Pet Disasters (4 page)

Mason and Brody made posters:

Mason was contributing the reward money from his saved allowance. It was the least he could do. Though, actually, as far as fairness went, the person paying the reward money should have been Brody. All Mason had done was utter the fateful words, “Maybe we should take him out of his cage and play with him.” Everything else had been Brody’s idea. But Mason didn’t want to make Brody feel worse than he did already.

“He’ll come home, I know he will,” Brody said as the two boys sat lettering their posters at Mason’s kitchen table. They had already searched for Hamster all over Mason’s backyard and front yard and side yard.

Brody sniffled as he copied their message onto the tenth piece of cardboard. Mason’s father had a huge stack of cardboard saved from every shirt he’d ever bought. “He’ll come home, won’t he, Mason?”

Mason didn’t know what to say. “Maybe.”

Brody sniffled again.

Mason corrected himself: “I mean, sure.”

They couldn’t use the photo of Hamster in his pirate costume. In the photo, all that could be seen of Hamster was his stubby tail on the far right side of the picture as he jumped out of sight.

Mason had thought about putting on the poster that Hamster was last seen wearing a red bandanna and a black eye patch. Those things would definitely
make Hamster easy to recognize. But Mason had a feeling that Hamster had taken them off by now. Hamster had turned out to be smarter than Mason had given him credit for. Hamster had clearly been more successful at avoiding a Christmas-card photo than Mason had been.

An hour later, the two boys headed out from Mason’s house, carrying a stack of twenty posters, a roll of masking tape, and a box of tacks.

“What do we put them on?” Mason asked.

“Lampposts. Or stop signs. Anything, I guess.”

The two boys taped a poster on every lamppost and stop sign within three blocks of Mason’s house, until almost all their signs were gone.

“Should we go home and make some more?” Brody asked. “How far do you think he went?”

Mason shrugged. He had no idea. Maybe hamster behavior would always remain a mystery.

As they were tacking their last sign to a last utility pole, a dark-haired girl pedaled by on her bike. She pulled up beside them: it was Nora.

“What’s the sign for?”

Before they could reply, she answered her own question by simply reading it.

“I bet he’s somewhere in the house. Lost hamsters are almost always somewhere in the house. You can put a little bit of flour on the floor near where you saw him last, and see if there are any hamster footprints in it, and find him that way.”

“He’s not in the house,” Mason said.

“We saw him go out the door,” Brody added.

“I never heard of a hamster going outside.”

“Hamster was—is—an extra-smart and adventurous hamster,” Brody told her.

“Then he’s probably in your yard. He probably found a hiding place. Hamsters are naturally good at hiding.”

“How do you know so much about hamsters?” Brody asked Nora. “Do you have a hamster?”

Nora shrugged. “I read a lot of books. Don’t you read books?”

Mason did read books. Even though he was a good reader on his own, his mother also read aloud to him all the time, old-fashioned books she had liked when she was a girl. None of them were about hamsters.

“I think we need to get home,” Mason said. “It’s almost suppertime.”

“Hamster will be hungry!” Brody almost wailed.

“There are lots of things for him to eat outside, right?” Mason asked Nora. “Can hamsters eat grass?”

“Yes, or seeds or bugs. But—well, they can also
get
eaten.”

As soon as she said it, the look on her face showed that she wished she hadn’t. Brody gave a low moan.

Back at Mason’s house, the sight of Hamster’s cage, with its abandoned food bowl and silent wheel, was depressing. Before dinner, Mason’s father carried the empty cage to a shelf in the garage, next to Goldfish’s empty bowl. The shelf was now full. Mason hoped his parents would notice that there was no room for any further pet equipment.

“I’m sure he’ll come back,” Mason’s mom said, with false cheeriness, as the three of them sat down to eat. Mason’s parents were having pasta Alfredo. Mason was having macaroni and cheese from a box. Mason’s mother used to complain about having to fix him macaroni and cheese, but now she seemed used to it.

“Don’t get his hopes up,” Mason’s father said to Mason’s mother.

Did Mason hope Hamster would come back? He did want Hamster to be all right, wherever he was.

After supper, Mason looked one last time under the bushes near the back door in case he saw a very small brown animal hiding there. He didn’t.

That evening, it was quiet in the family room without the ceaseless whir of Hamster’s wheel. Quiet and peaceful.

Mason did hope his parents wouldn’t get him any more pets. That much he could hope for.

At art camp the next day, Dunk strode into the room with a knowing smirk. He waved a torn piece of cardboard in Mason’s face. Mason could see it was one of their
LOST! ONE BROWN HAMSTER
posters.

“Is this your stupid hamster?”

There was no point in lying. Mason nodded.

“Hamster’s not stupid!” Brody said. “He’s a hundred times smarter than your dumb dog. You better put our poster back where you found it. It’s illegal to take down other people’s posters. You can get arrested for doing that.”

Was that true? Mason glanced over at Nora. She shook her head slightly.

