Meatball’s butt vanished behind the box. I picked up Noodles and went to see what he was doing.
My mouth fell open.
Meatball was skateboarding!
Well, he was sort of skateboarding. He had the pink skateboard flipped onto its wheels and was nudging it back and forth with his nose. As I watched, he put one paw on the board and walked along beside it for a minute. Then he put both his front paws on it and stood there, thinking. His brow was furrowed like he was concentrating really hard on figuring this out. His tongue was going flap flap flap like a sail again as he panted and thought and wobbled around on the skateboard.
Finally he got it moving by pushing with his back paws while his front paws were on it. Then he scrambled to get all his paws on at once, and the skateboard slowed to a stop. Undaunted, Meatball put one fat paw down and pushed — and he was rolling! I dropped his leash and let him go.
“Arrgaarraarrrgah!” Meatball gargle-barked triumphantly. He put his two left paws down and pushed again. The skateboard went flying across the driveway with him on top.
“Oh my gosh!” Rebekah shrieked. “Look! Mom, Dad, look at Meatball!”
Meatball beamed at us as he drifted slowly past, and then the skateboard planted him headfirst into a giant flower bush on the other side of the driveway. His paws flailed as he backed himself out, shaking his butt vigorously.
Rebekah’s parents came out of the garage, blinking in the sunlight. Her dad was wiping his hands on a rag, and her mom was brushing sawdust off her jeans.
“Watch Meatball,” Rebekah said, pointing. “He can ride a skateboard! Eric, you didn’t tell me he could do that! That’s so cool!”
“I had no idea!” I said. “He’s never seen one before, as far as I know.”
Meatball finally disentangled himself from the bush and thoughtfully pawed at his face for a second. He looked around, spotted the skateboard, and pounced on it. But instead of riding it, he wrapped one paw over the top, lay down, and started chewing on the edge with his big floppy mouth.
“Meatball!” I said sternly, hurrying over to pull the skateboard away.
“That’s OK, he can have it,” Rebekah said. “Right, Mom?”
“Sure. We were just going to throw it out,” her mom answered.
I squatted in the driveway next to Meatball. “You big dope,” I said to him. “Do you want a skateboard? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Yarm yarm yarm went his mouth against the side of the board. He rolled his eyes expressively toward me.
I touched the glittery lightning stickers. “Does it have to be pink?” I asked him.
Yarm yarm yarm.
“So this is your doggy Nintendo,” I said thoughtfully. Teaching Meatball to ride the skateboard could be fun. It definitely wouldn’t be boring! I pulled the skateboard out of his grasp and sent it rolling across the driveway. Meatball lunged to his feet and barreled after it, snorting. He pounced on it and it flew out from under his paws.
Rebekah laughed at his bewildered face. “Let’s go to the park,” she suggested. “You can pick up the skateboard on the way home.”
“Thanks,” I said, catching Meatball’s leash.
He sat down and his tongue rolled out the side of his mouth. Uh-oh. I recognized that look.
Rebekah took Noodles and started down the driveway. I tried to follow her, but of course Meatball had decided not to budge. He didn’t want to leave his new beloved pink soul mate behind.
I tugged sternly on my end of the leash. “Meatball, come!”
Snaarrr snaarrr snaarrrrr, went Meatball. His butt was rooted to the sidewalk.
I pulled harder, trying to drag him. Nothing doing.
Rebekah turned, halfway down the driveway, and saw that I was still stuck in place. I wanted to jump into one of the flower bushes myself. Why did I always look like such an idiot in front of her?
“Come on Meatball!” Rebekah called. He cast a longing glance at the skateboard. His message was clear: Want it. Not moving until I have it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “He always does this.”
“Oh, it’s OK, this is an easy problem,” Rebekah said, coming back toward me. She reached into her bag and pulled out a handful of dog treats.
Meatball’s ears perked up.
“You call him,” she said, handing them to me. I waved a treat in Meatball’s direction.
“Meatball, come,” I said again.
