Also Known as Elvis (6 page)

“Just a
week
?” Jessie whines. “Are you going to stay here with us?”

“I'll be out at my buddy Del's.”

“Aww,” says Jessie.

“We'll grab us some quality time later on,
Skeeze, just you and me. You go ahead over to Joe's.”

Oh boy, just what I want. Grabbing some quality time with my dad.

“Thanks,” I go, and I'm out of there before the scoop has hit the Bear Paw.

Here's something I've noticed. I'm thinking this on the way over to Joe's. Ever since my dad left, I only call him “my dad.” Even in my head. I don't call him “Dad” anymore. I don't know what that means. I still call Penny “Penny,” and not “my dog.” And even Grandpa, who died a few years ago, I don't say, “my grandpa.” But my dad, it's like he doesn't have a name anymore.

At least, not a name I want to call him.

By the time I get to Joe's house, a party's going on. The gang is down in the basement with
good
music and Cheetos and four half-gallons of ice cream (including Bear Paw, so I'm not even missing out). And it's not just the gang who's there, but Kelsey and Zachary and Becca, who is wearing shorts so short I have to look away.

“My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail,” I say to Joe as I grab a handful of Cheetos.

“Now, Skeezie,” Joe says, wagging a finger at me, “don't be all sulky. It's not manly.
Nobody
got an invitation. This is what we call spontaneous.”

Becca pats a spot on the couch next to her and says, “Sit.”

Like a dog, I obey.

“Guess what,” she says, turning and brushing Cheetos dust off the front of my shirt. What is
it with girls and food placement? I was perfectly happy to have Cheetos dust on my shirt.

“What?” I ask obediently. I'll probably start wagging my tail next.

“We're going,” she says.

“You're moving?” I ask. “You just moved back here, like, six months ago.”

It's true. Becca had lived in Paintbrush Falls, down the street from Addie, when she was little. Then she moved away and showed up again, six months ago, in the middle of seventh grade. I would never have figured she would be friends of any of us. She was all attitude and OMG and the right shoes. And she was always busting Addie's chops. But then it turned out that she actually looked up to Addie and even missed her, because they had played together a lot as kids. And ever since the end of school, she's been hanging out with us, and now I am sitting next to her on the couch in Joe's basement, trying not to look at her legs.

You know that
LIFE IS GOOD
T-shirt? I need one that says
LIFE IS WEIRD
.

Becca laughs. “It was
seven
months ago,” she says. “And we're not moving away. We're going to the shelter to get a dog. Clay caved.”

“I don't understand that last sentence,” I tell her. “Clay cave?”

“You're so
funny
,” Becca says, laughing again. “Clay is my stepfather, and he's the one who's been saying we shouldn't have a dog because they're too much work. But my mom and I convinced him, and so we're going next week when he gets back from a business trip, and we're getting a dog!”

At this point, she squeals and does this girly thing with her shoulders and head that's like a mini cheerleader move, and I go, “Yay, dog!” before I know what I'm doing. And this gets her laughing really hard, and she puts her hand on my knee and says, “Seriously, you are
so
funny.”

All of a sudden, I get hit with a spray of seltzer and Zachary's all like, “Oh, I'm so sorry, Skeezie.” And Joe is laughing like a maniac, because he's the one who convinced Zachary to shake the can
before he opened it, and I think,
And
I'm
supposed to be the immature one around here?

I jump up and wipe myself off with one of the throw pillows on the couch, which Joe is grabbing at and shouting, “Not the
Phantom of the Opera
pillow!” And now Becca is laughing like an even bigger maniac than Joe, and everybody seems to think the whole thing couldn't be funnier if it was on Comedy Central. Everybody but Zachary, that is, who is so nice and sincere that he's still apologizing a half hour later.