“It is!” Brody insisted. “You could go to jail, Dunk!”

Mason wasn’t going to get his hopes up about that, either.

That day the art campers were going on a camp trip, walking three blocks from Plainfield Elementary to the fast-flowing creek that ran past the public library. Each camper carried a folding easel, canvas, and paints.

“We’ll be painting outdoors, in the open air,” Mrs. Gong told them. “The way that Monet painted his haystacks!”

She had shown them pictures of the painter Claude Monet’s haystacks. Monet was a French painter who liked to paint the same thing over and over again, at different times of day, in different seasons. Mason was sympathetic to the idea of repetition: pick one idea and stick with it, instead of having to find new ideas day after day after day. But why a haystack? he wondered. If you could pick anything in the world to paint over and over again, why pick a haystack?

Though, what else would you pick? Mason couldn’t think of anything he’d like to paint over and over again. Actually, he couldn’t think of anything he’d like to paint at all.

Down by the creek, under the shade of the cottonwood trees, the campers set up their easels. Some kids, including Nora, took a long time to find the place with the most perfect view. Mason saw Nora systematically surveying the possible views from every direction, slowly revolving to select the most advantageous viewpoint.

Brody carefully climbed across three rocks in the creek and set up his easel on a big flat rock out in the middle of the water. Mason set his up as close as he could to Brody’s, but safely on dry land. He was relieved that Dunk’s easel was far away. Dunk was the only camper who stood facing away from the water altogether.

Mason started painting a tree. His picture of a tree looked more like a tree than his picture of Hamster had looked like a hamster. It did help to have the thing he was painting right there in front of him.

The tree had one long branch growing out over the water.

Mason painted one long branch growing out over the water.

The branch had a bunch of green leaves on it.

Mason painted a bunch of green leaves.

“Nice work!” Mrs. Gong said. He hadn’t realized
she was standing next to him. This time she didn’t have to make guesses about whether he was painting a tree or a telephone pole.

Mason allowed himself the thought,
Maybe art camp isn’t so bad, after all
.

He hoped he wasn’t jinxing anything by thinking it.

“Beautiful, Brody!” Mrs. Gong gushed; she was gazing over at Brody’s painting from the safe distance of the shore. Mason noticed that she was still wearing her smock and her beret. He had thought maybe she would take them off before going out in public with normal people.

“You’re really capturing the way the sunlight is shining on the water,” Mrs. Gong told Brody.

Brody beamed.

Mason looked at Brody’s picture, too. It was good, definitely good enough to win the art contest and be shown in a museum, even in a museum in New York City or Paris, France. It was harder to paint water that looked like water than to paint a haystack that looked like a haystack. Maybe that was why Monet had decided to keep painting haystacks over and over again.

There was some kind of noisy commotion over
where Dunk was painting. Or maybe it was just Dunk yelling something. “What is it?” Mrs. Gong called over to Dunk. “What’s going on?”

“A hamster!” Dunk shouted. “I just saw Mason’s hamster!”

Mason started to run in Dunk’s direction. Brody leaped off his rock to follow him. As he jumped, his foot caught one leg of his easel and sent it flying into the swift-flowing current of the creek.

“My picture!” Brody wailed.

But Brody left it behind and raced toward Dunk. “Where was he?” Brody gasped as he reached Dunk, just steps behind Mason.

Dunk didn’t answer.

“Which way did he go?” Mason asked.

Dunk burst out laughing. “I was just kidding, you guys,” he said.

Looking bewildered, Mrs. Gong was by their side, putting a comforting hand on Brody’s shaking shoulder. Mason tried to tell her what Dunk had done, but he was too angry to get all the words out. Nora finished the story for him.

“Dunk,” Mrs. Gong said reproachfully. “That was a very unkind thing to do. And now Brody’s beautiful painting is ruined. Tell Brody you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Brody,” Dunk said.

“And tell Mason you’re sorry, too.”

“I’m sorry, Mason.”

Dunk sounded sincere. But he had sounded sincere when he had yelled out about seeing Hamster, too.

Mason had been wrong: art camp was terrible, after all.

Mason wanted to turn on the TV, but he couldn’t find the remote. So he needed to get up and walk over to the TV. But he couldn’t get up and walk over to the TV, because asleep on his lap, purring as loudly as a motorboat, was his new pet, Cat.

Cat was gray and white. She apparently liked his lap, or she wouldn’t have been purring. Mason knew Cat was a she, because the lady at the shelter had told his father so.

Mason did not feel like purring. It was a hot day, and having a cat on his lap made him feel hotter. Mason’s house had air-conditioning, but his mother never wanted to turn it on, because she thought air-conditioning was bad for the environment. She didn’t seem to realize that extreme, oppressive heat was bad for Mason.

He suddenly realized that he also needed to go to the bathroom. Soon.

“Cat!” Mason said, hoping she’d wake up and jump away.

Cat didn’t open her eyes. She probably couldn’t hear him over the sound of her own purring.