Teacher's Pet (8 page)

“No, not now,” he answers. “I'll do that when my reader comes over tonight.”

“What's a reader?” Brenna asks.

Mr. Carlson lifts the hamster to his shoulder. “A reader is someone I pay to read students' work to me. That's the one thing technology hasn't mastered yet—handwriting.”

The hamster on Mr. Carlson's shoulder sniffs at his ear. “That tickles,” Mr. Carlson laughs as he reaches up for Einstein.

“Hnnn, hnn,” Scout whines.

“OK, Scout, we'll leave the rodents alone and get back to work.” He hands Einstein to David. “You'd better take this little guy.”

“Rowff!” Scout barks suddenly.

The startled hamster leaps out of David's hands and lands on a desk, then hops to the chair and onto the floor. It scrambles between Zoe's legs.

“Look out! she shrieks. This frightens the rabbit, which jumps out of Brenna's arms and streaks past Scout. Brenna lunges after the rabbit, stumbles, and knocks over the cardboard box that holds the rest of the animals.

“Rowff, rowff!” Scout barks and lunges forward. He pulls Mr. Carlson off balance. Mr. Carlson stumbles, tripping over Scout and stepping on his sore paw. Scout yelps in pain.

“They're getting away!” Zoe yells.

“The door,” Mr. Carlson shouts. “Close the door! ”

Hamsters head for the door, gerbils run under the desks, and the mice run in twenty different directions. Everyone shouts at once.

“Get them!” hollers Brenna.

“Look out! warns Sunita.

“Under the desk! says Zoe.

“Don't step on them!” I caution.

“Rowff, rowff!” “ Scout barks.

“Scout, no! Scout, sit!” scolds Mr. Carlson.

“The door, get the door!” yells Brenna.

“Shoot! The hamsters are running down the hall,” David reports from the doorway. “Oh, no, you don‘t!” He closes the door just before the rabbit leaps to freedom. He picks her up. “Got one!”

“A mouse ran over my foot!” screams Zoe.

This is crazy. I stick two fingers in my mouth and whistle long and hard. It sounds like a referee's whistle in the middle of a game.

Everybody freezes and looks at me. I love whistling like that.

I take a deep breath. “Calm down, everybody.”

“But what about...” Brenna starts.

“Good idea, Maggie,” Mr. Carlson interrupts. “I'll take Scout outside. He needs a walk, and it will be easier to capture the runaways without him. It's OK, Scout, forward.”

Scout glances once at the guinea pig scurrying under the blackboard, but he leads Mr. Carlson out to the hall. David gets the door for them, then grabs a box and goes out into the hall himself, in search of hamsters.

“How are you going to find them?” asks Sunita.

David waggles his eyebrows. “I'll listen for the screams,” he says.

It takes almost half an hour to round up the animals. The hardest to catch are the mice. They can squeeze into the tiniest places. David finds every single hamster, even the one that caused a little excitement in the chorus room. By the time Mr. Carlson comes back, everything is calm. Most of the animals are in their cages, and a few are in the box that I'm going to carry back to Dr. Mac's Place.

“We found all of them!” I say triumphantly.

“Thank goodness,” Mr. Carlson says with a big sigh. “I was pacing back and forth on the soccer field, trying to figure out how to explain this to the principal. Lie down, Scout.”

Scout looks under the desk suspiciously, as if he expects the rabbit to pounce on him, but the rabbit is safely in her cage, exhausted by the excitement. He settles down with a groan. Poor Scout. What a day.

“Can I check his paw?” I ask Mr. Carlson.

“Please,” he says. He bends over and slips off Scout's harness.

I kneel and gently pet Scout before unwrapping and examining the reinjured paw. The dog looks up at me, his eyes a little sad. What does he think of the changes he's been through? He was with his foster family, and then he went to the school for training, then he met Mr. Carlson and started coming here. I'm sure he can sense that Mr. Carlson isn't 100 percent comfortable and confident yet. Does Scout think he's not a good guide dog?

I scratch between Scout's ears and rub his neck. He smiles and pants a little.

“Hang in there,” I whisper. “Don't give up on Mr. Carlson. He's trying.”

“How is the paw?” Mr. Carlson asks.

“The cut didn't reopen, but it's tender and swollen,” I report. I rewrap the bandage. “Can you let Scout take it easy this afternoon?”

Mr. Carlson nods. “I was going to work on lesson plans for the rest of the day anyway. Scout can be a couch potato.”

“That's just what he needs.”

“We had better get going,” Sunita says. “The late bus leaves in a few minutes.”

“Thanks for your help,” Mr. Carlson says.

“We're sorry—” I start.

“Don't worry about it,” Mr. Carlson says. “I'm a middle-school teacher, remember? We're trained to expect the unexpected. I appreciate all your help.”

He still seems a bit uneasy. I think that this bothered him more than he wants to let on.

“Do you still want us to come back?” Brenna asks as she picks up her backpack.

“I'm counting on you,” Mr. Carlson assures her.

I put on my backpack and pick up the covered box of animals. I am so ready to go home. As the others file out the door, I pause.

My quiz is lying on top of a pile of papers. I had forgotten about it with all the excitement.

The sight of it makes me feel queasy.

B
renna and Sunita have to help Zoe groom a pair of poodles, and David is stuck with receptionist duty. I carry the box of little animals in to Gran for a checkup.

“Who do we have here?” Gran asks as she dries off her hands with a paper towel.

“These are some of Carlson's Critters,” I explain. “I brought home the ones that looked like they needed a little vet care.”

