Aces Wild (15 page)

“Three weeks to go, Acey, see?” I circled the date on the calendar and showed him. Ace barked and jumped up, trying to see if the pen was a stick. “No, Acey, come on, you know better than that! You’re doing great, and with a little more practice, you’re going to ace your test. Get it?
Ace
your test!”

Ace barked again.
That’s my name!

“Mazel tov,” I told him. “Let’s see you do some of the trickier stuff.” He was a lot shakier on the stuff that came after week one: heeling on a loose lead, doing “down” the first time he was told to instead of the fifth, and, of course, not popping up when he was told to “stay.” I could tell he knew that he wasn’t released until I said “okay,” but he didn’t seem able to resist the temptation to squirm in place, then wiggle, then run around. Sometimes he’d scratch himself or shake as an excuse to break his “stay,” and then he’d give me a look like
What? I was just shaking!

By far, holding his “stay” when I left the room was the hardest part for him. No matter how many times I told him otherwise, and no matter how many times I came back
just like I said I would
, he seemed convinced that if he couldn’t see me, I was gone forever.

“It’s called object permanence,” Jeremy had explained to me. “It’s a developmental stage. Before babies develop object permanence, they think that things that are hidden don’t exist anymore. I guess it’s the same with puppies. Ace thinks when he can’t see you, you’ve disappeared forever.”

“Weird!” I said. But it actually made sense. No wonder Ace was so excited every day when I came home from school! “So how am I supposed to convince him that I’ll always, always, always come back?”

“Maybe you can’t,” said Jeremy. “I mean, think about it. Ace came from the Humane Society, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, clearly he had a mother once, and littermates, but he doesn’t know where they went. It’s possible he even lived with another family before your family and one day they disappeared too.”

“I never thought of that,” I said.

Jeremy shrugged. “Or maybe it’s one of those cognitive things and he’ll just develop it at some point. I don’t know. My dad studies people, not dogs.”

I had to admit that something about what Jeremy said made me less frustrated with Ace and more sympathetic toward him. The poor little guy had lost his mom, after all. Luckily, he had me. And he had another maternal figure in
his life: Bridget. Since she was such a good role model, I found myself “borrowing” her more and more as the test got closer and closer.

“Wanna go get Bridgie for a walk?” I asked Ace. At the sound of the word
Bridgie
, Ace’s ears perked up, and when I said
walk
, he went flying down the hall to grab his leash off the hook himself.

“Hold on, hold on,” I laughed, pulling my boots on and grabbing a hat, mittens, and a down vest. When I got to my feet and claimed one end of the leash, Ace gave a yank and practically dragged me out the door. Outside, he squatted immediately, then tried to kangaroo his way across our lawn before getting frustrated by the snowdrift.

“Gotcha!” I said, scooping him up and stealing a kiss before depositing Ace on the skinny path of cleared sidewalk my parents had managed to keep exposed. Ace bounded along, breaking into a run when he got to the Stanleys’ front walk. Mr. Stanley always puts down salt and Ace always forgets, then starts hopping and whining and trying to sit down and lick his feet. To avoid this, I grabbed Ace again and carried him up the Stanleys’ front steps.

I rang the doorbell.
Bing-bong-bang-bing
. I heard it echo inside, like always. But, unlike always, I didn’t hear Mrs. Stanley yell “Coming!” or the sound of Bridget following Mrs. Stanley down the hall, howling
aroooooo
because she couldn’t hear herself anymore.

I tried knocking, which got Ace barking. Then I rang again.

“I guess they’re not home,” I told Ace, peering through the window beside the front door, even though the Stanleys have lace curtains that make it pretty impossible to see anything inside except dark shapes. Like the light brown and white lump on the long rug that runs along the side of their staircase. Which looked like a pillow or a pile of laundry or—
a dog?

I bent down and flipped open the mail slot, then stuck a finger in and opened the other side. Ace made a funny whining noise.

“Oh my—Bridgie? Bridgie!”

Ace was trying to lick my face because it was down at his level, and now that I was saying “Bridgie,” he was getting more and more excited, wagging like crazy. It was like he thought we were playing some dog version of hide-and-seek and any moment now Bridgie was going to jump out of hiding, like Bubbles once did when she came for a surprise visit when I was really little.

