19
I stared up at the stained ceiling tiles of the school nurse’s office, trying to make my stomach settle down. For once, I hadn’t lied to Mr. White. I really did have a stomachache. I’d had one ever since I’d left Carmella’s yesterday.
I had left her house and gone on back to the car. I knew I should’ve gone over there and taken care of Willy, but I didn’t. I guess I was hoping Mookie would share his liver puddin’ again.
When Mama and Toby came back, I pretended like I was doing my homework, but I wasn’t. I was writing one word over and over, like this:
Willywillywillywillywillywilly And then after Mama fell asleep, I didn’t tell Toby that Carmella was getting the reward money from her uncle Haywood. I didn’t say that now it was time to take Willy back and get that money. I kept it all inside me where my aching stomach was.
Finally, I took out my How to Steal a Dog notes. I read all the way through them, starting with Step 1: Find a Dog and ending with Step 7 and the part about stirring and stinking.
I turned to a clean page and wrote: April 28. Then I added:
Step 8: If you want to, you can take the dog back and tell the owner that you don’t want the reward money after all. Here is what will happen if you decide to do that:
1. The owner will be really happy and she can give the money back to her uncle Haywood.
2. The dog will be happy because he is back home where he belongs instead of on that nasty porch.
3. You will be happy because you won’t feel bad about stealing a dog, even though you still live in a car.
4. When you stop stirring, it will stop stinking.
Or You can take the dog back and get the reward money like you planned. THAT is the decision you will have to make. I drew tiny little paw prints all around the edges of the page before I closed my notebook and put it away.
And now here I was in the nurse’s office, staring up at those ceiling tiles with my stomach aching like anything.
When the bell rang, I told the nurse I felt much better (even though I didn’t), and I made my way through the pushing, shoving kids in the hall. Outside, I found Toby, and we headed over to the old house.
The whole way there, Toby kept jabbering on and on about stupid stuff. Like how his teacher had hollered at him for doing math with a pen and how some kid’s gerbil got loose and went under the radiator. As usual, he was lagging behind, but I hurried on ahead. I needed to get to Willy fast. I needed to snatch him up and hug him, and then maybe my stomachache would go away.
As we hurried up the gravel road, my thoughts turned to Mookie. I sure hoped he was gone. I didn’t need his crazy talk that made me feel so squirmy all the time.
When we got to the house, I left my backpack by the road and pushed my way through the bushes toward the back. I rounded the corner, and the first thing I noticed was that Mookie’s big blue tarp was gone. The little clearing where his sleeping bag had been was empty. Just a pile of blackened wood and an empty soda can.
Then suddenly it hit me. Silence. Total silence. No happy little hello bark from Willy. I ran over to the back porch and yanked open the rickety screen door and wanted to die right then and there.
Willy was gone.
I must’ve looked like a crazy person, racing around that little dirt yard, pushing aside the weeds and bushes and hollering Willy’s name. Toby kept saying, “What’s wrong, Georgina?” and “What happened, Georgina?” Then he started bawling about Willy being gone, and I hollered at him to shut up.
I ran to the edge of the woods and called Willy’s name till my throat ached. The quiet that came back to me felt solid and mean, like a slap across the face.
I hurried back out to the road, not even caring about the briars that were snagging my clothes and scratching my arms. I ran up one side of the road and down the other, peering through the trees and calling Willy’s name.
Finally, I stopped and held my aching sides, trying to catch my breath. Then I felt Toby punch me in the arm.
“Willy’s gone!” he hollered. “And it’s all your fault.” He looked all wild-eyed and scared.
“My fault?”
“Yeah.” Toby stomped back up the road toward the house. I ran after him and yanked the back of his T-shirt to make him stop.
“It’s Mookie’s fault,” I said. “He took Willy. I know he did.”
Toby’s eyebrows squeezed together. “Mookie took Willy?”
I nodded. “I bet anything he did,” I said. “He’s crazy.”
“What’re we gonna do?”
I sat on the side of the road and put my head down on my knees. What were we gonna do? I didn’t have one single idea. Then, just when I was wishing that gravel road would open up and swallow me whole, I heard the chinga-chinga of a bicycle bell.
I looked up and saw the best sight I’d ever seen in all my born days. Mookie was pedaling his rusty old bicycle up the road toward us. And trotting along beside him was Willy, his string leash tied to the handlebars of the bike.
I jumped up and raced toward them.
Mookie stopped the bike and I scooped Willy up in my arms and buried my face in his warm fur. Then I felt a wave of mad sweep over me.