“Hmm,” Gran says, putting on her glasses and peering into the box. She lifts out the gold-colored hamster.

“That's Einstein,” I say.

Gran examines him, then chuckles. “Einstein is outrageously healthy,” she says. “He just needs his teeth trimmed a bit.”

Like many rodents and rabbits, hamsters' teeth can get long if they don't grind them down naturally on their food and playthings in their cages. Gran opens Einstein's mouth, makes sure his tongue is out of the way, and trims his teeth with a small pair of clippers. I don't mind clipping dogs' toenails, but I hope she never asks me to do rodent teeth.

The trimming takes only a minute. Then Gran hands Einstein over to me.

“There are two more hamsters in the box,” I say. “Newton and Copernicus. They need manicures. Or pedicures. Whatever you call it when hamsters need their toenails trimmed.”

Gran quickly trims the tiny hamster toenails. “They are escape artists,” she warns as I put them in the cage with Einstein. “Make sure that top is secure. Who's next?”

She reaches into the box and pulls out a fat yellow guinea pig with a band of white fur around its middle.

“Galileo,” I say.

“Ahh,” Gran says with a knowing look in her eyes. She cuddles Galileo and checks out his eyes and ears. “Galileo was an astronomer, among other things. He supported the theory that planets revolve around the sun, not the earth. That scared lots of people—they weren't ready for the new idea. He was a brave man.”

She examines the guinea pig's tiny limbs. “Galileo also became blind late in his life. I see... the foot,” she says.

I nod. Galileo's front right foot looks infected and sore.

“That's easy enough to treat,” Gran says as she pulls some antibiotic cream out of a drawer.

I take Galileo from Gran and hold him snugly against my chest so that she can spread the cream on his sore foot.

“Mr. Carlson must really care for these little guys,” she says.

“He's used to tiny critters. He said something about growing up in an apartment. He was never allowed to have a dog, but he had lots of rodents. If you ask me, I think dogs make him nervous. Do you think he was afraid of Scout at first?”

Gran watches the way Galileo limps across his cage, unhappy with the goo on his foot.

“No, not afraid,” she says. “The trainers at the guide-dog school would have noticed. But he has had a lot of adjusting to do—first, to his blindness, and second, to relying on a dog, an animal he doesn't have much experience with.”

Getting used to an awesome dog like Scout would take me about three seconds, but I'm not Mr. Carlson.

Gran cracks her knuckles and stretches her fingers. “You know, Scout has made a lot of adjustments, too. Even though he has been training his whole life to work with a blind human, every situation is different. He has to get used to the way Mr. Carlson gives commands, and also to his house and to the school.”

Scout has to get used to school?
I hadn't thought about that before. I've thought about it for me, maybe, but for Scout? Still, it's a school with lots of kids, teachers, and funny smells from the caf eteria. Scout sees new kids every class period, I guess, kids who are big and loud. Lockers slam, the bell rings every forty-five minutes. That's a big change from guide-dog school. I wonder if Scout feels as crowded as I do in the halls. I bet he worries about keeping Mr. Carlson safe.

“Let's finish up here,” Gran says, peering at the last residents of the box. “Five mice?”

“One of them has a sore eye,” I say. “But I figured you should look at all of them in case it was an infection that could spread to the others.”

“That was smart,” Gran says.

An unexpectedly warm feeling passes over me. I haven't been feeling very smart today. The comment seems extra nice coming from Gran.

She looks at each mouse, checking from nose to tail. The fifth one, a female, has a swollen eye, but it turns out to be a piece of a wood shaving, not an infection. Gran flushes it out easily and puts the mouse in a glass cage with the others.

“I don't like the idea of you taking the animals on the bus again,” she says as she watches the mice run around the cage. “I can drive you on Wednesday morning if you want. Tomorrow I have my yoga class. Are you going to help Mr. Carlson map out the school again?”

“I think so,” I say.
Unless I got a D or F on that quiz and he decides to get someone else to help him. I
crouch down to watch the little mouse with the sore eye. She scurries to hide in a toilet-paper tube. I wish I could hide like that.

“So, how was school today?” Gran asks, looking at me with those laser-beam eyes.

“Lots of things happened at school,” I say as I watch the quivering mouse. I know I'm stalling, but it's the truth. Lots of things
did
happen.

I'm saved from more questioning by a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Gran says.

It's Zoe. “Dinner's about ready. It's going to be spectacular.”

“That meat loaf smells great,” Gran says.

I take a sniff. She's right. All of a sudden, I'm starving.

Gran takes a pen out of her pocket. She has to write up the reports about Carlson's Critters. “Maggie, run in and set the table,” she says. “I'll be only a couple of minutes. We'll have a nice dinner, and then you'll have lots of time to work on your homework. I thought Mr. Carlson said something about a quiz coming up soon.”

Zoe pauses. “They had that quiz today,” she says innocently. “Maggie told us all about it. Sunita had two quizzes. I'll probably have one tomorrow. My English teacher had that look on her face.”

“You didn't mention the quiz to me, Maggie,” Gran says.

“I, uh, just forgot,” I say. “It's so hard to keep everything straight, plus we had the great escape after school. We get our grades tomorrow. It's not a big deal.”

M
r. Carlson has passed back our quizzes. I feel like someone just slapped me in the face.

My grade? A whopping forty-nine percent.

I go cold. Forty-nine percent? That's not just failing—that's
flunking.

There is so much red on the page that it looks like a Christmas decoration. I got three out of ten definitions right for twelve points. The questions about how the eye works were worth sixty points. It's a good thing Mr. Carlson gave partial credit. I got thirty-seven.