Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy (25 page)

So I turned around and ran back the way I’d come. And I’m running along, dodging Santas and elves and horses and wagons, when all of a sudden I hear, “Sammy! Over here!”

Well, sure enough, it’s Holly, calling me from down a side street. I run over, and she says, “You’re not going to believe what a mess things are!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The bracket to hold up the wreath snapped, they can’t get the lights to work, and Mr. Petersen keeps yelling at everybody. He’s making the dogs so nervous that they’re snapping at each other and they won’t wear their antlers.” She picked up Vera’s little dog and said, “And Hero keeps trying to lift his leg on Lucy!”

I tried not to laugh. I mean, Lucy’s like a cross between a Chihuahua and a toy poodle, and I couldn’t imagine another dog
bothering
to pee on her. But it was easy to see that Holly was upset, so I just asked, “Who’s Hero?”

“That wanna-be dalmatian over there.”

I looked at the float and knew right away which dog she meant. His body was spotted like a dalmatian, but he had the long droopy ears and face of a basset hound. And on the very tip of his tail was a tuft of long red hair—like his great-great-granddaddy had been an Irish setter and was fighting to be remembered.

I laughed. “That is one strange-looking dog.”

“You can say that again.”

“So who’s Mr. Petersen?”

She rolled her eyes. “The guy who puts together the calendar.” She pointed at a man with oily hair wearing a black tuxedo with tails. “He is such a jerk.”

Now
I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “He looks like a giant stinkbug!”

Holly’s eyes popped open. “He … he does…!”

Just then Mr. Petersen yelled, “And where the devil is Marique? I should never have let that prima donna in the calendar! Someone get on the phone and find out where that stupid dog is. If she’s a no-show, I’m ripping her off the cover!”

A lady with some kind of cross-eyed terrier muttered, “Good idea anyway, if you ask me,” which made the people around her nudge each other and chuckle.

One of the men working on the float called, “If she’s a no-show, we don’t need this wreath, Royce!”

“Just fix the wreath!”

I rolled my eyes at Holly and whispered, “Tell me again why you were so excited about Lucy being on the float?”

She laughed. “I don’t remember right now.”

So we’re all kind of keeping our distance from Mr. Petersen, when a girl in jeans and a red jacket comes up carrying a dog under her arm like a furry football. She says, “Mr. Petersen?”

“Yeah, what?”

“I’m Tina Landvogt.” She holds out the dog and says, “My mother’s in the hospital with a broken leg, but she still wants Marique in the parade.”

Mr. Petersen looks around for a minute, not taking the dog. “So are you gonna show her?”

Tina shakes her head. “I can’t. I’ve got to videotape the parade for my mother.” She shoves the dog into his arms and says, “Besides, she doesn’t want me to do it. She wants Vera to.”

So there he is, the world’s biggest stinkbug, holding this miniature lion like it’s a baby with a dirty diaper. He blinks around at us, then notices Vera. “You! Here! You’re in charge of this.”

Vera says very carefully, “I never said I would show Lilia’s dog. Besides, I have Lucy to show.”

“I thought your girl was showing your dog.”

“Yes, but I’m—”

“Then you can deal with this thing.”

He tried to give her the dog, but Vera wouldn’t take it. “No, Royce. I’m photographing the parade.”

“This is more important than some silly snapshots!”

Now Vera isn’t big, but she could wrestle Mr. Petersen into a flea-dipping tank quicker than you or I could spell his name. And standing there getting yelled at by the Big Bug, you could tell she was thinking that’s exactly what
the man needed. She crossed her arms and said, “No, sir. I made arrangements for my dog. You find someone else.”

But in the middle of saying that, she looks around and notices me. She waits a minute, then motions me over and whispers, “Sammy, why don’t you show her?”

“Me?”

“Sure. She’s a good dog, and really, the float isn’t much without her.”

“Why’s that?”

She points over to the wreath that they’ve finally got to stand up. “Marique’s the one that jumps through the hoop.”