Anyways, the point is that my conversation with Becca about her getting a dog gets derailed, along with her hand on my knee; and, once everybody calms down after what will live on as the Notorious Seltzer Incident, all anybody wants to talk about are their Big Family Vacations. Addie's not going away on hers until August, but she is leaving tomorrow to visit her grandma for a week. As it turns out, Bobby and his dad are heading off for their camping trip tomorrow, too. And Joe and his family are leaving for Montreal. Or as Joe
insists on putting it,
“Nous allons à la métropole.”

Much of the time, I have no idea what Joe's talking about—even when he's speaking English.

I sit there feeling miserable. Not only do I
not
want to hear about everybody's jolly times with their happy families, I don't want to think about the fact that my three best friends are all going to be away at the same time. For an entire week, they are leaving me here jerking sodas in Paintbrush Falls while they go out to see the world and have fun. Talk about rotten stinkin' planning on their parts. The least they could have done was consult with me first!

And to make matters worse, knowing that Becca is getting an actual dog makes me realize how much I want a dog and how much I miss Penny, and how both those things have been true for six years—almost half my entire life.

Somehow, even though everybody's been moving around, about a half hour later Becca and I end up sitting on the couch next to each other again. And somehow she's picked up on the fact of me being miserable, possibly because instead of
saying anything, I have just set a new world record for the Number of Cheetos Eaten By a Thirteen-Year-Old in Thirty Minutes or Less.

She bumps her shoulder against mine. “I'm not going away on vacation, either,” she says.

“Yeah, but you're getting a dog.”

“Yay, dog,” she goes, smiling at me like we've just shared our first secret.

Is Steffi right? Does Becca actually
like
me? Is this possible?

“You should get a dog, too,” she says.

I don't go into the million and one reasons this is not going to happen. Instead, I tell her, “I had a dog once. When I was seven.”

“What happened to him?” she asks.

“Her. Her name was Penny. She ran away and I never saw her again.”

Becca looks like she's going to cry. I don't know if it's because of Penny in particular, or she's just one of those people who gets all weepy when anything bad happens to a dog.

“Did she—was she—you know, like, okay?”

I shrug. “I don't know. Like I said, I never saw her again. So how should I know if she was okay or not? She never turned up dead or anything, that I heard about anyways, but . . .”

Becca puts her hand on my arm. “I'm sorry, Skeezie,” she says. “Really.”

I like the feel of her hand on my arm and I like the sound of her voice when she says she's sorry, but I'm not sure I want to say anything else. If I tell her the whole story, I'll end up bawling, because—you probably guessed this already—I'm one of those people who gets all weepy when anything bad happens to a dog. Especially when the dog was mine.

Plus, she's a girl. And like I said, I don't know how to talk around girls.

But somehow Becca gets me talking. I don't tell her the whole story, just the part I can tell and not get all choked up about.

Penny was a mutt, I tell her, a stray somebody found out along Route 9 and brought to the shelter. When my dad and I went there to pick out a
dog, I took one look at her and said, “That one!”

“Let's look at them all first, Skeezo,” my dad said, but I wouldn't budge. I knelt down in front of Penny's cage and put my face right up to the chain link where you're not supposed to, and she stuck out her big old taffy tongue and started licking my nose like it was some kind of doggie lollipop. It tickled. I giggled. And my dad said, “Done deal.”

Penny had some other name the shelter gave her, something dumb like Princess or Pickles or something, but I said we had to name her Penny because she had penny-colored hair, just like Joe's mom. And
her
name is Penny, and I always thought that was so cool. I guess my Penny must have had some golden retriever in her, but when you're seven years old and you finally get the dog you've been blowing out birthday candles for your whole life, you don't care what kind she is. All that matters is that she's yours. And that she has a good name. Penny was a good name.

My dad had already built the doghouse and put up the kennel, so Penny moved right in when we
got back home. I wanted her in the house with me, curled up at my feet under the kitchen table while I did my homework and snoring her head off next to me in my bed at night. But I'd already lost that fight. My mom said no way. She didn't want a dog in the first place, because she figured she'd be the one to take care of it. And she for sure didn't want one in the house.