“Why’d you take Willy?” I hollered at Mookie.
“Take Willy?” Mookie’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, if that don’t put pepper in the gumbo,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” I glared at him. I wasn’t in the mood for his crazy talk.
“Means you better slow your mouth down before you start coming out with such as that,” he said.
I pressed my face against Willy. His hair was all matted with mud, and he smelled awful.
“For your information, missy,” Mookie said, “I was clear on over there by the shopping center when that dog of yours come running up behind me.”
“Oh,” I said. I knew I should’ve said more. I should’ve said, “I’m sorry.”
I should’ve said, “This dog’s not mine.”
I should’ve said, “I stole this dog, but now I’m gonna take him back.”
I finally managed to lift my head and look at Mookie.
“Then thanks for bringing him back,” I said.
I wanted Mookie to say, “That’s okay.” But he didn’t. He just nodded.
I’d forgotten all about Toby until he suddenly said to Mookie, “Are you leaving?”
Mookie nodded again. “I am,” he said.
He untied Willy’s string leash and tossed it to me. Then he turned his bike around and pedaled off up the road away from us, leaving a wobbly tire track in the dusty road behind him.
And in that instant, I knew I’d been wrong about Mookie. Well, maybe not totally wrong. He was kind of crazy. But I guess he was nice, too. And smart. And someone who leaves a good trail behind him.
“Mookie!” I called after him. “Did you fix our car?”
But he just kept pedaling away from us. Then, right before he rounded the curve and disappeared from sight, he gave a little wave with his three-fingered hand.
Suddenly the woods seemed quieter than they ever had before. Not a bird chirping. Not a leaf rustling. Just silence.
“What do we do now?” Toby said.
I looked at Willy, and he cocked his head at me and made me smile.
“We take Willy home,” I said.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Yes!” Toby pumped his fist in the air. “Then we get that money, right, Georgina?”
But I didn’t answer. I just hugged Willy.
20
I had to admit, Toby had been pretty good at stealing a dog. He had thought of stuff like food and all.
He had found the string leash. And best of all, he hadn’t goofed up and told Mama what we had done. So I felt kind of bad about taking Willy back to Carmella’s without him. I knew he’d be mad as all get-out.
And I knew Mr. White would be mad as all get-out if I missed school again and didn’t bring a note from Mama. I knew he’d have a meeting with the principal like he’d warned me would happen. A meeting to talk about me and how much I’d been messing up. A meeting about why my mom wouldn’t answer Mr. White’s letters and all.
I knew what was ahead of me if I did what I’d planned, but I was gonna do it anyways.
I made sure Toby was in his classroom, then I hurried back outside and raced over to the old house. I couldn’t hardly get my feet to go fast enough as I pushed through the bushes on my way to the back.
Please, Willy, be there. Please, Willy, be there, I said over and over inside my head.
As soon as I rounded the corner of the house, I heard Willy’s happy little yips.
“Hey there, fella,” I called, hurrying over to the porch.
Willy stuck his head through the torn screen and wagged his whole body.
I sat on the step and let him jump through the screen door into my lap.
“How you doin’, fella?” I said, scratching the top of his head.
He sniffed my backpack, making little snuffling noises. I pulled out the peanut butter sandwich I had brought him, and tore it into pieces. He gobbled them up, swallowing them whole without even chewing.
“Ready to go home?” I said.
Willy perked his ears up and let out a little bark. That dog sure was smart.
I untied his leash and started for the path that led to the road. But as I was crossing the clearing where Mookie had camped, I noticed something that made me stop. A little green dog collar, lying on top of the log that Mookie used to sit on.
My heart dropped with a thud. That collar looked familiar.
I picked it up and studied the tag. Yep. There it was, plain as day. Willy.
I turned it over and read:
Carmella Whitmore 27 Whitmore Road Darby, NC
I felt a big blanket of shame fall over me. Mookie had found Willy’s collar. He had known the truth about Willy. He had known the truth about me.
I looked down at Willy. He was watching my face like he knew every thought in my head.
“Mookie knew about us, Willy,” I said.
Willy whined and wagged his tail.
“I wonder why he was so nice to me,” I said.
Willy nudged me with his nose.
I buckled the green collar around his neck and said, “Come on, Willy. Let’s go home.”
By the time I got to the corner of Whitmore Road, Willy was pulling so hard I thought that string was gonna bust in two. I knew he was dying to race up the street, through the gate, up the porch steps, through the doggie door, and right into Carmella’s lap. But I needed to slow down a minute. I had to make sure the coast was clear and nobody was outside.
