Springer didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look at me, and I felt my face get warm. “I know, I know,” I said. “He might have a little trouble with the finding stuff part, too.”
Springer glanced in my direction, his expression sympathetic. He nodded once, then went back to watching my dog, who had started to wander aimlessly away from the mound of dirt, sniff
ing the ground and wagging his poofy tail.
About a second later, a squirrel skittered by, and Sam shot off after it, barking and barking.
“Sam?” I stumbled forward, breath catching hard in my chest. “Sam-Sam! Hey, come back!”
Off in the distance, brush and leaves crackled. Pomeranian yips filled my ears, getting farther away with each second.
From somewhere in some other galaxy, Springer said, “Oh. Not good.”
One bark. Two. Three. Four, five, six—deep in the woods. Deeper. Cold dread splashed across my insides.
“Sam-Sam!” I ran toward the distant noise.
Woods had coyotes. And hawks and eagles. And owls. A good-sized crow could pick up Sam and carry him away. Even that squirrel he was chasing could probably take him in a fight. “Saaaaaaammm!”
Trees got closer together, and branches smacked at my face. I batted them away with both arms. “Sam-Sam! Sam-Sam!”
My feet ground against leaves and rocks and twigs. My dog. My little fuzzy dog. Tears crammed into my eyes, blurring the world into greens and browns and blues, and I kept trying to breathe, and smelling bacon and dirt.
“Sam!”
I burst out of tree cover and teetered on the bank of Pond River Forest’s actual pond. The wide, muddy expanse stretched out before me in all directions, the dark surface rippling in the light breeze. My cheeks stung. My chest hurt, but not from running. All around me, the woods had gone quiet. There was no sound except the quiet tap-lap of water against some rocks below me.
“Sam-Sam?” My voice came out in a whisper.
And then I heard the crunchity-crunchity-crunchity of something pelting through the underbrush. And the thumpity-thumpity-thumpity of something bigger thundering down the path behind me. Off in the distance on a side trail, right where I had to squint to see it, a white fuzzy blur popped into view.
Sam.
He was racing back to me, as fast as his tiny paws would carry him.
He hit me from the side right about the exact second Springer stumbled past me and almost hurtled headfirst into the pond. He managed to stop himself just in time.