He leaned toward me, sniffing, and then made a grab for the treat, but I pulled it away and stepped back. With a long-suffering sigh, Meatball got to his paws and followed me. After two steps I gave him the treat. At the end of the driveway, I gave him another.
He trotted agreeably next to me the rest of the way to the park, glancing up at my hand occasionally.
Note to self, I thought. Take treats everywhere we go.
“I should warn you,” I said to Rebekah, “Meatball is kind of boring at the park.”
She laughed. “With a face like that, Meatball could never be boring.”
Meatball shot me a look like Yeah, so there.
I glanced at Rebekah and suddenly realized how totally crazy this was. If you’d told me just one week before that I’d be walking down the street with my own dog on one side of me and Rebekah Waters on the other, I wouldn’t have believed you. I would never have imagined this could happen to me. Maybe to some other, braver, alternate-universe version of Eric.
OK, so I wasn’t quite brave enough yet to ask Rebekah to be my girlfriend. But maybe with Meatball’s help, one day I would be.
And sure, Meatball wasn’t exactly the athletic dog of my dreams. There wasn’t anything I could do about his snoring. Or his drooling. Or the fact that he sounded like a freight train when he breathed. But Meatball was loyal and funny and he helped me to be braver than I usually am. And you know what? It’s not like I’m perfect either.
He looked up at me, snorting and rolling along on his fat paws, and grinned. It was like he could read my mind.
I guess you knew it all along, Meatball, I thought. You are exactly the right dog for me.
We could hear shouting from the sixth-grade hallway as we went through the front doors, and I could tell that one of the people shouting was Rory Mason. Rory is one of my best friends.
Then I realized that the other person shouting was Avery, and I was like, Oh, no. Every time Avery gets in trouble at school, his parents get supermad and then there’s even more yelling and fighting, and then he’s grumpy for months afterward. So you’d think he would try harder not to get in trouble, but sometimes it’s like trouble just falls on him. I don’t mean, like, accident trouble, like what happens to me. I mean, if someone’s going to pick a fight or if someone’s going to get blamed for something, it’s probably Avery.
Also, I know Rory, and she pretty much says what she really thinks, and she would totally not be afraid of hitting him. Plus I didn’t need my best friend and my secret friend hating each other’s guts. It’s hard enough to stop Avery from complaining about everyone at school.
“She says you took it, Avery!” Rory yelled as we came up to the crowd that was standing around our lockers. I saw Rory’s little stepsister, Cameron, standing behind her, looking all mad, so I figured that was the “she” Rory was talking about. That meant real trouble because Rory is like a Rottweiler about defending Cameron.
“I didn’t!” Avery yelled back. “She’s lying!”
“Cameron wouldn’t lie!” Rory shoved him in the chest.
“Yeah!” Cameron yelled. “So there! Meanie!”
“I don’t need her stupid lunch money!” Avery shouted. He looked really upset. His green polo shirt was coming untucked and he kept clenching and unclenching his fists. I know that makes him look like he’s about to punch someone, but I think it actually means he’s trying to stop himself from getting too mad.
“Give it back, Avery!” Danny called.
I thought that was kind of unfair. We didn’t even know the whole s
tory yet.
I know, he’s a bully and he says mean things and he likes making other people as miserable as he is. But he’s not a liar, and he’s not a thief. I was pretty sure about that.
“Yeah Avery, stop being a jerk!” Tara Washington shouted. Like she should talk, by the way. She is absolutely as mean as Avery when she wants to be.
Then Brett Arbus poked his nose in and offered to buy Cameron’s lunch in his smiley, slippery way.
“It’s not about the money,” Rory said. “It’s about pushing around a little girl! What kind of freak-show coward are you, Avery?”
Well, OK. So then I had to get involved. Didn’t I? I mean, poor Avery, if he was innocent. Or if he wasn’t, then Rory needed my help.
I jumped in and grabbed Avery’s arm. “Stop fighting!” I said. “You guys are both going to get in trouble again!”
“I didn’t steal any stupid lunch money,” Avery growled, glaring at Rory.
“Cameron says he did!” Rory insisted. “Why would she lie about that?”