Except Bridget wasn’t hiding. Or jumping. She was lying there.

Don’t panic!
I thought.
She’s probably just asleep
. “Bridgie!” I yelled through the mail slot, even though I knew her hearing was lousy. “Bridget, wake up.”

Hrrnnnnn
. Ace started to whine. The game wasn’t fun anymore. Where was his walking buddy? Where was Bridget?

“Come on,” I told him. I got up and ran down the stairs, forgetting all about the salt and everything as I dashed back to the sidewalk and retraced our steps to our front door.

“Mom?! Mom!” I yelled, feeling the tears of fear and desperation coming even though I had only been gone five minutes. I knew she was there.

My mom came running. “Zelly, what on earth?”

“It’s Bridget. She’s not moving and I think she might be hurt or something.”

“What? Where?”

“At her house. I went to see if she could take a walk with Ace, but no one’s home and she’s just lying there.”

“Okay, hang on.”

My mom grabbed her coat, then followed me back over to the Stanleys’, Ace racing at our heels. Mom rang the bell just like we had and put her nose up to the glass window beside the door. She cupped one hand to her face to get a better view through the lace. I showed her the view through the mail slot.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“Maybe she’s just asleep,” I told her.

“Maybe,” she said, but it didn’t sound like maybe. I burst into tears as my mom took out her cell phone. She dialed, and after a pause I heard her say, “Maureen? Hi, it’s Lynn Fried.” Even though you don’t have to say that on a cell phone, Mom always does.

I grabbed Ace and ran down the walk so I wouldn’t have to hear what came next. I just wanted to go home, to go back, to make it so I had never taken Ace out, never seen what I saw, make it so it didn’t even happen. When I got home, I found that our door was locked, so I sat on our front step and pulled
Ace into my lap. I buried my face in his fur and cried, hugging him so tightly I thought he’d squirm away or whine, but he didn’t. Maybe he needed that too. After all, Bridget was his friend as much as she was mine.

“Zell?” I looked up to see my mom standing there. “Sweetie, let’s go inside. You’ll freeze out here.”

“She’s not …?”

My mom nodded. “I’m so sorry, Zelly.”

“No!” I yelled, surprised at how angry I felt. “You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I wish I was,” said my mom quietly. “I used my spare key to let myself in and check on her, sweetie. I’m so sorry.” Ace cocked his head to one side, trying to figure out what was going on. My mom took out her keys and opened the door.

“I want to be alone,” I announced when we got inside. I stomped past Ace, who was doing the crossword puzzle at the kitchen table, and went to go dump my boots and outerwear. From the mudroom, I heard Ace ask Mom, “WHAT’S WITH GRETA GARBO?”

“Dad,” said my mom sharply.

“WHA?”

“It’s the Stanleys’ dog,” my mom whispered, but loud enough to make sure Ace could hear. “Bridget? She passed away.”

“SHE RAN AWAY?”

“No, Dad.
Passed
away.”

“HIT BY A CAR?”

“No.”

“BUS? YOUR MOTHER USED TO LOSE A CAT A WEEK TO THE—”

“No, Dad, not the bus. Sha!”

I didn’t want to hear any more, either. I stomped back through the kitchen and up to my room, Ace scampering to keep up with me.

I heard the phone ring a couple of times, but I didn’t even think of running to get it like I would otherwise. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even Allie or Jeremy. Ace hopped up on my bed, circled once, and then flopped down like he’d run a marathon. I wished I could be like him, blissfully unaware of how his world had changed just like that. My clueless, fearless, hopelessly sweet dog.

A long time later, there was a knock on my door.

“KID!”

I rolled over and put a pillow over my head.

“KID, YOU DECENT? I’M COMING IN.”

I heard the muffled sounds of Ace shuffling over to my bed and lowering himself until he was sitting next to me. I felt Ace-the-dog begin wagging his whole body and Ace-the-grandpa giving him some rough thumps on the back. Ace-the-grandpa lifted the pillow off my head and leaned in.

“Don’t say it,” I told him.

“SAY WHAT?”

“ ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘It’ll be okay.’ ”

“I’M NOT SORRY. IT WON’T BE OKAY.”

“Very funny, Grandpa. It’s just, I hate that stuff. It doesn’t make it any better.”

“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TALKING TO?”

He had a point. Ace-the-grandpa sat by my side. He scratched Ace-the-dog’s ears and for once didn’t try to bend mine.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye to her. Neither did Ace,” I told him.

“SOMETIMES YOU DON’T,” said Ace.

I rolled over and looked at him cautiously.

“Did you say goodbye to her?” I asked.

“TO THE STANLEYS’ DOG?”

“No! To Bubbles.”

“I did,” Ace told me, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “Maybe a thousand times. With what she had, we saw it coming a long way off.” He shrugged. “But you know what? It never feels like enough.”

I nodded. I thought about how Mrs. Stanley had said that Bridgie couldn’t get comfortable anymore. How she howled because her world was too quiet and dark and confusing. Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Stanley saw this coming a long way off. Maybe they said goodbye to her a thousand times.

And maybe they were also wishing for a thousand and one. Just like me and Ace.

I had a hard time falling asleep that night. I kept thinking about getting up and reading a book or something, but I wasn’t quite awake enough to actually do it. But then all of a sudden I woke up and smelled something. Or maybe I woke up because I smelled something. This wasn’t the first time I had been woken up by odors—having a poorly potty-trained puppy made this a fairly regular occurrence. This was a different smell. Sort of like something baking. No, not exactly. It reminded me of Sam singing
“I’ll never leave your pizza burning.…”

Pizza … burning … fire—

Was that smoke I smelled?

I threw off my blanket and ran to the door of my room, Ace hot on my heels. Remembering a “stop, drop, and roll” school assembly from years before, I cautiously touched the
doorknob and was relieved to find it was cool. I grabbed Ace, threw the door open, and ran down the stairs, Ace’s ears flapping as we dashed to safety.

My still-half-asleep plan was to race outside, where I supposed I’d find my frantic family. But as I sprinted into the kitchen, I heard the whir of the stove fan and—

“Auuughh!”

CRASH!!!

“OY YOY YOY!”

At the sound of my shriek, Ace, wearing his pajamas, a bathrobe, slippers, an apron, and oven mitts, had dropped the tray he was holding. Carrots, potatoes, and brown and black chunks of I’m not even sure what were scattered all over the floor. Ace wiggled out of my grasp and sprang to investigate. The whole mess was steaming, so he stood on the edge of the puddle, trying to figure out how to eat something that was too hot to touch. So hot it was practically—

“Oh no,” I said.

Burning. That was what I’d smelled. What had I done?

“Grandpa, I’m sorry! I thought—”

“YOU THOUGHT WHAT?” barked Ace, his caterpillar eyebrows taking on an angry fighting stance.

It was going to sound so dumb, but I couldn’t think of anything else to tell him except the truth: “I smelled something burning, so I thought—”

“YOU THOUGHT I WAS BURNING THE HOUSE DOWN?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “What were you making?”

“TZIMMES,” he said. Then he began to chuckle. Then really laugh. “I ENDED UP MAKING A TZIMMES ALL RIGHT.”

I looked at him, confused.

“TZIMMES,”
he explained, “MEANS ‘STEW.’ SO I STARTED OUT MAKING TZIMMES FOR THE STANLEYS. BUT
TZIMMES
ALSO MEANS ‘A BIG MESS’ OR ‘A FUSS’.”

I did my best to help Ace, crouching down with the dustpan while he attempted to sweep the tzimmes in the direction of the target. From this position, I could see that the brown parts were meat and the black parts were—no big surprise—prunes. Ace felt that any meal could be improved by adding prunes.

“Why are you making stew for the Stanleys?” I asked.

“IT’S WHAT YOU DO,” said Ace. “LOOK, WE NEED TO START OVER, AND WE DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME.” He began pulling things out of cupboards. Pots and pans, cinnamon and spices. “GET THE SOUR CREAM,” he ordered. “EGGS. MILK. BUTTER. AND GET ME A CHAIR. HUSTLE, KID.”