When Life Gives You O.J. (6 page)

O.J. beamed up at me. If he had a tail, he would have wagged it.

Maybe Ace was right
, I thought suddenly.
Maybe this plan is so crazy it just might actually work
.

If I had a tail, I probably would have wagged it too.

“Zelly, time to set the table!”

“Coming!” I yelled, grabbing O.J. by the handle.

I set O.J. down under the table, then put out the place mats, plates, and silverware. When my mom left the room to tell Ace it was time to eat, I pulled out O.J. and quickly “fed” him. He smiled up at me the whole time.
Yum, yum
, he seemed to say.
Dog food! My favorite!
I slid him under my chair just in time. Everyone would see his face eventually, but there was no rush as far as I was concerned.

After dinner, we had cherry crisp à la mode, which was delicious. It was also shocking because we had stopped at Ben & Jerry’s on the way back from the orchard. My mom is not a two-ice-creams-in-one-day kind of mom. But I wasn’t going to say anything and neither was Sam. He picked up
his bowl and tipped it to lick the pink dribbly bits on the bottom.

“Gross,” I told him. But when I saw that no one was going to stop him, I did the same. It was that yummy.

“So, any news on the Allie-gator front?” asked my dad brightly.

“Nope,” I said, putting my bowl down. Once again, this had not been my lucky day in the mail department.

“Oh, sweetie,” said my mom. “I’m sure she’s busy.”

“I guess,” I said glumly.

“And she’ll be home soon,” added my dad.

“Can we please talk about something else?” I asked.

“Hey, you know what?” announced Sam, seeing his big chance. “One time, on hamburger day? Paul Harwood put a whole handful of ketchup packs on Andy Allen’s chair? And then the lunch lady was like,
Sit down, young man!
and it was like
splort!
Only all over Paul!” Sam spread his fingers excitedly.

I rolled my eyes. “You and your friends are in a whole separate league of dumbness,” I said.

“Zelly, that’s enough. Apologize to your brother.”

“Sorry,” I said in my best robot voice.

“Zelly.”

“What? I said sorry.”

Meanwhile, Ace had apparently dropped something—probably his spoon—because his head had disappeared under the table. All of a sudden, he sat straight up, holding O.J. in the air triumphantly.

“NOW THAT’S MORE LIKE IT!” he crowed.

Everybody turned to look. And started to laugh. Sam laughed the loudest, happy to have an excuse to get me back. But my parents laughed too. I could see why: Ace was holding up an orange juice jug with a silly cartoon dog face drawn on it. But that didn’t make it okay.

“Oh, right,
I’m
dumb!” yelled Sam. “You’re pretending that’s a dog and
I’m
dumb?”

“Give that to me,” I demanded. Ace just stared at me, so I snatched the jug out of his hands.

“Zelda,” said my dad sharply.

Instead of answering, I ran out the back door. As soon as it slammed, I sat down. And burst into tears.
What had I gotten myself into?
Sam was one thing, but what if he told his stupid friends? They were all babies like Sam, but lots of them had older brothers and sisters in my grade. What if word got out that I had a plastic jug that I pretended was a real dog? I used to be able to count on Allie to take my side, but now that she had gone to camp and become this camp person who didn’t write me even a single letter, who knew? And what about the boys …?

What if Nicky Benoit found out?

Nicky Benoit
 … I cringed at the thought. Nicky Benoit had been picking on me since my first five minutes at school in Vermont. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Conroy, had met me in the hallway and asked me what I liked to be called. Then we went into the classroom together and she announced, “We have a new student. Please welcome Zelly Fried. She just
moved here from New York.” And she wrote my name on the board in big block letters:

When she finished making the
D
at the end of my name, I heard a loud laugh from one of the boys in the back. But nobody said anything.

Until lunch.

I found a seat at a table with a bunch of girls from my class. All of a sudden, I heard someone behind me make a big, exaggerated sniffing sound. I turned in my seat and saw a boy—Nicky Benoit—standing there. He had dirty blond hair and dark, almost black eyes.