I had to admit that was pretty confusing. “Maybe there’s a mistake,” I said. “Hey Cameron, did you maybe just lose it?”
“No!” Cameron said, pouting. Cameron is a very cute third-grader, with perfect pale skin and vibrant red curls. But I’m afraid being that cute helps her get away with anything. I mean, I would never tell Rory that her sister is a bit spoiled, but … she kind of is. “It was in my backpack and then it was gone! He took it!” Cameron said decisively.
“Out of your backpack?” Rory said. “I thought you said he took it from you.”
So it could be a mistake. I tried to give Avery a reassuring look, but he was too busy scowling at Cameron to meet my eyes.
“He did!” Cameron said. “It was mine!”
“But did you see him take it out of your backpack?” I asked.
Cameron’s blue eyes were filling with tears, but I’ve seen her do that lots of times to get what she wants, so I wasn’t sure it was all that real. “I know he did!” she cried. “I know he took it! He’s mean!”
I couldn’t really argue with that, but I could see that Rory was confused, too. She’ll do anything for Cameron, but she’s also really fair. I knew she wouldn’t have accused Avery if she hadn’t been sure he did it. And now she wasn’t so sure.
That’s when we heard the dreaded sound of Vice Principal Taney’s voice.
“What is all this?” he barked, hurrying toward us. He looked really mad, almost as mad as when someone hit him with a piece of bologna during the cafeteria food fight a couple weeks earlier. I felt like my feet were frozen in place. It was like someone just piled a whole pack of Great Danes on my shoulders. I was too terrified to move. I hate getting in trouble, because then Mom shakes her head and looks even more disappointed in me than usual.
Rory and Avery and Cameron were stuck there, too, but everyone else vanished.
Mr. Taney has long, bony fingers. He was waggling one of them at us like he was hoping it would turn us all into salamanders.
“Sir, it’s just a misunderstanding,” I said as fast as I could. “Really, there’s nothing wrong, everyone’s —”
“Detention!” Mr. Taney shouted. “All of you!” He stopped in front of us. His white hair was sticking up in grouchy tufts.
“All of us!” Cameron squeaked, looking outraged. “That’s not fair! I didn’t do anything! I’m a good girl!”
Mr. Taney pointed his bony forefinger at her little button nose. “Detention,” he snarled. He pointed it at Rory, then Avery, then me. “Detention. Detention. Detention.”
“Can’t we explain?” Rory started to say, but Mr. Taney cut her off.
“My office. Lunch,” he snapped. “And you all have after-school detention for the next week.”
“A whole week!” Cameron shrieked.
“Push me, and I’ll make it two,” Mr. Taney hissed. “Now get to class.”
So that’s how I ended up in detention with Rory and Avery after school that Thursday. It wasn’t really my fault, right? But maybe it’s good that I was there, because Rory and Avery kept throwing each other these fierce hostile looks, and I’m not sure they could have stayed quiet that whole time if I wasn’t sitting in between them trying to block the angry vibes.
And in some ways, it’s definitely good that I got detention, because of what happened on the way home.
Avery rocketed out of his seat the minute Mr. Guare told us we could go. I don’t even think he stopped at his locker. He shot out the front door of the school, practically leaving puffs of smoke behind him, like a cartoon.
Rory and Cameron walked me to my locker and then stood well back so nothing would fall out of it onto their heads. I don’t have any idea how my locker becomes so messy so quickly, but I never have time to clean it, and anyway at least I know everything’s in there somewhere. I hope.
“You want a ride home?” Rory asked me as I untangled my sweater from my math book and spilled jelly beans all over the hall. “I can’t promise it’ll be fun. Dad’s not happy at all.”
“It’s not my fault,” Cameron said for the eightieth time. “Avery’s mean. I know he took my lunch money.”
Rory didn’t bother answering her.
“That’s OK,” I said. “I brought my bike today.”
“All right,” Rory said, pulling her ponytail tighter. “See you tomorrow, Heidi. Sorry about detention.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “I finished most of my homework, so it’s not all bad.” I smiled at Rory to show her I knew it wasn’t her fault.