“Hang on, little fella,” I said.
I squinted up the road, checking out the yards and driveways.
“Okay, Willy,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I hurried toward Carmella’s house. By the time we got to the hedge, Willy was practically going crazy, leaping and carrying on.
I tiptoed along the hedge, trying to keep Willy from yanking the string right out of my hand. I hoped Carmella wasn’t home, but when I got to the gate, I could see her car in the driveway. I untied the string from Willy’s collar. Then I took his whiskery face in both my hands and rubbed my nose back and forth against his. An Eskimo kiss.
I lifted the latch and opened the gate. Then I let go of Willy’s collar and watched him dash across the yard and up the steps, then disappear through the doggie door and into the house.
I turned and hurried back up the road. But the farther I got from Carmella’s house, the heavier my feet felt. By the time I got to the corner, they felt like cement bricks, slowing me down until I couldn’t take another step.
What’s wrong with you, Georgina? I said to myself. Don’t stop now. Get on outta here before somebody sees you.
But I guess my heart was taking over my feet, making me stop. Making me turn around. Making me walk on back to Carmella’s.
I stood outside the gate. Music from a radio drifted out of the screen door. More than anything, I wanted to disappear. To leave Whitmore Road and never come back. To just pretend like I’d never laid eyes on Willy or Carmella.
But I couldn’t.
I took a deep breath and put my hand on my heart. I could feel it beating, fast and hard. Then I opened the gate and made my cement feet walk up the sidewalk to Carmella’s front door.
“Carmella,” I called through the screen.
“Georgina!” Carmella squealed from inside. “Guess what!”
She came to the door carrying Willy. He was licking her face all over and wiggling his whole body.
“Willy’s home!” Carmella said. Tears were streaming down her face and she looked about as happy as a person could be. “He just came running right through that doggie door and into the kitchen like he’d never been gone.” She kissed Willy’s nose. “Can you believe that?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, I can believe that, ’cause, um …”
“Come on in.” Carmella pushed the screen door open. “I’m gonna give him a bath. He’s a mess.”
I stepped inside.
“But first,” Carmella said, “I’m gonna cook him some sausage.”
“Carmella …” I followed her down the hall and into the kitchen. “I, um, I need to, um …”
But Carmella wasn’t listening. She was humming and talking to Willy while she put little sausages in a frying pan.
“Carmella,” I said louder than I’d meant to, ’cause it sounded like a yell.
She looked at me kind of surprised.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
She put a lid on the pan and turned to me.
“Okay,” she said.
I looked down at the dirty linoleum floor. Willy had left little muddy paw prints in front of the stove where Carmella was standing.
“I stole Willy,” I said to the floor.
A terrible silence settled over the room. I could hear Carmella’s wheezy breathing. In and out. In and out.
Finally, she said, “What do you mean?”
I looked up. She was standing by the stove, holding a fork. Her face was white, making her freckles stand out like sprinkles of cinnamon. Willy sat on the floor beside her, watching her, waiting for that sausage.
“I mean, I stole Willy,” I said. “I took him right out of your yard.”
Carmella gripped the edge of the counter for a minute, then pulled out a chair and sank into it.
“But why?” she said.
And then I did the hardest thing I’d ever done. I told Carmella everything. I started with those three rolls of quarters and the wadded-up dollar bills in the mayonnaise jar, and I ended with Mookie leaving Willy’s little green collar on that log.
And then I waited for Carmella to hate me.
But you know what?
She reached out and took my hands in hers and didn’t sound at all hateful when she said, “I guess bad times can make a person do bad things, huh?”
I hung my head and couldn’t get myself to say another word.
“You did a real bad thing, Georgina,” Carmella said.
I nodded, keeping my head down so my hair would hide my face. Tears dropped right off the end of my nose and onto the floor.
The room was silent except for the sizzle of the sausage on the stove and the tick, tick, tick of the clock over the refrigerator.
Carmella pushed herself up off the chair and went over to the stove. She took the sausages out of the pan and cut them into pieces. Willy whined at her feet.
Tick, tick, tick went that clock.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Tick, tick, tick went that clock.
Carmella dropped the sausage pieces into Willy’s bowl. He gobbled them up and then kept licking the bowl, making it slide across the floor.
“I guess I better go,” I said. But I didn’t move. I stayed there with my heavy, cement feet planted firmly on the cracked linoleum of Carmella’s kitchen floor, waiting for her to make me feel better.
But she didn’t.
