Dog Heaven (12 page)

Her shoulders shook as she tried to stop laughing. “You’re creative, I’ll give you that.”

I’ll get you, I thought. You just wait.

Since Mom couldn’t stop gawking at me, I decided to go on. “This dog—it’s a girl dog, and she lives at the Humane Society, and, well, anyway, someone took her into the mountains
and dumped her. She is the fastest dog I’ve ever seen.”

Darci looked at Mom, then at Stella, then back at Mom.

I peeked over to see how I was doing.

Mom gaped at me. Maybe I was really telling it well and she was spellbound.

I felt my courage rise. “I only know two things about her, Mom. One is that she needs a home. Two is that she needs a friend … someone like … uh, someone like me.”

Stella roared. “He did it again! I can see right through you! I can almost see your skeleton!”

I squinted at her.

“That’s enough, Stella,” Mom said.

Stella raised her hands in surrender. “Fine.”

Mom shook her head and reached over to tap my hand. “That was sweet, Calvin, it really was. You’re trying so hard. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Did this mean I could get Streak?

Mom’s eyes glistened. She patted my hand again and sat back.

Darci gave me a secret thumbs-up.

“Oh, come on,” Stella said. “You don’t believe he just came up with that gooey stuff, do you? Somebody wrote it for him and he memorized it. Go ahead and ask him. I bet he could say it again, word for word.”

Mom laughed, dabbing her eyes with her napkin.

Stella frowned. “Think what you like, but he’s a fake.”

“Stella!” Mom said, then looked at me. “He’s a sweetheart.”

I lit up like a bug zapper. “Does that mean I can have a dog?”

Stella fake-coughed. She fake-rubbed her eyes. “Just talking about it makes my allergies act up.”

The phone rang.

Darci ran to get it. She poked her head back out. “For you, Mom. It’s Ledward.”

Mom got up and went into the kitchen.

I shoved my string beans into a tight pile so it would look like I ate some of them. What Stella needed was a bug in her bed. Or a lizard. No, a scorpion.

“Well,” Mom said, sitting back down at the table. “It looks like you have a friend, Cal.”

“I do?”

“Ledward just invited me to go somewhere with him.”

“Where?”

Mom put her elbow on the table and cupped her cheek with her hand. She sighed. “Does the name Streak ring a bell?”

I
t was Saturday. Stella was still asleep. Mom had already gone off to work, and Darci was watching TV.

I was just about to go down to Julio’s house when I heard the mail truck.

Darci ran out and came back with an Eddie Bauer catalog, a wad of newspapery junk mail,
two bills, and something for Stella that looked very much like it might be a birthday card.

There was a return address with no name.

I showed it to Darci. “Look. It’s from Texas.”

“Is it from her mom?”

“Got to be.”

“Should we wake her up?”

Stella had been waiting for this. “You do it.”

Darci shook her head. “She might get mad.”

We stared at the envelope.

I put Stella’s envelope and the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter. “Better safe than sorry, huh?”

Darci went back to cartoons. I went to Julio’s.

Mom came home just after four. Julio and I were tossing a football back and forth on the street. Mom waved as she drove. I tossed the ball back to Julio. “I gotta go.”

Julio held the ball under his arm. “When can we go for a ride in that jeep again?”

“Soon, I hope.”

I jogged home.

Mom was getting her purse out of the car. She smiled. “What’s going on, little big man?”

“Not much.”

“Staying out of trouble, I hope.”

“Yeah.”

I followed Mom into the kitchen. She dropped her keys and purse onto the counter, frowning at the bills. She moved the junk mail aside … and froze.

She grabbed the card under the catalog. “Look at this.”

“It’s from Texas.”

“Stella!” Mom called. She gave me a look I couldn’t figure out. Like she was mad at me, or something. “Stella!”

“I’m coming, hang on.”

Mom held the card up and gave me a stabbing look. “Did you know about this?”

“Well … yeah.”

“And you didn’t
tell
her?”

“She was asleep.”

Mom closed her eyes. What was she so hot about?

Stella came into the kitchen. Her hair was wrapped in a towel.

Mom held up the envelope. Stella snapped it out of her hand and tore it open. “Finally!”

She pulled the card out. A twenty-dollar bill fluttered to the counter. Stella started reading, smiling like she’d just won a trip to Disneyland.

Her smile faded.

Mom saw it, too. “What does it say, Stella?”

Stella handed the card to Mom and left the kitchen.

Mom read it and looked up.

“What?”

Mom handed it to me.

She didn’t even know how old her own daughter was. I looked up. “Fifteen?”

Mom shook her head.

The twenty-dollar bill lay with the junk mail on the counter.

T
he next day, Sunday, I was in the yard chasing toads out of the grass with a stick when Ledward came over. He was in a good mood.

He bent close and whispered, even though no one else was around. “Today we pop the secret plan. You ready?”

I flung the stick into the bushes. “What do I do?”

“Just be yourself.”

A half hour later Ledward, Mom, Darci, and I were on our way to the Humane Society in Ledward’s jeep. Ledward had invited Stella, too, but she said, “I don’t like cats, I don’t like dogs, I don’t like rabbits, and I don’t like seeing anything in a cage, so somebody tell me why I would want to go.”

Man, she was snippy.

When we got to the Humane Society, Ledward parked and turned to me. “Show your mama, boy.”

Mom put up her hand to stop me. “Listen, we’re just looking, right? Nobody’s getting a dog.” She looked straight into my eyes. “Are we clear about this?”

“Yeah, but—”

Mom put her finger on my lips. “Just. Looking.”

There were people everywhere. Almost
every dog was barking. It was deafening. I covered my ears and pushed my way through.

“Streak! Stre—”

I gaped at Streak’s empty kennel as my world crumbled.

“But …”

Ledward, Mom, and Darci crowded around me. Ledward looked in the kennels on either side. No Streak. “Maybe somebody’s got her out in the yard.”

“No. They can’t. She’s mine!”

Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Calvin, if someone wants to adopt her, that’s a good thing, right? She’ll have a home. Isn’t that what you wanted for her?”