Rory took Cameron’s hand and they went off down the hall toward Coach Mason’s office. I wrestled with my locker until I got it shut and then I went out the front door and unlocked my bike. It was the last one there. I hung my shiny blue helmet on the handlebars and pushed it across the street.
There’s a big field across from the school with a track running around it, which grown-ups use a lot for exercise. You can usually find someone jogging there, wearing sweatpants and headphones and a determined look, but this afternoon it was empty. Trees and thick bushes grow around the edges, hiding the field from the streets around it, and there’s a big space in the middle that the town uses for summer sports. I play soccer there a lot.
My bike went bump bump bump over the dirt as I pushed it toward the low wall that runs along one side of the track, under the trees. Avery was sitting on the wall, throwing stones at a tree trunk. Sometimes he waits for me there so we can walk home together.
“I have this great idea,” he said as I walked up. “Let’s take that lunch money I ‘stole’ and run away to New York and never come back.”
“I know you didn’t steal it,” I said. I dropped my bike on the grass and hopped up on the wall next to him. “Are your parents going to be really mad?”
“Well, Dad’s staying in a hotel again this week,” Avery said, “so maybe she won’t tell him, since they’re ‘not speaking.’ But Mom….” He threw another stone, really hard, and it bounced off the bark with a clunk.
“Maybe if you explain it to her … that it was a mistake …” I said. “I can talk to her if you want.”
“Whatever,” Avery said. “It’s not worth it. If she wants to get mad, fine. I don’t care. That stupid little brat.” He jumped down, picked up a handful of rocks, and tossed them all at once. Blip blip bonk bonk bonk they went as they pinged off the tree and scattered to the ground.
“Why do you think Cameron said it was you?” I asked.
Instead of answering, he shoved his hand in his pocket, pulled out a small white object, and tossed it at me. I lunged to catch it and would have fallen off the wall, but Avery caught my arms and pushed me back up.
“There you go, throwing yourself at me again,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Thanks,” I said with a grin, peering at the thing in my hand. It was an eraser, little and white and shaped like a tiny white dog — some kind of terrier, I guessed, with a red collar around its neck and
a little pink tongue hanging out. “This is so cute,” I said.
“I thought you’d like it,” Avery said with a shrug. I looked up in surprise, and he went, “Don’t get all mushy-wushy on me, Heidi. I found it on the playground yesterday. Problem is, the brat saw it at the same time and she pitched a fit when I wouldn’t let her have it. Anyway, I guess that’s why she’s mad at me.”
“Wow,” I said, flipping the eraser between my fingers. “So you won this in a fight with an eight-year-old girl. No wonder I have such a crush on you.”
“Shut up,” he said, grabbing my foot and pulling off my sneaker.
“Give that back!” I yelled as he ran off across the field. “I’m not going to chase you with one shoe, Avery! Get back here!”
“What, this?” he called, stopping several feet away. He tossed my shoe from one hand to the other. “You want this?”
I crossed my arms. “I’m not going to come after it,” I said.
“OK,” he said with a shrug. “Then we can just stay here forever. Suits me. I don’t want to go home.”
Rrrrrrrooorrrroorrrrrooooooo.
I tilted my head at Avery. “Did you just growl at me?” I asked. I was sure I’d heard something — something like a growl or a whimper or a mumble. Had it come from the bushes by the wall?
“You’re losing it, Heidi,” Avery said, wiggling his finger by the side of his head like I was crazy.
“You didn’t hear that?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said with another shrug. He tossed my shoe behind his back and caught it in his other hand, then waved it at me.
“Avery, give me back my sneaker.”
“Nope,” he said, dancing back another step.
“You’re a pain in my butt,” I said.
“That’s why you’re in loooooooooove with me,” he said. “Hey, do you know you’re wearing two different-colored socks?”
I looked down and realized that my shoeless foot was wearing a dark blue sock, while the other one was wearing a yellow sock with black polka dots. How did I do that? I must have been in such a hurry that morning that I didn’t even notice.
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