So I moved my heavy feet, one in front of the other, down the hall, through the front door, and out onto the porch. I was almost to the gate when Carmella called, “Georgina.”
I stopped and turned around.
She stood on the porch holding Willy. His tail wagged, thwack, thwack, thwack against her leg.
“Why don’t you and Toby come by tomorrow?” she said. “Y’all could take Willy for a walk.”
I felt my whole self get lighter, as if that heavy blanket of shame I’d been wearing had been lifted right up off of me.
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “We will.”
Then I hurried out of the gate and up the road. I couldn’t wait to tell Toby what I’d done. I knew he wouldn’t be mad when I told him how happy Willy was and how Carmella didn’t hate us. I’d let him hold the leash when we walked Willy tomorrow, and he wouldn’t think I was mean anymore. When I got to the corner of Whitmore Road, I stopped and looked back. Carmella was still standing on the porch, holding Willy like she wasn’t ever going to put him down.
She waved at me.
I waved back.
Then just as I was about to turn and head back toward the highway, I glanced down and noticed my footprints in the dirt along the side of the road. I smiled, thinking about Mookie and his motto. About the trail you leave behind being more important than the path ahead.
Then I turned and raced off toward school to wait for Toby.
21
We lived in that nasty old car for two more days. Then one day Mama came back from work and said, “Pack your bags, boys and girls. We’re moving.”
Me and Toby looked at each other, then back at Mama, waiting.
She tossed two Snickers bars into the backseat and said, “You heard me. We’re moving. And I’m talking house. A real house.”
Me and Toby started whooping and bouncing up and down on the backseat. Then we took down our beach towel wall and jammed all our stuff into garbage bags. Schoolbooks and dirty T-shirts. Playing cards and comic books.
As we drove to our new house, I felt a flutter of excitement as I thought about being normal again. I pictured myself going to school in clean clothes and having all my homework done and Mama telling Mr. White that everything was fine now, so don’t worry about Georgina anymore. I pictured me and Luanne having a sleepover like we used to, painting our toenails and sharing our secrets. Maybe working on our cooking badge for Girl Scouts. I even pictured myself sitting on my very own bed wearing my new ballet shoes, combing my hair so I’d look nice for my ballet lessons with Luanne and Liza Thomas.
When we pulled up in front of our new house, me and Toby grinned at each other. It was a tiny white house with a rusty swing set in the red-dirt yard and a refrigerator with no door sitting right up on the front porch.
But it looked like a castle to me.
Somebody named Louise was already living there with her baby named Drew. Louise was a friend of Patsy’s and needed somebody to share the house with her and help take care of Drew and pay some of the rent.
I didn’t have my very own room, but I had my very own bed. Louise gave me a plastic laundry basket to keep my things in and told me to put it up on the closet shelf so Drew couldn’t get my stuff.
The first night in our new house, Mama brought home pizza and we watched TV Before I went to sleep, I lay in my bed and stretched my legs out under the cool sheets. The tiny window across the room was open, and a soft breeze lifted the faded curtains. Moths flapped and buzzed against the screen.
I reached under my pillow and took out my glittery purple notebook. I turned to my How to Steal a Dog notes, and in the dim glow of the hall light I read through Step 8 again. About making a decision. About getting the reward or not getting the reward. I smiled to myself when I read the part that said:
THAT is the decision you will have to make. I knew I had made the right decision because my tapping insides had finally settled down.
But I still felt bad about what I’d done. I still wished I could turn back the time far enough to where I could do things different.
But at least when I’d gotten to Step 8, I’d made the right decision.
I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and wrote: May 3.
Step 9: Those are all the rules for how to steal a dog. But
I drew a red heart around the word But. Then I wrote in great big letters:
DO NOT STEAL A DOG because I drew a blue circle around because. Then I took out my gold glitter pen and wrote:
it is NOT a good idea. THE END I closed my notebook and slid it back up under my pillow.
As I lay there in my very own bed, I thought about Mookie. I wondered what he was doing right that very minute. Was he making Hoover gravy? Was he wiggling that three-fingered hand of his at somebody? Was he fixing somebody’s car?
Where was he leaving his trail now?
I thought about Willy, too. I bet he was curled up at the foot of Carmella’s bed beside his chewed-up toys, dreaming about sardines and liver puddin’, happy as anything to be back home again.
I looked over at Toby, sucking his thumb in the bed next to mine. Then I tiptoed over to the window and looked out into the night. I took a deep breath. The air smelled good. Like honeysuckle and new-mowed grass.
It didn’t stink at all.