“P.U.!” he yelled, right in my face. “What stinks? Smelly FRIED egg! Ha-ha!” And then he started running around repeating it and holding his nose, and some of the other boys started laughing and saying it too.

I froze, startled.
Did I really smell bad?
I didn’t think I did, though the last thing I was going to do was to try to check with everyone staring at me. Of course, I knew what his joke was. My family sometimes got wrong numbers that asked to speak to Mr. or Mrs. FRY-d, since our last name, which is pronounced FREE-d, is spelled F-R-I-E-D. But I’d never been called a
smelly
fried egg on account of my nickname being Zelly.

“Ignore him,” advised the girl sitting next to me. She had long, straight blond hair all hanging down her back except
for one tiny braid by her ear. All around us were kids with shiny, straight blond or light brown hair. In Brooklyn, almost all of the kids in my class had dark hair. Thick, dark brown hair like mine; dark, shiny black hair; dark brown woven braids with beads at the end; or just plain dark brown hair. Looking around the lunchroom, I began to wonder if anyone in the entire state of Vermont had dark brown bushy hair like me. The lunch lady who grabbed Nicky and benched him for the rest of lunch had frizzy red hair, but that wasn’t the same thing.

Another straight-haired girl nodded, her ponytail bobbing up and down. “He’s a loser,” she added.

I nodded too, trying to act like what had happened was no big deal. But inside I felt I might start crying, which I really didn’t want to do. I couldn’t believe this was happening. In Brooklyn, everyone knew how to pronounce my name. The principal at my old school had even been named Mrs. FRIEDRICKS. No one would have dared call her Mrs. FRY-dricks.

Quickly, I uncrumpled the top of my brown paper bag and peered down into it. There was an apple, some pretzels, and something square wrapped in waxed paper—strange, since my mother usually used foil—and several rubber bands. I pulled it out and unwrapped it suspiciously. Inside, I found a sandwich made of rye bread, mustard, and some sort of dark pink meat. I peeled back the top slice of bread and saw …

Oh no.

The girl who had called Nicky a loser looked at my
sandwich with interest. The girl next to her looked over too. She had a haircut I had begged my mom to let me get in third grade: bangs and one length all over. For the next six months I had to walk around with my head looking like a mushroom.

“Is that bologna?” asked the girl next to me, fiddling with her tiny braid.

“Uh, no,” I answered without thinking, before realizing that there would be no way of explaining my lunch to them.
You see, I have this grandfather, named Ace. And he lives with us now because my grandma died. Well, he must have packed my lunch and he put in a tongue sandwich. Yeah, tongue, like in your mouth, only it’s a cow’s tongue. I used to like it when I was little, I mean, before I knew what it was, but now I don’t, really.…

For some reason, I suddenly pictured Ace standing in the cafeteria, defending the sandwich. “THE TONGUE’S WHERE ALL THE VITAMINS ARE!” he’d say. I imagined him opening his mouth wide and pointing inside while the straight-haired girls stared at his brown-spotted hands, his thick old-person tongue, and the hairs sprouting from all over him except the top of his head. “YOU PUT A SHMEER OF MUSTARD ON IT,” he’d inform them, “AND IT’S THE PERFECT NOSH!”

I wadded up the sandwich as fast as I could and shoved it back into my bag.

“I mean, yeah, it’s bologna,” I lied. “I’m just not hungry.”

I shuddered at the memory of that awful first day. Remembering the tongue sandwich made me think about Ace and his
ridiculous O.J. plan all over again. I looked down, and, sure enough, there was O.J., sitting on the back steps right next to me. I had taken him with me without even realizing I had done it.

He grinned his goofy grin at me.
“Time for my walk?”
he seemed to be asking. Ugh, three walks a day … That was going to get old fast. But as I stood up, the solution occurred to me. Ace had said three walks a day, but he didn’t say where. As long as I stayed in our backyard, I could take care of O.J. without anyone finding out.