“What about Meg? I could run and get her—”

“No, she’s home with the flu, sicker than a dog. I feel bad even being away from her.”

Mr. Petersen sees us whispering and shouts, “You! What about you?”

“Me?” I blink at him a bunch and say, “I don’t know anything about showing a dog!”

Holly whispers, “C’mon! It’ll be fun. I’ll help you.”

“Why don’t
I
take the pictures and
Vera
can show the dog?”

Vera shakes her head and says, “I don’t think you’ll be able to handle the camera. It’s got a telephoto and a zoom. There’s no autofocus and the meters are hard to read until you know what you’re looking for. I don’t think I can teach you in five minutes.”

It did look more like a cannon than a camera, so I said, “Okay, okay! I’ll show the dog.”

I had
no
idea what I was getting myself into.

By the time Mr. Petersen maneuvered our float forward to join the rest of the parade, Hero had run out of ammunition and the other dogs had settled down a bit. Some of them were still trying to shake their antlers loose, but pretty much they just sat next to their owners, looking ridiculous.

And I was concentrating so hard on Marique jumping back and forth through the wreath that I wasn’t really paying attention to anything else. Not until Holly called, “Hey, Sammy! Isn’t that your favorite cop?”

Now I haven’t known Holly all that long, and it’s kind of a long story, but she understands better than anyone else I know what it’s like to avoid the police. And it’s not like I’m a lawbreaker or anything. I mean, I don’t shoplift or break into houses—nothing like that. It’s just that I’m living with my grams at the Senior Highrise, and over there, kids are like rats; if someone thinks there’s one in the building, they’re going to set traps until it’s caught.

And there’s no one who would like to snap my tail more than Officer Borsch. Well, except maybe my neighbor Mrs. Graybill.

And I’d recognize Officer Borsch anywhere. Even somewhere you’d never expect to see him. Like in a
Christmas parade. On a horse. And since I’d never seen him ride anything but a squad car before, to me he looked pretty uncomfortable, swaying back and forth up there in the saddle. And I know that horses are supposed to be pack animals, but let me tell you, the
horse
looked pretty uncomfortable, too. Like he’d never had to carry a load quite like Officer Borsch before and was having trouble getting him balanced.

I called back to Holly, “I don’t believe it!”

She laughed. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not going to notice you.”

I watched him for a minute, but then I got back to concentrating on Marique. And after we turned onto Broadway I’d actually forgotten about Officer Borsch and was starting to have fun. The street was packed with people, and when we drove by they clapped and whistled and shook their jingle-bell sticks so hard that you’d have thought Marique was jumping through fire instead of a hoop of pine branches. Some of them even called out, “Go, Marique, go!” like she was a real celebrity.

And when we got to the place I was supposed to meet up with Grams, sure enough, there she was, with Hudson, looking everywhere but at the parade, worried. I hollered, “Hey, Grams! Hudson! Up here!” and waved real big.

Hudson grabbed Grams’ arm and pointed. And Grams’ face went from worried, clear through shocked, all the way to relieved in about two seconds. She waved back and laughed, and when Marique jumped through the wreath, she had the biggest smile in the crowd.

So we were putting along and everything was going fine,
and then we hit Cook Street. Cook is where the judging starts. It’s also where the biggest crowds gather. There’s a mall parking lot on one side and a big church parking lot on the other, so there’s lots of room for people to stand.

If you’ve ever been in a parade you know: sometimes it’s real noisy—people are clapping and cheering and there’s music blaring over loudspeakers and the marching band is playing—and sometimes it’s quiet. Completely quiet. Like in class, when everyone’s talking all at once and then all of a sudden
nobody’s
talking.

So there we were, at the corner of Broadway and Cook, waiting, when suddenly there’s this wave of quiet. And that’s when I notice these three people dressed up like the Three Kings stepping off the curb and into the street. They’re wearing robes with the hoods up, and they’re kind of looking down so you can’t see their faces.

