Say Good-bye

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Kimberly Michels, D.V.M.

To Cathy East Dubowski, with friendship and thanks

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

I
’m up early, making French toast—not the Wonder Bread kind, the real stuff, with thick, day-old French bread, fresh strawberries, and powdered sugar on top.

I feel a tug on my shoelaces and look down. “Sneakers …” I groan.

My six-month-old pup is having my shoelaces for breakfast. Sneakers is adorable, even though he’s a mutt—short-haired, with cute, floppy little triangle ears. He’s mostly black with a little bit of brown in spots. He also has white fur around his muzzle, neck, and tummy and four white legs. He looks like he’s wearing white kneesocks.

A woman rescued Sneakers and a bunch of other dogs from an awful man who was selling puppies at the farmer’s market. The dogs were dirty, starving, and full of worms. Luckily for the pups, the lady brought them in to Dr. Mac’s Place animal clinic. That’s the veterinary clinic that my grandmother, Dr. J.J. MacKenzie, runs out of an office attached to her home.

We found good homes for most of the dogs. But somehow this little mutt won me over—especially since he kept trying to sneak out through the clinic door into Gran’s house, like he belonged here. That’s how he got the name Sneakers.

But the best part was that Gran decided to let me keep him. My very first pet ever! I guess she figured one stray would cheer up the other.

Right now Sneakers is at my feet playing tug-of-war with my laces. He manages to untie one of my shoes. “Shoo!” I tell him, then laugh at my dumb pun. But Sneakers ignores my command, and I sigh. I love him, but he doesn’t mind very well. I guess it’s because he’s still so young. I’m sure he’ll do better when he grows up.

Suddenly I hear someone pounding down the stairs. I roll my eyes. It’s my cousin Maggie.
She makes more noise than an entire basketball team—of boys. She leaps off the second-to-last stair and skids into the kitchen, her reddish hair stuffed up in a baseball cap. She wads her pj’s into a ball and crouches down.

“What are you doing?” I ask her.

She ignores me. Leaps into the air. Shoots her pj ball into the laundry basket on top of the washer in the corner of the kitchen. “Two points!” she cheers.

Sports. That and animals are the only two things Maggie cares about.

She reaches past me into the upper cabinets and pulls down a box of some kind of candy-flavored, artificially colored cereal. She pours a bowlful, then leaves the opened box on the counter, and grabs the milk jug out of the fridge.

“How can you eat that junk?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Simple. I spoon it into my mouth, chew, and swallow.” She always gobbles things down without taking the time to chew them. She says I’m picky about food. I say she’ll eat anything.

Did I mention we’re not exactly twins?

“You know what I mean,” I tell her. “I’m making
French toast. Real French toast. With real French bread. Not those frozen things you like to make in the microwave. Want some?”

“No time.” She clunks the bowl down on the table and begins to overfill it with milk. “Basketball camp starts today. My ride will be here any minute.”

I shrug and turn back to the stove. “Your loss.”

As I flip the first slices of French toast onto the plate, Gran comes in from the clinic.

“Zoe! That smells heavenly!” She unfolds the morning newspaper on the counter and reaches for the coffeepot to refill her cup. “Having a real cook around here certainly makes a difference!”

“Thanks.” I grin at the praise and hand her a plate. I don’t know what Gran and Maggie did before I moved in. The day I got here, they had absolutely nothing to eat in the house.

I hear Maggie’s chair scrape back, hear her plop down in her seat, then—

“Ewww! Gross!”

“Told you,” I say. But when I turn around, I realize she’s not talking about her cereal. She’s talking about something under the table.

I take a quick peek.

Uh-oh. Not again!

Sneakers left a little “present” under the table. And Maggie just put her foot in it.

“Zoh-eee!” Maggie says, drawing out my name in a whine. She pulls off her sneaker and carries it over to the trash can.

“What?”

She cleans off her shoe with a piece of old newspaper. “Did you forget to take Sneakers out again?

Okay, I admit it. The first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning is not whether the puppy needs to go. I mean, I really do love Sneakers. But I grew up with a live-in housekeeper—and without any pets. I never had to do any chores or think about anybody else when I got up in the morning. So all this is new to me. But I’m trying to do better.

“I was going to,” I explain, “as soon as I made breakfast.”

Maggie looks at me like I’m a total idiot. “Don’t you get it, Zoe? A dog needs to go out first thing—especially a puppy.” She goes to the sink and squirts way too much pink antibacterial dishwashing detergent on the sole of her sneaker. She scrubs at it with a paper towel.

Ewww, how can she do that? It’s the sink we use when we cook and wash dishes! “Is that sanitary? Shouldn’t you do that outside?”

Maggie just rolls her eyes as she washes her hands. After she dries her hands and her shoe, she grabs some cleanser from under the counter and dumps it into the sink. Then she sits back down at the table and digs into her cereal.

Good. Maybe her mouth will be too full of artificial colors and flavors to complain any more about Sneakers and me.

Then she says, “How come you let her get away with this, Gran?”

Wrong. She’s not going to let it drop.

“You never let me keep any of the puppies from the clinic,” Maggie complains. “But you let her keep Sneakers. You ought to make her look after him.”

Gran looks up from her newspaper, her right eyebrow arched. “Maggie,” she says firmly, “your cereal’s getting soggy.”

Maggie gets the message. She shuts up and eats her cereal.

Thanks, Gran
, I think—too quickly. Because then she turns that stern look on me. “Zoe,
Sneakers is nearly six months old now, but his behavior’s not improving.”

“It’s getting worse,” Maggie mumbles into her bowl.

Gran lets that one go. “I realize this is new to you, but Sneakers needs…”

She stops and looks around the room. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s right…” I look around. Sneakers has disappeared.

I feel my cheeks flush. I’m too embarrassed to say I don’t know where he is. I turn back to the counter so Maggie won’t see my face. I pick up the wire whisk and briskly beat the already beaten eggs in the mixing bowl. “Um, he’s… around.”

Maggie snorts.

Gran sighs. “Zoe. You have to be consistent with your puppy training, or he’ll never learn.”

I stare into the bowl of thick, yellow goo. “I’m sorry, Gran,” I say. “I promise I’ll do better—”

“Don’t promise Gran,” Maggie says. “Promise poor Sneakers!”

Gran glares at her, and Maggie ducks her head over her bowl.

“It’s not fair,” I say in my defense. “I try, I really do. But Sneakers just doesn’t listen. Couldn’t we hire a professional pet walker or something to train him? That’s what they have back home.”

“Back home” is Manhattan—the heart of New York City—where I was born and raised. You can hire anybody to do anything in the city.

“Up there the streets are filled with dog walkers,” I try to explain. “And usually they’re walking six or seven dogs at a time.”

“Oh, brother,” Maggie mumbles.

“It looked pretty efficient to me,” I shoot back.

“What’s the point of having a dog if you’re gonna pay somebody else to look after it?” Maggie argues.