The leash was hanging up on the coat pegs in the back hall. Next to the plastic bags and a canvas bin full of Ace’s precious rubber bands. After snatching these supplies, I set out with O.J. for a quick stroll along the inside of our fence. It worked like a charm! The fence was too high for people to see in. All I would have to do was slip out back three times a day and—

“FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! GIVE THAT DOG A REAL WALK.”

A hand was extended out of the bathroom window and was waving what appeared to be the
New York Times Magazine
at me. Small problem. No one could see into our yard. But, unfortunately, someone could see
out
of our house.

“I … but … Grandpa, you didn’t say anything about where,” I stammered.

“VEY IZ MIR! I DIDN’T SAY DON’T WALK ON YOUR HANDS, BUT THAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS TOO.”

“Okay, okay. Fine!” I said with exasperation, stalking out
of the yard. A walk would do me good. It’d give me some space from Ace and a chance to clear my head and think. To figure out how I was going to pull this whole O.J. business off. Or, actually, to figure out
if
I was going to pull this whole O.J. business off. Hopefully, I’d figure out whatever I was going to figure out before I ran into someone I knew.

Like Nicky Benoit.

I dragged O.J. down to the corner. He made a little noise as we went, sort of a
skrit-skrit-thump
from sliding on the sidewalk and bumping across overgrown tree roots. Some of the trees in Vermont are huge, and their giant roots make the sidewalks look more like roller coasters than the flat ones we had in Brooklyn.

One of the nice things about moving to Vermont
, my mom had been quick to point out when we moved,
is that you can walk around by yourself
. In Brooklyn, I was allowed to walk from my apartment to some of my friends’ apartments on our block. And that was only if it didn’t involve crossing streets and my mom could lean out the window and watch me the whole way. But in Vermont, I could walk down to the corner and turn left and be completely on my own awhile.

Another thing she liked to remind me of—
skrit-skrit-thump
—is that all the big trees keep it so it is never too hot in the summer. And, according to my dad, “When you blow your nose in Vermont, it blows clean.”

“Vermont boogers are clean?” asked Sam the first time my dad made this observation.

“Well, what I mean is, there isn’t any of that grimy junk like you get when you blow your nose in the City.”

“What kind of grimy junk?” asked Sam, intrigued.

“Nate, what are you telling them?” asked my mom.

“Nothing,” said my dad. “It’s just, you kids should be glad we moved. Clean living. It’s good here.”

“I wanna hear more about grimy boogers!” whined Sam.

Dragging O.J.—
skrit-thump, skrit-thump-thump
—over the sidewalk bumps made by the giant trees’ roots, I quickened my pace. O.J. sounded particularly loud, and I just wanted to get the walk over with. I turned the corner onto Summit Terrace, planning to go to the dead end. Allie and I always went to the dead-end part on our roller skates so we could practice our moves where no one could see us wipe out. It seemed like the perfect spot to take care of O.J.’s “business.”

Just then, I noticed a kid I had never seen before sitting on the front steps of a white house with green shutters across the street. He had glasses and dark brown hair and wore a white polo shirt and shorts. His hair was wavy on top like you might draw the ocean, but it was short on the sides. He bounced a yellow tennis ball on the ground between his knees.

I pretended not to see him and stared at the houses on my side of the street as if they were suddenly fascinating. O.J. seemed to get louder all of a sudden.
SKRIT-SKRIT-THUMP, SKRIT-SKRIT-THUMP
.

“Hi!” the kid called out.

Oh no
. I tried to walk even faster, as if I hadn’t heard him—since I almost hadn’t, thanks to O.J. But the next thing
I knew, the boy jumped off the steps and bounded down the street.

“Hey, um, hi. What’s your name?” he asked.

There was no avoiding it. I stopped and turned, still holding O.J.’s leash.

“Zelly,” I said.

“Sally?” he asked.

“Zelly,”
I corrected him. “As in Zelda.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Zelda what?”

“Fried. Why?”

“Aha! Jewish, right?” He smiled wide, and I could see the braces on his teeth.

“So?” I asked.

“So, me too!” he said. He tugged on his necklace and showed me the Star of David dangling from it, as if I had asked for proof. “I’m Jeremy Fagel. We just moved here.”