At first I thought they were just late joining a float, but then I notice that they’re not carrying gold, frankincense, or myrrh—they’ve got cats. Scared, panicked cats.

And while my brain’s trying to absorb the fact that the Three Kings are bearing their gifts straight toward our float, through the quiet I hear, “Maaaariiique! Maaaariiique!”

Well, Marique goes charging through the hoop and straight off the float. And while I’m calling, “Marique! Marique, come back!” she flies across the street, through the crowd, and into the darkness.

I swung my legs over the edge of the float, but we were moving forward and the bed of the truck was quite a ways up, so I couldn’t exactly jump. Mr. Petersen yells out his
window, “What are you doing? Get back on!” but does he slow down? Not at all. Finally I just flip around, hang over, and let go, and as I’m getting my balance, I see the Three Kings, right at our float. I yell, “Hold on to your dogs!” but it’s too late—cats are already sailing through the air.

Reindeer antlers went flying everywhere. Hero charged across the float and knocked down the wreath, then a bulldog with a mane like a chow leapt off into the street, and before you know it everyone was scrambling off the float to chase their dogs.

They went in every direction, but the furry bulldog decided to take a shortcut—straight under Officer Borsch’s horse. Well, that spooked the horse so badly that he neighed and pulled a giant horsy wheelie, and even though Officer Borsch held on like a koala to a tree, it wasn’t long before he was sitting on asphalt.

By the time everyone got their jaws back in socket, the Kings were gone. I wanted to track them down and deliver a gift of my own, but I had to find Marique. So I ran through the crowd calling, “Marique! Marique! Here, girl!” but I didn’t see her anywhere. I asked a lady, “Did a little dog run through here?”

She laughed, “Which one?”

“She’s furry—kind of orange. The one that was jumping through the wreath …?”

A woman standing next to her said, “The Pom? She went straight through there,” and pointed across the mall lawn. “Cute dog!”

I ran across the lawn and looked everywhere, but no Marique. Finally I asked a man in the parking lot, “Has
a dog come through here? Little. Furry. Orange …?”

He shook his head. “Ain’t seen one.”

I spent the next two hours chasing around the mall, asking people if they’d seen Marique—nobody had. I called Grams and told her about the feline fiasco, then started searching farther into the neighborhoods around the mall. But the later it got, the fewer people I ran into, and nobody had seen Marique.

I was about to give up and go home when I passed by the library and noticed someone sitting on the root of a giant fig tree in the library lawn.

I decided to go ask if they’d seen Marique, but the closer I got the slower I walked, until finally I just stopped and stared. And I could feel my heart start to beat a little funny because I realized that it wasn’t a person sitting on the root of that tree—it was an elf. A real live elf.

I was afraid to get any closer. I was afraid somehow it would disappear. So I just stood there in the dark watching the elf kind of glow in the moonlight.

Finally I moved in, little by little, and the elf didn’t disappear. She kept right on sitting there, looking up at the moon. When I got close enough I realized that she was just a little girl in an elf costume, but I was still having trouble shaking off the feeling that I’d found a real live elf. Finally I whispered, “Hi.”

She just kept staring.

“Hi … um … I was wondering …” I said, but all of a sudden I wasn’t really wondering about Marique—I was wondering about
her
. I sat down one root over. “What are you doing?”

She looked at me for a second, then went back to staring at the moon. “Nothing.”

I looked at the moon, too. “Well, what are you thinking?”

For a long time she didn’t say a word. She just stared up at the sky. Finally she let out a little sigh and whispered, “I wonder what it’s like.”

I waited a minute. “What what’s like?”

“To be up there.”

“On the moon?”

She shrugged. “Just up there.”

I watched her, watching the moon. Finally I asked, “Were you in the parade?”

She kicked the grass with her little elf boot and muttered, “Stupid parade.”

“What happened?”

She looked at me like I ate toads. “Nothing. It’s just stupid.”