“I've got two kids already—three, counting your dad—and another one on the way,” she'd tell me, “and we are
not
getting a dog. Period. End of discussion.”

Of course, it wasn't the end of the discussion. I kept on bringing it up every chance I got, and my dad was quick to take my side. He'd had a dog when he was growing up, and he believed that every boy should have a dog. I don't know where that left girls, but that wasn't my concern at the time.

The truth is, getting a dog was one of the things my parents fought about. They fought about a lot of things, but the fact that getting a dog was one of them made me feel guilty, like their fighting was
my fault. So when my dad ended one fight with, “We're getting the boy a dog, Allie, and that's the end of it!” I didn't know whether to cheer or hang my head.

He let me help him build the doghouse, and he took me with him to the Home Depot to pick up the chain-link fence to make the kennel. Two days later we were at the shelter and my dad was signing the papers that made Penny my dog.

“I had her for three months, one week, and four days. She got out of her kennel and ran away and I never saw her again,” I tell Becca as if this is the end of the story, even though it's only half the truth.

Becca's eyes are wet. “How did she get out?” she asks.

I hesitate before answering. “Dug her way under the fence,” I say, crossing over from half a truth to a full-out lie.

Becca shakes her head and wipes the tears away with the back of her hand.

“You should totally come with us,” she says.

“Huh?”

“When we go to the shelter next week. You should totally come with us.”

“Nah,” I say. “I don't think so.”

Suddenly, Becca's eyes light up and she's like, “You really
have
to, Skeezie. Oh, please. You know you want to.
Please
.” Now she does that pouty-girl thing I hate, but somehow it looks good on Becca, especially when it's directed at me and she's asking me to go with her to pick out a dog.

“I might have to work . . . or take care of Megan and Jessie or . . .”

“Or clean out your sock drawer. Oh, come on, it will be so fun! We'll go when you're
not
working or taking care of your sisters or—”

“Or cleaning out my sock drawer,” I say, and we both laugh.

“So you'll come?”

I nod and go, “Yeah. I'll come.”

“Yay!” she says, clapping her hands. And then she reaches one of those hands out to me and the next thing I know I'm dancing with Becca
Wrightsman. It's the first time I've danced with a girl. Ever.

I try to ignore my friends hooting and making a big deal out of the fact that I, Skeezie Tookis, am dancing at all and think,
Maybe it'll be okay being on my own for a week. If being on my own means being with Becca.

Saturday my mom and I have to work, so my dad is spending the day with the girls. He's taking them out to Water Slide World. I actually like Water Slide World and would normally feel bad about not getting to go, especially on a hot day like this, but right now I feel lucky that I have to work, because it means being spared so-called quality time with my dad. Let the girls have it, is what I say. Jessie will take all she can get, and Megan will have a good time sulking.

I start the day mowing Addie's lawn, which totally sucks because I have to watch her load her stuff into her mom's Volvo, then wave at her while they drive off to the Trailways station and yell, “Have fun!” like I mean it. When what I really want to yell is, “Have fun while I stay here and get all stinky and sweaty cutting your grass in the hundred-degree heat!”

“Oh, I will!” she calls back, waving like the queen of England or something.

“I'll bring you out some lemonade when I get back from dropping Addie off!” Addie's mom shouts before rolling up her window and disappearing into her nice
air-conditioned
car.

Addie's dad is inside the house practicing his cello, which I can't hear because of the noise from the mower, but I know because he told me, “If you need me, I'll be inside practicing my cello,” like it's a normal father thing to be doing on a Saturday. My dad—and probably 99 percent of the dads in America—would be inside drinking beers and watching football. Not that I think that's a great thing. Personally, I hate football and the smell of beer, so I could easily end up in the other one percent, although it's more likely I'd be practicing my electric guitar (if I had one) and not the cello.